We’re reducing homelessness in Santa Cruz County; now we must fight to keep the funding

Quick Take

Santa Cruz County is bucking national trends, significantly reducing homelessness through sustained investment, coordination and compassion, writes Mer Stafford, the chair of the Coalition to End Homelessness in Santa Cruz County. But, with this year’s point-in-time count happening Thursday, those gains are now at risk as state and federal funding for housing and homelessness programs face deep cuts. Losing this support would push hundreds of people back into homelessness and undo years of hard-won progress. Stafford urges residents to contact local and state leaders to protect the funding that’s working.

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Santa Cruz County is proving that homelessness can be reduced — even in the least affordable rental market in the nation. But the programs making that progress possible are now at risk with cuts to federal and state funding.

I am calling on residents, business leaders and elected officials to speak out immediately to protect funding for housing and homelessness solutions before years of hard-won gains are undone.

Since 2019, Santa Cruz County has reduced the number of actively homeless households by 38%. The number of households moving from homelessness into permanent housing has more than tripled, from 251 in 2018 to 774 in 2024. While homelessness is rising across California and the country, our community has shown that sustained investment, coordination and compassion deliver real results.

While first-time homelessness remains a concern, our community’s resilience is exceptional. Nationally, first-time homelessness rose by 34% between 2020 and 2024, yet here in Santa Cruz County, it declined by 26%. On Thursday, the 2026 point-in-time count will take place. We will see where we are when the results come in later this summer.

The changes we have seen are not just numbers. They represent parents reunited with their children, veterans finally sleeping under their own roof and young people beginning stable, independent lives. The life experiences shared by people who have lived unhoused tell a story of remarkable resilience. The community at large often doesn’t get to hear about the slow and steady work that it takes to come back from such experiences.

But we who work with these individuals do.

More solutions are arriving soon. Within the next nine months, our community will add over 200 housing and shelter units: 120 units of supportive housing in Santa Cruz, 20 units of interim shelter at Live Oak Landing, 32 units of shelter for people with behavioral health challenges in Soquel, and the 34-unit HOPE Village in Watsonville.

Each project represents a commitment to dignity, stability and community.

Our community’s gains are real, but they are not guaranteed.

The organizations and programs that made this progress possible are under threat. Institutions that we thought were unshakable have scaled back, leaving gaps in critical services.

We have made excellent progress in reducing homelessness, yet that progress stands on fragile ground. The supports that lifted hundreds of neighbors into stable housing are now being taken from our community as funding and policy shifts threaten to undo years of progress.

The state’s Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention (HHAP) program was cut in half last year. HHAP has helped roughly 57,000 Californians access permanent housing, including more than 12,000 in our region (Santa Cruz, Santa Clara, San Benito and Monterey counties), and received no funding in the governor’s January budget proposal.

At the federal level, support for the Emergency Housing Voucher program is ending prematurely. Without intervention, funding will run out by next year, and 250 Santa Cruz households, more than 550 people, could lose their housing.

Our local housing authority, which helps our lowest-income residents afford rent, faces up to $15 million in cuts, placing more than 1,000 additional residents at risk of losing their housing.

The federal Continuum of Care program provides $6.5 million each year to Santa Cruz County for permanent housing. Proposed policy changes will strip up to 70% of this funding, returning more than 325 currently housed people back onto our streets.

Worse, proposed federal requirements would force communities to criminalize outdoor sleeping, assist with immigration enforcement, impose work requirements on people unable to work, arbitrarily cap the length of housing assistance and block efforts to track outcomes by demographic groups.

These policies do not reduce homelessness. They prolong it.

Without sustained commitment, our community risks losing the progress we’ve worked so hard to achieve. Letting hundreds of families fall back into homelessness would erase years of effort and cost far more than maintaining the solutions that work. Local landlords will lose stable rent payments. Emergency rooms, law enforcement and shelters will once again be overwhelmed. Older adults, people with disabilities, veterans, families fleeing domestic violence and people with serious mental illness will be pushed out of housing and into instability and danger.

Thanks to widespread grassroots efforts to educate lawmakers across the aisle about the impacts of these changes, there is growing hope that Congress might prevent or delay them. However, that hope is not a guarantee – it depends on continued support from community members who are calling and emailing their lawmakers to say funding for homelessness matters to them.

Santa Cruz County’s strength lies in compassion and shared responsibility. We know that solving homelessness benefits everyone: our neighborhoods, our economy and our shared future.

In the words of my friend Mace Crowbear, a member of Housing Matters’ lived experience advisory group and a community activist, “This is about dissolving division. We are so divided, we don’t even come close to understanding how much we have in common. The common goal is for a healthy community. By putting the responsibility on everyone else, we forget it starts with us. What part are we gonna play in bettering our community? Let us be the first community that is able to continue the work and pick up where the government has shut us down. Let us not lose the progress we’ve made. Do not let the rest of the world affect our choices of what we can do in our beautiful community.”

I am calling on every member of Santa Cruz County to tell your elected officials, at every level of government, that you support continued funding for housing and homelessness solutions. All residents, business leaders, and policymakers have a role to play. Every call and letter matters.

This year, Santa Cruz County has a unique opportunity, and responsibility, to help shape the state budget and its response to federal funding cuts and the governor’s proposal to halt state funding for HHAP, the primary way it funds solutions to homelessness. State Sen. John Laird, who represents our county, chairs the Senate budget committee. Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas represents large portions of South Santa Cruz County and leads the Assembly. Together, they are in a position to help chart a path forward by restoring state investments in homelessness solutions.

But that will happen only if they hear clearly and consistently that funding for homelessness matters and must be restored.

Here is what to ask for specifically:

Ask our federal representatives to protect funding for housing as a solution to homelessness by:

Preserving funding for our local housing authority.
Renewing existing Continuum of Care program grants for at least one year.
Restoring funding for the emergency housing voucher program.

Ask state leaders to:

Invest in homelessness at scale, in an ongoing way. The leading policy concern for California voters deserves more than 1% of the state’s spending – and it deserves an ongoing commitment, not one-time investments.
Fully restore HHAP funding.
Be prepared to fill funding gaps if federal support is reduced.

Ask local officials to:

Join us in asking our state and federal representatives to protect housing and homelessness investments.
Prioritize prevention, shelter and housing as essential to public health and community safety.

Now is the time to protect what we have built and to finish what we have started. With sustained commitment, collaboration and courage, Santa Cruz County can become a place where homelessness is rare, brief and nonrecurring.

We know how to do this. We have already proven that progress is possible. What is needed now is the will to keep going.

Mer Stafford is chair of the Coalition to End Homelessness in Santa Cruz County.

The Coalition to End Homelessness of Santa Cruz County brings together 25 nonprofit partners committed to ending homelessness through collaboration and shared action. Together, these organizations combine their diverse expertise to create meaningful, countywide change. Instagram @coalitionscc

The following organizations are members of the coalition and support this op-ed.