The Brief

When Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill last month that would have supported sober homeless housing, his reason left many scratching their heads.

Newsom said Assembly Bill 255, which would have allowed cities to use up to 10% of their state funds to pay for “recovery housing,” was unnecessary. That’s because using state funds for sober housing is already allowed, the governor said. He said “recent guidance” makes that clear.

That was a big surprise to Assemblymember Matt Haney, who had spent the past two years working on the bill Newsom was now saying had been moot all along. Haney had been under the impression that California’s “housing first” rule — which dictates that homelessness programs offer housing to people regardless of their sobriety, mental health, employment, etc. — meant sober housing wasn’t eligible for state funds.

When CalMatters asked about the “recent guidance” that allows the state to fund sober housing, the governor’s office sent a link to a 20-page document. No one CalMatters spoke to had ever seen that document before. Neither had Haney, anyone in his office, or the other stakeholders involved in his bill, including the service providers trying to build more sober housing, he said.

While the document was dated July, 2025, it wasn’t published online until Oct. 2 — the day after Newsom’s veto.

“I think it’s a terrible bureaucratic failure,” Haney said of the lack of communication. Having the state and the Legislature work together, rather than on separate parallel policies, would have saved everyone time and resources, he said.

“Why didn’t anybody say anything over the course of two years,” Haney asked, “not just to me, but to the cities, counties and providers who desperately wanted to open these beds?”

The California Interagency Council on Homelessness, which has been working on the document since late 2024, put the blame on Haney’s office for not reaching out. A preliminary draft was publicly available earlier this year as part of a February council meeting, said Executive Officer Meghan Marshall.

The new sober housing guidelines come at a time when the state is facing political pressure from some facets to shift its approach to homeless housing – both to embrace drug-free housing and to turn at least some of its focus from permanent housing that accepts everyone to temporary shelter that may come with strings attached.

A group of legislators, city housing staffers and nonprofits recently took a trip to San Antonio, Texas to tour a massive homeless shelter there, and returned with ideas on how to beef up California’s shelter capacity — which some on the trip say has been neglected as a casualty of California’s strict preference for long-term housing. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump’s administration has signalled that it will shift federal money away from permanent housing and into temporary shelter, while also imposing conditions such as sobriety. California might have to get on board with that agenda, or risk losing federal funds.

While few California Democrats are supportive of anything Trump does, the continued prevalence of encampments on the streets has convinced some that the state should change its tactics.

“We need to break the logjam of the dogma that says that only permanent housing is acceptable,” said Sen. Catherine Blakespear, a Democrat from Encinitas. “Because what we’re de facto saying is that people are going to stay on the streets until we’ve built enough permanent housing or market-rate housing, and neither is on track to meet the need anywhere in the near term.”

But that push has some service providers worried that, in an environment where homelessness funding keeps getting cut, focusing on sober housing and temporary housing will mean less money for the permanent housing that ends people’s homelessness.

“The current trend shifts away from solving the actual lack of a home and focuses on some people’s associated issues,” said Jennifer Loving, CEO of Destination Home.

The debate over sober, temporary, or permanent housing doesn’t address the underlying income inequality that causes many Californians to lose housing in the first place and prevents their being able to afford housing afterward.

The deal with sober housing

California has required state-funded homeless housing be “housing first” since 2016, meaning it gets people into a permanent home as quickly as possible without forcing them to jump through additional hoops. The idea is that once someone is safely housed, it becomes much easier for them to get sober, find a job or take care of other issues.

Haney argues the model prevented the state from funding sober housing, which he said could be lifesaving for people who are overcoming an addiction and don’t want to live next to neighbors using drugs.

The new state guidance says sober housing can be housing first, if it’s done right. It must be the client’s choice to get sober and live in recovery housing, and they must have other local options that don’t require sobriety. In addition, sober housing providers can’t evict someone for relapsing. If a client decides they no longer want to live in sober housing, the provider must connect them to another housing option.

