Report 2023-102.1 All Recommendation Responses

Report 2023-102.1: Homelessness in California: The State Must Do More to Assess the Cost‑Effectiveness of Its Homelessness Programs (Release Date: April 2024)

Recommendation for Legislative Action

To promote transparency, accountability, and effective decision-making related to the State's efforts to address homelessness, the Legislature should amend state law to require Cal ICH, by March 2025, to mandate reporting by state agencies of costs and outcomes of state homelessness programs. To implement such reporting, the Legislature should require Cal ICH to develop guidance establishing specifics on uniformity of data to be collected and how it is to be presented. The Legislature should require Cal ICH to annually compile and report this cost and outcome information publicly beginning in September 2025 and should provide resources for this effort, as necessary.

Recommendation #2 To: Interagency Council on Homelessness

To ensure that its 2024 update to its action plan aligns with the statutory goals that the Legislature has established, Cal ICH should clearly identify in that update the statutory goal or goals that each of the action plan's objectives addresses.

6-Month Agency Response

Cal ICH's current "Statewide Action Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness" will expire December 2024 and a new plan will be adopted by the Council to take effect January 1, 2025; this new plan will include the incorporation of Cal ICH's statutory goals, as recommended by the California State Auditor.

California State Auditor's Assessment of 6-Month Status: Pending

60-Day Agency Response

Cal ICH's current "Statewide Action Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness" will expire December 2024 and a new plan will be adopted by the Council to take effect January 1, 2025; this new plan will include the incorporation of Cal ICH's statutory goals, as recommended by the California State Auditor.

California State Auditor's Assessment of 60-Day Status: Pending

Recommendation #3 To: Interagency Council on Homelessness

To promote transparency, accountability, and effective decision-making related to the State's efforts to address homelessness, Cal ICH should request that state agencies responsible for administering state-funded homelessness programs provide spending- and outcome-related information for people entering, experiencing, and exiting homelessness. By March 2025, Cal ICH should develop and publish on its website a scorecard—or similar instrument—on the homelessness programs that would enable the Legislature and other policymakers to better understand each program's specific costs and outcomes. Cal ICH should determine and request from the Legislature any necessary resources required for this effort.

6-Month Agency Response

Signed into law on September 19, 2024, AB 799 grants Cal ICH the authority to require agencies and departments administering state programs to provide it with fiscal and outcome data on or before February 1, 2027, and annually thereafter. The bill requires council staff to make the data publicly available on or before June 1, 2027, and annually thereafter. To accomplish this, Cal ICH will develop a fiscal dashboard that shall act as a companion to publicly available outcome data in HDIS dashboards.

California State Auditor's Assessment of 6-Month Status: Pending

60-Day Agency Response

Pursuant to Assembly Bill 977 (AB 977), the State of California requires grantees of specified state funded homelessness programs to enter specific data elements related to individuals and families into their local Homeless Management Information System (HMIS).

As of March 1, 2021, Cal ICH began requiring grantees who are Continuums of Care (CoCs), cities, and counties to collect both the Universal Data Elements and the Common Data Elements. These data elements are reported back to Cal ICH via the Homeless Data Integration System (HDIS) on a quarterly basis. As of July 1, 2024, all state departments responsible for the administration of state funded homelessness programs have access to dashboards that allow them to view outcome data for the programs they oversee. Because these dashboards include personally identifiable information (PII), they cannot be made public without suppression.

Because HMIS does not collect financial data, a separate reporting system must be developed in order for Cal ICH to incorporate this information into dashboards.

Cal ICH continues to explore funding options to fully implement this request.

California State Auditor's Assessment of 60-Day Status: Pending

Cal ICH indicates in its response that it has begun providing state departments with dashboards with program outcomes, but that those dashboards cannot be made public without suppression. Our recommendation is that Cal ICH should publish information on its website about costs and outcomes for each program. This reporting should be done in the aggregate or in another way that does not disclose personally identifiable information.

Recommendation #4 To: Interagency Council on Homelessness

To ensure that the State has consistent, accurate, and comparable data for all state-funded homelessness programs, by March 2025, Cal ICH should work with CoCs to implement standardized data requirements that programs must follow when entering information into HMIS. The requirements should establish expectations defining CoCs' responsibilities for ensuring data accuracy and reliability.

6-Month Agency Response

Because Cal ICH does not oversee CoCs, it would be inappropriate for it to set "policies" for them, as the CSA suggested in an email response to our 30-day update. We can, and have, incorporated language into our quarterly emails to CoC, outlining our expectations of data quality (including test entries, etc...). These emails go out to all CoC leads and ahead of the quarterly HMIS uploads. In addition, we have incorporated this as a standing item for discussion in our monthly HDIS Academy, which was relaunched in June 2024.

California State Auditor's Assessment of 6-Month Status: Fully Implemented

Cal ICH provided evidence that it outlined expectations for the CoCs regarding their responsibility for ensuring data accuracy and reliability.

60-Day Agency Response

As stated in our initial response to this recommendation, Cal ICH provided instructions for Continuums of Care (CoCs) to establish state funded programs in their respective Homeless Management Information Systems (HMIS) and begun receiving data project codes for state funded projects after the audit commenced.

Cal ICH will continue to work with and support CoCs to ensure data associated with state funded programs is accurate.

California State Auditor's Assessment of 60-Day Status: Pending

We look forward to reviewing Cal ICH's 6-month response to assess any expectations Cal ICH sets for CoCs regarding data accuracy and reliability.

All Recommendations in 2023-102.1

Agency responses received are posted verbatim.