Riding on the coattails of Santa Clara County’s homelessness prevention program, California will be creating its own statewide prevention strategy.
State officials are planning out their first homelessness prevention strategy after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 1924 last month. The law requires the California Interagency Council on Homelessness to come up with a blueprint for measurable prevention goals and an action plan by July 1, 2028. It also tasks the council with identifying efforts with the highest impact locally and making recommendations for funding them in the future. Because of budgetary constraints, the law does not include funding for homelessness prevention programs — meaning it could be up to cities and counties to pay for.
“It’s an important transformation for the state to move in this direction,” Michael Feuer, senior policy advisor at nonprofit Inner City Law Center, one of the co-sponsors of AB 1924, told San José Spotlight. “Having a stabilized prevention strategy is a first step to really making the kind of progress we need in reducing homelessness. It’s also much less expensive to prevent someone from falling into homelessness than having to serve that person once they become homeless.”…