HomeMy WebLinkAbouthome-together-2026-year-1-update-050923-final-appendix-a12 Home Together 2026 — Year 1 Progress Update
Background and
Data Sources
Home Together Background
The Home Together 2026 Community Plan,
released in May of 2022, is a five-year plan
to dramatically reduce homelessness and
associated racial disparities in Alameda County.
The Plan reflects and responds to increasing
rates of homelessness and overwhelming racial
disparities within the homeless population
in Alameda County. This growth reflects
conditions resulting from decades of housing
rental and sales price increases relative to
flat wages, along with policies that have
drastically reduced funding for housing that
is affordable to very low-income households.
The current housing shortage has created a
competitive housing market where tens of
thousands of households in our county are at
risk of homelessness each year, with numerous
households losing their homes.
Centuries of structural racism in which Black,
Indigenous, and other People of Color (referred
to as BIPOC) communities have faced limited
opportunity to achieve economic security,
and discriminatory housing policy has led to
the stark overrepresentation of BIPOC within
the homeless population. Centering this racial
equity impact, stakeholders in the Oakland-
Berkeley-Alameda County Continuum of Care
(CoC) have generated plans to invest both
much more and differently in creating program
models and pathways that meet the needs of
those most impacted by homelessness.1
The Home Together Plan serves as a
roadmap for system transformation. It lays
out goals, strategies and investments needed
to make homelessness in Alameda County
a rare, brief, and nonrecurring experience
by 2026 and combat racial disparities in
homelessness by fully centering equity in the
response to homelessness.
To achieve the Home Together Plan, including
decreasing racial disparities, the Plan outlines
strategies and activities under four goals:
1. Prevent homelessness for our residents
whenever possible;
2. Connect people to shelter and
needed resources;
3. Increase permanent housing solutions; and
4. Strengthen coordination, communication
and capacity of stakeholders throughout
the system.
1 Oakland-Berkeley-Alameda County Continuum of Care. Centering Racial
Equity in Homeless System Design. January 2021. https://homelessness.
acgov.org/reports.page?#systemdesign
The purpose of this lookback at the first year
of the Home Together Plan implementation
is to review progress and identify course
corrections that will be needed in future months
and years in order to stay on track towards
achieving the goals in the Home Together Plan.
The first year progress update combines data
from across jurisdictions in Alameda County in
four specific areas: funding and investments,
system inventory, strategies and activities and
key service and outcome measures. Progress
reported in for the first year of the Plan includes
data from County Fiscal Year 2021–2022 (July 1,
2021 to June 30, 2022).
Appendix A
13 Home Together 2026 — Year 1 Progress Update
Data Sources
Data used to analyze progress during FY21–22
comes from a variety of sources. Information
related to funding sources, changes to
homelessness response system inventory and
Home Together activities is compiled from
reports provided by jurisdictions and partners
in the community. The Alameda County Office
of Homeless Care and Coordination (OHCC)
has developed a set of tracking tools to
support collection of this information, which
will be compiled from partners once per year
in preparation for an annual Home Together
progress update. Information about key
systemwide service and outcome measures
comes from the Alameda County Homeless
Point-In-Time Count (PIT) and the Homeless
Management Information System (HMIS).
Additional data about homelessness response
system programs and operations comes from
the Alameda County Office of Homeless Care
and Coordination.
The PIT data is an estimate of the number of
people experiencing homelessness who are
either sheltered or unsheltered on a specific
night, whether or not they receive services in
Alameda County. The demographics of those
thought to be experiencing homelessness
at that point in time are estimated based
on a survey of a smaller number of people
experiencing homelessness.2
2 In the weeks following the 2022 Point in Time Count in Alameda
County, a survey was administered to 1,517 unsheltered and sheltered
individuals experiencing homelessness in order to profile their
experience and characteristics.
Data from HMIS includes people who have
engaged with the homelessness response
system and enrolled in one or more of its
programs. HMIS data for a fiscal year (such as
FY21-22) represents a larger group because
it covers a year period, but it excludes people
who have not engaged with the homelessness
response system at all or have not agreed to
share information about themselves.
Differences in the racial and ethnic
makeup of the two groups may reflect
real-world differences in who experiences
homelessness versus who engages with
the homelessness response system, and
may also be impacted by differences in
how questions are asked (and by whom)
or reflective of particulars about conditions
such as weather or coverage during the PIT
count and the follow-up survey. Exploration
of these differences, what they mean for the
effectiveness of the system and who it does
and does not reach are critical to consider
moving forward in order to ensure that the
community’s racial equity goals are achieved.