HomeMy WebLinkAbouthometogether2030-draftplan-publiccomment-final-adaDRAFT Home Together
2030 Plan
A 5-Year Strategic Plan for Alameda County’s
Homelessness Response System
Contents
A Message From the Director 3
Acknowledgements 4
Introduction: The Next Phase of Home
Together 6
Why This Plan, Why Now 7
Building on Alameda County’s
Commitment to Addressing Inequities 8
How This Plan Is Organized 9
Section 1. Landscape and Context 10
1.1 Housing Affordability and
Homelessness As Shared Community
Concerns 12
1.2 Progress, Opportunity, and Urgency 14
1.3 The Role and Limits of the
Homelessness Response System 16
1.4 An Uncertain and Changing Policy and
Funding Landscape 18
1.5 Lessons From Home Together 2026
and the Development of Home
Together 2030 21
Section 2. The Scale and Scope of
Homelessness in Alameda County 23
2.1 Scale of Homelessness: On a Single
Night and Over a Year 24
2.2 People and Populations More Affected 25
2.3 The Different Ways People Experience
Homelessness 29
2.4 A Countywide Challenge With Distinct
Regional Patterns 30
Section 3. Vision, Goals, and
Measuring Progress: Establishing Clear
Direction and Accountability Amid
Uncertainty 32
3.1 Vision and Goals 33
3.2 What Progress Looks like 33
3.3 The Role of System Modeling 35
Section 4. Strategic Framework:
Translating Analysis Into Action 38
4.1 Pillars and Foundations: A Balanced
Framework for Action 39
4.2 Aligning Investments With Strategy 40
Pillar 1: Prevention 42
Pillar 2: Access 48
Pillar 3: Shelter 53
Pillar 4: Housing 58
Pillar 5: Health Care 65
System Foundations 72
Section 5. Conclusion: From Strategy
to Stewardship 78
5.1 From Adoption to Action 79
5.2 Implementation Roles and Governance 81
5.3 Performance Management, Course
Correction, and Public Reporting 84
5.4 Closing: The Next Phase of
Countywide Action 85
3HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
A Message From the Director
We are pleased to share a draft of Home Together 2030 for the public's
review and feedback.
Starting in early 2025, Alameda County Health’s Housing and
Homelessness Services and the Oakland-Berkeley-Alameda County
Continuum of Care (CoC), EveryOne Home, convened a Task Force and
work groups to inform this plan. These groups brought together people with
lived experience of homelessness, service and housing providers, city and
county staff, and subject matter experts. As you'll see, we have grounded
the plan in updated system modeling, an updated racial equity analysis,
and the latest countywide data. We also heard directly from communities
at forums held across every region of the county.
Home Together 2030 is a roadmap. It sets priorities across the full continuum of need, from preventing
homelessness before it starts, to expanding shelter, to securing exits into permanent housing.
Homelessness is not a fixed condition. People move into and out of it, and sometimes back again. This plan
works to strengthen the whole system rather than any single part. The plan sets universal goals to reduce
homelessness for everyone, while also recognizing that different groups face different barriers. Our team
will continue working closely with community partners to make sure the overall strategies in the plan are
carried out in ways that respond to those unique challenges and address deep disparities.
This plan is the framework for galvanizing our collective action with a clear direction and shared goals.
This will no doubt flow into myriad streams of more focused work serving the unique needs of our diverse
communities, all moving in the same direction to help them move home together.
We are grateful to the voters of Alameda County, whose passage of Measure W provides a critical source
of funding to advance this work. It’s even more critical as we navigate an unpredictable federal funding
environment, allowing us to sustain existing successful programs while still expanding our system. Measure W
funding comes with a responsibility to be transparent and accountable. We will set clear goals, report to the
public regularly, and be honest about where we are succeeding and where we still have work to do.
I want to thank everyone who gave their time and expertise to get us here. Thank you to the Task Force
members, work group participants, and providers. And thank you especially to the residents with lived
experience who shaped this plan from the inside out.
Homelessness affects our whole community, and everyone has a stake in this work. Your comments are
essential to shaping the final plan. This is a draft plan—there are images and some basic formatting, but
it will continue to change as we get new photographs, add more charts, and integrate your feedback. We
hope that this is still a good starting place for you to read and respond.
Because we are hoping to receive a lot of comments on this plan, we are asking you to use this online form
for feedback. We ask that you give us your feedback in that form by October 1, 2026.
If we stay focused and keep building on what works, we can create a community where far fewer people
experience homelessness at all. That is the work ahead of us.
Jonathan Russell
Director, Alameda County Health, Housing & Homelessness Services
HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT 4
Acknowledgements
The Home Together 2030 Community Plan reflects the collective commitment and expertise of hundreds
of individuals and organizations working toward the shared goal of preventing and ending homelessness in
Alameda County.
First and foremost, we acknowledge the people whose lives have been impacted by homelessness.
Their experiences, insights, resilience, and leadership helped shape this Plan and continue to inform our
collective efforts to build a more equitable and effective homelessness response system.
We also extend our sincere appreciation to the many partners who contributed their time, expertise, and
leadership throughout the development of the Home Together 2030 Community Plan, including:
• Oakland, Berkeley/Alameda County Continuum of Care
• Alameda County Board of Supervisors
• Home Together 2030 Work Groups
Home Together 2030 Task Force
• Arlene Hipp
• Chaleen Whiteleach, Peer Wellness Collective
• James Wagner, Alameda County Health, Behavioral Health Department
• Jenn Oakley, Rising Sun
• Jennifer Dow Rowell, SAVE
• Jessica Loebedan, City of San Leandro
• Jonathan Russell, Alameda County Health, Housing and Homelessness Services
• Marcela Muñoz
• Margaretann Fortner, CityServe Tri-Valley
• Mark Walker, Swords to Plowshares
• Michelle Starratt, Alameda County Housing and Community Development
• Moe Wright, BBI Construction
• Peter Radu, City of Berkeley
• Sasha Hauswald and Cupid Alexander, City of Oakland
• Sharon Cornu, St. Mary's Center
• Shelly Haynes, City of Livermore
• Tanya Carvajal, MISSEY
• Vivian Wan, Abode
HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT 5
System Modeling Technical Work Group
• Amy Cole-Bloom, City of Hayward
• C'Mone Falls, City of Alameda
• Eleni Spiru, Swords to Plowshares
• Gary Tia, BACS
• Josh Jacobs, City of Berkeley
• Luke Barnesmoore, Front Porch
• Margaret Alfaro, Abode
• Melissa Moore, RISE
• Ray Corona
• Sasha Hauswald, City of Oakland
Racial Equity Analysis Technical Work Group
• Damon Shuja Johnson, Black Men Speak
• Darlene Flynn, City of Oakland
• Krsna Hare
• Laurie Flores, City of Fremont
• Lynette Ward, Alameda County Housing and Homelessness Services
• Sabrina Abong
• Sandi Galvez, Alameda County Health, Public Health Department
• Shatae Jones, Alameda Alliance for Health
• Sunita Garrett
• Veronica Alder, Peers Organizing Community Change
Special thanks to David Amaral, Colleen Monahan, and Marisa Espinoza with All Home, for providing
technical leadership and support for the Home Together 2030 system modeling.
We also acknowledge Aneeka Chaudhry, Director, Alameda County Health, for her leadership and support
throughout the planning process.
Finally, we extend our gratitude to our consulting partners—Kristy Greenwalt, Suzanne Warner, Focus
Strategies, and Band Together Communications—for their expertise, facilitation, analysis, and support in
developing the Home Together 2030 Community Plan.
6HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
Introduction: The Next Phase of Home Together
7HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
Why This Plan, Why Now
Home Together 2030 begins the next phase of Alameda County’s work to reduce homelessness: building
on hard-won progress, strengthening the system’s ability to identify and reduce inequities, and focusing
the system on measurable, lasting results. It builds on the foundation established by Home Together 2026,
while responding to a changed landscape: new local resources are becoming available, the scale and
dynamics of homelessness have shifted, federal and state policy conditions are increasingly uncertain,
and the county and its partners have learned more about what it will take to produce measurable, lasting
reductions in homelessness.
Home Together 2026 was developed as a five-year community plan for building a more coordinated
homelessness response system and reducing racial disparities across Alameda County. It was launched
during the COVID-19 pandemic, a period of intense instability for people experiencing homelessness,
providers, public agencies, and communities across the region. The plan anticipated that Measure W
resources would help scale the work, but litigation delayed access to those funds for nearly the entire
Home Together 2026 plan period. During that time, Alameda County and its partners advanced the work
with a patchwork of federal, state, local, and pandemic-era resources—preserving and expanding core
housing, shelter, outreach, and service capacity during a volatile period and laying the foundation for
progress now emerging.
The need for a refresh is therefore both practical and strategic. Alameda County is no longer planning
for the same conditions that shaped Home Together 2026. Measure W is finally available, and the Board
of Supervisors designated the Measure W Home Together Fund as a major local resource to support
implementation of the Home Together framework. At the same time, changes in federal and state policy,
potential shifts in safety-net programs, rising operating costs, and ongoing housing affordability and
cost-of-living pressures create real uncertainty about what resources will be available, what it will cost to
sustain existing programming, and how many more households may be pushed toward housing instability
or homelessness.
Home Together 2030 responds to this moment by updating the analysis, goals, strategies, and
implementation framework for the next five years. It incorporates new system modeling (Appendix A),
updated Point-in-Time (PIT) Count and systemwide data, an expanded racial equity analysis of disparities
and system outcomes (Appendix B), lessons from Home Together 2026, and input from people with lived
experience, cities, providers, county agencies, Continuum of Care (CoC) partners, and other stakeholders.
The result is a plan designed not only to describe what Alameda County hopes to achieve, but to guide
decisions, align partners, and support accountability as conditions change.
8HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
Building on Alameda County’s Commitment to Addressing Inequities
Home Together 2030 carries forward Alameda County’s commitment to identifying and reducing racial
and other inequities across the homelessness response system. The community's Centering Race
Equity in Homeless System Design report (January 2021) provided an important foundation for Home
Together 2026, which established reducing racial disparities as a core system objective. Racial disparities
in homelessness reflect longstanding inequities in housing access, income, wealth, health, safety,
and involvement with other public systems. Reducing homelessness therefore requires more than
increasing overall system capacity; it requires intentional design, implementation, and accountability
so the homelessness response system interrupts—not reinforces—those inequities.
Race remains one of the clearest and most persistent predictors of who experiences homelessness in
Alameda County. Because race is where the most prominent disparities exist, this plan continues to focus
on reducing racial disparities in access, housing outcomes, and returns to homelessness. Our focus
will be race explicit but not exclusive as people experience homelessness through multiple, overlapping
identities and circumstances. A parent fleeing violence, an older adult on a fixed income with complex
health needs, a young person disconnected from family support, an LGBTQ+ adult seeking safe shelter, and
a person returning from incarceration may each encounter different barriers and require different forms
of support. Reducing disparities requires seeing people holistically and designing responses that reflect
those differences.
Accordingly, this plan uses targeted universalism to set shared goals for everyone experiencing or at risk of
homelessness, while acknowledging tailored programming, protocols, and approaches will be required to
help different populations reach those goals. This approach is not about establishing eligibility or preferences
based on race or other individual identity markers alone, but rather using disaggregated data to understand
how the system is working for different populations and working to improve its effectiveness for everyone.
Throughout Home Together 2030, this commitment shows up in several ways: in how prevention resources
are targeted; how outreach, shelter, housing, and health care strategies are tailored; how community-
based providers are supported; how people with lived experience help shape implementation; and how
data will be disaggregated and reviewed to identify disparities and guide course correction. Addressing
disparities is not treated as a standalone initiative. It is integral to effectively addressing homelessness and
a core expectation for how the entire homelessness response system should operate.
9HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
How This Plan Is Organized
Home Together 2030 is organized to move from context to action:
• Section 1, Landscape and Context, describes the conditions shaping this plan. It explains why
homelessness is a shared community concern, summarizes the progress Alameda County has
made and the urgency that remains, clarifies what the homelessness response system can directly
influence and where broader partnership is required, and describes the uncertain policy and funding
environment in which plan implementation will occur.
• Section 2, The Scale and Scope of Homelessness in Alameda County, summarizes what current
data show about homelessness across the county: how many people experience homelessness,
how people experience homelessness, who is most affected, and how homelessness varies across
cities and regions.
• Section 3, Vision, Goals, and Measuring Progress, defines the plan’s overall direction and the
outcomes Alameda County will use to assess progress. It establishes communitywide goals for
reducing overall and unsheltered homelessness, explains how system modeling informed those
goals, and identifies the systemwide data that will be tracked over time to monitor progress.
• Section 4, Strategic Framework, translates the analysis into action. The framework is organized
around five core system pillars—Prevention, Access, Shelter, Housing, and Health care—supported
by cross-cutting System Foundations that strengthen the capacity needed to implement them.
The section also introduces the investment framework and sequencing considerations that will help
guide implementation choices over time.
• Section 5, From Strategy to Stewardship, explains how the plan will be used after adoption.
It describes implementation roles, the importance of city-county-provider partnerships, the
role of people with lived experience, and the use of companion documents to guide day-to-day
implementation, tracking, and reporting.
Home Together 2030 is not a spending plan or an implementation manual. It is a strategic framework for
coordinated action that strikes a balance: broad enough to galvanize community stakeholders around
systemwide objectives, focused enough to guide concrete action in specific program areas. Detailed
implementation decisions will be made and refined over time through budget processes; data and
system performance analysis; consultation with city leaders, providers, and other partners; and ongoing
engagement with the people and communities most affected. The purpose of this plan is to provide a
shared direction: reducing homelessness, reducing its harms, improving equity, and strengthening the
systems and partnerships needed to help more people move from crisis to safe, stable housing.
10HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
Section 1. Landscape and Context
11HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
Home Together 2030 begins from two truths. Alameda County has made real progress
in reducing homelessness, increasing exits to housing, and helping more people avoid
homelessness altogether. At the same time, thousands of people still lack safe, stable
housing, and the broader conditions driving homelessness—housing unaffordability, income
instability, behavioral health needs, safety-net gaps, and longstanding inequities—continue
to place pressure on households and communities across the county.
This section describes the conditions shaping homelessness in Alameda County and the environment in
which Home Together 2030 will be implemented.
Behind every data point in this plan is a person: someone sleeping outside, someone navigating a
complicated system, someone on the brink of losing housing, or someone waiting for a referral, a unit, or
a door to open. Throughout this plan, individual stories illustrate what is at stake and how the system can
work better, faster, and for more people.
Their stories are different, but the system worked for each of them. This plan is about making it work better,
faster, and for more people.
Voices of the Plan
Amanda, Fremont
A single mother of three and survivor of domestic violence and cancer whose path back to health,
safety, and stability began with housing support.
Mr. Lee, San Leandro
At 76, one man moved from living on the street to a recuperative care interim housing program thanks
to the compassion, patience, and diligence of service provider staff.
Albert, Oakland
After a middle-aged man suffered a traumatic brain injury in an assault, a social worker helped him
find a shelter bed where he could recover.
Dan, Oakland
An Oakland man went from experiencing homelessness for five years and struggling with seizures,
anxiety, depression, and alcoholism to living in permanent housing over the course of 18 months.
Kelly, Oakland
An elder woman who had gone years without seeing a doctor was finally able to find a primary care
provider through her shelter.
12HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
1.1 Housing Affordability and Homelessness As Shared Community Concerns
Housing affordability and homelessness affect everyone in Alameda County. Not equally, but everyone
feels the impact. Homelessness is a symptom of many deeply rooted, structural issues, and ending it will
require all of us working together in solidarity to be part of the solution.
Alameda County is not alone. Across the country, renters are struggling as wages and fixed incomes fail
to keep pace with skyrocketing housing costs, and California remains one of the least affordable rental
markets in the nation. Nationally, half of renter households are cost burdened, more than one-quarter
are severely cost burdened, and only one in four eligible households actually receives federal housing
assistance.1 In California, a full-time worker must earn $49.61 per hour to afford a modest two-bedroom
rental home at Fair Market Rent; in Alameda County, that figure is $51.58 per hour.2
People experiencing homelessness bear the greatest harm. Living without safe, stable housing means
exposure to physical danger, loss of dignity, and barriers to health care, employment, and community
connection. The residents most affected are disproportionately people of color—especially among the
Black and Native/Indigenous communities—people on fixed incomes (especially older adults), people
with disabilities or chronic health conditions, and people facing circumstances that can quickly turn a
housing crisis into homelessness, including family conflict or lack of support; new or intensive caregiving
responsibilities; and seasonal or unstable employment.
At the same time, the conditions that produce homelessness are not distant from the lives of housed
residents. The cost of housing and overall rise in cost of living in Alameda County places significant stress
on a far larger population than those currently experiencing homelessness. Adult children who cannot
afford to move out on their own. Seniors and people with disabilities living on fixed incomes with little
margin for error. Families without inherited wealth or a financial safety net whose stability depends on
nothing going wrong.
The Alameda County Housing Plan illustrates the scale of this broader instability. More than 202,000
households are cost burdened, includng 95,000 households that are severely cost burdened. Thousands of
people also experience homelessness on any given night, including 7,456 households (8,201 individuals)
identified through the 2026 Point-in-Time (PIT) Count. Collectively, these figures show that homelessness is
only the most acute and apparent part of a much larger housing affordability crisis in Alameda County and
across the nation. The Housing Plan provides a fuller analysis of countywide housing needs, affordability
gaps, and long-term housing production goals.3
Not every cost-burdened household will become homeless. But when rent consumes too much of a
household’s income, many households have little margin for error: a lost job, reduced hours, medical
crisis, family disruption, rent increase, or other shock can quickly become a housing crisis.
1 Housing cost burden is generally defined as spending more than 30 percent of household income on housing costs, including rent and utilities. Severe housing cost burden is generally defined as spending more than 50 percent of household income on housing costs.
2 National Low Income Housing Coalition, Out of Reach 2025: The High Cost of Housing (Washington, DC: National Low Income Housing Coalition, 2025), national and California data tables, including Alameda County Housing Wage data. Available at nlihc.org/oor.
3 Alameda County Housing and Community Development Department, Alameda County Housing Plan: 10 Year Housing Strategy 2025–2035, approved July 22, 2025.
13HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
This plan is grounded in the understanding that housing stability is essential to thriving communities—and
that both are shared community interests. The goal is not only to reduce suffering, though that matters
deeply, but to also build a system that produces better outcomes and more livable communities for
everyone. By targeting solutions for those disproportionately impacted by homelessness and structural
inequities, everyone will benefit. More affordable homes. Safer streets. Stronger neighborhoods.
A community where fewer people are pushed into and then caught in the cycle of housing crises.
HOMELESSNESS IS ONLY THE MOST ACUTE AND APPARENT PART OF
A MUCH LARGER HOUSING AFFORDABILITY CRISIS
8,201people experiencing
literal homelessnesson a given night
202,000
cost-burdened households
WHAT PEOPLE DON’T SEE
WHAT PEOPLE SEE
95,000severely
cost-burdenedhouseholds
Key Terms Used in This Plan
The terms below are used throughout Home Together 2030.
• Homelessness Response System. The shared network of county agencies, cities, service
providers, community partners, funding sources, programs, and policies that help prevent
homelessness when possible and support people experiencing homelessness to move from
crisis to housing and long-term stability. While no single entity controls the full system or the
broader conditions that cause homelessness, the system as a whole shapes how quickly,
effectively, and equitably people are helped to resolve a housing crisis.
• Point-in-Time Count. A one-night count of people experiencing sheltered and unsheltered
homelessness, conducted every two years in January. The PIT Count provides a snapshot of
homelessness at one point in time.
• Homeless Management Information System. A local data system used to track how people
move through the homelessness response system over time, including program use, housing
placements, returns to homelessness, and other outcomes.
14HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
• System Inflow and Outflow. Inflow refers to people newly entering or returning to
homelessness. Outflow refers to people exiting homelessness into housing, reunification,
or another stable destination. Reducing homelessness requires both reducing inflow and
increasing outflow.
• Sheltered and Unsheltered Homelessness. Sheltered homelessness refers to people staying
in emergency shelter, transitional housing, or another temporary setting intended for people
experiencing homelessness. Unsheltered homelessness refers to people staying outside or in
places not meant for human habitation, including streets, vehicles, parks, encampments, or
abandoned buildings.
