Last year, Newsom pledged $650 million to cities, counties and regional associations called Continuums of Care to fight homelessness. Of that, Newsom has made $500 million available; the other $150 million will be disbursed once the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development certifies the 2019 “point in time” count of homeless people. Newsom is asking the Legislature for another $750 million in this year’s budget, some of which would go to shelters.

“The governor has made available a historic amount of resources, in addition to the money that naturally goes to cities and counties for homelessness and mental health resources,” Elliott said.

But opening and running a homeless shelter for even just a short time can cost millions. A tent shelter underneath a bridge for 420 people cost Modesto $1.6 million during the 10 months it was open. A shelter in Sacramento with services focused on finding temporary or permanent housing cost the city $5 million in public and private money over 17 months, raising hackles on the City Council.

Homeless advocates say that the shelters will reduce the cost of jails, emergency room visits and other services that would result from people living outdoors.

“We’ve got to bring people indoors,” said Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg, who is co-chair of the governor’s council on homelessness. “I view this as all new opportunity. Land is costly, and if the state’s willing to partner with us and provide land, I only have two words: thank you.”

But reducing homelessness and its associated issues, including mental health, are big challenges, said Weiss, mayor of Oceanside. Many residents have negative perceptions of homeless people because of crime, litter and frequent calls for police, so they may oppose a shelter.

Weiss said he would welcome a new shelter — but not the associated costs.

Caltrans identified a 17-acre parcel of excess land south of State Route 76 in Oceanside, but Weiss said he doesn’t know how the city or county would pay for a shelter there.

A Richmond and Contra Costa County homeless coalition will be allocated one-time funding of up to $2.7 million in emergency homeless aid from the state, along with another $2.5 million that’s available directly to the county as part of the state’s $650 million going directly to cities, counties and regional care associations.

However, Richmond’s mayor says that’s not nearly enough when counts show his city alone has at least 400 unsheltered people at any point.

“We’re either gonna continue to put Band-Aids on it and push these people into shelters and Tuff Sheds and that, or the state is going to pay up. California’s rich enough to afford it, the United States is rich enough to afford it,” Butt said.

“When I read this thing that the problem’s gonna get pushed down to cities and counties, that’s just crazy and it makes no sense. We’re either gonna solve it or we’re gonna keep pushing it down.”

Whatever-It-Takes Mode

Steinberg, Sacramento’s mayor, said the counties and regions could work together to solve the homeless crisis, but they haven’t.

“No one would ask the counties or cities to do what they can’t do, but we are in whatever-it-takes mode,” Steinberg said.

James Gore, a Sonoma County supervisor and first vice president of the California State Association of Counties, said there could be electoral consequences for officials that push forward with shelter plans. “Diving into homelessness and affordable housing is a good way for elected officials to get voted out of office in a world run by NIMBYs (Not In My Back Yard),” he said.

Nevertheless, Gore said the governor’s shelter plan is urgently necessary, especially since local efforts haven’t been effective.

“I would look at my colleagues who are criticizing the governor and say the time for criticism is over. There was local control, and there haven’t been results,” he said. “For cities and counties that think they don’t have enough money, they have a reckoning coming.”

Part of the problem, Steinberg said, is how Californians think about the word “shelter.”

“Shelter has been and in many ways continues to be a pejorative term,” Steinberg said. “It implies to people who are skeptics that the only kind of shelter is a long-term, dusty, mis-run facility where people are helpless without the ability to get long-term housing.

“That’s a stereotype and it may have been an accurate stereotype at one point. But now, when we say shelter, we’re talking about navigation centers, where the point is to gain stability to get off the streets permanently.”

It’s unclear what kind of shelters would be built on excess state land. The governor’s office has mandated that they all have “service provisions” such as housing assistance and medical care.

Nothing yet compels cities and counties to work together to resolve their homelessness crises, but the Steinberg-led governor’s coalition wants to change that. Under a coalition proposal, the state could sue cities and counties that fail to house the majority of their homeless population. The Legislature would have to design the plan, and it would have to go before voters.

In the meantime, Newsom is pushing even further with the idea of turning government land into shelter space. On Jan. 21, the governor asked U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson to “match our commitment by similarly providing surplus federal land to local governments across the state so they can build housing for the homeless.”

Shelter 1.0: A Roof and a Bathroom

Haynes, who runs the National Guard Armory shelter in Santa Ana, describes it as a “shelter 1.0,” which are deliberately temporary. “Here’s a roof, here’s a door, here’s a bathroom, do the best you can,” he said.