Informing Policy

California passed the Community Assistance, Recovery, and Empowerment (CARE) Act in 2022 to provide behavioral health and housing services to individuals with psychotic spectrum and schizophrenia disorders who are deemed unable to care for themselves. This policy brief from the Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative at UCSF and the California Policy Lab uses anonymized data to estimate how many San Franciscans in a database of individuals who have contact with the urgent and emergent care system may be eligible for referral to CARE Court and describe their service needs.

BHHI conducted in-depth interviews with 48 people living in their vehicles in Oakland. This report sheds light on the needs and challenges of vehicle residents and provides recommendations on how the city can better serve that population.

This brief, based on our analysis of Census Pulse Data and a survey administered by BHHI and partners at UC Berkeley and UC ANR Nutrition Policy Institute, includes recommendations for how public and nonprofit entities in California can improve emergency rental assistance uptake among low-income renters. Because many survey respondents said they were not aware of the emergency rental assistance program's existence, our core recommendation is that various entities engage in public outreach to renters who are likely to be eligible for assistance.