California homelessness: How bad is it?

California’s homelessness crisis stares people in the face on the streets, and shows up as one of the biggest worries in poll after poll.

This week, thousands of volunteers ventured across the state to find out how bad the problem is. The federally-mandated “point-in-time count” of the homeless population helps determine how state funds are allocated and how local agencies plan their spending, among other policy decisions.

Early Thursday morning, CalMatters homelessness reporter Marisa Kendall joined volunteers from Alameda County Healthcare for the Homeless in Berkeley for the count. Equipped with maps marked with known encampments, these volunteers included 61-year-old first-timer Deidra Perry. After meeting a young woman living inside a silver SUV, Perry asked personal questions, including on mental health and HIV status, then gave the woman a $10 gift card.

• Perry: “They’re tough questions to ask. It feels very intrusive.”

Last year, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development counted 181,399 unhoused Californians — 28% of the country’s entire homeless population and nearly 40% more than five years ago.

Getting an accurate updated count is more difficult than usual. This exercise happens every two years, but some counties delayed their counts during the pandemic. Now, not all California counties are in sync.

Different counties also approach the count differently: Some have volunteers who attempt to talk to each person, others use algorithms to estimate how many people live inside each dwelling, and others are instructed to tally just the tents and RVs without bothering the people inside.

Experts agree that the count isn’t perfect and that the real number of homeless Californians is likely higher. Driven by income loss and high rent, the state’s unhoused population continues to grow, with the biggest concentration in Los Angeles.

Also worrying: The high death rates among the homeless population. According to the Sacramento Regional Coalition to End Homelessness, 250 homeless people died in California’s capital in 2022 — the highest number ever, reports The Sacramento Bee. And while the final total has yet to be tallied for 2023, it is expected to break that record.

For more on the point-in-time count, read Marisa’s story.

For more than a year, UCLA law professors and student advocates campaigned for the University of California regents to adopt a plan to enable an estimated 4,000 undocumented UC students to legally work. 

But Thursday, the regents voted to suspend the plan for at least another year, writes CalMatters higher education reporter Mikhail Zinshteyn.

• Michael Drake, president of the UC: “We have concluded that the proposed legal pathway is not viable at this time…. (But) as new information becomes available, we will evaluate that information, and if appropriate, move ahead.”

In May 2023, the regents had voted to consider the plan only to miss their own November deadline to determine next steps, causing an uproar among students.

Drake argued that while some legal scholars say the UC is exempt from federal law that bars employers from hiring undocumented immigrants, human resources employees and legal staff “might be subject to criminal or civil prosecution if they knowingly participate in hiring practices deemed impermissible under federal law,” and the university may be threatened with civil fines or criminal penalties.

To find out more about the debate, read Mikhail’s story.

Also from Mikhail:

The undocumented students policy wasn’t the only consequential punt UC regents took Thursday.

Regents decided to wait until March to vote on whether to place limits on the political speech that academic departments and other “units” at the UC can post on the landing pages of their websites.

In the lead-up to Wednesday’s discussion, some faculty said it would limit professors’ free speech and academic freedom. They faulted the regents for not adopting existing faculty policy that says departments can post opinions but they should be clearly marked as views independent of official UC policy.

Members of the board who sought to pursue the policy said the homepages of university websites should exist for official university business, not anything else.

• Jay Sures, a regent who co-led the effort: “When individual or group viewpoints or opinions on matters not directly related to the official business of the unit are posted on these administrative websites, it creates the potential that the statements and opinions will be mistaken as the position of the institution itself.”

Several regents floated the idea of a separate opinion page where departments can publish their views. While most regents were vague about the impetus for the plan, one regent, Hadi Makarechian, said its source was the rancor over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The debate was impassioned — and prompted Keith Ellis, a regent, to implore his peers to practice “decorum.”

“It seemed like a bunch of tomfoolery was coming down.” 

That’s how one Berkeley resident, who was planning to add a solar rooftop to their home last spring, put it to CalMatters environmental reporter Julie Cart after the state’s public utilities commission voted to reduce payments that homeowners can receive from the electricity their solar panels generate.

The new rate structure, which slashed the amount utilities pay homeowners by about 75%, was passed in 2022 and went into effect last April, driving a three-month surge in new solar applicants. But after that, Julie found out, demand plummeted — about 82% fewer customers applied for solar connections from May through November 2023 compared to 2022.

Some solar companies also say that the rate change — which only applies to new solar installations and only for PG&E, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric customers — have forced them to lay off workers or shut down altogether. 

The utilities commission declined an interview with CalMatters, but part of its rationale when it passed the rule was based on equity. Solar customers are typically well-to-do, and were being paid near-retail prices for their excess power. Because they didn’t pay their fair share of fixed energy costs, low-income households were disproportionately being saddled with higher bills.

Reversing what it viewed as unfair subsidies was also one reason why the agency in November expanded the lower rates to apartments, schools and businesses.

But for Ken Wells, who had to lay off all his employees at his own solar company after the rate change, the conflict between the state’s ambitions for clean energy and the rate change remains confounding.

• Wells: “We are talking from both sides of our mouth?…. We cannot afford years of setting back the solar industry, just cutting it off at the knees with these policies. These policymakers got it wrong.”

For more on how the rate change impacted California’s solar transition, read Julie’s story.

Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Gavin Newsom are in campaign mode — for President Biden’s reelection.

Harris returned to Sacramento on Thursday to rally Democratic state lawmakers in a gathering closed to reporters. She did a fundraiser Wednesday night and was scheduled to attend another Thursday night in Los Angeles. And on Monday, she plans to be in San Jose for an event on abortion rights — a key issue for Biden. Republicans welcomed Harris by calling her “among the least popular Democrats in the nation” due to her “failed, radical record.”

Meanwhile, Newsom promoted Biden in South Carolina, which revived Biden’s campaign in the 2020 presidential primary. Newsom — who ridiculed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis after his debate opponent dropped out and endorsed former President Donald Trump on Sunday — plans to stop in Nevada today before returning to California.

In other political news: Secretary of State Shirley Weber isn’t giving up her fight to keep GOP Assemblymember Vince Fong of Bakersfield from running for Congress and reelection at the same time.

Weber is urging a state appeals court to overturn a December ruling that allowed Fong to be on the March 5 primary ballot for the congressional seat vacated by former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Weber asked for a ruling by April 12, when she will certify the election results, reports The San Joaquin Valley Sun. If she prevails, Fong would be disqualified from advancing to November if he finishes in the top two.

In response, Fong’s campaign blasted what it calls a “last-ditch attempt by a liberal Sacramento politician to strip Central Valley voters of their right to choose.”