• Permanent Housing. Housing intended for long-term or indefinite residence, typically
governed by a lease or occupancy agreement. Assistance may be time-limited or ongoing, but
the housing itself is permanent because the tenant’s ability to remain is based on the lease or
occupancy agreement rather than the duration of program support.
• Targeted Universalism. An approach that sets shared goals for the whole community while
tailoring strategies, resources, and implementation to address the different barriers people and
communities face in achieving those goals.
• Home Together Fund. The Alameda County funding source created from Measure W revenue
to support implementation of the Home Together plan, including efforts to sustain, enhance,
and expand homelessness programs and support one-time capital investments.
1.2 Progress, Opportunity, and Urgency
Alameda County enters Home Together 2030 with evidence of real progress and a clear opportunity to
build on it. The homelessness response system is helping more people move into housing, returns to
homelessness (and racial inequities therein) have declined, shelter and interim housing options have
expanded, and the most recent Point-in-Time (PIT) Count shows fewer people experiencing homelessness
than in recent years. These are encouraging signs that sustained investment, coordinated planning, and
years of work by cities, county staff, providers, people with lived experience, advocates, and community
partners are beginning to make a measurable difference.
Signs of Progress
The 2026 PIT Count identified 8,201 people experiencing homelessness in Alameda County on a single
night in January, down from 9,450 in 2024. This 13 percent decline marks an important shift after years in
which homelessness remained high, even as the system worked to slow growth and stabilize key measures.
The decline was especially notable among people experiencing unsheltered homelessness, which
decreased 18 percent between 2024 and 2026. Relatedly, across recent PIT Counts, the share of people
experiencing homelessness who were sheltered has also increased, from 21 percent in 2019 to 37 percent
in 2026.
The PIT Count is one important measure, but it does not tell the whole story. It is a single-night snapshot,
while homelessness changes every day as some people lose housing and others regain it. Homelessness
Management Information System (HMIS) data, which tracks people who interact with participating
15HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
homelessness response programs over the course of a year, points in the same general direction. In 2025,
over 25,000 were served by the system across all programs and services. And, for the first time since the
start of the Home Together plan tracking in 2021, more people exited homelessness into housing than
entered homelessness: 4,445 people gained housing, while 4,358 people became homeless for the first
time or returned to homelessness after a prior housing placement.
Other system indicators also show progress. Nearly 1,000 more people gained housing in 2025 than in the
Home Together baseline year, increasing from 3,595 people in 2021 to 4,445 people in 2025. Returns to
homelessness within two years declined from 18 percent in the baseline year to 13 percent in 2025.
There are also signs of progress on reducing some disparities. While Black residents remain severely
overrepresented among people experiencing homelessness, the share of people newly experiencing
homelessness who are Black has declined, and returns to homelessness among Black households have
fallen to the systemwide average. Together, these measures suggest that the decline in the 2026 PIT
Count is not happening in isolation; it is part of a broader pattern of progress across key indicators. These
and other system performance trends are described in greater detail in the Home Together 2026 Year 4
Progress Update.4
4 Alameda County Health, Housing and Homelessness Services, Home Together 2026 Community Plan: Year 4 Progress Update, July 1, 2024–June 30, 2025. https://health.alamedacountyca.gov/home-together-2026
FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE THE START OF HOME TOGETHER TRACKING, MORE PEOPLE EXITED
HOMELESSNESS INTO HOUSING THAN ENTERED HOMELESSNESS
Source: HMIS
2,000
3,000
4,000
5,000
number of individuals
2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025
New Homelessness + Returns to Homelessness People Who Gained Housing
Year
4,742
16HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
An Opportunity to Build Momentum
This progress creates an important opportunity. Home Together 2026 was launched during a period of
extraordinary disruption, and the local resources originally expected to support implementation were
delayed for most of the plan period. Home Together 2030 begins from a different position. Measure W
resources are now becoming available through the Home Together Fund, providing a local source of
funding to sustain, enhance, and expand homelessness programs and services. At the same time, Alameda
County has stronger system infrastructure, more implementation experience, better data, and new
modeling to help guide investment decisions.
But progress is not self-sustaining. Thousands of people in Alameda County still lack safe, stable housing,
and more than 60 percent of people counted in 2026 were still experiencing unsheltered homelessness.
The broader conditions driving homelessness—high housing costs, the shortage of affordable units,
income instability, behavioral health needs, gaps in safety-net systems, and longstanding inequities—
continue to place pressure on households and on the homelessness response system. System data also
show that the average length of time people experience homelessness increased from 225 days in 2022
to 270 days in 2025, underscoring the need to improve flow through the system and expand access to
permanent housing.
The funding environment also remains uncertain. One-time investments have helped Alameda County
preserve and expand key parts of the response system, but permanent housing, shelter, services, and
prevention require sustainable funding to operate over time. Federal and state resources have played a
critical role in the homelessness response system to date, and changes in those sources could affect
both the resources available for implementation and the number of households at risk of homelessness.
Measure W creates a major opportunity, but it does not eliminate the need for careful stewardship,
continued partnership, and ongoing advocacy.
1.3 The Role and Limits of the Homelessness Response System
Home Together 2030 is a plan for the homelessness response system. That scope is worth naming clearly,
because what the system can accomplish depends significantly on forces and decisions that sit outside
it. The homelessness response system is the coordinated set of programs, partnerships, resources,
and policies that help prevent homelessness when possible and support people experiencing
homelessness to move from crisis to appropriate housing pathways and long-term stability. While it does
not control all of the economic, housing, health, and social conditions that cause homelessness, it shapes
how quickly, effectively, and equitably people are helped to resolve a housing crisis.
Homelessness Is Dynamic
Every day, people enter homelessness when a housing crisis overwhelms their ability to remain housed.
Every day, others exit homelessness when they reconnect to housing, services, subsidies, family supports,
or other pathways to stability. The number of people experiencing homelessness at any given time reflects
the relationship between these streams: how many people enter, how many exit, how quickly exits happen,
how long people remain homeless, and how often people return after being housed.
17HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
This distinction matters because public perception of homelessness is often shaped by what is most
visible: encampments that appear unchanged, individuals who seem permanently stuck and suffering from
substance use and mental illness, and the conclusion that nothing is working. That perception can miss a
deeper reality. The system is always moving, but much of that movement is not visible to people outside it.
The question is not whether movement exists. It is whether the system moves fast enough, and at a
large enough scale, to keep people from getting stuck. When exits to permanent housing slow, shelters
fill up. When shelters fill up, people remain outside. When prevention falls short, more people enter
homelessness than the system can help transition back to housing. These bottlenecks are not evidence
that the work is hopeless. They are evidence of where the system needs to be stronger, and where this plan
focuses its strategies.
Reducing homelessness therefore requires attention to both sides of the equation: helping people who
experience homelessness become housed more quickly and reducing the number of people losing housing
in the first place. Over time, sustained reductions in homelessness depend on increasing outflow, reducing
avoidable inflow, shortening the time people spend homeless, and helping people remain stably housed
after their homelessness ends.
What the System Can Influence
Within its direct role, the homelessness response system can influence:
• how effectively prevention and problem-solving resources reduce avoidable entries
into homelessness;
• how quickly outreach, access, shelter, and housing navigation connect people to the right supports;
• how available housing resources are prioritized, matched, and used;
• how consistently programs coordinate and perform;
• how well services mitigate the harms of homelessness while people are waiting for housing;
• how effectively people are supported to remain housed after they exit homelessness; and
• whether outcomes improve equitably across populations and communities.
These are the core levers through which the system can help people avoid homelessness whenever
possible, reduce the time they spend without a safe place to stay, limit the trauma and harm of living
outside or in unsafe conditions, and support people in regaining stability as quickly as possible. Home
Together 2030 is organized around these levers, as detailed in the strategic framework in Section 4, with
strategies focused on prevention, access, shelter, housing, health care, and the system foundations
needed to support effective implementation.
A Focused Role Within a Broader Ecosystem
The homelessness response system operates within a broader ecosystem. Housing affordability and
supply, income and employment, health care access, behavioral health capacity, aging and disability
supports, domestic violence services, child welfare, immigration-related barriers, and the criminal legal
system all influence who becomes homeless and what support people need to regain stability. The
homelessness response system does not govern these systems, but it must coordinate with them, promote
effective discharge and transition planning, and align policies wherever possible to reduce preventable
inflow and barriers to housing.
18HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
This is why Home Together 2030 should be understood alongside other county and community plans,
including the Housing Plan, the Care First, Jails Last recommendations, the Countywide Plan for Older
Adults, the AC Health Behavioral Health Strategic Plan, and other efforts focused on health, safety,
economic stability, and community well-being. Those plans address aspects of the broader conditions
that shape housing stability across Alameda County. Home Together 2030 focuses on the homelessness
response system’s role within that larger landscape: preventing housing crises from becoming
homelessness where possible, responding when homelessness occurs, and helping people return to
stable housing as quickly and equitably as possible.
The limits of the homelessness response system are not a reason to lower expectations for what can be
achieved. They are a reason to focus the system on the outcomes it can most directly influence, while
strengthening alignment with the broader systems whose functions shape housing stability across the
county. Home Together 2030 does not promise to solve every driver of homelessness within five years. It is
designed to build a system that is more coordinated, more accountable, and more capable of delivering
measurable results over time.
1.4 An Uncertain and Changing Policy and Funding Landscape
Home Together 2030 is being developed at a moment of both significant opportunity and considerable
uncertainty. Alameda County now has access to a historic local funding source through Measure W,
creating the possibility of strengthening, stabilizing, and expanding the homelessness response system
in ways that were not previously possible. Even so, the system continues to depend on a complex mix of
federal, state, local, and other resources, many of which are restricted, time-limited, or vulnerable to policy
and budget changes.
Measure W: A Historic Local Commitment
In November 2020, Alameda County voters approved Measure W, establishing a dedicated funding source
through 2030 to strengthen the county’s response to homelessness and related safety-net needs. In July
2025, the Board of Supervisors designated the Measure W Home Together Fund, dedicating 80 percent of
Measure W revenue—approximately $170 million annually through 2031—to support the Home Together
framework. Tax collection began in January 2021, but revenues were held in escrow while legal challenges
were resolved. In April 2025, Measure W was upheld, clearing the way for funds to be deployed.
The Measure W Home Together Fund represents a historic opportunity because it is both locally controlled
and flexible. Many funding sources available to the homelessness response system are limited to specific
populations, activities, program models, or time periods. Flexible local funding allows the county and its
partners to fill critical gaps, align resources across programs, respond to changing conditions, and invest in
the strategies most likely to reduce homelessness over time.
Measure W is also important because homelessness response programs require recurring funding. Shelter
operations, rental subsidies, supportive housing services, outreach, housing navigation, prevention,
data systems, and provider capacity all require year-over-year support. One-time funds can help launch
new projects, acquire or rehabilitate facilities, or create short-term capacity, but they cannot sustain the
ongoing work of helping people stay housed, supporting people who entered programs years ago, and
continuing to serve people who are newly entering homelessness.
19HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
At the same time, as a ten-year revenue measure, Measure W is itself time limited through 2031 and
not intended to replace other funding sources or reduce the responsibility to pursue and leverage every
available dollar. Home Together 2030 assumes continued commitment to maximizing federal, state, local,
philanthropic, and other resources. Measure W gives Alameda County a stronger local foundation, but the
system’s success depends on using those funds strategically alongside all other available resources.
Funding Comes From Many Sources but Still Falls Short
of Need
Alameda County’s homelessness response system is funded through a braided mix of sources. In 2025,
reported homelessness response funding from the county and cities totaled approximately $352.8 million.
Of that amount, 43 percent came from state sources, 28 percent from federal sources, and 29 percent
from local sources. These resources supported shelter and interim housing, permanent housing subsidies
and services, prevention, outreach, health care services, system infrastructure, and other activities across
Alameda County and its cities.
Even with these investments, current funding remains well
below the scale of need identified through the Home Together
2026 system modeling. In 2025, funding for program operations
was approximately $267.4 million, compared to an estimated
need of $619 million. This gap helps explain why Measure W
matters: existing resources have supported meaningful progress,
but they have not been sufficient to fully meet the need for
prevention, shelter, permanent housing, supportive services, and
system infrastructure.
Why Federal Funds Matter
Federal resources remain foundational to Alameda County’s
homelessness response system. The HUD Continuum of Care
(CoC) Program supports Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH)
and other critical interventions, while Medicaid/Medi-Cal and
other federal or federally linked resources help support health
care, behavioral health, housing navigation, tenancy-sustaining
services, and safety-net supports.
Recent federal actions have created significant uncertainty for communities that rely on these resources.
Under the Trump Administration, federal homelessness policy has moved in a direction that creates real
risk for Alameda County’s current system design, including proposals to reduce support for permanent
housing, narrow allowable uses, and attach new policy conditions to federal homelessness grants. Those
changes have been challenged in court, paused, revised, and contested, creating an unusually unstable
federal funding environment for local homelessness systems and requiring Alameda County and its
partners to plan for continued uncertainty during the early years of Home Together 2030.
CoC funding illustrates the larger funding challenge. Relative to the full scale of need, federal CoC dollars
represent only a limited portion of what is required to end homelessness in Alameda County. Yet they
support core parts of the system, especially permanent housing, supportive services, and related system
infrastructure. Because many programs rely on combining CoC funds with state, local, Medicaid, and other
SOURCES OF FUNDING
FOR ALAMEDA COUNTY'S
HOMELESSNESS
RESPONSE SYSTEM
LOCAL
29%
STATE
43%FEDERAL28%
20HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
sources, changes in CoC funding levels, eligibility, allowable uses, or policy priorities destabilize programs
beyond just the programs directly receiving those funds.
Preserving effective existing capacity is a core part of Home Together 2030. When a high-performing
housing, shelter, or service program loses funding, the impact is not limited to a budget line. People being
served may lose housing or support. Experienced staff may leave. Providers may lose capacity that took
years to build. Units, facilities, or landlord relationships may be lost. Rebuilding that capacity later is often
slower, more expensive, and more disruptive than sustaining what is already working.
Federal, State, Legal, and Economic Uncertainty
The broader policy environment also creates uncertainty for both need and system capacity. Potential
reductions or restrictions in federal housing, homelessness, Medicaid, food assistance, income support, or
other safety-net programs could increase housing instability while reducing resources available to respond.
The county estimates that federal budget changes will result in significant losses in benefits coverage, with
over 65,000 people at risk of losing dental benefits, 9,400 losing Medi-Cal coverage, and 23,000 losing
CalFresh due to new work requirements.5 Changes in immigration enforcement or LGBTQ+ policy may also
affect whether some households feel safe seeking outreach, health care, housing, or other assistance.
State policy and funding changes add another layer of complexity. After several years of major
state investments in homelessness and behavioral health, recent budget and policy shifts have delayed,
reduced, or reshaped several homelessness-related funding streams. Changes in behavioral health
financing, including the transition to the Behavioral Health Services Act, may create new opportunities,
but they may also reduce flexibility or create transition pressures for local systems that rely on coordinated
funding to sustain housing and services.
Legal and local policy changes further shape the implementation environment. The U.S. Supreme Court’s
decision in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson (2024) changed the legal landscape for how jurisdictions may
respond to people sleeping or living outside when no safe indoor alternative is available. While the decision
expanded local authority in some respects, it did not reduce the need for shelter, housing, health care, or
other supports. Cities are often responding to real community concerns about public spaces, health, safety,
and neighborhood conditions. At the same time, when enforcement approaches vary across jurisdictions
or are not paired with sufficient safe alternatives and housing pathways, people are forced to move from
one location to another without being connected to stable housing. This can interrupt service relationships,
increase trauma, strain coordination across cities and providers, and make system data harder to interpret.
Together, these conditions reinforce the need for disciplined stewardship. Home Together 2030 is designed
to guide investment in a changing environment: expanding where resources allow, preserving effective
capacity where it is at risk, using flexible local dollars to leverage and align other funding, and adapting over
time as federal, state, local, legal, and economic conditions evolve.
5 Alameda County Social Services Agency. June 8, 2026. Presentation to the Board of Supervisors Joint Health/Social Services Committee.
21HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
1.5 Lessons From Home Together 2026 and the Development of Home Together 2030
Implementation of Home Together 2026 demonstrated that sustained investment, coordinated action, and
a shared strategic framework can produce measurable progress. Alameda County expanded housing and
interim housing capacity, increased the number of people exiting homelessness to permanent housing,
reduced unsheltered homelessness, and saw signs of improvement in some equity-related outcomes.
Yet, the first four years of implementation also showed that progress is fragile when system capacity,
operating resources, and housing pathways remain below the scale of need. For much of the
implementation period, new entries into homelessness continued to outpace exits, limiting the effect of
new investments until later years, when early signs showed that the balance was beginning to shift. This
experience—real progress alongside continued system pressure—shaped both the lessons below and the
planning process used to develop Home Together 2030.
Lessons From Home Together 2026
Success depends on a balanced and coordinated system.
Different parts of the homelessness response system depend on one another. Prevention, outreach,
shelter, housing, services, and system infrastructure all affect whether people enter homelessness, how
long they remain unhoused, and how quickly they regain stability. Expanding one part of the system without
aligning the others can create bottlenecks elsewhere. Lasting reductions require coordinated investment
across the full continuum.
Reducing disparities requires intentional system and program design.
Racial and other disparities in homelessness remain significant, reflecting longstanding inequities in
housing access, income stability, health care, and exposure to other systems. Increasing overall capacity is
necessary, but it is not sufficient to ensure that assistance is accessible and effective across populations.
Home Together 2030 therefore uses a targeted universalism approach: setting shared goals for the whole
community while tailoring strategies to address the different barriers faced by different populations. This
requires well-targeted prevention, culturally responsive outreach and services, prioritization practices that
are designed to be responsive to disparities in need and access, engagement and empowerment of people
with lived experience, provider capacity-building, and ongoing review of disaggregated data.
Growth requires ongoing investment, not just one-time funding.
Shelter beds, rental subsidies, supportive housing services, prevention programs, outreach teams, and
system infrastructure require recurring support. One-time funds can help launch programs, acquire or
rehabilitate facilities, or create short-term capacity, but without ongoing funding, programs get smaller, staff
capacity is lost, and people being served experience disruption. Sustaining effective existing programs is
often more cost-effective, less disruptive, and more humane than allowing capacity to dissolve and trying to
rebuild it later.
Operational capacity and administrative alignment shape results.
New program funding does not automatically translate into immediate service capacity. Contracting
timelines, procurement rules, hiring processes, data systems, provider capacity, and cross-departmental
and cross-jurisdictional coordination all influence how quickly resources can be deployed and how
22HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
effectively programs perform. Experience under Home Together 2026 showed that investing in system
foundations—including workforce, data, contracting, performance management, and provider capacity—is
essential to achieving results at scale.
Investments take time to show results.
New resources must move through planning, contracting, hiring, program start-up, housing search,
construction or rehabilitation, lease-up, and service delivery before they produce measurable reductions
in homelessness. In many cases, that process takes months or years. Responsible stewardship requires
interpreting short-term trends with care, understanding the lag between investment and outcomes, and
staying the course long enough for effective strategies to produce results.
Together, these lessons inform Home Together 2030. The next phase builds on the foundation created
under Home Together 2026 while placing greater emphasis on balanced investment, system flow, equity,
operational discipline, and long-term sustainability.
How Home Together 2030 Was Developed
Building on the lessons from Home Together 2026, Home Together 2030 was developed through a
structured planning process led by Alameda County Health’s Housing and Homelessness Services
(H&H) in partnership with the CoC. The process was designed to take stock of what had been built, test
assumptions against current data, examine racial disparities, incorporate operational expertise, and center
the perspectives and expertise of people with lived experience of homelessness. Together, these inputs
helped define what should be sustained, strengthened, and expanded in the next phase of work.
H&H and the CoC Board established a Home Together 2030 Task Force to provide advisory and technical
input throughout the planning process. The Task Force included representatives from county agencies,
cities, service providers, community partners, and people with lived experience of homelessness. Its role
was to review information, surface implementation realities, consider tradeoffs, and help shape priorities
for the next phase of work.
The Task Force was supported by two technical working groups. The System Modeling Work Group
examined system flow, resource needs, and potential investment scenarios, including how changes in
inflow, exits, system efficiency, and funding could affect results over time. The Race Equity Analysis Work
Group examined disparities in access, service experience, and outcomes, and identified opportunities to
address documented barriers through system design, implementation, and performance management.
Findings from both groups informed Task Force discussions and helped shape the strategic framework.
