All across California, temporary homeless shelters have become the foundation of taxpayer-funded efforts to get people off the street.

Lauren Hepler

CalMatters

Our new investigation found that shelters have instead become housing purgatory. They’re often a mess — dangerous, chaotic and ultimately ineffective at finding people lasting housing.

Shelters are usually off-limits to anyone but staff and residents. To understand what’s happening inside, we obtained previously unreleased state performance data, reviewed thousands of police calls and incident reports and interviewed more than 80 shelter residents and personnel.

Here are seven key findings from our investigation:

1. Local and State Officials Bet Big on Shelters

Large, bunk bed-lined group shelters have long been the default answer to homelessness in big cities. Now, officials in all kinds of cities, suburbs and rural areas are banking on emergency beds to help clear the streets of tents after the Supreme Court’s Grants Pass ruling gave cities more power to ban sleeping outside.

No state agency tracks the total amount of money spent on homeless shelters, but public records show that state and local agencies have spent roughly $1 billion on shelters since 2018.

This has more than doubled the number of emergency shelter beds in California, from around 27,000 to 61,000.

2. Shelters Are Deadlier Than Jails

Annual shelter death rates tripled between 2018 and mid-2024. A total of 2,007 people died, according to data obtained from the California Interagency Council on Homelessness. That’s nearly twice as many deaths as California jails saw during the same period.

3. Inside Shelters, Chaos Frequently Breaks Loose

Black mold. Bedbugs. Domestic violence. Sex crimes.

We analyzed thousands of police call logs and shelter incident reports. They catalog the deluge of issues inside shelters.

4. Fewer Than 1 in 4 People Who Cycle Through Shelters Move Into a Permanent Home

Contracts often call for nonprofit shelter operators to find housing for between 30% and 70% of the people who come through their doors.

We obtained and analyzed state data on shelter effectiveness and found that, statewide, they’re far behind that target.

5. Scandals Have Plagued Fast-Growing Shelter Operators

The Oakland-based Bay Area Community Services saw revenue climb 1,000% in a decade to $98 million in 2023. At the same time, it faced a long list of allegations against staffers at one taxpayer-funded shelter, including fraud and inappropriate relationships with clients.

6. Local and State Oversight Is Failing

While the state sends local governments hundreds of millions of dollars for shelters, it does little to ensure accountability. Nearly all of California’s 500-plus cities and counties have ignored a state law that requires them to document and address dangerous shelter conditions, CalMatters found.

7. Experts Say There Are Several Potential Solutions

Experts advocate for government agencies to redirect money from short-term shelter and services toward promising early-stage solutions like direct rent assistance.

Even staunch shelter critics agree that cities need some of the facilities since they play a crucial role for vulnerable people.

Read the full investigation at this link.

About the Author

Lauren Hepler is an investigative reporter at CalMatters focused on labor issues and California’s housing crisis.

About CalMatters

CalMatters is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom committed to explaining California policy and politics.