As part of the state’s ongoing efforts to address the national homelessness crisis, Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday announced strong accountability measures for local jurisdictions to demonstrate results to continue receiving state homelessness funding.

Gov. Newsom is also launching a new online tool, accountability.ca.gov, which brings together thousands of locally reported data points to provide a clear picture of local communities’ work on California’s most pressing issues, including homelessness, housing, and behavioral health.

“No one in our nation should be without a place to call home. As we continue to support our communities in addressing homelessness, we expect fast results, not excuses. While we are pleased by the progress many communities have made to address the homelessness crisis, there is more work to do,” said Newsom.

Newsom announced additional accountability measures for communities that receive state funding. The announcement comes alongside new Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention, or HHAP, funding to support local homelessness efforts, tied to performance benchmarks and the ability for the state to withhold funding allocations if local communities do not make progress.

The funding also comes with flexibility for communities that need to modify their plans in the case of natural disasters, such as the recent Los Angeles area firestorms.

Communities that receive awards through the newest round of HHAP funding must adhere to increased accountability, transparency, and compliance measures. These include an increased focus on resolving encampments, requirements that recipients have a compliant housing element to obtain future funding, and requirements that grantees obligate and expend past awards before receiving new funds. These strengthened measures will better ensure real, measurable results and will improve the tracking of data and outcomes.

As part of the proposed 2025-2026 budget, the governor has called for even stronger accountability measures as a condition on any additional state funding, including requirements that grantees have and maintain a compliant housing element, prioritization for communities designated as “pro-housing,” and mechanisms to claw back funding from local governments that fail to demonstrate progress.

Dashboard shows how communities are doing

Monday’s announcement comes alongside the debut of a new online tool accountability.ca.gov, which brings together thousands of locally reported data points to provide an accurate picture of local communities’ work to address homelessness, create housing, and create behavioral health supports.

The new accountability tool will allow Californians to quickly and clearly assess the progress being made by their local governments on these pressing issues, and learn more about the process and funding provided to communities by the state.

In the case of Lake County, the dashboard shows it as having the second-highest increase statewide in unsheltered individuals, at 68%. Based on the available data, San Joaquin had the highest increase, with 156% increase. Fifteen counties did not provide new data on their unsheltered populations.

Lake County created a total of 123 housing units between 2019 and 2023. There are 10 counties, all in rural Northern California, that created fewer units, the smallest being Modoc, with five.

The dashboard also showed 35 people in Lake County being in full-service partnerships with Behavioral Health.

Lake’s neighboring counties reported the following statistics:

• Colusa: 95 housing units created; unsheltered down 28.3%.
• Glenn: 118 housing units created; unsheltered down 28.3%.
• Mendocino: 780 housing units created; unsheltered up 34.6%.
• Napa County: 718 housing units created; unsheltered down 41.8%.
• Sonoma County: 6,364 housing units created; unsheltered up 22.2%.
• Yolo County: 1,541 housing units created; unsheltered up 67.5%.

State is slowing growth of homelessness

As states throughout the nation continue to see ever-higher increases in homeless populations, Newsom’s office reported that California has dramatically slowed the growth in homelessness and reduced the number of veterans and youth experiencing homelessness — more than any other state.

Homelessness continues to increase nationwide, increasing in 2024 by more than 18%, but California is bucking the national trend by holding the statewide increase to 3%. This is a lower rate than in 40 other states.

California is also one of the few states that have dramatically blunted the increases in unsheltered homelessness, holding it to 0.45%. By comparison, in 2024, nationwide unsheltered homelessness grew by nearly 7%. Unsheltered homelessness growth in other large population states like Illinois, Florida, New York, and Texas surpassed California’s in terms of percentage and number.

Newsom’s administration reported that it is making significant progress in reversing decades of inaction on homelessness.

Between 2014 and 2019, unsheltered homelessness in California increased by approximately 37,000 people — more than double the increase seen during the Newsom Administration.