The guidance is more permissive than Haney’s bill. While the bill would have capped state funding on sober housing at 10%, the state guidance has no limit. But Haney worries it’s too strict in other ways. If housing providers can’t evict someone for using drugs or alcohol, they can’t run effective sober housing, Haney said.

“There are some questions as to whether anyone is actually going to step up and do this under the guidelines as written,” he said.

The state guidelines come with no money to open new sober housing beds.

Without extra funding, as more money goes to sober housing, that means less money for low-barrier housing, said Loving, who worries that shift will move the state backward. Sober housing and drug testing were the norm in the 1980s and 1990s, but people still overdosed in those environments, she said.

“Drugs were always present, even in sober living environments,” Loving said. “And that did not increase our housing outcomes. What increased our housing outcomes was the availability of actual houses for people to transition into.”

Temporary or permanent housing?

Several dozen California legislators, city housing workers and nonprofit providers traveled to Texas last month to visit a massive homeless shelter in San Antonio. Haven for Hope fits about 1,500 people on one 22-acre campus — meaning that almost anyone in the city who wants to can sleep indoors. Most of those people are required to stay sober in order to keep their spot, and healthcare, counseling and other services are offered on site.

That program is a sharp contrast from the “discouraging results” of California’s homelessness strategy, said Sen. Dave Cortese, a Democrat from San Jose who went on the trip. He’s frustrated with what he sees as California’s neglect of temporary shelter. New programs such as Newsom’s Homekey only fund permanent housing. So did the Measure A affordable housing bond in Santa Clara County.

Long-term housing is the only way to resolve someone’s homelessness, which is why it has been the gold standard in the state. But it can take years to build, and voters aren’t always patient.

“If you push all your chips to the middle of the table on permanent supportive housing, you start to lose your constituency because constituents are coming by in their cars every day and seeing more tents and more illegal encampments,” Cortese said. “And their thought process is, ‘I thought we just put a billion dollars into eradicating homelessness. What’s going on? Why is it getting worse?’”

An illustration is displayed at The Salvation Army Silicon Valley groundbreaking ceremony for their HOPE Community Safe and Sober Overnight and Transitional Housing program in San Jose on Nov. 3, 2025.

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Nhat V. Meyer

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Bay Area News Group

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Land is scarce and expensive in California, which would make it hard to replicate a shelter as large as Haven for Hope. But city staff in San Jose are looking into whether some version of it can be done there, said Housing Director Erik Soliván, who was on the Texas trip.

While it may seem unusual for the Golden State to look to Texas in search of advice on social services, Californians have been awed by Haven for Hope for years. CalMatters wrote about the phenomenon in 2023.

The Texas shelter has made some changes since then. About 1,600 people slept in the shelter in 2023, and the facility served 85% of the city’s homeless population.

But even that giant facility couldn’t hold everyone. The space was overcrowded, with hundreds of people sleeping on the floor on mats inches apart. Haven for Hope had to pause enrollments and put new rules in place to limit who can come in. In the last fiscal year, the population was down to an average of 1,453 people per night. About 60% of those are in a program that regularly conducts drug and breathalyzer tests.

California will have to do more to embrace that style of shelter if it doesn’t want to get left behind by the federal administration, said Elizabeth Funk, founder and CEO of shelter provider DignityMoves, who went on the Texas trip.

The Trump administration appears poised to divert money away from permanent housing and into temporary housing that comes with sobriety and other requirements. But we won’t know the extent of that change until the government shutdown ends.

“The federal government is going to come down with a bunch of money for things that don’t allow drug use,” Funk said, “and that needs to fit in our system.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen were ensconced in the Orion space capsule when they dropped into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego at 8:07 p.m. Friday. The USS John P. Murtha is stationed near the splashdown zone to help recover the crew.

The USS John P. Murtha is stationed near the splashdown zone and will help recover the crew. A team will head out to the floating capsule and install an inflatable raft just below Orion's side hatch. The crew will be examined by a flight surgeon, then helped out of the capsule. From the transport ship, they will hitch a ride back to Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Risk of reentry

There's always risk when returning from space. Glover said that he has been thinking about this portion of the mission since he was selected for it back in 2023, and he's been looking forward to it ever since.

