Interim housing could give thousands more homeless Californians shelter

Californians are tired and angry about the seemingly intractable, unsheltered, street homelessness crisis. 

After serving in elected office for 12 years, I have been frustrated by the many boxes that we’ve put around ourselves as policymakers that somehow justify allowing people to suffer, degrade and ultimately die in front of us, while our public spaces become living spaces for other humans. 

It’s a terrible reality for everyone. In the last decade more than 50,000 people died nationwide after living on the streets. This is unacceptable! 

Now, for the first time in years, there is growing recognition that we can end unsheltered homelessness, if we expand our concept of acceptable housing to be broader than someone’s forever home. There are a number of interim solutions between living unsheltered on the street and permanent housing. 

One proven scalable solution for building interim supportive housing is using temporarily vacant land and modular, relocatable cabins. These are not the “shelters” of the past. These are quick-build, clean, safe, modest housing units that provide shelter from the elements and have social workers on site. 

Wide-scale adoption of this interim housing would mean our streets aren’t a waiting room anymore for the 187,000 unsheltered homeless people in California. Interim housing can be constructed for as little as $50,000 a unit, compared to an average cost of $650,000 for a permanent housing unit. 

Some cities are leading the way. San Jose is on track to open 1,400 beds within 18 months — including more than 800 modular interim housing units — in stark contrast to taking the four to seven years, which is standard for traditional affordable housing projects. 

One of the pernicious problems in tackling homelessness in the real world is the “where” question. NIMBY-ism, bureaucratic hurdles, lawsuits and political jousting can lead to the inaccurate perception that nowhere in an entire city is the right place to build a small, homeless-serving housing project. This is absurd. 

We need to be more open-minded in considering locations. Urban landowners own undeveloped or under-developed parcels slated for future investments that could host shorter-term interim projects. 

Large parking lots that can be repurposed for a quick-build project are everywhere when you start to look — from aging shopping malls, to city civic centers, to community college campuses, to fairgrounds, to Caltrans park & ride lots. 

Old hotels and motels already provide separated rooms. 

And we need everyone to get on board — leaders in politics, business, labor, environment and community preservation. We should demand a goal of getting to functional zero in unsheltered street homelessness and that we have a plan to get there. 

Two bills this year — one by me (SB 16) and one from state Senator Josh Becker (SB 606) — would bolster this framework. The state and its regions would be required to develop a plan to reach and maintain functional zero for unsheltered homelessness, and they would be held accountable to use the tools the state has provided, including the Shelter Crisis Act passed in 2020 and the Low-Barrier Navigation Center law passed in 2019.

 We could make this happen by legislating property tax breaks, city incentives like the Regional Housing Needs Allocation credit, security and sanitation commitments from cities, flexible funding and automatic “by-right” approvals when projects satisfy zoning and local ordinances.

That could be paired with a requirement that all 500-plus cities and counties in the state participate in the provision of  in-patient treatment and interim housing.

Today, unfortunately, the preponderance of state funding comes with rigid restrictions that tie the money exclusively to permanent housing “exits.” For example, the state’s Homekey+ program specifies that “ineligible uses include: Interim Housing.” 

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The latest state Encampment Resolution Funds program now requires that any interim use must be accompanied by a concrete plan to move individuals into permanent housing. 

These restrictions prevent pragmatic interim solutions to bring people in off the streets fast and cost effectively. Cities should be empowered to use state funds for interim solutions.

Interim housing does not end all types of homelessness for all people at all stages. We still need to build enough permanent housing to end the housing crisis. 

But unsheltered homelessness is the most devastating. And it is actually solvable in the near term when we expand our definition of housing to include “housing now.”