New law directs the state to build on proven local prevention programs, helping stop homelessness before it starts; California’s statewide prevention strategy will be one of the nation’s first
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Gov. Gavin Newsom today signed AB 1924, authored by Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel, directing the state to develop California’s first-ever statewide homelessness prevention strategy. The bill requires the California Interagency Council on Homelessness to issue the strategy by July 1, 2028, including the state’s first prevention goals and measures of success, state agency homelessness prevention action plans, evidence-based model prevention practices that the state, cities and counties can adopt, and recommendations for funding the highest impact state and local prevention efforts. The strategy will build on successful homelessness prevention work in jurisdictions across the state.
AB 1924 was co-sponsored by All Home, Destination: Home, and Inner City Law Center, and passed the Legislature with overwhelming bipartisan support, clearing the Assembly 77-1 before unanimous passage in the Senate.
“The best way to reduce homelessness is to stop it before it starts,” said Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel (D-Encino). “We know that prevention is the most compassionate and effective approach to this crisis, and it’s long past time California adopted a statewide prevention strategy. I’m grateful to Governor Newsom for signing AB 1924 into law and helping us pair proven prevention strategies with real accountability.”
Every year, nearly 190,000 Californians experience homelessness for the first time, and for every person who exits homelessness, three more are pushed into it. This constant inflow has sustained the problem despite increased efforts to combat homelessness. AB 1924 marks a turn toward treating prevention as a core pillar of the state’s strategy – recognizing that pairing response and prevention will help existing resources go farther in the state’s effort to end homelessness.
The push builds on a decade of local results. All Home and Destination: Home have supported prevention programs across seven Bay Area counties, serving 75,000 people at risk of losing their housing, with nearly 90% remaining stably housed years later. Inner City Law Center has been a strong advocate for similar prevention programs in Los Angeles, which has seen promise using county health data to reach at-risk families before a crisis hits.
“We’ve seen prevention programs work in the Bay Area and Los Angeles to start turning the tide on people becoming homeless. This bill would direct California to develop a statewide strategy to implement these critical programs for the first time,” said Brett Andrews, interim Chief Executive of All Home. “Independent researchers have proven how effective homelessness prevention can be at keeping people housed even years after they received assistance, and we hope the state will build off this experience to bring these programs statewide.”
“It’s not only much more humane to keep residents in their homes—it’s much less expensive than providing shelter and services once they fall into homelessness,” said Mike Feuer, Senior Policy Advisor at L.A.’s Inner City Law Center, a co-sponsor of AB 1924. “With this bill, prevention becomes a central pillar of California’s homeless policy. If we can begin to move the paradigm to preventing homelessness in the first place, we can finally turn the tide on one of our most intractable challenges.”
“California is showing compassion and common sense go hand-in-hand by making homelessness prevention a strategic priority,” said Jennifer Loving, CEO of Destination: Home. “By signing AB 1924 into law, Governor Newsom is putting the state on the cutting edge of nationwide efforts to solve our homelessness crisis.”
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All Home is a Bay Area nonprofit advancing regional solutions that disrupt the cycles of poverty and homelessness, redress racial disparities, and create more economic mobility opportunities for people with extremely low incomes. All Home works across counties, sectors, and silos to advance coordinated, innovative solutions and build a movement to challenge the status quo that perpetuates homelessness.
Destination: Home is a public–private partnership working to end homelessness in Silicon Valley and beyond. Through our collective-impact model, we convene and collaborate with community stakeholders to address the root causes of homelessness and drive systemic change. We take a data-driven, human-centered approach—advocating for effective policies, incubating new ideas and programs, and investing in strategies that connect more of our homeless neighbors to stable housing and prevent homelessness before it begins. Destination: Home leads the Right at Home initiative, with a goal of building strong evidence that prevention works—so we can end homelessness locally and nationally. Together, we can build a nation where homelessness is rare, brief, and non-recurring.
Inner City Law Center is a nonprofit, poverty-law firm based in the Skid Row area of Los Angeles. As the only legal-services provider with offices in Skid Row, Inner City Law Center fights for housing and justice for low-income tenants, working-poor families, housing insecure veterans, people experiencing homelessness and people living with disabilities or HIV.