"We have to get back," he said from the Orion capsule Wednesday. "There's so much data that you've seen already, but all the good stuff is coming back with us. There's so many more pictures, so many more stories, and, gosh, I haven't even begun to process what we've been through."

To get back, the capsule must hit the atmosphere at a precise angle.

"Let's not beat around the bush," said Jeff Radigan, Artemis II's lead flight director. "We have to hit that angle correctly. Otherwise, we're not going to have a successful reentry."

All eyes will be on the heat shield — this is the piece of hardware beneath the capsule that protects the crew from the extreme temperatures during reentry. NASA tested it out on Artemis I, the previous, uncrewed mission, and found that the heat shield wasn't performing as designed.

NASA mission planners and the Artemis II team worked on a way to mitigate that risk. Instead of "skipping" through the atmosphere like Artemis I, this mission would hit the atmosphere steeper and faster, limiting the time the spacecraft spends in those fiery, energetic moments of reentry.

"It's 13 minutes of things that have to go right," said Radigan. "I have a whole checklist in my head that we're going through of all the things that have to happen."

Mission success

The Artemis II mission is a key flight test for Orion, and thus far, mission managers have been pleased with the results. The spacecraft has taken humans farther from Earth than they've ever been, breaking a record set by Apollo 13 astronauts in 1970.

The crew tested the manual control of the spacecraft, which will be needed for future missions that will dock with a lunar landing system. The mission tested the spacecraft's life support systems and ability to keep four astronauts comfortable within the confined space.

Artemis II returned humans to the moon for the first time since the Apollo program over 50 years ago. And while some astronauts back then did see the far side of the moon, the Artemis II crew was able to observe it from a vantage point never before seen by humans. Their images and geological notes will help better determine what the moon is made of and where it came from.

While some of the astronauts' observations may help scientists understand the distant past, others will help mission managers better plan for the future. Case in point: The crew tested out the very first toilet to go to the moon, and it quickly ran into issues during flight. Multiple times during the trip, the crew had to use manual urinals instead. The issue, NASA said, was not with the toilet itself, but the system that dumps the urine overboard when it gets full.

The Orion capsule will return to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida after the mission, where engineers will examine the spacecraft after its flight, including a closer look at the spacecraft's plumbing. The team will be picking apart the spacecraft to see how it performed — and make any necessary changes ahead of the next mission, Artemis III, set to launch next year.

An L.A. city official sounded the alarm Friday that homeless service providers may go bankrupt or have to lay off staff over major reimbursement delays that still haven’t been fixed by the region’s homeless services agency — despite promises two years ago to fix it.

The L.A. Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) is late in reimbursing more than $50 million to shelter, housing and other service providers — much of which is more than 90 days overdue — according to a report it issued last month. One service provider said LAHSA is more than 90 days late in reimbursing more than $12 million in invoices to their organization.

”Everybody involved with contracting is frustrated, is angry, is exhausted," said John Wickham, the lead city staff member who presented about the issue to the city council’s Housing and Homelessness Committee on Friday. Wickham said the frustrations are shared by all of the city departments that deal with LAHSA, as well as LAHSA staff and service providers.

Wickham said he’s heard that some service providers may be considering layoffs or even considering filing for bankruptcy because of the delayed payments.

“ When payment delays occur, [service providers] are forced to make difficult decisions that everyone is experiencing right now,” said David Carpio, the chief operating officer for Veteran Social Services, Inc.

Those decisions, he said, include reducing available beds, limiting intake of new people for services, increasing wait times, ending projects — which he said leads to increased homelessness and burden on the city for emergency services calls.

Sharon Sandow, a spokesperson for the city housing department, said the department has paid LAHSA upfront — known as “advances” — so it has cash on hand to pay service providers. Sandow said the city has, at times, borrowed money from the General Fund to make advance payments to LAHSA.

Wickham said advanced payments from the city to LAHSA were being passed “ back and forth and around and around in circles.”

