Success message
Error message
Activating our sector for change through advocacy and education
The Coalition to End Homelessness of Santa Cruz County brings together 25 nonprofit partners committed to ending homelessness through collaboration and shared action. Together, these organizations combine their diverse expertise to create meaningful, countywide change.
The individual organizations that comprise the Coalition support people experiencing homelessness through outreach, case management, housing services, workforce development, vital document recovery, youth and family programs, shelter, and permanent housing.
We are united by a shared purpose: to focus existing resources and innovation toward ending homelessness in Santa Cruz County. Our mission is to support evidence-based best practices, educate the community to end the stigma of homelessness, and advocate for effective public policy and resource allocation. We act from the values that we feel also define this county: collaboration, integrity, belonging, accountability, and measurable impact. We center lived experience to drive system change.
We build on generations of civic-minded, generous, and progressive activists who imagined a community where every person has a place to call home. Today, that vision is within reach.
Despite being the least affordable rental market in the United States, Santa Cruz County has made measurable gains in reducing homelessness while rates across the state and country continue to rise. Since 2019, the number of actively homeless households recorded in our Homeless Management Information System has fallen by 38 percent, including a 19 percent decrease between 2023 and 2024. The number of households moving from homelessness into permanent housing has more than tripled, from 251 in 2018 to 774 in 2024.
While first-time homelessness remains a concern, our community’s resilience is exceptional. Nationally, first-time homelessness rose by 34 percent between 2020 and 2024, yet here in Santa Cruz County, it declined by 26 percent.
These are not just numbers. They represent parents reunited with their children, veterans finally sleeping under their own roof, and young people beginning stable, independent lives.
More solutions are arriving soon. Within the next nine months, our community will add over 200 housing and shelter units: 120 units of supportive housing in Santa Cruz, 20 units of interim shelter at Live Oak Landing, 32 units of shelter for people with behavioral health challenges in Soquel, and a 34-unit Tiny Home Village in Watsonville. Each project represents a commitment to dignity, stability, and community.
Our gains are real, but they are not guaranteed. The organizations and programs that made this progress possible are under threat. Institutions that we thought were unshakable have scaled back, leaving gaps in critical services.
We have reached unprecedented progress in reducing homelessness, yet that progress stands on fragile ground. The supports that lifted hundreds of neighbors into stable housing are now being taken from our community as funding and policy shifts threaten undoing years of progress:
Although many believe California spends heavily on homelessness, California dedicates less than 2 percent of its state budget to housing and homelessness services.
The state’s Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention (HHAP) program was cut in half last year. HHAP has helped roughly 57,000 Californians access permanent housing, including more than 12,000 in our region (Santa Cruz, Santa Clara, San Benito, and Monterey counties).
At the federal level, support for the Emergency Housing Voucher program is ending prematurely. Without intervention, funding will run out by next year, and 250 Santa Cruz households, more than 550 people, could lose their housing.
The local Housing Authority, which helps our lowest-income residents afford rent, faces up to 15 million dollars in cuts, placing more than 1,000 additional residents at risk of losing their housing.
The federal Continuum of Care program provides 6.5 million dollars each year to Santa Cruz County for permanent housing. Proposed policy changes will strip up to 70 percent of this funding, returning more than 325 currently housed individuals back onto our streets.
Worse, proposed federal requirements would force communities to criminalize outdoor sleeping, assist with immigration enforcement, impose work requirements on people unable to work, arbitrarily cap the length of housing assistance, and block efforts to track outcomes by demographic groups. These policies do not reduce homelessness. They prolong it.
Without sustained commitment, our community risks losing the progress we’ve worked so hard to achieve. Letting hundreds of families fall back into homelessness would erase years of effort and cost far more than maintaining the solutions that work. Local landlords will lose stable rent payments. Emergency rooms, law enforcement, and shelters will once again be overwhelmed. Seniors, people with disabilities, veterans, families fleeing domestic violence, and people with serious mental illness will be pushed out of housing and into instability and danger.
Our community’s strength lies in compassion and shared responsibility. We know that solving homelessness benefits everyone: our neighborhoods, our economy, and our shared future.
In the words of Mace Crowbear, a member of Housing Matters’ Lived Experience Advisory Group and community activist, “This is about dissolving division. We are so divided, we don't even come close to understanding how much we have in common. The common goal is for a healthy community. By putting the responsibility on everyone else, we forget it starts with us. What part are we gonna play in bettering our community? Let us be the first community that is able to continue the work and pick up where the government has shut us down. Let us not lose the progress we’ve made. Do not let the rest of the world affect our choices of what we can do in our beautiful community."
We call on every member of our community. All residents, business leaders, and policymakers have a role to play.
Tell your elected officials, at every level of government, that you support continued funding for housing and homelessness solutions. Every call and letter matters.
Here is what to ask for specifically:
Ask our federal representatives to protect funding for housing as a solution to homelessness by:
preserving funding for our local Housing Authority
renewing existing Continuum of Care program grants for at least one year
restoring funding for the Emergency Housing Voucher program
Ask state leaders to:
Invest in homelessness at scale, in an ongoing way. The leading policy concern for California voters deserves more than 1% of the state’s spending - and it deserves an ongoing commitment, not one-time investments.
fully restore HHAP funding
be prepared to fill funding gaps if federal support is reduced
Ask local officials to:
Join us in asking our state and federal representatives to protect housing and homelessness investments.
prioritize prevention, shelter, and housing as essential to public health and community safety.
Now is the time to protect what we have built and to finish what we have started. With sustained commitment, collaboration, and courage, Santa Cruz County can become a place where homelessness is rare, brief, and nonrecurring.
We know how to do this. We have already proven that progress is possible. What is needed now is the will to keep going.
Signed,
The Coalition to End Homelessness SCC
Abode Services
Association of Faith Communities
Community Action Board
Community Bridges
Dientes
Encompass Community Services
Families in Transition
People First
Front St. Inc
Grey Bears
Homeless Garden Project
Homeless Persons Health Project
Housing Matters
Loaves and Fishes
Miracle Messages
Monarch Services
Nation's Finest
Pajaro Valley Shelter Services
Santa Cruz Community Health
Second Harvest
Siena House
Vet's Village
Walnut Avenue Family and Women's Center
Wings Homeless Advocacy