El Dorado County Homelessness Digest

Jennielynn Holmes stood in the middle of a make-shift evacuation center when the scope of the crisis hit her.

Gov. Newsom launched an ambitious program that uses Medi-Cal to help Californians access housing, healthy food and more. Now, its fate is in the hands of President-Elect Trump.

Learn more about the new Upper Room Dining Hall food truck serving the hungry and food insecure in El Dorado County.

Many California cities offer their homeless residents one-way bus tickets to other places.

Learn more about the clearing of three homeless camps and the thousands of pounds of rubbish removed before being covered by coming winter snows.

November has been designated by Tahoe Youth and Family Services as a time to focus on runaway or homeless youth in the community. Read on to learn more.

Homeless Californians face many barriers to casting a ballot, even in elections that affect their lives. Some counties and nonprofits are trying to boost turnout.

In the face of vigorous opposition, Housing El Dorado dropped a proposal to rent an empty space at the Cameron Park Community Services District campus to use as an inclement weather shelter for local homeless.

Multiple state agencies spent nearly $24 billion on housing and homeless programs in the first five years of Gavin Newsom’s governorship, but the number of people without homes continued to grow, rising by 20% to more than 180,000 in the most recent federal count in 2023.

Homeless service providers are scaling back and taking out loans as they wait for late payments from the government.

Over the last five years, the state government has spent some $24 billion to ameliorate homelessness, which, according to polls, is California’s most troublesome issue.

Failed legislative bills have attempted to create safe parking programs for students to sleep in their cars on California campuses while awaiting housing. Meanwhile, Long Beach City College allows homeless students to park overnight.

For five years, California officials responding to the homelessness crisis had to work around one big restriction imposed by the federal courts: Because they didn’t have enough shelter beds, cities generally couldn’t make homeless camps illegal.

More than two-dozen California cities passed, strengthened or are considering ordinances that penalize people for sleeping outside, after the U.S. Supreme Court allowed cities to crack down.

An exclusive CalMatters analysis of the latest California homeless count reveals some good news and bad news: Though the growth rate of homelessness appears to be slowing, the overall number of unhoused Californians increased from two years ago.

California has allocated more than $20 billion to alleviate the state’s homelessness crisis since Gavin Newsom became governor in 2019, but there’s precious little data on how the money was spent and what effect it’s had, other than the number of unhoused people has continued to climb.

A critical new federal audit calls out California for doing too little to prevent fraudulent spending of homelessness funds. Nearly $320 million was at risk.

In 2021, responding to reports that the state’s homeless shelters were dirty and dangerous, the state Legislature crafted a plan: It would require local governments to inspect their shelters after complaints and file annual reports on shelter conditions.

The Supreme Court’s decision on homelessness will test a shelter system that’s full of problems – and lacking accountability.

Taking advantage of new state funds, some California healthcare providers are starting to offer what their homeless patients really need: housing.

There’s a lot of misinformation floating around out there about homelessness in California. We use data to dispel several common myths.

The ruling by the conservative court majority means cities no longer are prohibited from punishing homeless people for camping if they have nowhere else to go.

The Supreme Court 6-3 ruling in the City of Grants Pass v. Johnson case found that the fining and arresting of homeless people does not violate Eighth Amendment rights.

In a June meeting, the El Dorado County Board of Supervisors were presented with the first annual report of the homeless navigation center.

A panel at the CalMatters Ideas Festival debates how to reduce homelessness without punishing poverty. There’s worry about a potential $1 billion cut in state funding.

It’s the billion-dollar question. That’s how much cities and other local governments have been receiving from the state each year to deal with California's ever-increasing population of homeless people.

In their May 21 meeting, the El Dorado County Board of Supervisors approved a proposal to develop a permanent homeless shelter on a 1-acre lot on Forni Road in Placerville.

A bill to ban homeless encampments statewide near parks, schools and transit hubs failed to get out of the same legislative committee as last year.

El Dorado County is planning for a new homeless navigation center in Placerville on Forni Road.

There’s so little data available, it’s impossible to even tell if several of California’s largest homelessness programs are working, according to a statewide audit released Tuesday.

I thought my journalism and others’ could change policy, perhaps even inspire a New Deal-style response equal to the challenge. Such was my naiveté.

An introduction to locals living out of their vehicles and examples of municipal "safe parking programs."