Addressing Homelessness in California: A Collaborative Research Series

As California’s homelessness crisis has continued to grow, so has the range and scale of efforts to address it. To understand these efforts in greater depth and inform their ongoing implementation, the Terner Center, Abt Associates, and UCSF’s Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative (BHHI) collaborated on a statewide assessment, presented in a new series of research briefs. Our teams interviewed hundreds of people with lived experience of homelessness, staff members in local governments, nonprofit service providers, and other organizations working to address homelessness throughout California. We also analyzed quantitative data from local homelessness service, shelter, and housing programs.

The first brief in the series, Five Recent Trends in Homelessness in California, describes the number and characteristics of people experiencing homelessness in California and documents trends in the available shelter and housing across the state. The patterns presented in the brief underscore the need for sustained resources to address homelessness, equitable service provision, and greater production of affordable housing.

The study is now available on our new landing page for this research series. Briefs published in the coming months will point to where progress has been made and where gaps remain. The briefs will also lift up innovations in policy and practice, and recommend additional ways to make homelessness rare, brief, and non-recurring for all people in California.