Guest Commentary written by

Shawn Pleasants

Shawn Pleasants is a member of the Bring California Home Coordinating Committee and Chair of the LAHSA Lived Experience Advisory Board.

In June, I’ll celebrate six years housed. What got and kept me here is knowing I wasn’t on this journey alone. 

People who’ve never lost their housing think becoming housed is the end, but it’s really a midpoint. Experiencing homelessness meant taking on damage night after night. Having a roof over my head meant I could begin to heal. 

And the support from a case manager — who helped me find an apartment that takes my voucher and helps navigate my medical issues — meant I could move my life forward in ways homelessness completely prevented.

My story and those of my friends and fellow advocates who’ve experienced being unhoused are evidence that through proven solutions — connecting people to affordable housing with services like job training and behavioral health treatment — California can solve homelessness for any one of us.

If California put 2.5% of the state budget into homelessness solutions, we could solve it for all of us. Instead, despite being the fourth largest economy in the world, we spend less than 0.5% of the state budget on the homeless response.

California provides predictable, ongoing funding for public education, healthcare and transportation. Yet our homeless response sector must come to Sacramento every year to keep their doors open. With adequate ongoing funding, providers on the ground could plan and build infrastructure to bring more people home.

Even with unreliable funding, we’ve made progress. While homelessness stayed flat in California last year, it rose by 18% in the rest of the country. 

However, we’re cutting back on one-time sources. There’s no new funding in the governor’s proposed budget for the Homeless Housing Assistance and Prevention (HHAP) program, which has helped more than 100,000 Californians exit homelessness to permanent housing in the past three years.

The program’s funds help local homeless response agencies statewide. Without funding, shelters will close and key programs will end as providers cut staff. Ultimately, someone will get left behind and may not survive to get a chance to move forward. 

On many occasions, I nearly lost my life due to no fault of my own. I remember getting food poisoning and being hospitalized for days. 

Ultimately the cuts won’t save the state money. We’ll end up spending more, putting people who live on the streets behind bars and in hospital beds.

The state funding woes come as federal funds are uncertain.

Last year, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) proposed changes that would have rendered me and more than 27,000 Californians homeless again. For now, a court order is preventing these new rules from going into effect. But the federal government can and will try again to put them in place. 

This comes on top of losing 14,000 homes by the end of the year as federal emergency housing vouchers expire and Congress refuses to act. Together, losses from HUD and vouchers could mean a  22% increase in people sleeping on our streets.

People like me, who have worked hard to thrive in supportive housing, will be retraumatized by housing insecurity, because we can’t afford increasing rents. Too many others will remain on or return to the street, disconnected from family and friends, their past lives, and futures we all hope to see.

I understand this is another tough budget year. However, funding for homelessness programs should be prioritized because it supports people who need it most. 

People are not becoming rich; they’re just getting the basics of life: a roof, food and a chance to thrive again. I want to stay housed. I’m older now, and if I ended up homeless again, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t make it out. 

Hundreds of thousands more people living in our streets and shelters want to come home. 

Even more Californians are struggling to keep up with the costs of groceries, gas and rising rents. They need a safety net to catch them and keep them from falling into homelessness.Fully funding proven solutions could be game-changing. California is a place of opportunity, grounded in compassion and care. We can stand up to policies of cruelty.