Lived experience input was also central to the planning process. People with lived experience participated
in the Task Force and Work Groups to help identify where the system works, where it falls short, and what
changes would make assistance more accessible, respectful, and effective. H&H also hosted community
meetings to share information about the Measure W Home Together Fund and more generally hear about
priorities, concerns, and opportunities for investment.
Home Together 2030 reflects this combined input: implementation lessons from Home Together 2026,
system modeling, race equity analysis, lived experience, provider and partner expertise, public feedback,
and county and CoC leadership. The result is a strategic framework grounded in evidence, shaped by
community expertise, and designed to remain adaptable as conditions evolve.
23HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
Section 2. The Scale and Scope of Homelessness in Alameda County
24HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
Homelessness in Alameda County is both countywide and unevenly experienced. Thousands
of people experience homelessness on any given night, and many more interact with
the homelessness response system over the course of a year. Some people experience
homelessness briefly and regain housing with limited support. Others remain homeless for
long periods, live unsheltered, cycle through crisis systems, or need ongoing services and
housing assistance to remain stable.
This section describes what current data show about homelessness in Alameda County: who experiences
homelessness, how people experience homelessness, where homelessness is concentrated, and what
these patterns mean for strategy. It is intended to provide a clear picture of current conditions, not a full
trend analysis of how conditions changed during Home Together 2026 implementation. More detailed
performance data and demographic information are available on the Home Together website.1
2.1 Scale of Homelessness: On a Single Night and Over a Year
Alameda County uses multiple data sources to understand homelessness and housing instability, but two
federally required data sources provide the primary systemwide measures of literal homelessness: the
Point-in-Time (PIT) Count and the Homeless Management Information System (HMIS). Both are required by
the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and are used by communities across the
country to track homelessness, assess system performance, and inform funding and planning decisions.
These data sources focus on people who meet HUD’s definition of homelessness, including people
staying in emergency shelter, transitional housing, or places not meant for human habitation—such as on
the street, in vehicles, or in abandoned buildings. They generally do not include people who are housing
insecure but not literally homeless per the HUD definition, such as people staying temporarily with friends
or family, paying for a motel on their own, living doubled up, or otherwise struggling to remain housed.
As described in Section 1, this means the number of people counted as experiencing homelessness is
much smaller than the number of households facing severe housing instability, rent burden, or risk of
homelessness as HUD defines it.
The 2026 PIT Count identified 8,201 people experiencing homelessness in Alameda County on a single
night in January. HMIS data show that the annual reach of the homelessness response system is much
larger: in 2025, the fourth complete year of Home Together 2026 implementation, more than 25,000 people
interacted with homelessness response system programs over the course of the year.2
These figures are different because they measure different things. The PIT Count is a single-night count
of people experiencing sheltered and unsheltered homelessness, based on shelter records, outreach,
street canvassing, surveys, and other local count methods. Like any single-night count, it has limitations,
but when conducted consistently over time, it provides an important way to understand changes in the
scale and visibility of homelessness from one count to the next. By comparison, HMIS provides year-round
information about people who interact with participating homelessness response programs. HMIS provides
1 https://health.alamedacountyca.gov/home-together-2026
2 This number is comprehensive of everyone served during the year (2025), including people receiving services while in permanent housing programs.
25HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
information on entries into homelessness, exits to housing, returns to homelessness, and program use.
Because some people experiencing homelessness never engage with participating programs, HMIS is not
a full census of everyone who experiences homelessness over the course of a year. But together, PIT and
HMIS provide the clearest available picture of literal homelessness in Alameda County: both how many
people are experiencing homelessness on a given night and how many people touch the system over the
course of a year.
2.2 People and Populations More Affected
Homelessness affects people across many different household types, ages, identities, and life
circumstances. Alameda County’s Home Together strategies must reduce homelessness for everyone
while recognizing that people do not experience homelessness in the same way or face the same barriers
to stability.
Household Type, Age, And Gender
Homelessness affects people across the lifespan and across many different household types, but
most households served by Alameda County’s homelessness response system are adult individuals
without children. In 2025, among households experiencing literal homelessness who interacted with
the homelessness response system during the year, approximately 86 percent were individual adult
households, compared with 7 percent families with children and 6 percent unaccompanied youth
households. This proportion is consistent with prior years.
These data should not be interpreted to minimize the urgency of family or youth homelessness. Families
with children and young people may experience homelessness in less visible ways, may avoid services
because of safety, privacy, or child welfare concerns, or may not be captured in system data when
appropriate shelter or housing options are unavailable. At the same time, the large share of individual adult
households has clear implications for strategy, underscoring the need for housing and service models that
respond to the varied needs of single adults, including people experiencing unsheltered and chronic
homelessness.
MOST HOUSEHOLDS
SERVED BY ALAMEDA
COUNTY’S HOMELESSNESS
RESPONSE SYSTEM ARE
ADULT INDIVIDUALS
WITHOUT CHILDREN
Source: HMIS
UNACCOMPANIED
YOUTH
6%
INDIVIDUAL
ADULT HOUSEHOLDS
86%
FAMILIES WITH
CHILDREN
7%
26HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
Most people served are adults between 25 and 55, but age also matters for strategy. People at different
life stages face different risks, strengths, and pathways back to stability. Older adult homelessness is
an increasingly urgent issue in Alameda County and across the country.3 In 2025, 30 percent of people
experiencing homelessness in Alameda County were age 55 or older, and roughly one in ten were age 65
or older. Older adults are more likely to live on fixed incomes and may have health, disability, mobility, or
caregiving needs that make both homelessness and housing retention more difficult. For Home Together
2030, this reinforces the need for prevention for people on fixed incomes, stronger connections to health
care and aging services, housing stabilization supports, and permanent housing models that can be
tailored to aging-related needs.
Children, youth, and young adults experiencing homelessness also have a unique set of needs. Youth
homelessness occurs during a developmental stage when stable housing can shape education,
employment, family and social connections, and the transition to adulthood. Research also shows
that youth homelessness and related experiences—including family conflict, foster care involvement,
running away, and heightened vulnerability to trafficking or exploitation—are strongly associated with
homelessness later in life.4 This makes youth homelessness a critical focus for prevention and early
intervention, even when young people are less visible in shelter and HMIS data.
3 Dennis P. Culhane et al., The Emerging Crisis of Aged Homelessness: Could Housing Solutions Be Funded by Avoidance of Excess Shelter, Hospital, and Nursing Home Costs? University of Pennsylvania, Actionable Intelligence for Social Policy, 2019; U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, Addressing Homelessness Among Older Adults: Final Report, 2023.
4 Matthew H. Morton, Amy Dworsky, and Gina Miranda Samuels, Missed Opportunities: Youth Homelessness in America. National Estimates, Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago, 2017.
THE MAJORITY OF PEOPLE EXPERIENCING HOMELESSNESS ARE AGES 25–54 IN 2025
Source: HMIS
under 18 18–24 65+55–6445–5435–4425–34
0%
5%
10%
15%
20%
25%
Age
3.7%4.2%
10.1%
15.6%
23.3%
20.0%
23.1%
Gender also affects safety, service access, and housing needs. In 2025, men made up a little more than
half of people experiencing homelessness during the year (54 percent), while women made up slightly less
than half (45 percent). Transgender, nonbinary, and gender-expansive residents represent a smaller share
of those served, but may face distinct safety concerns, barriers to shelter, and risks related to violence,
discrimination, or exclusion.
27HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
Racial and Ethnic Disparities
People of color—particularly Black, American Indian, and Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander residents—
continue to be disproportionately represented among people experiencing homelessness relative to their
share of the Alameda County population. In 2025, people who are Black/ African American made up more
than half of the population experiencing homelessness in Alameda County (52 percent) while comprising
just 10 percent of the general population. These disparities reflect historical and ongoing inequities in
housing access, employment, wealth-building, and exposure to systems, including criminal legal and child
welfare systems.
In 2025, Black, African American, or African residents also represented nearly half (49 percent) of people
newly experiencing homelessness. This reinforces the need for prevention strategies that are not only well
targeted by risk but also designed with the communities most affected by housing instability and
homelessness in mind.
RACE AND ETHNICITY OF PEOPLE EXPERIENCING HOMELESSNESS IN 2025 COMPARED TO THE
ALAMEDA COUNTY GENERAL POPULATION
Source: HMIS and U.S. Census
0%
20%
40%
60%
American Indian / Native
Alaskan
Asian or Asian American
Black / African American
Hispanic & Latino/e/aMultiple Races – not Latino/e/a
Native Hawaiian / Pacific
Islander
White
People Experiencing Homelessness
Served in 2025 (HMIS)
Alameda County General
Population in 2024
Race and Ethnicity
22.3%
30.0%
52.4%
10.0%
2.9%
33.0%
2.7%1.0%1.7%1.0%
5.8%
12.0%
20.7%22.0%
For deeper analysis of racial equity within the homelessness response system, see the Home Together 2030
Racial Equity Analysis, Appendix B; for equity indicator tracking over time, see the Home Together Year 4
Annual Progress Update.5
5 Alameda County Health, Housing and Homelessness Services, Home Together 2026 Community Plan: Year 4 Progress Update, July 1, 2024–June 30, 2025. https://health.alamedacountyca.gov/home-together-2026
28HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
Populations With Distinct Risks and Service Needs
Several other populations also require focused attention in implementation because they face distinct
risks, eligibility pathways, safety considerations, or barriers to access. For example:
• Veterans may be eligible for dedicated federal housing and service resources, but not all veterans
can access those benefits.
• Survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, human trafficking, and other forms of gender-based
violence may need confidential access points, strong data privacy protections, safety planning, and
housing pathways that prioritize safety and survivor choice.
• LGBTQ+ residents may face family rejection, discrimination, or safety concerns in shelter and
housing settings.
• People with behavioral health needs may experience mental health and/or substance use
challenges that contribute to housing instability and are often worsened by the trauma and stress of
homelessness, underscoring the need for accessible behavioral health care, recovery supports, and
housing models that can support people with complex needs.
• Immigrant and mixed-status households may face language barriers, changing federal rules, limited
eligibility for some resources, or fear of seeking assistance, all of which can make homelessness
and housing instability harder to identify and address.
• People with current or past criminal legal system involvement often face barriers to housing and
employment, as well as elevated risk of homelessness when leaving custody or supervision.
• Families with children often face disrupted routines, limited access to early childhood and school
supports, heightened health and developmental risks for young children, and trauma tied to housing
instability; they benefit from coordinated services that integrate housing assistance, family-centered
case management, early care and education, and trauma-informed supports to address their
complex, intergenerational needs.
These populations are not separate from the broader homelessness response system, but their
experiences must shape how outreach, shelter, housing, health care, and stabilization strategies are
designed and implemented.
Why Targeted Universalism Matters
The population patterns described in this Section show why Home Together 2030 uses targeted
universalism as a practical framework for strategy and implementation. The plan sets shared
goals and measures for reducing homelessness, while recognizing that the path to those
goals must be tailored through action planning, investment decisions, program design, and
performance management.
This does not mean creating a separate plan or system for every population. It means using data,
lived expertise, and community partnerships to guide implementation over time, including how
resources are targeted, how services are delivered, where course corrections are needed, and how
outcomes are measured and improved.
29HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
2.3 The Different Ways People Experience Homelessness
People experience homelessness in different ways and for different lengths of time. Some people touch
the homelessness response system briefly during a short-term crisis and regain housing with limited
assistance. Others experience homelessness for long periods, live unsheltered, have disabling conditions,
or cycle repeatedly through shelters, hospitals, jails, behavioral health crisis services, and other
systems. These differences matter because the type, intensity, and duration of support people need can
vary significantly.
Sheltered and Unsheltered Homelessness
One of the most important distinctions is between sheltered and unsheltered homelessness. People
experiencing unsheltered homelessness are living outside, in vehicles, encampments, abandoned
buildings, or other places not meant for human habitation. However, sheltered and unsheltered
homelessness should not be understood as fixed categories of people. Individuals may move between
sheltered and unsheltered settings over time depending on shelter capacity and availability, program rules,
safety concerns, and whether available options meet their needs. When people are unsheltered, they face
greater exposure to violence, trauma, weather, health risks, sanitation challenges, and disconnection from
services. It is also the form of homelessness most visible to the broader community and often shapes
public perception of the crisis.
Alameda County has made progress in reducing unsheltered homelessness, but it remains a central
challenge. The 2026 PIT Count identified 5,202 people experiencing unsheltered homelessness, down
18 percent from 2024. Even with this reduction, more than 60 percent of people counted in 2026 were
unsheltered. This shows meaningful progress, but also underscores the need to continue expanding safe,
accessible, housing-focused shelter while accelerating exits to permanent housing.
Short-Term vs Chronic Homelessness
Another important distinction is between people who experience homelessness as a short-term housing
crisis and people who experience chronic homelessness. Chronic homelessness is a federal definition
that generally refers to people who have experienced homelessness for a year or longer, or repeatedly over
several years, and who also have a disabling condition. People experiencing chronic homelessness often
face the deepest barriers to housing stability and may need deep, ongoing support from the homelessness
response system to remain stably housed.
In Alameda County, chronic homelessness represents a significant share of need. In 2025, nearly
half (49 percent) of all people experiencing homelessness were identified as experiencing chronic
homelessness, substantially higher than recent national annual estimates.6 Available local data also show
high rates of disabling conditions among people served, including among people who do not yet meet
the length-of-time criteria for chronic homelessness. This suggests continued risk of people becoming
chronically homeless, especially as local data also show long and growing durations of homelessness.
6 U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. (2026). The 2025 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report (AHAR) to Congress, Part 1: Point-in-Time Estimates of Homelessness. Office of Community Planning and Development.
30HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
These patterns point to the need for a broader range of housing and service models that can serve
people earlier, match supports to different levels of need, and reduce the number of people who become
chronically homeless over time.
Not everyone who experiences homelessness needs the most intensive intervention. Many people become
homeless because housing costs exceed their income, because of a specific financial or housing crisis,
or because of barriers shaped by discrimination in housing, employment, and other systems. Many could
resolve homelessness with short-term rental assistance, shallow subsidies, dedicated affordable housing,
reconnection to family or community supports, or help overcoming a specific barrier, if these options were
swiftly available at sufficient scale. A high-performing homelessness response system must be able to do
both: respond quickly and flexibly to people whose homelessness can be brief, while also providing deeper,
longer-term support for people with chronic homelessness, disabling conditions, or complex health and
behavioral health needs.
2.4 A Countywide Challenge With Distinct Regional Patterns
Homelessness is a countywide challenge, but it is not evenly distributed across Alameda County. People
experience homelessness in every region of the county, and every jurisdiction has a role to play. At the
same time, the scale, visibility, and local experience of homelessness vary significantly by place.
The Oakland/Piedmont region accounts for the largest share of homelessness in Alameda County. In the
2026 PIT Count, 54 percent of people identified countywide were in Oakland. Mid County accounted for 15
percent of the countywide count, South County for 13 percent, North County for 12 percent, and East
County for 6 percent. These patterns reflect a mix of factors, including housing costs, poverty, historical
patterns of displacement and segregation, local land use laws, and the location of existing shelter,
affordable housing, and supportive services.
HOMELESS POINT-IN-TIME COUNT BY REGION, 2022–2026
Source: People identified through the PIT Count
2022 2024 2026
0
2,000
4,000
6,000
North
County
Oakland &
Piedmont
Mid
County
South
County
East
County
people experiencing
homelessness
1,171 972 975
5,097
5,488
4,416
1,563
1,5451,267
1,573
1,074
1,064
343 372 479
Region
31HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
Unsheltered homelessness also varies by region and city and changes over time. Some communities
have more shelter or interim housing capacity, while others have higher shares of people living outside, in
vehicles, or in other places not meant for habitation. These differences matter for strategy: communities
with high levels of unsheltered homelessness may need stronger outreach, more shelter, and faster
pathways into permanent housing, while communities with smaller visible counts still play essential roles
in prevention, affordable housing production, landlord engagement, and regional service partnerships.
A smaller local count does not mean a jurisdiction is disconnected from the causes of homelessness or
from the solutions needed to reduce it. Homelessness in each jurisdiction is shaped by countywide and
city-specific conditions and policy choices, in addition to the broader economic and policy pressures.
For this reason, Home Together 2030 treats homelessness as both a local and countywide responsibility:
cities must be able to see and respond to the needs in their own communities, while Alameda County and
its partners work across jurisdictions to support consistent and equitable access to the help people need,
regardless of where they are.
Taken together, these data show that homelessness in Alameda County is both widespread and uneven.
It affects every region, but not at the same scale; it affects people across populations, but not with the
same risks or barriers; and it ranges from brief housing crises to long-term, unsheltered, and chronic
homelessness. These patterns shape the goals and commitments that follow: Home Together 2030 must
reduce homelessness overall while using targeted strategies that respond to different needs, disparities,
and local conditions.
32HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
Section 3. Vision, Goals, and Measuring Progress: Establishing Clear Direction and Accountability Amid Uncertainty
33HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
3.1 Vision and Goals
Home Together 2030 envisions a homelessness response system in Alameda County that moves
people from crisis to stable housing quickly and for the long term. Through data-informed and sustained
investment, coordinated action, and accountability at the city and county levels, we will reduce
homelessness across the region.
Five-Year Goals
Home Together 2030 sets two communitywide goals to guide the next five years of action:
• Reduce overall homelessness by one-third; and
• Reduce unsheltered homelessness by 50 percent.
These goals reflect what system modeling suggests is achievable with sustained local investment, stable
federal and state partnership, coordinated action across jurisdictions, and balanced implementation
across prevention, access, shelter, housing, and system capacity.
At the same time, Home Together 2030 is grounded in the reality of a volatile federal policy environment
and broader economic uncertainty. If funding reductions, policy shifts, or broader economic pressures
constrain system capacity, the county’s responsibility shifts from accelerated homelessness reduction to
disciplined stabilization. Under those conditions, the system will:
• Protect core housing and service capacity;
• Preserve hard-won reductions in homelessness across the community; and
• Continue shortening the time people spend homeless, strengthening housing stability, and
improving equity in outcomes.
Across all possible scenarios, the central commitment remains the same: resources will be deployed
strategically, system performance will be strengthened, and progress will be pursued in ways that are
durable rather than temporary.
3.2 What Progress Looks like
Home Together 2030 defines progress in measurable terms. Although homelessness is influenced by
broader economic and policy conditions, the performance of the homelessness response system—and its
contribution to community outcomes—can and will be tracked transparently.
Sustained reductions in homelessness will require measurable improvements in the core drivers of
system performance: preventing new episodes among households at greatest risk; shortening the time it
takes for people experiencing homelessness to return to permanent housing; strengthening supports that
help people remain stable after placement; and ensuring the system helps interrupt—not reinforce—the
effects of longstanding racial inequities. Reducing unsheltered homelessness will require those same
improvements, along with stronger interim housing pathways that provide safer, more service-connected
options while people work toward permanent housing. The Plan therefore establishes a focused set of top-
line indicators to assess whether the system is making measurable progress on these core outcomes.
34HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
Home Together 2030: What Progress Looks Like
Our goals are ambitious. These measurable indicators will help us track progress and
understand whether our strategies are making a difference.
WHAT WE'LL DO
Reduce overall homelessness by ⅓
Reduce unsheltered homelessness by 50%
HOW WE'LL DO IT
Reduction in first-time
homelessness
Shows effectiveness
of homelessness
prevention efforts
Increase in exits to permanent
housing
Shows stronger
pathways to housing
Reduction in time spent
homeless
Shows that system
is reducing chronic
homelessness by
connecting people
with high needs to
the right housing
Reduction in returns to
homelessness
Shows housing
placements
are stable
Reduction in disparities
across
populations
Shows whether
outcomes
are becoming
more equitable
across populations
Indicators will be tracked over time using PIT, HMIS, and other system performance data.
Home Together 2030 tracks progress through a focused set of systemwide indicators. These indicators
are intended to show whether Alameda County is moving in the right direction overall, whether the
homelessness response system is performing more effectively, and whether outcomes are improving
equitably across populations and communities.
35HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
Systemwide Indicators and Objective-Level Measures
These top-line indicators represent the most important measures of overall system direction. More
detailed objective-level measures will be included in the companion Performance Management
Framework. These measures will track progress within specific strategy areas and support ongoing
implementation, management, and course correction. The Framework will prioritize measures that
can be disaggregated by race, ethnicity, geography, household type, and other key characteristics to
monitor disparities and strengthen accountability for equitable outcomes.
Taken together, these elements create a layered performance framework: a concise set of
systemwide indicators that signal overall trajectory, supported by more detailed metrics that guide
implementation and day-to-day management.