“ I actually haven't been able to get to the bottom of that myself,” Wickham said when asked why that’s happening. “Nobody [can] understand that.”

Wickham said he and colleagues have held over 100 meetings with officials to try to understand how the city contracts for homeless services, but some aspects were still unclear.

Officials promised to get payments back on track two years ago by streamlining their processes. Councilmember Nithya Raman, who has chaired the council’s homelessness committee for the past few years, said on Friday the city is “stuck” and has not fixed the issue.

“We don't have the ability at the city to manage this process any better than we did last year or the year before. We have just not moved forward at all,” she added. “It is extraordinarily frustrating, and those same issues persist at LAHSA that we've been discussing. So we're literally in the same place that we've been for two years.”

What LAHSA leaders say

The agency’s CEO, Gita O’Neill, told the committee the delays are “unacceptable” and that LAHSA is working with a consultant to improve its processes. LAHSA’s chief financial officer, Janine Trejo, said LAHSA “is accepting responsibility,” while she also pointed at the city for what she described as delays in the city finalizing its agreements to fund LAHSA and payments to LAHSA.

Mayor Karen Bass oversees the city agencies that pay LAHSA and is the only elected official on LAHSA’s governing commission, which she has served on for more than two years. She did not respond to a request for comment through a spokesperson on Friday’s discussion of the payment delays. Raman is running against Bass in the June primary election for mayor.

What’s next

Following up on City Council requests from years ago, the council committee plans to decide next Wednesday whether to recommend pulling all of the city’s funding out of LAHSA and having a different agency manage it. It will then go to the full City Council for a decision.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday is expected to consider, a motion aimed at assessing the impact of the growing number of data centers in the region.

The centers have drawn criticism for their potential health and environmental effects on surrounding communities, and for the amount of energy they use.

Around the country, the growth in the number of data centers — which house servers, storage systems and other technology — has been driven in part by the proliferation of artificial intelligence, which has drastically increased the need for critical internet technology infrastructure.

There are already more than 70 established data centers in the county, with that number likely to grow as developers approach cities and the county to create additional facilities, according to the motion authored by Supervisor Hilda Solis.

“Establishing local regulatory oversight of data center placement and operation is needed to ensure community and environmental health and safety is protected,” the motion states. “As newer centers expand in scale and complexity, their energy use and environmental footprint is also increasing, with little community engagement on the potential impacts on residents’ health and wellbeing.”

A representative of the data storage industry raised concerns about the motion, which calls for a moratorium on data center development in unincorporated L.A. County that would be initiated “as applicable.”

“What concerns me most with the motion is the inclusion of a moratorium,” said Khara Boender, director of state policy for the Data Center Coalition. “That sends a strong signal as to whether they are welcome in those areas.”

Data centers ‘underregulated’

Solis’ motion calls on various departments including public health, public works and fire to provide findings regarding the health, environmental and safety impacts of data centers on neighboring communities, the impact on electrical and water resources and a review of how other jurisdictions around the county are regulating data centers within urban areas.

It also calls for a community education and outreach campaign to inform residents on potential impacts of advancing technologies.

The Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group, has said the data center industry is under-regulated and accelerating at a speed, scale and concentration that is impacting energy systems, water supplies, air quality, community health, land use and public finances.

A recent report by the group said state and local policymakers are at the forefront of this expansion, “uniquely positioned to guide it in ways that reflect local priorities and community needs, especially in the absence of federal guidelines.”

A fact sheet from the council said unrestricted buildout of data centers could come with big consequences including:

• Higher household water and energy bills
• Water scarcity 
• Increased water, air and noise pollution

The motion by Solis quotes a 2026 report by Community & Environmental Defense Services that showed pollutants emitted from data centers may adversely impact the health of individuals living as far as 0.6 miles from the site.

Boender, of the Data Center Coalition, said concerns about data centers have been overstated. In addition, she said data centers have “a lot of positive economic impacts associated with them.” She cited a Pricewaterhouse report that found one job in a data center creates six jobs in the broader economy.

