Does California Need a Homelessness Czar? State Lawmakers Say Yes

California’s approach to homelessness is often criticized as fragmented and disconnected, with various agencies getting huge amounts of funding but not coordinating with each other.

That criticism even comes from within.

A 2021 audit called the state government “disjointed” on homeless services, with at least nine state agencies overseeing 41 different programs that collectively spend billions of dollars.

A bill that’s sailing through the Legislature would change that, by having a single point person manage all those efforts.

AB 86 would require the governor to appoint a statewide homelessness coordinator to be “the lead person for ending homelessness in California.”

Working in the governor’s office, that person would oversee the state’s homelessness programs, services, data and policies, set statewide goals, and identify city and county leaders who could work with the state.

“Somebody’s got to be in charge,” the bill’s author, Assemblymember Reggie Jones-Sawyer (D-Los Angeles), told LAist.

The bill got a major boost this week when the State Assembly approved it unanimously. It now heads to the State Senate; a vote is expected in the coming weeks.

Jones-Sawyer, a former assistant deputy mayor in L.A., represents an assembly district that includes Skid Row, home to the city’s largest unhoused population.

He said the idea behind AB 86 is to bypass bureaucratic silos and avoid finger-pointing among government agencies.

“Right now we have several bureaucrats [in charge] and we’re not getting it done … we probably need one more quarterback, one more person to be in charge that we can actually go to and ask questions, make responsible. And if it doesn’t work, we can fire that person and put somebody else in,” Jones-Sawyer said.

‘The buck’s got to stop somewhere’

“The buck’s got to stop somewhere. It’s got to,” he added.

He said that just like in a natural disaster or war, his bill would create a “general” to deal with the homelessness crisis.

“We’re treating this as an emergency, as a catastrophe. And just like in any major incident … you’ve got to have one person in charge,” Jones-Sawyer said.

The bill is expected to come up for a vote in the full Assembly in the coming days.

AB 86 seems like a step in the right direction toward accountability in state government, said Benjamin Henwood, a USC professor who studies homelessness.

But, he said, it wouldn’t fix a big issue in Los Angeles, which administers many local homelessness programs: Just like at the state level, there isn’t a single accountable leader in L.A., with responsibilities split among the county, city and the joint city-county Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.

“There’s an issue about who should that point person [on homelessness] be in LA., and that’s not going to be resolved by this,” Henwood told LAist.

“All the players have started working together a lot more than I think historically has been the case,” he said. “But … there’s still a lot of fragmentation that happens at the local level.”

That being said, Henwood said Jones-Sawyer’s bill “gives us a clearer sense of where reform is needed [at the state level] if we are going to sort of bend the curve so to speak and start making progress.”

‘What’s taken so long?’

One of L.A.’s leading advocates for unhoused people questions why the state doesn’t already have a point person on homelessness.

“What’s taken so long?,” said Pete White, founder and executive director of the Los Angeles Community Action Network.

“You would think that we would have already had a designated point position or point person that was coordinating what’s coming in and what’s going out,” he said.

Back in 2020, Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill that would have required him to appoint a homelessness czar. His press office didn’t respond to requests for comment on the latest bill.

If a homelessness czar does get created, White said it’s important that they get full access to all the documents around homeless services.

“I would hope that the entire suite of information as it relates to houselessness is made available to this position,” he said.

White also said there should be a clearer process as well for community members and activists to give input on homelessness efforts.

“The actual expertise exists on the ground,” he said.