3.3 The Role of System Modeling
Home Together 2030 is informed by a structured system modeling process designed to support decision-
making. It is not meant to predict a single outcome or guarantee a specific result.
System modeling draws on available local data sources—including Point-in-Time (PIT) counts, Homeless
Management Information System (HMIS) records, and Coordinated Entry System (CES) information—
combined with stakeholder expertise to estimate the scale and mix of interventions required to achieve
defined reduction goals. (See Appendix A for an explanation of different program models considered in the
modeling.) It is part quantitative analysis and part data-informed judgment. The purpose is not to forecast
what will happen, but to clarify how different choices are interrelated and what they are likely to produce.
Rather than asking, “What will happen?” the modeling asks: If we make this scale and mix of investments,
and if external conditions or system performance change in these ways, what are the likely consequences?
Modeling Clarifies Connections and Tradeoffs
A central insight from the modeling is that the homelessness response system functions as an
interconnected whole—not a collection of independent programs. The analysis demonstrates that:
• Investments in prevention, shelter, and permanent housing are interdependent.
• When one area lags, pressure builds elsewhere in the system.
• No single intervention can produce sustained reductions on its own.
For example, prevention will not reduce homelessness in the community if people already experiencing
homelessness cannot exit to housing. Expanding shelter capacity will not reduce unsheltered
homelessness if beds remain full because housing resources are constrained. Increasing permanent
housing will not produce sustained reductions if the number of people becoming homeless continues
to outpace the number of people getting housed. Sustained progress requires keeping inflow, shelter
capacity, and housing exits in balance.
The modeling also clarifies a common misunderstanding in policy discussions: the idea that prioritizing
one strategy over others can achieve similar results at lower cost. In reality, over-reliance on any single
approach requires far greater scale to produce impact and often creates bottlenecks that slow system
performance overall.
36HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
Modeling Under Uncertainty
The modeling process tested different conditions, including scenarios involving changes in funding levels,
shifts in inflow, and variations in system performance. These scenarios underscore a critical insight:
sustaining effective program capacity is typically more cost-efficient and impactful than rebuilding it
after disruption. Strategic preservation does not mean maintaining every program unchanged; it means
protecting high-performing core infrastructure while continuing to refine and enhance program design to
ensure resources remain aligned with demonstrated need and impact. Because housing units and service
capacity take time to develop, systems that safeguard essential capacity are better positioned to withstand
economic shocks and policy shifts without losing ground.
This insight informs the Plan’s emphasis on:
• Sustaining hard-won housing and service capacity amid federal and state policy and
funding uncertainty;
• Enhancing existing housing, services, and facilities to improve quality, support, and outcomes; and
• Expanding housing and service capacity where feasible to meet unmet need.
Modeling as a Tool for Accountability
The modeling reinforces that outcomes are the result of policy and funding choices—not inevitability.
Different levels of investment and coordination will produce different results.
Home Together 2030 draws on system modeling to:
• Set ambitious but realistic goals under defined conditions;
• Make tradeoffs transparent; and
• Support ongoing course correction as conditions evolve.
Based on the Plan’s goals described above—a one-third reduction in overall homelessness and a 50
percent reduction in unsheltered homelessness—the modeling provides an estimate of the scale of
resources and system capacity needed to achieve those outcomes. The table below summarizes the
investment and inventory needs identified through the modeling, comparing the approximate resources
needed to sustain the current system with the expanded resources associated with achieving those goals.
These figures are intended to illustrate scale and tradeoffs, not to serve as a fixed budget, spending plan, or
prediction of what will occur.
37HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
Modeled Resource Needs for Achieving the Plan’s Reduction Goals1
Resource Need Preservation Expansion
Targeted Prevention
Households Assisted ~500 HHs/year 4,700 HHs/year
Average Annual Ops/Services Costs $3.7M $37.0M
Permanent Housing Solutions
Total HHs Exiting to Subsidized Housing 2,400 HHs/year 2,900 HHs/year
Time-limited Subsidies 717 slots 1,400 slots
Dedicated Affordable Housing N/A 3,500 units
Permanent Supportive Housing 4,178 units 4,900 units
Medically Frail PSH 50 units 2,000 units
Average Annual Ops/Services Costs $132.4M $337M
5-year total Capital Costs N/A $1.87B total
Interim Housing
Households Assisted 5,100+ HHs/year 8,000 HHs/year
Units in Operation 2,980 units 3,400 units
Approximate Program Costs $105.7M $136M
5-year total Capital Costs N/A $98M total
Total Annual Ops/Services Costs $242M $510M
At a high level, the modeling indicates that meaningful reductions in homelessness require coordinated
expansion across multiple parts of the system at once—not just in one area. In particular, the modeled
results point to the need for substantially greater prevention capacity, increased exits to subsidized
housing, and additional interim housing capacity to reduce unsheltered homelessness while permanent
housing pathways expand.
Detailed assumptions, projected inventory needs, and cost estimates are documented in a companion
report, Modeling Solutions to Homelessness in Alameda County (see Appendix A). Those materials are
intended to guide implementation decisions, inform resource alignment, and support ongoing coordination
across jurisdictions.
As conditions evolve and implementation proceeds, modeling assumptions and projections will be
revisited and updated. This iterative approach ensures that strategy remains grounded in current realities
while preserving flexibility in a dynamic environment.
1 Note: Estimates are based on modeling assumptions about inflow, returns, targeting efficiency, intervention mix, system flow, and costs. They are intended to inform planning and resource alignment, not to establish fixed implementation requirements.
38HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
Section 4. Strategic Framework: Translating Analysis Into Action
39HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
The strategies in this plan are designed to reduce homelessness in ways that are actionable,
equitable, and aligned with the realities of implementation in Alameda County. They reflect
input from people most affected by homelessness, evidence about what works, and a
realistic understanding of what local systems can deliver over the next five years.
The framework is grounded in the system modeling work, which leveraged subject matter expertise from
providers, people with lived experience, and local government staff to quantify the relationship between
different interventions and their cumulative impact on homelessness. These insights clarified which
system levers have the greatest potential to improve outcomes—and where tradeoffs must be navigated
when resources are constrained. Analysis of demographic disparities further informed strategy design by
highlighting how different populations experience the homelessness response system and where targeted
action is required to improve access and outcomes.
The result is a focused set of objectives that work together—not as a menu of standalone options, but as a
system-level roadmap for reducing homelessness through coordinated and sustained action.
4.1 Pillars and Foundations: A Balanced Framework for Action
Reducing homelessness at scale requires coordinated action across the full system—no single intervention
can improve system performance on its own. Accordingly, the Strategic Framework is organized around
five interdependent pillars, supported by a cross-cutting set of foundational strategies that strengthen the
infrastructure, capacity, and policy environment needed to implement the plan at scale:
• Pillar 1: Prevention focuses on building a coordinated prevention network to prevent people from
becoming homeless and prevent returns to homelessness among people who have previously
experienced it.
• Pillar 2: Access focuses on engaging people experiencing homelessness, removing barriers to
assistance, and creating clear, navigable paths to shelter, housing, and other support.
• Pillar 3: Shelter focuses on providing safe, dignified interim housing with services to support people
in ending their homelessness.
• Pillar 4: Housing focuses on preserving and expanding housing options, accelerating exits from
homelessness, and strengthening long-term stability through services and subsidies.
• Pillar 5: Health care focuses on improving access to low-barrier health care, behavioral health,
substance use treatment, and care coordination so health needs do not become barriers to safety,
housing, or long-term stability.
• System Foundations focuses on strengthening the core capabilities needed to advance
the work across all five pillars, including workforce development, data and performance
management, contracting and procurement, governance alignment, and advocacy for a supportive
policy environment.
Each pillar targets a distinct component of the homelessness response system. The goal is to ensure
progress in one area does not come at the expense of another. When objectives are advanced together,
the system operates more effectively, people experiencing homelessness receive more coordinated and
responsive support, and long-term outcomes improve.
40HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
How to Read the Strategic Framework
Each pillar contains a set of objectives that focus on different components of the homelessness response
system. These objectives are followed by lists of strategies that specify the actions needed to achieve the
goals of each pillar. Appendix C has a detailed description of the different program types referenced in
the strategies.
Strategy Table Structure
The list of strategies that follow each objective translate the strategic framework into a clear set of
actions. They are designed to make priorities, dependencies, and sequencing visible—without locking the
system into rigid implementation details. Each list is organized around a single objective and includes the
following elements:
Strategic Intent
Describes what needs to be accomplished to improve system performance. Strategies are framed at a high
level; details are addressed through companion implementation materials.
Investment Category
Identifies which of the three investment categories—Sustain, Enhance, or Expand—the strategy
advances, clarifying its role in overall system performance. These categories are applicable across all
funding sources. (See Section 4.2 below.)
Implementation Sequencing
Describes how strategies are sequenced and advanced over time, based on urgency, dependency, and
system impact:
• Foundational (Critical Path): Core conditions required for other actions to succeed and/or protect
prior system investments; must be initiated immediately.
• High-Impact: Delivers significant results and should begin as soon as possible, even if they do not
enable other actions.
• Phased: Long-term strategies that can be phased in over time.
4.2 Aligning Investments With Strategy
Home Together 2030 is not a spending plan. It is a strategic framework designed to guide investment
decisions across all flexible funding sources—local, state, federal, and philanthropic. While the Measure
W Home Together Fund is a critical local funding source and a central point of public accountability, the
investment approach outlined here intentionally does not specify funding sources. It reflects how the
system will align and steward all resources to achieve long-term results.
The framework organizes investments into three categories based on the nature of the investment and its
role in system performance—not by program type or funding source.
41HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
Sustain: Preserve and Protect Core System Capacity
This category prioritizes preserving effective housing, shelter, and service programs during periods of
funding and policy volatility. Losing effective programs not only causes immediate destabilization of people
currently being served—including loss of housing and possible returns to homelessness—but also erodes
long-term system capacity.
Investments in this category focus on:
• Protecting effective housing, shelter, and service programs from funding losses, policy changes,
rising operating costs, and other disruptions that can destabilize services or reduce capacity.
• Preserving the value of past investments—including housing, facilities, and provider capacity—so
the system does not lose hard-won progress during periods of uncertainty.
Why it matters:
Preserving effective programs is often more efficient and cost-effective than rebuilding them after they are
lost. When programs go offline, people currently being served can lose housing and supports, providers
may lose experienced staff, and units or properties can be lost from the system’s inventory. Rebuilding that
capacity later typically requires far more time and resources than sustaining what already works.
Enhance: Improve Effectiveness, Quality, and Equity
This category targets performance. It supports system partners in delivering high quality, consistent,
person-centered results grounded in a commitment to addressing historical and ongoing inequities.
Investments in this category include:
• Strengthening service quality and consistency
• Improving coordination and targeting
• Addressing racial and other disparities in access and outcomes across populations
• Strengthening data systems, performance management, and accountability
• Supporting workforce capacity and provider sustainability
Why it matters:
Stronger programs serve more people effectively and equitably. While these investments may require
additional staffing and operational capacity, they are focused on improving performance, consistency, and
equity rather than substantially expanding service volume. They strengthen the impact of other investments
and build public confidence through responsible stewardship of public dollars.
Expand: Increase Capacity Where Needed
This category supports the strategic growth of system capacity—adding shelter, housing, and prevention
resources where gaps are greatest and where scale is essential to expand service areas and increase
the number of people assisted. It also creates space for H&H to identify innovative program models and
investment strategies.
42HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
Investments in this category focus on:
• Scaling prevention to reduce inflow
• Expanding shelter capacity to reduce unsheltered homelessness
• Increasing permanent housing subsidies and units to support timely exits
Why it matters:
When available housing and services do not keep pace with need, people remain homeless longer.
Strategic expansion—guided by system modeling and balanced across prevention, shelter, and housing—
is essential to reduce unsheltered homelessness and help more people move into stable housing
more quickly.
Addressing the Needs of Specific Populations Within a
Unified System
Different populations require services designed to address their unique needs. Veterans, survivors
of interpersonal violence, youth, families with children, older adults, people exiting incarceration,
and individuals experiencing chronic homelessness all face different risks, barriers, and practical
realities that shape what kinds of assistance will feel safe, appropriate, and sustainable. Lasting
reductions in homelessness depend on strengthening the overall response while tailoring
interventions to meet the needs of different groups.
Home Together 2030 does not organize strategies by population. Because this is a strategic plan,
it highlights where the circumstances of different groups should shape implementation, while
ensuring more detailed decisions about program models, service delivery, physical environments,
and measures of progress are taken up with sufficient detail and focus within the implementation
phase. Ongoing engagement with stakeholders representing those populations will help inform
those decisions. In addition, performance monitoring will disaggregate outcomes by key populations
to help identify disparities and inform adjustments over time, so the system delivers equitable
access and results.
Pillar 1: Prevention
Preventing homelessness through targeted interventions focusing on those households most at risk
helps avoid the trauma and instability that can come with losing housing. Reducing the number of people
entering homelessness—even incrementally—improves system outcomes by:
• Helping households stabilize earlier, before they need more costly shelter, services, and
rehousing interventions;
• Easing pressure on limited shelter, crisis response, and housing resources so they can reach people
with the fewest alternatives and greatest needs; and
• Supporting more equitable reductions in homelessness, including unsheltered homelessness, by
focusing prevention resources on households and communities at highest risk.
43HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
System modeling for Home Together 2030 suggests that meaningful reductions in homelessness will
require prevention at far greater scale than exists today—from roughly 500 households assisted annually
today to approximately 4,700 households per year under the expansion scenario—alongside stronger
housing stabilization efforts to reduce returns to homelessness. At the same time, resources are limited,
and prevention must be balanced with other parts of the homelessness response system. Because it is
not always possible to predict who will ultimately experience homelessness, prevention resources must
be focused where they are most likely to make a difference.1 This pillar aligns with key strategies detailed
in Alameda County’s Homelessness Prevention Framework2 and builds upon work already underway to
strengthen how prevention is designed, targeted, and delivered. It emphasizes directing limited resources
to households at highest risk, where timely intervention can help avert first-time homelessness and reduce
returns to homelessness among people who have previously experienced it. It also reflects the need
for sustained leadership and an enabling policy environment to support prevention, including stronger
coordination across mainstream and safety net systems that serve people at risk of losing housing.
What We Know3
• Black households are sharply overrepresented among people experiencing homelessness
in Alameda County. In 2025, Black residents made up 10 percent of the county population but
52 percent of people experiencing homelessness.
• Black/African American, American Indian/Alaska Native or Indigenous, and Native Hawaiian/
Pacific Islander populations are disproportionately represented among people newly
experiencing homelessness relative to their share of Alameda County’s general population.
• Black/African American and American Indian, Alaska Native, or Indigenous populations
account for a disproportionately large share of returns to homelessness relative to their
representation in Alameda County’s general population.
• Older adults make up a growing share of Alameda County’s homeless population. People
age 55 and older comprise 30 percent of Alameda County’s homeless population.
1 The system modeling assumes that targeted prevention assistance is not perfectly predictive and therefore must reach more households than will ultimately avoid homelessness because of the intervention. In year one, the model assumes a targeting efficiency of 10 percent for first-time homelessness prevention—meaning approximately 1 in 10 households served would otherwise have entered homelessness without assistance. By year five, that assumption increases to 15 percent, or roughly 1 in 6.7 households served. For returns to homelessness, the model assumes a targeting efficiency of 33 percent, meaning approximately 1 return is prevented for every 3 households served. These are planning assumptions grounded in prevention research and used to model a cost-effective scale-up scenario, in which improved targeting over time is necessary to contain costs while expanding prevention capacity.
2 Alameda County Health, Homelessness Prevention Framework: A Companion to the Home Together Community Plan (2025), https://homelessness.acgov.org/homelessness-assets/docs/ACH_Homelessness-Prevention-Framework_021825.pdf
3 Findings and themes presented in the “What We Know” sections draw from Alameda County PIT Count data; HMIS data; the 2024–2025 Coordinated Entry System Evaluation; qualitative input from Alameda County Health Care for the Homeless focus groups, summarized in Voices from the Margins (2026); community input gathered through the 2025 Home Together Fund community meetings; and the 2025 Home Together Racial Equity Analysis.
44HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
Objective 1.1: Create a Robust Prevention Network With
Cross-System Engagement
Effective homelessness prevention depends on more than financial assistance alone. It requires clear
leadership, shared accountability, strong coordination across the county, community-based providers, and
partnerships with mainstream systems that are often best positioned to identify housing instability early
and connect people to help before a crisis leads to homelessness.
Coordinating prevention efforts across publicly funded, upstream systems is essential, particularly for
addressing racial and other disparities in rates of homelessness. People at risk of homelessness are often
already connected to systems related to health care, employment, justice involvement, education, child
welfare, aging and disability, or Veteran services. When prevention providers connect with teams in those
systems, especially those where people are residing (e.g., treatment facilities, jails or prisons, or foster
placements), at-risk households can access resources to prevent homelessness when they need it the most.
This objective focuses on establishing the infrastructure needed to successfully implement the prevention
work. It draws on the Homelessness Prevention Framework by emphasizing a coordinated prevention
network and stronger integration with upstream systems.
1.1.1 Create a Prevention Team within H&H to lead the implementation
of the Prevention Pillar and Prevention Framework
The H&H Prevention Team will provide administrative leadership and direction-
setting for prevention work, including coordinating with other systems, regional
partners, cities, and providers; identifying and disseminating reliable and accurate
screening tools; developing budgets and pursuing additional funding opportunities
to expand resources; and overseeing data collection, reporting, and ongoing quality
improvement.
INVESTMENT
Expand
SEQUENCING
Foundational
1.1.2 Establish a Homelessness Prevention Network to make prevention
services easier to access, streamline application processes, and
support consistent information-sharing
Create a Homelessness Prevention Network by contracting with a community-based
agency to serve as the Prevention Hub, who will work closely the Housing Resource
Centers, which will act as the regional spokes across Alameda County. With
facilitation from the H&H Prevention Team, the network will use shared priorities,
coordinated outreach and targeting approaches, and consistent information
gathering and evaluation practices to provide timely, geographically responsive,
data-informed prevention services.
INVESTMENT
Expand
SEQUENCING
Foundational
45HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
1.1.3 Strengthen partnerships with systems that serve households at
risk of homelessness
With facilitation from the H&H Prevention Team, Homelessness Prevention Network
agencies will be supported to develop relationships with other systems (e.g.,
criminal legal, education, child welfare, Veteran services, etc.) and informal partners
(e.g. faith-based organizations, immigrant and cultural centers, community
advocates) to create communication pathways, disseminate the prevention
assistance screening tool, facilitate discharge planning, and operate as a supportive
services network.
INVESTMENT
Expand
SEQUENCING
High Impact
Objective 1.2: Prevent New Entries Into Homelessness
Preventing new entries into homelessness requires a different approach than preventing returns among
people already known to the homelessness response system. Particularly among households with
no recent connection to the homelessness response system, it can be difficult to know which will
regain stability through personal networks or short-term support and which will go on to experience
homelessness. As a result, prevention resources must be targeted carefully and paired with strong
partnerships across mainstream and community-based systems that are more likely to encounter people
at highest risk before they lose housing.
For some households, housing problem-solving and light-touch financial assistance can help resolve
a crisis before homelessness occurs. Others may need more targeted support because of overlapping
risks such as extremely low income, legal barriers, health or behavioral health needs, family instability, or
limited access to informal support. These risks are not distributed evenly. Longstanding racial inequities in
housing, income, wealth, and access to support mean that some communities face a much greater risk of
entering homelessness and may require more intentional outreach and tailored interventions.
The strategies in this objective are designed to strengthen early identification, improve targeting, and
connect people to timely assistance before a housing crisis turns into homelessness. They also emphasize
coordination with the broader systems and community partners that are often best positioned to reach
households before they enter the homelessness response system.
Community Story: Amanda, Fremont
In 2023, Amanda, a single mom of three young children, was devastatingly diagnosed with cancer.
Without support from her children’s father, she was able to manage for a while, but her financial
situation became dire when she required a second round of chemotherapy. When the notice of
eviction came, a friend recommended reaching out to her city’s Family Resource Center, where she
was assigned a case manager who assisted her with applying for housing funds through a nonprofit
organization that provides support to survivors of domestic violence. With aid from that organization,
Amanda received approval for a 12-month rental assistance program. Today, Amanda has returned
to work while continuing to take care of her children.
46HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
1.2.1 Develop a countywide targeting strategy for prevention services
Leverage local data and best practices research to create a standardized screening
and targeting approach to guide outreach and eligibility for prevention assistance,
combining risk indicators and equity factors to prioritize households at highest risk
of first-time homelessness and intentionally reduce racial and other disparities in
system inflow.
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
High Impact
1.2.2 Tailor prevention approaches to high-risk populations
Leverage local data and best practices research to create a standardized screening
and targeting approach to guide outreach and eligibility for prevention assistance,
combining risk indicators to prioritize households at highest risk of first-time
homelessness and intentionally reduce racial and other disparities in system inflow.
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
Phased
1.2.3 Streamline access and delivery of financial assistance
Based on early lessons learned, simplify application processes, expand flexible use
of funds, and identify ways to more rapidly deploy prevention assistance—ensuring
help is available quickly and equitably.
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
Phased
Objective 1.3: Prevent Returns to Homelessness
Preventing people from becoming homeless again after securing housing is essential to avoiding re-
traumatization while also protecting prior investments made in rehousing. Unlike households not yet
connected to the homelessness response system, these households are already known to providers
and may show signs that a housing placement or level of support is no longer working. Because returns
to homelessness are often preceded by instability that can be seen and addressed, this work requires a
distinct prevention approach.
This objective focuses on strengthening how the system monitors housing stability, identifies households
at elevated risk of returning to homelessness, and responds when additional or different support is
needed. That includes clear protocols for evaluating and reevaluating stability, targeted interventions
for households facing renewed risk, and flexible pathways to increase support or adjust a housing
arrangement when it is not working. These strategies are intended to reduce avoidable returns while
making better use of existing housing and shelter resources.
While not all returns are preventable, earlier identification and more tailored responses can help more
people remain housed and sustain the progress made through rehousing.
1.3.1 Expand eviction prevention and legal supports for formerly
homeless households
Prevent avoidable returns by expanding access to legal assistance, eviction defense,
landlord-tenant mediation services, and related housing stability supports for
households who have recently exited homelessness and face emerging landlord-
tenant challenges or housing-related legal issues.
INVESTMENT
Expand
SEQUENCING
Phased
47HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
1.3.2 Implement a systemwide progressive engagement protocol to
prevent housing loss for households in RRH
Establish a shared framework for identifying households at heightened risk of
returning to homelessness and stepping up assistance. Define risk indicators and
establish criteria for when RRH may be extended, modified, or transitioned to
shallow subsidies as a targeted prevention tool—not automatic progression—and
with attention to addressing racial and other disparities in RRH referrals, income
growth barriers, and rates of return to homelessness.
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
Foundational
1.3.3 Establish transfer and relocation protocols for households whose
housing is not working
Create a clear, responsive, and supportive process for transitioning households—
particularly in PSH—when the unit, neighborhood, or service configuration
undermines stability (e.g., define circumstances under which transfers are
appropriate, clarify roles and timelines, identify how moving costs will be
supported).
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
Phased
1.3.4 Develop a comprehensive plan to prevent and address
youth homelessness
Prevent future adult homelessness by advancing a coordinated, systemwide
approach to youth homelessness that reflects the developmental needs and
circumstances of young people, recognizes youth homelessness as a distinct
pathway with long-term system impacts, and moves beyond isolated programs
toward a coherent strategy for prevention, stabilization, and long-term housing
stability—rather than treating youth responses as extensions of adult models.
INVESTMENT
Expand
SEQUENCING
Foundational
1.3.5 Strengthen income, employment, and workforce
development supports
Integrate employment and workforce supports into prevention, rapid re-housing,
housing stabilization, and other homelessness response services to help
households increase income and improve long-term financial stability. This includes
employment navigation, warm handoffs to workforce development partners,
partnerships with job training and apprenticeship programs, and tracking referrals
and outcomes to identify gaps and opportunities for improvement.
INVESTMENT
Expand
SEQUENCING
Phased
48HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
Pillar 2: Access
Outreach and access shape how people experiencing homelessness encounter the system—particularly
those who are unsheltered. How the system engages people, communicates options, and connects them
to next steps has a direct impact on outcomes as individuals and families navigate the homelessness
response system across the county. Strategies in this pillar take into consideration that people
experiencing unsheltered homelessness are not all the same and that the system needs a variety of
outreach and access tools and approaches to meet the diverse needs of the community.
This pillar integrates best practices and input from people experiencing homelessness to develop
strategies that ensure people can access help in timely, coordinated, and humane ways. Feedback
from people experiencing homelessness and service providers makes clear that effective outreach and
access are not simply about contact or assessments; they are about building trust, reducing harm, and
ensuring that engagement leads to meaningful options—including shelter, housing, health care, and other
supports—rather than stalled or disconnected interactions.
While this pillar centers on unsheltered homelessness, many of the strategies described also support
people who are in shelter or navigating transitions between programs. This pillar emphasizes:
• Clear and coordinated outreach roles across county-funded and city-funded teams;
• Predictable and understandable pathways for people seeking help;
• Stronger connections to health care, behavioral health, and other supports that reduce harm and
support housing stability;
• Encampment responses that prioritize safety, dignity, and alternatives to displacement; and
• Strong alignment with Coordinated Entry to support fair and consistent access decisions.
Together, these strategies are intended to shorten the time people remain unsheltered and strengthen the
connection to shelter and housing resources addressed in subsequent pillars.
What We Know
• Encampment clearings and forced moves do not resolve homelessness and can
undermine engagement. Community members described repeated displacement without
viable alternatives as worsening instability, eroding trust, and interrupting connection to
services and support.
• Not all populations experiencing unsheltered homelessness are connecting to services
at the same rate. Hispanic/Latine and Asian adult-only households make up a larger share of
the unsheltered population than of households enrolling in homelessness response services,
pointing to important gaps in access and engagement.
• Even as access points have expanded, many people still struggle to navigate the
system. Clients described repeated referrals, unclear eligibility criteria, confusion about
what assessments mean, and difficulty tracking their status, while people without phones
or stable contact information were especially likely to lose connection after initial outreach
or assessment.
49HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
• In some cases, assessment and prioritization processes are not producing equitable
results; however, those trends are not borne out in permanent housing placements.
Among adult-only households, white and American Indian/Alaska Native households scored
higher on average than other racial and ethnic groups. Among family households, Black and
Hispanic/Latine households scored significantly lower than white families—patterns that
contributed to disparities in who met the criteria to be added to the housing queue. However,
2025 permanent housing placements for Black households matched their proportion of the PIT
Count. Hispanic/Latine households were slightly underrepresented.
Objective 2.1: Strengthen Outreach and Engagement for
Unsheltered Residents
For people experiencing homelessness who are unsheltered, outreach teams are often the primary point
of contact with the homelessness response system. The quality, consistency, and coordination of those
interactions directly influence whether engagement leads to meaningful next steps or repeated contact
without progress.
This objective focuses on strengthening outreach delivery across the county by clarifying roles and
coverage areas between county- and city-funded teams, establishing shared practice standards, and
improving coordination between housing, health care, and behavioral health partners. Outreach is not
an end in itself; it must be purposeful, connected to realistic options, and aligned with clear pathways to
shelter, problem-solving, and housing.
By improving role clarity, consistency, and integration across systems, this objective aims to reduce
duplication, support more person-centered and coordinated encampment responses, and increase the
likelihood that outreach engagement results in timely delivery of street-based services and connection to
appropriate supports.
2.1.1 Align outreach coverage and roles across the county
Reassess geographic and population coverage across county- and city-funded
outreach teams to reduce duplication, close gaps, and clarify responsibilities—
particularly between housing/health-focused county outreach and city-led
encampment or crisis response teams.
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
Foundational
2.1.2 Establish shared outreach practices and coordination protocols
To create more regional consistency, develop shared standards and protocols
for outreach practices, including expectations for continuity of engagement,
communication of options, follow-up, consistent data entry into HMIS, incorporation
of housing problem-solving approaches where appropriate, and clear pathways for
connecting people to CES, shelter, and other supports so engagement consistently
leads to timely next steps. Ensure the shared practices and protocols can be
adapted to meet the needs of different regions.
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
Foundational
50HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
2.1.3 Strengthen coordination between outreach teams and behavioral
health providers
Strengthen coordination between outreach teams and psychiatric, substance use,
street medicine, and other health care providers to facilitate timely access to street-
based clinical services, assessment, medication access, treatment connections,
and documentation needed to access specialized services and housing resources
with defined eligibility criteria. [See also Strategies 5.2.1 and 5.2.2 under Pillar 5:
Health care.]
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
Phased
2.1.4 Expand peer-based and culturally responsive outreach models
Enhance engagement with unsheltered residents by expanding the use of peers
and culturally affirmative outreach approaches that reflect the communities
served. Leverage shared experience and community-based knowledge to build
trust, improve communication, and increase connection to shelter, navigation, and
housing opportunities.
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
Phased
2.1.5 Improve cross-team information sharing and care coordination
Maintain existing and establish new (as needed) structured information-sharing
mechanisms—such as regular regional outreach coordination meetings and shared
data protocols—to reduce duplication, support continuity across teams and
jurisdictions, and improve visibility into engagement progress.
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
High Impact
Objective 2.2: Create Clear and Timely Pathways to Assistance
For people experiencing homelessness, knowing where to go—and being able to access timely help—
is too often experienced as a further trauma to the experience of homelessness itself. In contrast to a
true ‘no wrong door’ approach, services are often siloed and not always easy to access, with confusing
requirements and inconsistent processes that can prolong homelessness even when resources are
available. These barriers can often reinforce structures that make it harder for some groups, like people of
color, immigrants, older adults, or people with disabilities to access the resources they need.
This objective focuses on what happens once someone seeks assistance. It emphasizes clear and
geographically accessible mobile and site-based “no wrong door” entry points; timely and consistent
assessment protocols; and strengthened housing problem-solving so that resolving a housing crisis is
actively pursued whenever possible. It also prioritizes equitable and transparent determinations about
eligibility and prioritization, so people understand their options and next steps, and the system doesn’t
further perpetuate existing inequities.
By reducing delays, improving communication, and aligning eligibility and prioritization determinations with
real-time system capacity, this objective aims to ensure assistance is provided based on need and policy—
rather than persistence, geography, or visibility—so people can move toward appropriate shelter, housing,
or other supports as quickly and realistically as possible.
51HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
Community Story: Mr. Lee, San Leandro
Mr. Lee is a 76-year-old man who had been living on the street, contracting severe pneumonia and
spending weeks hospitalized. Following his hospitalization, he was connected to interim housing
at Fairmont Tiny Homes in San Leandro. At first, Mr. Lee experienced behavioral health symptoms
and would not leave his unit. Fairmont staff never stopped trying or treating him with kindness in an
effort to build rapport and trust. Eventually, after many months, he emerged from his unit, and even
allowed a nurse to bring him to the hospital to get treatment for a rash—this was a major milestone.
Weeks later, he showed up at the Cardea Health offices brandishing a letter from over six months
prior that informed him of a placement available to him at Eddie’s Place, a recuperative care interim
housing program. Staff helped him move into a room that same morning.
2.2.1 Expand and clarify system access points across the county
Ensure people seeking assistance understand where to go and can access help
without unnecessary travel or delay by enhancing Housing Resource Centers,
Limited Access Points, and outreach-based access services. This may include
strengthening regional hubs, adding satellite or co-located access points, expanding
hours, and improving virtual or mobile access options so entry into the system does
not depend on geography or mobility.
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
Foundational
2.2.2 Strengthen housing problem-solving at access points
Strengthen housing problem-solving at homelessness response system access
points so that, when people seek assistance, resolving their housing crisis is actively
pursued with access to flexible financial resources if needed. This includes training
client-facing staff in problem-solving approaches, ensuring rapid access to flexible
resources that can be deployed quickly, and improving data collection to understand
outcomes achieved and what’s working.
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
High Impact
2.2.3 Strengthen next-step protocols following a visit to an access point
Strengthen shared protocols for determining and communicating next steps after
visiting an access point to reduce confusion and promote timely engagement. This
includes clarifying when different types of referrals should be discussed, setting
expectations around timelines and availability, and supporting frontline staff with
tools and guidance to deliver consistent, accurate information.
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
High Impact
2.2.4 Continue to evaluate and improve Coordinated Entry prioritization
protocols and communication with stakeholders
Continue monitoring Coordinated Entry prioritization protocols for disparities in
assessment and placements to ensure shelter and housing resources are used
strategically to advance key objectives. Communicate frequently with system
stakeholders about prioritization processes and feedback opportunities.
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
Foundational
52HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
2.2.5 Align eligibility and prioritization determinations for shelter and
other interim placements with real-time system capacity
Ensure determinations about shelter and other interim placements reflect real-time
system capacity so people are not routed to unavailable resources and referrals are
grounded in current conditions rather than static assumptions.
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
High Impact
2.2.6 Clarify navigation and handoff roles across providers
Align roles across navigation, outreach, shelter, and housing providers to establish
clear expectations for responsibility for key tasks (e.g., documentation, housing
search, application assistance) at different stages. This alignment can be reinforced
over time through updated protocols, training, and contract requirements—reducing
duplication, gaps, and delays for people seeking help. [See also Strategy 3.3.4
regarding role clarity at shelter exit.]
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
Phased
Objective 2.3: Center Homelessness Response System
Engagement in Public Health and Safety Actions
Homelessness affects the entire community, though its impacts are not experienced equally. In addition
to the profound consequences for people experiencing homelessness, unsheltered homelessness can
create public health and safety concerns in public spaces, for both those experiencing homelessness and
the broader community. At the same time, encampments can serve as places of survival, connection, and
relative stability for the people living in them, and disruptions that fail to account for this can cause harm.
This objective addresses these realities responsibly—recognizing both the importance of avoiding
unnecessary harm to people living in encampments and the need for cities to respond to public health
and safety concerns. It makes clear that managing the conditions that surround encampments is not a
substitute for ending homelessness. Activities such as sanitation, fire prevention, debris removal, and
environmental health response must be coordinated with outreach, shelter, and housing efforts to reduce
repeated displacement and unnecessary harm.
By clarifying roles and strengthening coordination across county and city departments, this objective
supports safer, more predictable responses that reduce risk, promote dignity, and align public health and
safety actions with progress toward housing solutions.
2.3.1 Support local jurisdictions’ efforts to implement best practices for
encampment response
Distribute best practices resources, provide guidance as appropriate, and support
cities in the pursuit of resources for encampment resolution, including state funding.
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
Foundational
2.3.2 Establish ongoing interagency coordination and review process
Create regular coordination and review mechanisms across cities and county
departments to monitor significant public health and safety impacts, identify
patterns, and improve alignment with the homelessness response system.
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
High Impact
53HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
Pillar 3: Shelter
Shelter plays a critical role in the homelessness response system by providing immediate safety and
stability for people who cannot remain housed or are living outside. Even in a system focused on returning
people to permanent housing, shelter is necessary because identifying an appropriate unit, completing
leasing processes, and supporting a safe move-in take time. System modeling suggests that making
meaningful progress in reducing unsheltered homelessness would require expanding Alameda County’s
interim housing inventory from roughly 2,980 units in operation today to about 3,400 units—an increase of
approximately 420 units.
At the same time, shelter alone cannot end homelessness. Shelter is one part of a broader system: people
must be able to access shelter when they need it but then move on to stable housing quickly enough to
free space for others. Without timely exits to housing, even new shelter capacity fills quickly and backlogs
remain —leaving more people unsheltered and straining the system overall. Shelter conditions matter,
too. For shelters to function as intended, they must be safe, supportive, and respectful so people feel
comfortable accepting a bed.
This pillar focuses on ensuring that shelter functions as a short-term bridge rather than a long-term
destination. System modeling helps clarify how much shelter capacity is needed under different
assumptions about housing availability and speed to exit, while community input helps shape facility,
program, and service design so shelter better reflects the needs of different populations. Together, these
inputs help the county make strategic shelter investments with limited resources while remaining focused
on the long-term goal: helping people return to stable housing of their own.
What We Know
• Shelter is not functioning equally well as a bridge to housing for all populations. Hispanic/
Latine adult-only households exit shelter to permanent housing less frequently than to other
non-permanent destinations.
• The quality of shelter is shaped not only by the physical environment, but by how people
are treated inside it. Community members who participated in Home Together community
meetings emphasized that respectful treatment, strong supervision, and clear accountability
are central to whether shelter feels safe, dignified, and effective.
• Family shelter needs are distinct from adult shelter needs, and current capacity falls
short. Community members emphasized that families cannot safely be served in large adult
congregate shelter settings and that family homelessness is often undercounted, masking the
scale of unmet need.
• Shelter is more effective when basic conditions and support are consistently in place.
Community members described cleanliness, maintenance, hygiene access, food quality, and on-
site, continuous case management as critical to stability, while inconsistent conditions and time-
limited support can leave people cycling through shelter without making progress toward housing.
• Community members repeatedly emphasized that some populations have shelter needs
that are not well met by standard adult congregate models. Transition-age youth, survivors
fleeing violence, LGBTQ+ individuals, and older adults were among the groups identified as
needing shelter options that better reflect their safety, privacy, accessibility, and service needs.
54HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
Objective 3.1: Align Shelter Capacity With System Need
The availability, location, and type of shelter offered to individuals experiencing homelessness directly
affect whether people are willing and able to come indoors. This objective focuses on ensuring that the
system has sufficient and appropriate shelter capacity to meet current needs, including a range of models
that reflect different circumstances, vulnerabilities, and levels of acuity. As with other objectives in this
plan, this objective recognizes that these varying circumstances and needs matter and that the system
requires enough options and flexibility to respond to that breadth of need. By better aligning shelter supply
with system need, geography, and population-specific considerations, this objective aims to reduce
unsheltered homelessness and ensure that shelter functions as a viable alternative to living outside.
3.1.1 Right-size shelter capacity using system demand and modeling
Use system modeling and gaps between inventory and the number of unsheltered
individuals to guide decisions about the amount, type, and timing of shelter capacity
needed to reduce unsheltered homelessness.
INVESTMENT
Expand
SEQUENCING
High Impact
3.1.2 Expand shelter capacity where geographic and population gaps
are greatest
Target expansion and/or reconfiguration of shelter capacity in locations and for
populations where unmet need is most significant, informed by where people are,
trends in shelter use, and system modeling.
INVESTMENT
Expand
SEQUENCING
High Impact
3.1.3 Ensure a diversified mix of shelter models to meet varying needs
Use data, system modeling, and partner feedback to ensure the shelter system
includes a diversified mix of models appropriate for different needs, including:
• Family- and youth-appropriate models that preserve household unity,
provide privacy, and offer developmentally appropriate environments for
young people;
• Survivor-informed models that prioritize safety and confidentiality for people
fleeing interpersonal violence; and
• Models that support specific stabilization goals, such as sober living,
behavioral health treatment models, and programs connected to workforce or
education goals.
INVESTMENT
Expand
SEQUENCING
High Impact
3.1.4 Expand medically supportive shelter models
Expand shelter models designed for people with high medical, mobility, aging-
related, behavioral health, or functional support needs who cannot be safely
or effectively served in standard shelter settings. Ensure medically supportive
shelter and interim housing models include appropriate accessibility, health care
coordination, and connections to in-home, caregiving, care management, benefits,
and other supports needed to help people stabilize and move into permanent
housing. [Also appears as Strategy 5.3.2 in Pillar 5: Health care.]
INVESTMENT
Expand
SEQUENCING
High Impact
55HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
3.1.5 Preserve and stabilize existing shelter capacity during market and
funding volatility
Protect existing shelter capacity during periods of housing market constraint or
funding uncertainty to avoid increases in unsheltered homelessness.
INVESTMENT
Sustain
SEQUENCING
Foundational
3.1.6 Improve real-time visibility and utilization of shelter capacity
Strengthen systemwide visibility into available shelter beds and interim options
through shared reporting tools and coordinated communication across access,
outreach, and shelter providers—so capacity is used efficiently and beds do not
remain vacant while unsheltered homelessness persists.
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
Foundational
Objective 3.2: Improve Shelter Quality, Safety,
and Experience
For shelter to serve its intended purpose, it must be a safe, dignified, and supportive environment.
Conversations with people experiencing homelessness consistently emphasize that when shelter
environments provide an inconsistent level of service, are unsafe, or overly restrictive, people may avoid
them altogether, exit prematurely, or spend extended time in shelter without gaining housing —undermining
both individual outcomes and broader system goals.