Support for state legislation

In addition to asking county staff to assess the impact of data centers, the Solis motion calls on the county to support state legislation that directs the Public Utilities Commission to create a special rate structure for large-scale energy users and requires these users to pay for upfront transmission or distribution upgrades.

The county Board of Supervisors is expected to consider the motion during its regular meeting Tuesday. For more information, click here.

Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell, one of the leading candidates for California governor, came under increasing pressure Friday to drop out of the race following a report by the San Francisco Chronicle that he sexually assaulted a former female staffer. Swalwell denied the allegations.

Several other Democratic candidates called for him to immediately drop out, including Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan and former Controller Betty Yee, who called the allegations “sickening.”

Swalwell had racked up endorsements across the Democratic establishment, and at least one labor union and one politician who was backing him suspended their support swiftly Friday afternoon.

The Chronicle reported that a woman who worked in Swalwell’s Castro Valley office claimed to have had sexual encounters with him while she worked for him and alleged he sexually assaulted her when she was intoxicated. The report comes after weeks of rumors that Swalwell had inappropriate interactions with staff for years. On one instance in 2019, the woman said she became intoxicated after Swalwell asked her for drinks and woke up in his bed in a hotel room, feeling the effects of intercourse.

"These allegations are false and come on the eve of an election against the frontrunner for governor. For nearly 20 years, I have served the public — as a prosecutor and a congressman and have always protected women. I will defend myself with the facts and where necessary bring legal action,” Swalwell said in a statement Friday.

In recent weeks, two social media influencers began posting online what many people had considered rumors about Swalwell’s behavior with women. The influencers said they had spoken with several young women with whom Swalwell had behaved inappropriately. CalMatters has not independently verified the claims.

Swalwell pushed back hard against the allegations this week, telling reporters at a town hall in Sacramento on Tuesday that they are “false,” that he had “never” had a sexual relationship with anyone who worked for him. He suggested the allegations were politically motivated.

“I don’t want there to be any question in the minds of Californians,” he said. “I’m offering myself also as somebody who is fearlessly going to stand up for Californians on the toughest issues and not flinch.”

An attorney for Swalwell sent cease-and-desist letters to some of the women, one of the influencers, Arielle Fodor, wrote online. The attorney, Elias Dabaie, did not respond to a request for comment on the Chronicle story but confirmed to other news outlets the letter’s authenticity.

On Thursday night, Swalwell canceled a planned town hall in Southern California. Swalwell began calling groups that have endorsed him Friday morning to tell them of an upcoming story in the Chronicle, and denying the story, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke to CalMatters.

At least four of his senior campaign staffers, including a top consultant who helped him court labor support, abruptly resigned before the news report.

Swalwell’s top two Democratic competitors in governor’s race, Tom Steyer and Katie Porter, on Friday avoided calling for him to drop out, though both issued statements commending the woman in the Chronicle story for coming forward.

Some groups that have endorsed Swalwell declined to comment on the allegations when reached by CalMatters, saying their board members needed time to digest the news.

For others, the exodus was swift. U.S. Rep. Jimmy Gomez, a Los Angeles Democrat who chaired Swalwell’s campaign, resigned from the role Friday and called on Swalwell to drop out. He called the allegations “the ugliest and most serious accusations imaginable.”

“My involvement in any campaign begins and ends with trust,” he said in a statement. “The congressman should leave the race now so there can be full accountability without doubt, distraction, or delay.”

The powerhouse union California Teachers Association immediately suspended its support of Swalwell, calling the allegations against him “incredibly disturbing and unacceptable” in a statement by President David Goldberg. “Our elected board will be meeting as soon as possible to follow our union’s democratic process to determine next steps.”

Another heavyweight union that endorsed him, Service Employees International Union California, suspended at least one ad buy in support of Swalwell following the accusations.

The California Medical Association, another backer, was convening an emergency meeting of the board, and “takes these allegations extremely seriously,” said spokesperson Erin Mellon.

CalMatters' Yue Stella Yu contributed to this report.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.