This objective focuses on ensuring that shelters have clear expectations, adequate resources, and strong
accountability for maintaining safe, humane, and well-functioning environments. It emphasizes updated
standards, alignment of funding and contracts with operational needs, meaningful input from people with
lived experience, and stronger monitoring and grievance processes. Together, these strategies support
stabilization, more effective use of shelter capacity, and stronger pathways to housing.
3.2.1 Update and clarify shelter standards and models
Update Emergency Shelter Standards informed by people with lived experience,
shelter providers, and relevant best practices, addressing key elements such as
physical safety, accessibility, cleanliness, health protocols, and trauma-informed
practices. In addition, review and clarify the purpose, target population, eligibility
criteria, and access pathways for different shelter models to promote greater
consistency and transparency across the system.
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
Foundational
3.2.2 Align funding, procurement, and contracts with shelter standards
Ensure shelter standards are reflected in funding structures, procurement
processes, and contracts, with resources aligned to the range of operational
and staffing needs required to maintain safe, accessible, and well-functioning
shelter environments (e.g., staffing levels, security, food service, janitorial, and
maintenance).
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
Foundational
56HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
3.2.3 Integrate lived experience in shelter design and operations
Create structured mechanisms to ensure people with lived experience are
continually and meaningfully engaged to inform discussions about shelter design,
shelter policies/rules, and operations.
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
High Impact
3.2.4 Strengthen incident tracking and grievance processes
Strengthen and standardize incident tracking, grievance processes, and client
feedback protocols across shelter programs to ensure proactive feedback channels
exist and concerns are addressed transparently and consistently.
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
High Impact
Objective 3.3: Strengthen Pathways Out of Shelter
Shelter is intended to be temporary—a short-term source of safety and stability while people work toward
their next housing option. When people remain in shelter longer than necessary, capacity tightens,
backlogs grow, and fewer people can be served over time. Accordingly, strengthening pathways to housing
remains a critical part of system transformation efforts.
This objective focuses on aligning operating models, staffing, and funding with clear expectations for
timely exits. It ensures shelter operators work closely with partners to integrate housing problem-solving
and rapid exit supports on site. It also strengthens coordination and role clarity between shelter and
housing providers, so transitions are purposeful and not delayed by avoidable friction. In doing so, it
seeks to reduce the growing risk that prolonged shelter stays erode people’s connections to housing,
employment, and support networks, making homelessness harder to resolve and increasing the likelihood
of chronic homelessness.
Reducing length of stay in shelter is not about imposing arbitrary time limits. Exits must be appropriate,
supported, and aligned with individual needs and market conditions. Forcing people to leave shelter
without viable options can increase returns to homelessness and undermine trust in the system.
Accordingly, this objective also emphasizes communication, shared expectations, clear pathways, and
strong coordination to support exits that are both timely and sustainable.
Community Story: Albert, Oakland
Albert is a middle-aged man experiencing homelessness with a history of health issues, including
schizoaffective disorder, epilepsy, methamphetamine use disorder, and PTSD. With the support of
an Alameda County Health Care for the Homeless social worker, Albert was placed in a shelter bed
to aid in his recovery from a traumatic brain injury caused by an assault. While he was in recovery
at the shelter, the social worker connected Albert with care at a medical home and additional
supports through La Familia while continuing to meet with him weekly, providing emotional support,
transportation and accompaniment to appointments, and assistance with obtaining progress
reports for behavioral health court.
57HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
3.3.1 Align shelter operating models and funding with housing-
focused practices
Ensure shelter bed night rates and contract structures support adequate staffing for
housing navigation, case management, and rapid exit activities—so expectations for
throughput are matched by the resources required to achieve them.
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
Foundational
3.3.2 Strengthen structured housing planning within shelter
Ensure shelter stays include structured and ongoing housing planning that identifies
realistic exit options early and revisits them throughout the stay. This includes clear
guidance for shelter staff on how to link residents to Housing Community Supports
and other resources to accelerate exits.
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
High Impact
3.3.3 Embed housing problem-solving and rapid exit in shelter practice
Link shelter providers with housing problem-solving and rapid exit teams to ensure
participants have consistent access to problem-solving support throughout
their shelter stay. Establish clear referral pathways, shared protocols, regular
communication, and timely access to flexible funding so housing resolution is
consistently pursued rather than treated as a one-time conversation.
INVESTMENT
Expand
SEQUENCING
Foundational
3.3.4 Clarify roles and responsibilities at shelter exit
Establish clear expectations and coordination protocols between shelter, housing
navigation, and housing providers regarding responsibilities for housing search,
documentation, landlord engagement, and move-in coordination, reducing stalled
exits and confusion as clients transition out of shelter.
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
High Impact
58HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
Pillar 4: Housing
Stable housing is the foundation for ending homelessness. It creates the safety and stability people need
to manage their health, maintain relationships, pursue work or income, and build long-term well-being.
Reductions in homelessness ultimately depend on the availability of housing that people can afford, that
is appropriate to their different needs, and that can be sustained over time. System modeling underscores
the scale of the housing challenge, suggesting that achieving the plan’s goals would require adding
approximately 680 time-limited subsidy slots and over 6,000 permanent housing subsidies or units above
today’s baseline.
At the same time, people experiencing homelessness often face different challenges to gaining and
maintaining housing. Rising costs of living, discrimination, and unpredictable federal policies can deepen
those barriers and make housing harder to access and keep. Older adults, immigrants, Black, Indigenous,
and other people of color, youth, families with children, survivors of gender-based violence, and
members of the LGBTQ+ community may require different housing models and supports that reflect their
circumstances and needs.
This pillar advances three complementary dimensions of housing system performance. First, it increases
the supply of permanent housing designed for people exiting homelessness, recognizing that the private
rental market alone cannot meet the scale or complexity of demand. Second, it accelerates exits to
housing through tenant-based and flexible assistance, enabling households to return to housing more
quickly within current market constraints. Third, it strengthens housing stability by ensuring that once
people are housed, services and supports are responsive to people’s changing needs and support
housing retention.
What We Know
• Hispanic/Latine households face access gaps between eligibility for housing and actual
enrollment. The racial equity analysis found that Hispanic/Latine adult-only households
and families make up a larger share of households eligible for both Rapid Rehousing and
Permanent Supportive Housing than of those actually enrolled, suggesting barriers persist even
after eligibility is established.
• Stable housing is foundational to recovery and long-term stability. Participants with
substance use treatment experience repeatedly linked housing instability to relapse risk,
stress, difficulty sustaining treatment, and barriers to employment.
• Housing placement alone is not enough to ensure stability. People with lived experience
emphasized that successful transitions to housing often require hands-on support, connection
to health care, help navigating benefits and income, and ongoing social connection to reduce
isolation after move-in.
• Fragmented systems can undermine housing stability. Focus group participants and
community speakers both described poor coordination across housing, health, behavioral
health, and benefits systems as a barrier to successful stabilization in housing.
59HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
Objective 4.1: Increase the Supply of Permanent Housing
Designed for People Exiting Homelessness
The homelessness response system cannot rely solely on tenant-based strategies in a constrained and
competitive housing market. Increasing the supply of permanent housing designed for people exiting
homelessness is necessary to ensure that exits are possible at scale, particularly for people with higher
needs or barriers to accessing the private rental market.
This objective focuses on expanding and sustaining site-based PSH and related models that increase
overall housing supply, can be built or adapted to meet specific accessibility and service needs, and
provide greater long-term cost stability. Purpose-built housing allows for on-site services and design
features that support people with significant health, behavioral health, or mobility needs—while ensuring
housing is appropriately distributed and consistent with fair housing requirements.
Recognizing the time and complexity involved in developing new housing, this objective also emphasizes
preserving existing PSH and leveraging acquisition and rehabilitation strategies to maintain and grow
system capacity over time. Together, these approaches help ensure that permanent housing remains
available and viable, reducing long-term dependence on shelter and short-term interventions.
4.1.1 Align site-based housing investments with system demand and
population needs
Use system modeling, population, and disparity data to guide coordinated planning
and decision-making about the scale, mix, and location of site-based housing
investments. Ensure that capital resources are allocated intentionally—across
jurisdictions and housing types—to respond to system demand and complement
tenant-based approaches.
INVESTMENT
Expand
SEQUENCING
Foundational
4.1.2 Expand Medically Frail PSH
Increase the supply of site-based PSH designed to serve older adults and other
medically vulnerable residents with a combination of complex health conditions,
functional support needs, and/or mobility limitations. Prioritize accessible unit
design, enhanced on-site service coordination, connections to health care,
behavioral health care, in-home support, care management, and aging and disability
services, with operating models that allow people to remain stably housed as their
health and support needs change over time. [Also appears as Strategy 5.3.3 in
Pillar 5: Health care.]
INVESTMENT
Expand
SEQUENCING
High Impact
4.1.3 Prioritize acquisition and rehabilitation to accelerate new supply
Bring permanent housing online more quickly by prioritizing acquisition and
rehabilitation of existing properties where feasible, recognizing the limits of new
construction timelines and the need to respond within current market and capacity
constraints.
INVESTMENT
Expand
SEQUENCING
High Impact
60HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
4.1.4 Leverage operating subsidies to enable and sustain
site-based housing
Secure and align long-term operating and service subsidies to ensure site-based
housing remains financially viable over time and to unlock faster acquisition and
rehabilitation opportunities that would not be feasible through capital funding alone.
INVESTMENT
Expand
SEQUENCING
High Impact
4.1.5 Streamline requirements that affect the speed and cost of
housing delivery
Review and pursue changes to local and funding-related requirements that influence
development timelines and costs, including aligning capital incentives, streamlining
county funding processes, and reducing unnecessary complexity while maintaining
safety, quality, accountability, and fair housing compliance.
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
Phased
4.1.6 Coordinate with city/regional partners to increase housing
opportunities countywide
Work collaboratively with city and regional partners to increase predictability, shared
responsibility, and geographic distribution of permanent housing for people exiting
homelessness (e.g., identifying priority sites, aligning zoning or permitting pathways,
committing local staff capacity to support projects, or streamlining local approval
processes for county-supported housing). Align countywide resource distribution
with efforts to reduce documented racial and other disparities in access and
outcomes.
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
Phased
4.1.7 Preserve existing PSH stock
Protect existing site-based housing from loss due to expiring subsidies, rising
operating costs, capital needs, or redevelopment pressures, recognizing
preservation as essential to maintaining system capacity and safeguarding prior
investments.
INVESTMENT
Sustain
SEQUENCING
Foundational
4.1.8 Continue to support community care licensed (board and care)
facilities for people with significant behavioral health needs
Maintain and enhance licensed board and care facilities through a combination of
the Housing Support Program (HSP) and Behavioral Health Bridge Housing (BHBH)
expansion, with emphasis on tailored care for individuals experiencing mental
illness and/or substance use disorders.
INVESTMENT
Sustain
SEQUENCING
High Impact
61HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
Objective 4.2: Accelerate Housing Exits Using Tenant-Based
and Flexible Assistance
While increasing housing supply is essential, many people can return to housing more quickly through
tenant-based and flexible financial assistance when those tools are available, well-coordinated, and used
in balance. This includes not only short-term subsidy models, but also dedicated affordable housing,
which provides a more stable and appropriate pathway for households who need deeper affordability but
may not require PSH. These strategies are critical to reducing unsheltered homelessness in the near term,
improving equity in housing outcomes, and making effective use of existing housing stock in a constrained
and competitive housing market.
This objective focuses on accelerating exits from homelessness through a portfolio of tenant-based and
flexible housing options—such as rapid rehousing, shallow or bridge subsidies, scattered-site supportive
housing, dedicated affordable housing, and flexible funding approaches, including the Flexible Housing
Subsidy Pool. Together, these tools allow the system to respond to different household circumstances,
provide varying levels and durations of assistance, resolve short-term affordability and placement barriers,
and prevent housing opportunities from being lost due to avoidable delays.
By prioritizing speed, flexibility, and clear coordination and communication across access, housing
navigation, landlords, and funders, this objective aims to reduce time spent homeless while supporting
placements that are sustainable, flexible, equitable, and aligned with local housing market conditions.
4.2.1 Deploy a balanced portfolio of tenant-based and flexible
housing options
Accelerate exits from homelessness by investing in a range of tenant-based and
flexible housing tools— including dedicated affordable housing, rapid rehousing,
shallow or bridge subsidies, scattered-site supportive housing, and flexible
funding—recognizing that different households require different levels and durations
of assistance and that a more diversified portfolio is necessary to improve both
system performance and equity in housing outcomes.
INVESTMENT
Expand
SEQUENCING
Foundational
4.2.2 Strengthen protocols for matching households to tenant-based
housing resources
Improve the effectiveness and speed of housing exits by developing and refining
existing protocols that guide how households are matched to tenant-based and
flexible housing resources based on client needs, barriers, and preferences.
Protocols should clarify typical use cases for different interventions, support
intentional exceptions, reduce default reliance on RRH, and incorporate safeguards
to identify and reduce disparities in matching decisions and outcomes.
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
Foundational
62HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
4.2.3 Refine RRH referral pathways and strengthen service supports to
improve housing outcomes
Update RRH referral protocols to prioritize households with employment, benefits,
or active workforce engagement; prioritize case management and workforce
development services; and support connections to employment and workforce
development service providers for RRH households. Monitor outcomes to ensure
equity and avoid unintended exclusion.
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
High Impact
4.2.4 Develop bridge housing pathways for high-acuity, time-
sensitive exits
Develop protocols for using RRH-like models as temporary stabilization tools for
high-acuity individuals when PSH is not immediately available. Define eligible
population, eligible circumstances (e.g., encampment resolution, program
closures), and clarify roles and timelines.
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
High Impact
4.2.5 Develop structured shared housing and roommate-based
exit options
Develop shared housing and roommate-based placements as viable exit pathways
by establishing clear matching processes, guidance on lease structures (including
when subsidies are involved), landlord engagement strategies, and access to light-
touch stabilization supports.
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
Phased
4.2.6 Resolve short-term affordability and placement barriers through
flexible resources
Use flexible funding to address move-in costs, arrears, unit readiness issues, or
temporary income gaps that would otherwise delay or prevent housing placements,
ensuring housing opportunities are not lost due to solvable, short-term barriers.
INVESTMENT
Expand
SEQUENCING
High Impact
4.2.7 Strengthen systemwide landlord engagement and coordination
Expand and retain the pool of landlords willing to participate in housing programs by
presenting a more coordinated and predictable system experience—through shared
outreach strategies, clear points of contact, aligned incentives and risk mitigation
tools, and coordination with housing authorities—reducing fragmentation and
competition across programs.
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
Phased
4.2.8 Coordinate deployment of tenant-based resources with shelter,
outreach, and housing navigation
Improve flow through unsheltered and shelter settings by coordinating the timing and
deployment of tenant-based and flexible housing resources with outreach, shelter,
and housing navigation functions. This includes shared visibility into resource
availability and clearer handoffs across system partners so housing opportunities
can be matched and utilized more quickly once people are eligible and referred.
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
High Impact
63HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
4.2.9 Establish and communicate clear operating protocols and
transparency across the housing placement process
Strengthen system performance by clarifying roles, expectations, and handoffs
across the housing placement process—from referral through move-in—and
reducing avoidable delays caused by fragmentation or ambiguity. This includes
developing shared protocols, incorporating expectations into contracts or operating
agreements, developing tools or dashboards that provide visibility into progress
across steps (e.g., documentation, housing navigation, application, inspection,
lease-up, and move-in), and ensuring providers understand what resources
are available.
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
Foundational
Objective 4.3: Strengthen Housing Stabilization and Tenancy Supports
Housing placements are most successful when services are appropriately matched to people’s needs
and can adjust over time. While some people exiting homelessness may require short-term transitional
support, others need ongoing, light-touch assistance to remain stable, and still others require much
deeper levels of support. These needs are not static over time, and effective housing systems must be able
to right-size and adapt supports without requiring people to move units or change programs in ways that
undermine housing stability.
This objective focuses on strengthening services that help people stay housed (i.e., tenancy-sustaining
supports), ensuring that services are flexible, responsive, and aligned with long-term housing stability.
It leverages feedback from people with lived experience of homelessness, who emphasize the value of
flexibility and culturally responsive supports. It highlights the ability to adjust service intensity over time—
within existing housing models—based on changes in health, aging, income, or other life circumstances.
Alameda County has leveraged Medicaid-funded supports to help sustain housing placements, but
feedback from providers and tenants indicates that these resources are not always sufficient on their
own. This objective also focuses on identifying gaps in existing service models and exploring how housing
stabilization supports can be supplemented—through coordination with behavioral health partners,
flexible funding, or other service approaches to help people stay housed.
By strengthening housing stabilization supports, this objective helps ensure that housing placements last,
reduces avoidable returns to homelessness, and supports better outcomes for people housed through
both site-based and tenant-based strategies.
Community Story: Dan, Oakland
For five years, Dan had been experiencing homelessness, living on the streets of Oakland, and
struggling with a multitude of health issues, including seizures, severe depression, anxiety, and
alcoholism. Alameda County's Street Health Team—comprised of a physician, psychiatrist,
registered nurse, social worker, and community health worker—reached out to Dan at his
encampment to help him connect with services to address his health and also find housing. Within
18 months of working together, Dan was able to not only find health care and move into permanent
housing, but reconnect with his family.
64HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
4.3.1 Ensure sufficient and flexible funding for housing
stabilization services
Supplement Medicaid and other funding sources to ensure service intensity
matches tenant needs, including identifying gaps between Medicaid-covered
services and actual stabilization needs, braiding funding to support non-billable but
essential activities, and protecting flexibility to increase or decrease service intensity
without forcing program exits.
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
High Impact
4.3.2 Establish clear case management and housing
stabilization standards
Promote consistency and quality across providers by outlining expectations for case
management services, including development of housing plans, person-centered
planning, cultural responsiveness, language access, and shared responsibility
between clients and providers, including managed care partners—incorporating
expectations into contracts, training, and monitoring efforts.
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
Foundational
4.3.3 Strengthen supervision, training, and oversight of housing
stabilization staff
Develop strategies to ensure services are delivered effectively, ethically, and
sustainably—employing tools like clinical supervision of complex cases, workforce
training to increase use of evidence-based practices, and shadowing/coaching
approaches.
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
Phased
4.3.4 Enhance engagement and trust through peer-based and culturally
responsive service models
Enhance engagement and housing stability outcomes by expanding the use
of peer-based and culturally responsive service models within stabilization
supports, recognizing the value of shared experience in building trust, improving
communication, and sustaining long-term tenancy.
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
Phased
4.3.5 Improve long-term housing stability through access to a range of
supportive services
Strengthen housing outcomes by ensuring programs can draw on the range of
expertise needed to support tenancy—such as workforce (see Strategy 1.3.5) and
financial capability supports, behavioral health and aging-related services, benefits
navigation, and language access—recognizing that different housing interventions
and populations require different emphases and that no single role is expected to
provide all supports.
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
High Impact
65HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
Pillar 5: Health Care
For people experiencing homelessness, Alameda County’s “health care system” is not one system, but
an array of public and private health care providers, hospitals, clinics, behavioral health systems, public
health departments, managed care plans, and community-based organizations. These providers share a
commitment to serving people with Medi-Cal, Medicare, and those who are uninsured, but they operate
across separate systems that are often over capacity and difficult to navigate.
For people who are unhoused, even basic health care needs can become difficult to meet. Finding a regular
provider, replacing medications that were lost or stolen, following up after an emergency department visit,
getting dental care, accessing behavioral health treatment, or arranging transportation to an appointment
can require persistence and coordination that is nearly impossible while living outside, in a vehicle, in
shelter, or moving between temporary settings. As a result, many people delay care, rely on emergency
departments, or forgo care altogether until health needs become more serious.
Health care does not replace the need for housing. Alameda County’s homelessness crisis is
fundamentally driven by a shortage of affordable housing and the instability that results when people
with the fewest resources are forced to navigate a high-cost housing market. But homelessness also
creates and worsens health conditions, and untreated health needs can make it harder for people to stay
connected to services, obtain housing, and remain stably housed once they do.
Alameda County Health Care for the Homeless (ACHCH), a program within H&H, plays a central role in
addressing this gap. ACHCH provides care directly and through partnerships with trusted providers across
the county, including street medicine teams, mobile clinics, shelter-based nurses, community health
centers, Alameda Health System, public health partners, and behavioral health providers. These services
are designed to reach people both inside and outside traditional clinic settings and to connect health care
more directly to the realities of homelessness.
This pillar focuses on strengthening the connection between health care and the homelessness response
system so that health-related needs do not become barriers to safety, shelter, housing, or long-term
stability. It emphasizes:
• Low-barrier, integrated health care that reaches people where they are;
• Behavioral health, substance use, overdose prevention, and recovery supports in street and
shelter settings;
• Shelter and housing supports for people who are aging, medically frail, or need daily living
assistance; and
• Stronger coordination, transitions of care, and emergency response between hospitals, emergency
departments, public health, shelters, outreach, and housing providers.
Together, these strategies are intended to reduce the health harms of homelessness, improve access
to care, prevent avoidable crises and deaths, strengthen housing stability, and ensure that health care
systems and homelessness response systems work together toward the shared goal of helping people
move from crisis to stable housing as quickly, safely, and sustainably as possible.
66HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
What We Know
• Homelessness is associated with sharply elevated risk of premature death. In 2024,
people experiencing homelessness in Alameda County had an age-adjusted mortality rate five
times higher than the general population. These disparities underscore the need for health
care, behavioral health, and housing strategies that reduce preventable harm while people are
experiencing homelessness.
• Health outcomes and mortality reflect broader racial inequities. From 2018 to 2024,
African American/Black unhoused residents accounted for 41 percent of deaths among
people experiencing homelessness, compared with 9 percent of Alameda County’s general
population. This disparity underscores the need for health care, behavioral health, and housing
strategies that are designed to reduce preventable harm and improve outcomes for the people
and communities most affected.
• Older adults and medically frail people require shelter and housing models that can
support daily living needs. People age 55 and older comprise 30 percent of Alameda County’s
homeless population. Many older adults experiencing homelessness face mobility limitations,
cognitive decline or dementia, fixed incomes, and a need for ongoing care or help with daily
living. Standard shelter and housing models are often not designed to meet these needs.
• Homelessness makes substance use far more dangerous and deadly. Substance use
occurs across all communities and income levels, but people experiencing homelessness
face much higher overdose risk because they lack stable housing, consistent access to care,
medication continuity, and safe ways to seek help without fear of stigma or punishment. In
2024, people experiencing homelessness in Alameda County had a drug overdose death rate
54 times higher than the general population.
Objective 5.1: Expand Low-Barrier, Integrated Health Care for People Experiencing Homelessness
For people experiencing homelessness, accessing health care often requires navigating multiple
disconnected systems while managing the instability and trauma of not having a safe place to live. Routine
needs such as seeing a primary care provider, filling a prescription, receiving dental care, or following up on
a serious health condition can become difficult or impossible when people are living outside, in vehicles,
in shelters, or moving between temporary settings. When health care is not accessible and continuous,
people may delay care, rely on emergency departments, or experience worsening health conditions that
make homelessness harder to resolve.
This objective focuses on bringing health care to people where they are and strengthening low-barrier
pathways into ongoing care. It emphasizes street medicine, shelter-based health care, mobile services,
homeless-specific clinics, pharmacy access, dental care, specialty care connections, and protocols for
conditions that require ongoing monitoring and follow-up. Together, these strategies are intended to reduce
preventable harm, build trust, and ensure that health care supports—rather than interrupts—progress
toward housing stability.
67HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
5.1.1 Strengthen street medicine and mobile health services
Bring health care directly to people living in encampments, vehicles/RVs, shelters,
and other community settings through consistent street medicine routes, mobile
clinics, and trusted provider partnerships.
INVESTMENT
Sustain
SEQUENCING
High Impact
5.1.2 Expand homeless-specific clinics and low-barrier health
access points
Increase the availability of integrated primary care designed for people experiencing
homelessness, particularly in areas of the county without dedicated homeless-
specific health clinic capacity. Ensure services are low-barrier, culturally responsive,
trauma-informed, and integrated with robust behavioral health services.
INVESTMENT
Expand
SEQUENCING
High Impact
5.1.3 Improve access to medications and pharmacy services
Reduce barriers to prescription fulfillment, medication continuity, vaccines, testing,
and basic treatment supplies through mobile pharmacy services and coordination
with pharmacies, shelters, and street medicine teams.
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
High Impact
5.1.4 Strengthen ongoing care for serious health conditions
Strengthen protocols for ongoing care, medication continuity, monitoring, follow-
up, and care coordination for conditions that require ongoing management, such
as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, seizure disorders, cancer care, and other
conditions that increase risk of emergency room visits, hospitalization, or premature
death when left untreated.
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
Phased
5.1.5 Expand mobile dental services in shelter and community settings
Increase access to dental care for people experiencing homelessness by bringing
mobile dental services to shelters and community locations, in coordination with
Alameda Health System and other health care partners.
INVESTMENT
Expand
SEQUENCING
Phased
Objective 5.2: Strengthen Behavioral Health and Substance
Use Supports in Street and Shelter Settings
Homelessness is primarily driven by the mismatch between housing costs and the resources available to
people with extremely low incomes. Mental health conditions and substance use disorders can contribute
to housing instability for some people, but they do not explain homelessness on their own. They can also
emerge or worsen after someone becomes homeless, as people cope with trauma, exposure, isolation,
untreated pain, and the daily stress of survival without stable housing.
For people living outside or in shelter, access to behavioral health care and substance use treatment is
often limited by fragmented systems, stigma, transportation barriers, program rules, and services that are
68HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
not designed around the realities of homelessness. Without timely care and support, conditions can spiral,
making homelessness more dangerous, more isolating, and harder to exit. These barriers are especially
harmful for people and communities who have experienced disproportionate rates of homelessness,
overdose, premature mortality, and mistrust of public systems.
This objective focuses on expanding access to behavioral health, substance use, overdose prevention, and
recovery supports in the places where people experiencing homelessness already are. It emphasizes low-
barrier psychiatry and mental health services, medication supports, shelter-based substance use services,
Medication Assisted Treatment, overdose prevention, post-overdose response, and culturally responsive
approaches that affirm dignity, autonomy, and choice. These strategies are intended to reduce preventable
deaths, support recovery, and improve the ability of people with behavioral health and substance use
needs to stabilize and move toward housing.
5.2.1 Increase access to psychiatry and mental health care for people
on the street and in shelters
Increase access to psychiatric consultation, behavioral health assessment,
medication access, and treatment for people on the streets and in shelters.
Strengthen capacity to deliver mental health services in low-barrier settings,
including timely diagnosis, medication support such as long-acting injectable
medications when clinically appropriate, and health documentation that supports
access to appropriate benefits, services, and housing pathways.
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
High Impact
5.2.2 Expand low-barrier substance use treatment and recovery
supports in street and shelter settings
Increase capacity to provide or connect people to substance use disorder services,
including Medication Assisted Treatment for opioid and alcohol use disorders,
group-based interventions, and other recovery supports.
INVESTMENT
Expand
SEQUENCING
High Impact
5.2.3 Strengthen overdose prevention and response
Ensure shelters, outreach teams, and community sites have access to naloxone,
overdose-response training, health and safety supplies, and clear protocols
to prevent avoidable deaths. Promote post-overdose engagement and timely
connections to health care and other needed supports.
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
Foundational
5.2.4 Align behavioral health and homelessness resources
Strengthen coordination with Alameda County Behavioral Health, CARE Act
implementation, Behavioral Health Bridge Housing, and related programs so people
with behavioral health needs are connected to appropriate care, services, and
housing pathways.
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
High Impact
69HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
Objective 5.3: Expand shelter and housing supports for
people who are aging and medically frail
Alameda County’s homelessness response system is serving a growing number of people whose needs
cannot be met through standard shelter, housing navigation, or case management alone. Older adults,
people who are medically frail, people with cognitive decline or dementia, and people who need help with
activities of daily living (ADLs) may be unable to safely use shelter or remain housed without additional
supports. These needs are distinct from having a mental health condition or substance use disorder alone.
They are about functional limitations, health-related vulnerability, and the level of hands-on assistance
needed to remain safe and stable.
This objective focuses on adapting shelter and housing models so they can better serve people with aging-
related, medical, mobility, cognitive, and daily living support needs. It emphasizes hands-on supports,
accessible housing design, clearer pathways to higher-support housing models, and stronger coordination
with aging, disability, health care, and in-home support services. These strategies are intended to help
people remain in the least restrictive appropriate setting, reduce unnecessary institutionalization, and
prevent people from returning to homelessness because their care needs exceeded what the system was
designed to support.
5.3.1 Expand nursing, personal care, and assistance with activities of
daily living in shelter and PSH
Increase the ability of shelters and PSH sites to support people who need assistance
with activities of daily living, personal care, medication management, or health
monitoring to remain safely sheltered or housed.
INVESTMENT
Expand
SEQUENCING
High Impact
5.3.2 Expand medically supportive shelter models
Expand shelter models designed for people with high medical, mobility, aging-
related, behavioral health, or functional support needs who cannot be safely or
effectively served in standard shelter settings. Ensure medically supportive shelter
models include appropriate accessibility, health care coordination, and connections
to in-home, caregiving, care management, benefits, and other supports needed to
help people stabilize and move into permanent housing. [Also appears as Strategy
3.1.4 in Pillar 3: Shelter.]
INVESTMENT
Expand
SEQUENCING
High Impact
5.3.3 Expand Medically Frail PSH inventory
Increase the supply of site-based PSH designed to serve older adults and other
medically vulnerable residents with a combination of complex health conditions,
functional support needs, and/or mobility limitations. Prioritize accessible unit
design, enhanced on-site service coordination, connections to health care,
behavioral health care, in-home support, care management, and aging and disability
services, with operating models that allow people to remain stably housed as their
health and support needs change over time. [Also appears as Strategy 4.1.2 in
Pillar 4: Housing.]
INVESTMENT
Expand
SEQUENCING
High Impact
70HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
5.3.4 Develop clearer criteria and pathways for higher-support housing
and service models
Strengthen assessment and referral practices so enhanced service models,
including Medically Frail PSH or other high-intensity supportive housing resources,
are targeted to people whose functional limitations, medical frailty, or aging-related
needs require a higher level of care.
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
Foundational
Objective 5.4: Improve health care coordination,
transitions of care, and emergency response for people
experiencing homelessness
People experiencing homelessness often move between systems that are not designed to communicate
well with one another: hospitals, emergency departments, street medicine teams, shelters, behavioral
health providers, jails, housing programs, and public health systems. When these transitions are not
coordinated, people may be discharged without medications, follow-up care, benefits, transportation,
or a safe place to recover. This fragmentation can lead to repeated crisis-system use, preventable health
deterioration, and missed opportunities to connect people to shelter, housing, and ongoing care.
This objective focuses on strengthening the connections between health care, emergency response,
outreach, shelter, and housing systems. It emphasizes clearer communication pathways, warm handoffs,
regional coordination, support for frequent users of emergency medical services and emergency
departments, infectious disease response, encampment-related health coordination, extreme weather
planning, and mortality review. Together, these strategies are intended to reduce preventable harm,
improve continuity of care, and ensure that health-related crises become points of connection rather than
points where people fall further through the cracks.
Community Story: Kelly, Oakland
Kelly, an elder woman, was having difficulty since the COVID-19 pandemic with securing health
care. She made many phone calls to different numbers of Medicare providers but kept on running
into dead ends. Out of options, she made contact with the social worker at her shelter, and with their
support, Kelly was finally able to get connected with a primary care provider and doctor after having
gone years without seeing one. She is now permanently housed.
5.4.1 Strengthen coordination between hospitals, emergency
departments, shelters, street medicine, EMS, and housing providers
Develop clearer communication pathways, points of contact, regional coordination
practices, and shared data expectations—including consistent collection of housing
status and key demographic data needed for care coordination, equity analysis,
and reporting—to reduce preventable discharges to homelessness, avoidable
readmissions, repeated crisis-system use, and gaps in follow-up care.
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
Phased
71HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
5.4.2 Improve transitions of care for people leaving hospitals,
emergency departments, and other institutional settings
Support warm handoffs after discharge so people are connected to the care and
supported needed to recover safely—including to medical respite programs, street
medicine, dedicated primary care clinics for people experiencing homelessness,
behavioral health services, coverage and benefits assistance, and other follow-up care.
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
High Impact
5.4.3 Support expansion of medical respite capacity for people
experiencing homelessness
Support sustaining and regional expansion of medical respite programming for
people who are recovering from acute health conditions or otherwise unable to
recover safely in standard shelter or unsheltered settings. Convene respite providers
to support sustainability and access to ongoing clinical care for patients.
INVESTMENT
Expand
SEQUENCING
Phased
5.4.4 Ensure continuity of health coverage and health-related benefits
for people experiencing homelessness
Strengthen training, technical assistance, and coordination so health care and
homelessness providers can help people enroll in, renew, and retain Medi-Cal and
CalAIM services, and connect people to HealthPAC or other coverage options when
they are not eligible for Medi-Cal.
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
Foundational
5.4.5 Coordinate infectious disease prevention, testing, treatment, and
follow-up in shelters, encampments, and community settings
Coordinate public health, street medicine, shelter, pharmacy, and community
partners to expand access to testing, treatment, vaccines, self-testing supplies,
medication access, and follow-up care for communicable diseases such as
hepatitis C, HIV, syphilis, and other infectious disease concerns.
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
High Impact
5.4.6 Strengthen health response protocols for encampment closures,
extreme weather, and other emergency events
Create protocols for activating street health, public health, shelter, outreach, and
emergency response partners during planned encampment closures, extreme
weather events, and other health-impacting emergencies, including advance notice,
shelter connections, transportation assistance, health screening, medication
continuity or replacement, and post-event follow-up.
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
Foundational
5.4.7 Continue to track premature deaths among people experiencing
homelessness to guide policies and programming
Use mortality data, overdose trends, demographic disparities, and service-
use patterns to understand where preventable deaths are occurring and to
guide strategies that reduce risk, improve care coordination, and strengthen
accountability.
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
Foundational
72HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
System Foundations
The success of Home Together 2030 depends not only on the strategies outlined in the preceding pillars,
but on the system’s ability to implement them quickly, consistently, and at scale. Homelessness is an
emergency for the people experiencing it, and prolonged delays—whether caused by staffing shortages,
contracting timelines, or administrative complexity—carry real human costs. Even well-designed policies
and funded strategies will fall short if the system cannot act with urgency.
The System Foundations component focuses on strengthening the operational backbone of the
homelessness response system across county departments, cities, the CoC, and service providers. It
addresses persistent capacity constraints that slow implementation, weaken performance, and burn out
vital members of the response system, including workforce retention challenges, inefficient hiring and
procurement processes, fragmented data systems, and misaligned contracting and oversight practices.
These challenges can leave resources underutilized while homelessness persists, underscoring the need
not only for stronger internal systems, but also for provider capacity-building and meaningful engagement
of people with lived experience in shaping system improvement.
The objectives in System Foundations are intentionally practical and action-oriented. They focus on
reducing unnecessary friction in how the system operates, while maintaining strong stewardship of public
funds. By strengthening system infrastructure, workforce capacity, contracting practices, and performance
management, these strategies support faster deployment of resources, more reliable service delivery, and
continuous improvement over time. They help ensure that Home Together 2030 is not only well-designed,
but capable of sustained, effective implementation.
What We Know
• High caseloads and staffing shortages are limiting the system’s ability to move
households efficiently from assessment to housing. Housing Resource Center staff
reported caseloads of 200–300 households per worker, levels that made it difficult to provide
consistent follow-up, build trust, and support households through assessment, navigation, and
connection to housing.
• Smaller, Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC)-led and other community-based
organizations may face administrative and structural barriers to competing for county
resources, despite playing a critical role in reaching populations and neighborhoods that
are less connected to the larger system. Stakeholder input pointed to the need for capacity-
building support, technical assistance with county procurement and contracting processes,
and strategies that help qualified community-based providers compete for funding and sustain
their workforce.
• Accountability and oversight remain inconsistent across the homelessness response
system. Community feedback emphasized that standards for shelter and homeless services
are not enforced consistently across providers and jurisdictions, and highlighted the need for
stronger oversight within the system to ensure public funds are used as intended and basic
standards are met.
73HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
Objective 6.1: Stabilize and Strengthen the Homeless
Services Workforce
The homelessness response system depends on a skilled and stable workforce across public agencies
and service providers. Persistent challenges—including low compensation, high caseloads, inconsistent
training, burnout, and limited career pathways—have resulted in chronic vacancies and turnover that slow
implementation, disrupt services, and weaken outcomes. National research on the supportive housing
workforce underscores that compensation is directly tied to service quality and system capacity.4
This objective focuses on strengthening the workforce capacity required to deliver Home Together 2030
effectively. Workforce constraints affect not only providers delivering services, but also county and
city departments responsible for contracting, program oversight, and system coordination. Addressing
these challenges is essential to improving service quality and ensuring that funded strategies can be
implemented as intended.
This objective emphasizes practical, systemwide steps to improve recruitment, retention, and
effectiveness. These include streamlining public-sector hiring, addressing compensation and workload
pressures, expanding training and professional development, clarifying career pathways, and ensuring that
people with lived experience are meaningfully and appropriately integrated into the workforce. Together,
these efforts support more consistent service delivery and stronger system performance over time.
4 Corporation for Supportive Housing and Astron Solutions, Mission-Driven, Market Challenged: A Compensation Review of the Supportive Housing Industry, 2026.
6.1.1 Establish standardized roles and core competencies
Define shared role definitions and core competencies for key frontline positions
across the homelessness response system, aligning qualifications, credentials, and
experience requirements with actual service delivery expectations. Ensure contracts
and funding requirements reflect realistic and appropriate standards that support
quality service without creating unnecessary hiring barriers.
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
Foundational
6.1.2 Align compensation and career pathways to support
workforce stability
Strengthen workforce retention and equity among providers by aligning funding,
procurement, and contracting practices to support sustainable compensation
structures. This includes establishing baseline pay expectations (rather than
maximum caps), standardizing adequate administrative rates, and encouraging
career ladders that create advancement pathways.
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
High Impact
74HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
6.1.3 Strengthen the provider workforce
Provide capacity-building funding, contracting and procurement support,
and technical assistance to help BIPOC-led and other community-based
organizations compete for and effectively implement county-funded programs.
Support infrastructure development, fiscal readiness, and compliance capacity,
alongside staff retention, professional development, and broad outreach regarding
workforce opportunities to build long-term sustainability and leadership within the
homelessness response system.
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
Phased
6.1.4 Modernize and align workforce training with system needs
Collaborate with providers to develop a systemwide training framework that
prioritizes quality, relevance, and cultural responsiveness over perfunctory,
compliance-driven training. Align required training with role-specific needs;
strengthen competencies in cultural responsiveness, language access, disparity
awareness, and effective service delivery across diverse populations; improve
onboarding and supervision; and create tiered development pathways that support
career growth.
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
Phased
6.1.5 Reduce barriers to hiring and advancing staff with lived experience
Reduce system-level barriers that limit recruitment, hiring, retention, and
advancement of staff with lived experience by aligning qualification requirements,
funding and contracting expectations, job classifications, and supervisory supports
to create sustainable peer and near-peer career pathways across the system.
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
Foundational
6.1.6 Develop and strengthen services to support employment for
people with lived experience in homelessness response workforce
Develop training, mentorship, coaching, and ongoing support for people with
lived experience who are entering or advancing in homelessness response roles,
including outreach, navigation, housing services/case management, and leadership
pathways. This includes preparing organizations to support staff with lived
experience effectively and ensuring that career pathways are meaningful, supported,
and sustainable.
INVESTMENT
Expand
SEQUENCING
Phased
6.1.7 Streamline hiring processes for public sector positions
Reduce delays in county and city hiring for critical system functions by streamlining
approvals, timelines, and position authorities.
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
Foundational
75HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
Objective 6.2: Improve Data, Performance Management,
and Learning
Data and performance systems shape how the homelessness response system operates day to day. When
data are unreliable, duplicative, or disconnected from decision-making, they create administrative burden
without improving outcomes. Providers and public agencies enter significant information into HMIS and
related systems, yet often lack timely, actionable insight to guide services or system adjustments. Further,
reliable and accurate data systems are necessary to enable the level of transparency and information
sharing required for demonstrating progress toward Home Together 2030 goals.
This objective focuses on strengthening data quality, usability, and performance management across the
system. It emphasizes modernizing HMIS functionality, improving consistency and completeness of data
entry, and reducing unnecessary reporting burden so information is both reliable and practical.
It also establishes a structured performance review framework aligned with Home Together 2030 goals—
clarifying what data are reviewed, at what cadence, and by whom—to support active system management
rather than static annual reporting. By improving how data are collected, shared, and used, this objective
strengthens accountability, advances equity, and enables more responsive, informed decision-making.
6.2.1 Establish a systemwide performance framework and active
review process
Establish a performance measurement framework aligned with Home Together 2030
goals that clearly defines what data are reviewed, at what cadence, and by whom—
supporting a shift from annual reporting to ongoing, active system management.
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
Foundational
6.2.2 Strengthen disparity analysis and accountability
Integrate disparity review into routine system performance management,
building on the racial equity analysis conducted during the Home Together 2030
Plan development. Regularly assess differences in access, prioritization, exits,
and outcomes across race, ethnicity, gender, age, and geography, and other
relevant factors. Use findings to reduce systemic barriers, strengthen strategies
for populations experiencing poorer outcomes, and improve results across the
homelessness response system.
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
High Impact
6.2.3 Improve data quality and address critical data gaps
Enhance consistency and completeness of HMIS data entry across the system
through ongoing review of data quality and provider technical assistance, with
a particular emphasis on strengthening data collection to improve visibility into
system blind spots (e.g., understanding more about people who exit the system to
unknown destinations).
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
Phased
6.2.4 Modernize and improve HMIS usability and integration
Invest in HMIS technical assistance and improvements to HMIS functionality,
usability, and interoperability to reduce duplicative data entry, improve provider
access to actionable data, and strengthen connections with other systems where
appropriate, supporting more efficient service delivery and better system insight.
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
High Impact
76HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
Objective 6.3: Streamline Procurement, Contracting, and
Business Practices
Effective implementation depends not only on how much funding is available, but on how resources
are structured, contracted, and managed. Slow procurement processes, inconsistent contract terms,
misaligned performance measures, and insufficient administrative support can delay services,
strain providers, and undermine system goals. These challenges are compounded when cities and
the county issue separate contracts for similar services—creating fragmentation, inefficiency, and
administrative burden.
This objective focuses on strengthening procurement and contracting practices across the homelessness
response system, with particular attention to city-county coordination. It emphasizes aligning core
contract terms and performance expectations with Home Together 2030 goals, adopting sustainable
administrative and payment structures, reducing duplicative reporting, and promoting greater
predictability through coordinated RFPs and longer contract terms. The goal is not just efficiency, but a
more coordinated, transparent, and responsive system that puts public resources to work faster and with
greater impact.
6.3.1 Simplify and align contracting processes across funders
Align core contract terms, performance expectations, timelines, and monitoring
requirements across county and city funders to reduce administrative burden,
improve predictability, and support provider stability.
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
Foundational
6.3.2 Promote joint or coordinated RFPs
Reduce fragmentation by promoting joint or coordinated procurement processes
across jurisdictions, allowing providers to respond to shared funding opportunities
through a streamlined, consolidated process.
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
Phased
6.3.3 Streamline reporting and invoicing requirements
Reduce duplicative reporting by aligning templates, timelines, and documentation
requirements across jurisdictions and ensuring reporting expectations are
proportional to funding size and risk.
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
Phased
6.3.4 Extend contract terms to promote greater program stability
Promote multi-year contract terms and reduce unnecessary re-bidding where
performance is strong, supporting provider planning, workforce stability, and
continuity of services.
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
High Impact
77HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
6.3.5 Adopt sustainable administrative rates
Ensure administrative rates reflect the full cost of delivering contracted services,
including supervision, compliance, data management, payment processing, partner
coordination, and other core infrastructure required to implement both service and
housing assistance activities effectively.
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
Foundational
6.3.6 Align contract performance expectations with plan goals
Ensure that performance measures in contracts reflect the system-level goals of
Home Together 2030 and are limited to actionable, meaningful indicators.
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
Foundational
Objective 6.4: Advocate for a Supportive Policy Environment
The effectiveness of many of the strategies in this plan can be enhanced or diminished depending on
changes to local, state, and federal policy. While much of the policy environment is out of the county’s
direct control, the county can track, coordinate, and—when appropriate—advocate for changes to policy.
Policies that reduce economic burden on low-income households, increase the supply of deeply affordable
housing, strengthen tenant protections, reduce barriers to housing, and increase funding for homeless
services all further advance the strategies in this plan. Monitoring relevant policy and funding initiatives,
coordinating with system partners, and organizing aligned responses when warranted can help promote
the success of this plan.
6.4.1 Identify and participate in appropriate advocacy coalitions
County staff should participate in policy advocacy coalitions to enhance
understanding of the policy environment, collaborate with partners, and identify
opportunities to advocate for policies that will advance the strategies in this plan.
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
High Impact
6.4.2 Track relevant policy changes and funding initiatives
Systematically track and monitor local, state, and federal policy changes and
funding initiatives that may impact the viability of this strategic plan in order to
anticipate and proactively respond to significant changes in policy.
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
High Impact
6.4.3 Engage system partners to share information and align
as warranted
Coordinate with system partners (e.g., cities, providers, and advocacy networks)
to share information about proposed policy changes, legislation, and funding
opportunities and align on advocacy response as appropriate.
INVESTMENT
Enhance
SEQUENCING
High Impact
78HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
Section 5. Conclusion: From Strategy to Stewardship
79HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
Home Together 2030 is intended to do more than describe a vision or set of priorities.
It is a framework for action—designed to guide decisions, align partners, and support
accountability over time. Adoption of the plan is therefore not the end of the work,
but the beginning of a new phase focused on implementation, stewardship, and
measurable progress.
This final section explains how the plan should be used after adoption: how strategy will be translated into
action, how progress will be monitored and communicated, and how county leaders and partners can
sustain focus as conditions evolve. Its purpose is to ensure that Home Together 2030 functions not only
as a statement of direction, but as a lasting framework for guiding coordinated action and responsible
stewardship in the years ahead.
5.1 From Adoption to Action
Adoption of Home Together 2030 marks the close of the planning process and the beginning of
implementation. Its value will depend on whether it is used to shape funding and policy decisions, guide
implementation across systems and jurisdictions, maintain alignment among partners, and support
accountability for results over time.
As conditions change and political pressures shift, systems can easily become reactive: funding may be
redirected toward short-term solutions, implementation can fragment across jurisdictions or departments,
and priorities can drift. Home Together 2030 is intended to provide an enduring point of reference in that
environment. It establishes a shared direction for county leaders, jurisdictions, providers, CoC partners,
and the public, helping ensure that day-to-day decisions remain connected to the broader goals of
reducing homelessness, improving system performance, and addressing disparities.
For that reason, adoption should be understood not simply as plan approval, but as the point at which
strategy must begin to shape action. The next phase of work is not only to pursue individual initiatives,
but to translate the plan into coordinated implementation, active stewardship, and measurable progress
over time.
Guiding Decisions, Investments, and Alignment
Home Together 2030 is intended to guide how Alameda County and its partners make decisions about
policy, funding, implementation, and coordination over the next five years. Its function is not merely
descriptive. It should serve as the shared framework against which major investment decisions,
sequencing choices, and course corrections are assessed.
This includes decisions about how to use local resources, including the Home Together Fund, alongside
state, federal, philanthropic, and other flexible funding sources. The plan should help decision-makers
assess not only whether a proposed investment is valuable on its own, but whether it strengthens overall
system performance, supports balance across the plan pillars, and advances the long-term goals of the
county’s homelessness response system.
The plan should also support alignment across county departments, cities, providers, the CoC Leadership
Board and committees, and other partners by creating a common frame for understanding priorities, roles,
and desired outcomes. Different actors will contribute in different ways, but the plan is intended to help
ensure those contributions reinforce one another rather than operate at cross purposes.
80HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
Just as importantly, Home Together 2030 should provide a basis for accountability. It establishes a
reference point against which progress, tradeoffs, and implementation choices can be evaluated over
time. When conditions change or new information suggests the need to adjust course, those shifts should
be considered deliberately, informed by relevant stakeholders, and reflected transparently through the
county’s implementation and reporting processes. In that way, the plan helps ensure that adaptation
occurs through stewardship and public accountability—not through fragmentation or drift.
Documents That Support Implementation
Home Together 2030 is intended to function as a strategic plan, not a comprehensive implementation
manual. Its role is to establish shared direction, clarify priorities, and define the outcomes the county and
its partners are working to achieve. Keeping the main plan at that level is intentional. It allows the plan to
remain focused, accessible, and useful as a common point of reference across audiences, while avoiding
operational detail that will need to evolve over time.
More detailed guidance for implementation will be provided through a set of supporting documents that
translate the plan into operational frameworks, tools, and reference materials. These documents include:
• System Modeling Summary Report, with additional information on data sources, assumptions,
methodology, and outputs;
• Racial Equity Analysis Summary Report, documenting the analytic approach and key findings;
• Jurisdictional Roles and Collaboration Framework, addressing county and city roles,
collaboration protocols, and related implementation responsibilities;
• Performance Management Framework, detailing measures, data sources, review processes, and
how performance information will be used; and
• Communications Plan, to support clear and consistent communication about implementation
and progress.
These supporting documents will provide more specificity on how implementation will be structured and
carried forward, but they will not—and should not—attempt to predetermine every operational decision
in advance. Some aspects of implementation will need to be shaped over time through continued partner
engagement, review of performance and equity data, and ongoing learning about what is working and
where adjustments are needed. This is especially important where effective implementation depends on
tailoring program models, service approaches, physical environments, and measures of progress to the
needs of different populations and communities.
This structure is intended to balance clarity with flexibility. The plan provides the overall direction and
accountability framework; supporting documents provide greater specificity about implementation;
and ongoing stewardship will require continued collaboration, feedback, and refinement as conditions
change and implementation proceeds. In that sense, the supporting documents are not a substitute for
implementation judgment or stakeholder engagement, but a bridge between the plan’s strategic direction
and the ongoing work of carrying it out.
81HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
5.2 Implementation Roles and Governance
Reducing homelessness at the scale envisioned in Home Together 2030 will require sustained leadership,
coordination, and follow-through across many actors. Implementation is therefore shared, but it is not
ownerless. Progress will depend on the county, cities, providers, CoC leadership bodies, and other
partners carrying out distinct but reinforcing roles over time. Stewardship, in this context, is not only
an administrative function. It also includes the leadership, coordination, and ongoing review required
to maintain focus, navigate tradeoffs, identify course corrections, and sustain alignment around long-
term goals.
Shared Stewardship and Accountability
H&H will play a central stewardship role in helping carry the plan forward. This reflects not only H&H’s
policy, administrative, and system oversight responsibilities within county government, but also its
planning role on behalf of the CoC. Together, those functions position H&H to help align implementation
across systems and partners, support continuity between planning and execution, monitor progress, and
maintain accountability over time.
At the same time, H&H alone cannot deliver the outcomes envisioned in this plan. Success will depend on
multiple public agencies, jurisdictions, service providers, the CoC Leadership Board, and elected officials
making decisions and taking actions that align with the plan’s broader direction.
To support shared stewardship over time, H&H will maintain an ongoing Home Together 2030 advisory
and oversight structure, building from the Task Force that helped guide development of the plan. This
structure may evolve as implementation needs change, but it will provide a continuing forum for reviewing
progress, interpreting results, elevating implementation barriers, and advising on course corrections.
It will also help ensure that implementation remains connected to the plan’s goals, commitments, and
community priorities.
City and County Roles and Coordination
The county and cities together play an important role, not just through each jurisdiction acting
independently, but as a coordinated network of funders that can align resources, policy, and services
to address challenges of the homelessness response system that no single jurisdiction can solve
alone. However, successful plan implementation depends on continuing to shape and maintain clear
responsibilities across jurisdictions, and intentional coordination through both formal and informal
structures. Within this shared framework, the City of Oakland plays a uniquely significant role given its size,
concentration of need, and impact to countywide system outcomes.
Within the homelessness response system, the county is primarily responsible for overseeing access,
services, and countywide programs. For example, the county funds and coordinates street health teams
covering geographic regions across the county. It also oversees access to the homelessness response
system and its available resources through contracted housing resource centers, outreach, and 2-1-1
information and referral. Cities primarily lead efforts to build local infrastructure, including identifying
sites for shelter and permanent housing, supporting specific zoning goals and facilitating land use
decisions, and keeping streets clean and habitable for all residents. There are exceptions to these roles,
however—often the result of funding opportunities, local priorities and needs, and existing capacity and
82HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
infrastructure. For example, cities often fund case management services for targeted programs; the county
frequently invests in city-level capital projects.
There are also several joint roles held between the county and cities that are critical to maintain to
ensure alignment across partners. These areas of shared responsibility help deepen collaboration and
coordination of care across jurisdictions. For example, the prevention pillar includes activities such as
administering shallow subsidies and emergency rental assistance that occur at both city and county
levels, with multiple entities providing funding and oversight of prevention resources to residents in
their jurisdiction. Coordination efforts held by the county ensure that efforts are aligned with a shared
prevention framework. In addition, city jurisdictions provide other prevention resources including tenant
protections through local rent ordinances and housing counseling and eviction prevention programs while
the county offers housing stability services to formerly homeless individuals now housed. These efforts
offer a collection of prevention strategies that are greater than what any one jurisdiction can provide
operating alone.
The county and cities share other joint roles across the system detailed in the Jurisdictional Roles and
Collaboration Framework, including operations, services, and referral coordination for interim housing;
encampment resolution planning; and joint participation in the CoC. Streamlining how jurisdictions work
together to fulfill their individual and shared roles is part of the implementation work ahead. Consolidating
efforts, strengthening existing coordination, and identifying opportunities to integrate funding into single
contracts must all be addressed for implementation to succeed.
As plan implementation evolves, strong coordination structures and protocols for working together
become even more essential—keeping jurisdictions focused on shared priorities while remaining flexible
to adapt to changing conditions and engage in joint problem solving. Existing structures provide a
strong foundation for approaching this work. Jurisdictions meet collectively at least monthly to discuss
systemwide issues affecting homelessness response, and workgroups are used to develop more specific
recommendations to cross-cutting issues. Coordination protocols will continue to be developed to support
implementation of plan pillars using regional frameworks and convenings where appropriate.
The CoC Leadership Board and Committees
The CoC Leadership Board and its committee structure will also play an important role in implementation
by providing established forums for ongoing communication, feedback, and problem-solving. While the
CoC’s formal decision-making authority is defined by HUD requirements, the CoC remains an important
venue for engaging providers, people with lived experience, and other system partners as implementation
proceeds. In particular, CoC committees can help surface operational issues, identify emerging trends,
and provide informed input on how strategies are being carried out in practice.
Population-Specific Advisory Bodies
H&H will engage existing advisory, coordinating, and program implementation groups with direct
knowledge of key populations, including families with children, youth and young adults, older adults,
survivors of gender-based violence, people exiting incarceration, veterans, and other populations
experiencing disparities in homelessness or housing outcomes. These groups can help inform
implementation planning, program design, and course corrections by bringing population-specific
expertise and direct knowledge of how systemwide strategies are working for different communities.
83HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
Consistent with Home Together 2030’s commitment to targeted universalism and continuous quality
improvement, H&H and partners will return to these groups on an ongoing basis to share updates, review
what is being learned, identify disparities or implementation barriers, and adjust approaches as needed.
Lived Experience Advisory Board
As Home Together 2030 moves from planning to implementation, H&H will create a Lived Experience
Advisory Board (LEAB) to help ensure implementation is informed by the priorities, experiences, and insight
of people most affected by homelessness. The LEAB will provide ongoing input on how plan strategies are
being translated into practice, where barriers are emerging, and how implementation can better support
diverse groups of people experiencing or at risk of homelessness.
The LEAB will be designed in partnership with people with lived experience, including decisions about
its structure, membership, charge, and operating practices. As part of that design process, H&H and
partners will identify how to support meaningful participation, accessibility, compensation, and feedback
loops that show how input is used. The LEAB will also have a defined role in Home Together 2030 review,
including representation on the Task Force or successor oversight structure and participation in formal
feedback processes.
Housing and Service Providers
Providers, developers, outreach teams, housing operators, and other frontline organizations play an
essential role in translating strategy into real-world capacity and outcomes. Their ability to absorb new
resources, expand programs, and scale services determines whether the system can reach more people
over time. That is not a simple task. Expanding responsibly requires staffing, administrative infrastructure,
cash flow, and organizational capacity—challenges that can be compounded by low administrative rates,
workforce pressures, and the financial risks nonprofit organizations must manage. At the same time,
frontline organizations are responsible for the quality and integrity of implementation. They shape whether
services are delivered in accordance with written standards and best practices, and whether people
experiencing homelessness are treated with dignity, engaged through trauma-informed approaches,
and offered as much safety, stability, and clarity as possible during periods of profound uncertainty
and transition.
Elected Officials
Elected officials at the county and local level play an important role in sustaining momentum behind
Home Together 2030 and helping ensure that implementation remains aligned with the plan’s priorities
and strategies over time. Their leadership will be important in championing the plan’s goals, supporting
investments that reflect the plan’s emphasis on balanced system growth and evidence-informed
approaches, monitoring progress, and reinforcing a consistent policy direction as conditions change.
Elected officials can also help remove administrative and procedural barriers that slow implementation—
from contracting and procurement challenges to other sources of unnecessary delay—so the county and
its partners are better positioned to respond to homelessness with the urgency the crisis demands.
Taken together, these roles underscore a central principle of Home Together 2030: no single entity can
reduce homelessness on its own. Progress depends on clear responsibilities, intentional coordination, and
sustained alignment around shared goals and measurable results.
84HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
5.3 Performance Management, Course Correction, and Public Reporting
Home Together 2030 is intended to be actively managed over time, not simply referenced at moments of
major decision-making. Overall system progress will be assessed using the top-line indicators identified
in Section 3, together with additional objective-level and operational measures that support active system
management and help the county and its partners understand how different parts of the system are
performing in practice. Together, these measures will help show not only whether the system is moving
in the right direction overall, but also where progress is uneven, where bottlenecks persist, and where
disparities remain.
Performance review will be part of the county’s regular implementation practice. Performance data
and implementation progress will be reviewed on an ongoing basis to assess system performance,
understand whether implementation is on track, identify disparities in access and outcomes, and identify
where adjustments may be warranted. The purpose is not only to report results, but to support learning,
strengthen accountability, and inform decisions about resource use, sequencing, and operational change
over time. More detail regarding specific measures, review processes, and reporting structures will be
provided through the Performance Management Framework.
System Modeling Updates and Implementation Adjustments
The plan also anticipates that conditions will change over the course of implementation. Responsible
stewardship includes revisiting system modeling assumptions and implementation approaches when new
information or changing conditions materially affect the plan’s underlying context. This may include, for
example, the release of new PIT data, significant changes in available funding, or broader disruptions such
as a public health emergency, natural disaster, or other event that significantly affects system capacity or
need. When such changes occur, the county will reconvene the System Modeling Technical Working Group
to revisit assumptions, assess implications for implementation, and recommend adjustments within the
plan’s broader strategic framework rather than abandoning priorities altogether.
Public Reporting and Transparency
Public reporting is also a core part of stewardship. Clear, regular communication will help the public
and system partners understand where progress is occurring, where challenges remain, and how
implementation is evolving over time. H&H will produce annual public reports on Home Together 2030
implementation, including the top-line indicators identified in this plan and relevant demographic
information to help illuminate disparities in access and outcomes. H&H may also provide updates through
presentations to the Measure W Oversight Committee, the Board of Supervisors, its Health Committee,
and other public forums tied to implementation and budget decisions.
85HOME TOGETHER 2030 DRAFT PLAN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
5.4 Closing: The Next Phase of Countywide Action
Home Together 2030 is not a promise of immediate resolution. It is a commitment to disciplined,
coordinated progress over the next five years—grounded in evidence, shaped by experience, and focused
on the practical work required to reduce homelessness over time. The plan builds on the investments,
lessons, and infrastructure established under Home Together 2026 while providing a clear framework for
the next phase of countywide action.
Its success will depend not only on the availability of resources, but on sustained stewardship:
aligning decisions to strategy, making difficult tradeoffs, monitoring progress honestly, learning from
experience, and remaining focused as conditions change. That work will require continued leadership
from the county, cities, providers, the CoC, and other partners—not just at the moment of adoption, but
throughout implementation.
With strong implementation and shared commitment, Alameda County and its partners can make
meaningful progress over the life of this plan by reducing the harm caused by homelessness, shortening
the time people spend without a safe and stable place to call home, and strengthening a response system
rooted in dignity, safety, and belonging. That progress will matter not only in the next five years, but in laying
the foundation for deeper reductions in homelessness over time.