I’ve been looking more closely at how we count, track, manage, and fund homelessness in Chico and Butte County.

And the more I look, the more complicated the system becomes.

We have Point-in-Time counts.

We have HMIS.

We have Coordinated Entry.

We have Continuums of Care.

We have case managers, navigation services, outreach teams, assessment tools, referral systems, data systems, performance measurements, funding streams, and increasingly integrated health and social-service systems.

We have HUD’s Continuum of Care system under 24 CFR Part 578, which requires communities to coordinate their homelessness response.

We have California’s CalAIM, which is bringing Medi-Cal, health care, behavioral health, housing-related services, and social services into an increasingly connected system.

There is a lot of management happening.

But I keep coming back to a very simple question:

Where are the houses?

The numbers tell part of the story

In January 2025, the Butte County Point-in-Time count identified 1,065 people experiencing homelessness in Chico.

Countywide, it identified 1,392 people.

That is a one-night snapshot—not the number of people who experienced homelessness during the entire year.

Meanwhile, Butte County’s HMIS is continuously collecting information from participating homeless-service providers.

The local CoC itself explains the difference:

The PIT count is a snapshot of homelessness during a single night in January.

HMIS, on the other hand, continuously records people using services such as emergency shelter, rapid rehousing, and case management. The local dashboard is updated quarterly.

So we have a much larger picture of people moving through the system over time.

And that’s useful.

But it raises another question:

How much of our effort is going toward actually creating places for those people to live?

The system has become very good at managing people

This isn’t necessarily a criticism of the people doing the work.

Case managers matter.

Outreach matters.

Mental-health services matter.

Substance-use treatment matters.

Coordinated Entry can matter.

Having someone help navigate a complicated system can absolutely matter.

But somewhere along the way, we have created an enormous infrastructure around homelessness.

HUD’s HMIS standards describe a Continuum of Care that can involve homeless-service providers, governments, social-service agencies, mental-health agencies, hospitals, schools, public housing agencies, law enforcement, affordable-housing developers, and other organizations.

That’s a lot of people and organizations potentially involved in responding to one person’s homelessness.

And California is connecting even more of those systems.

Then came CalAIM

California’s CalAIM program is transforming Medi-Cal into a much broader, more coordinated system of health and social care.

Medi-Cal’s Community Supports can include housing navigation, housing deposits, housing tenancy and sustaining services, medical respite, and other services intended to address health-related social needs. Enhanced Care Management provides intensive coordination for eligible high-need Medi-Cal members.

In Butte County, California Health & Wellness says that it has connected with the local Continuum of Care and HMIS to identify Medi-Cal members experiencing housing challenges and refer them to housing-related Community Supports.

This is a significant development.

The health-care system and homelessness system are no longer completely separate worlds.

They are increasingly connected.

That may make sense. Housing affects health. Poor health can make it harder to maintain housing. Mental illness and substance-use disorders can complicate housing stability.

These things are connected in real life.

But there is a danger in responding to every problem by creating another layer of management.

We need more options—not more complexity

If someone is homeless, there isn’t one solution that works for everybody.

Some people need a permanent apartment.

Some need a room.

Some need an inexpensive studio.

Some need supportive housing.

Some need temporary shelter.

Some need a safe place to stay while recovering from an illness.

Some need mental-health treatment.

Some need substance-use treatment.

Some need help getting identification, transportation, employment, or benefits.

Some people simply need an affordable place to live.

And some people need several of these things at different times.

That means we need more choices.

Not one giant system that tries to put everybody through the same pipeline.

We need more housing.

Actual homes.

Apartments.

Rooms.

ADUs.

Studios.

Shared housing.

Permanent supportive housing.

Small transitional housing options.

Caretaker housing.

Rural housing.

Whatever works.

More doors.

We need more kinds of shelter.

Emergency shelters have a purpose.

But a person who cannot function in a large congregate shelter isn’t necessarily someone who doesn’t want housing.

Maybe they need a smaller environment.

Maybe they need a private room.

Maybe they need a medical respite bed.

Maybe they need a place that accommodates pets.

Maybe they need a quiet environment.

Maybe they need somewhere they can stay for several months instead of several nights.

We need more options between sleeping outside and being completely independent.

We need better mental-health options.

If someone is experiencing serious mental-health problems, telling them to “get housing” isn’t necessarily enough.

We need places where people can actually receive appropriate treatment and support.

We need better substance-use options.

If someone has a substance-use problem, there should be multiple levels of help available—from harm reduction to outpatient treatment to residential treatment and recovery housing.

Not everyone needs the same thing.

And we need individualized attention.

A person should not become a number in HMIS.

The purpose of collecting information should ultimately be to help the person, not simply to create another report.

And we need to look at the cost of managing the system

This is where I think we should be willing to ask uncomfortable questions without automatically assuming bad intentions.

How much money actually reaches housing?

How much pays for shelter?

How much pays for case management?

How much pays for outreach?

How much pays for administration?

How much pays for data systems?

How much pays for coordinated entry?

How many different organizations are being paid to coordinate with one another?

And how many times can the same person’s needs be assessed, documented, referred, coordinated, entered into a database, and reported?

Those are legitimate questions.

They aren’t accusations of fraud.

They are questions about accountability and efficiency.

Butte County’s own funding records show just how many different activities are being funded. Recent homelessness grants have paid for case managers, navigation services, shelter expansion, outreach, permanent housing acquisition, rent subsidies, and other activities.

All of those things can have value.

But we should still ask:

What are we getting for the money?

Technology should reduce bureaucracy—not create more of it

We now have technology capable of doing things that once required entire administrative processes.

Data can be entered once and shared appropriately.

Reports can be generated automatically.

People can be matched with available resources.

Duplicate records can be identified.

Eligibility can be checked.

Appointments can be coordinated.

Progress can be tracked.

Much of the routine administrative work involved in managing information doesn’t necessarily require a person sitting at a desk doing it manually.

That doesn’t mean we should eliminate human beings.

Quite the opposite.

Let’s use people where people are actually needed.

Let technology handle repetitive administrative work so that trained people have more time to work directly with the person standing in front of them.

A case manager should be helping someone solve a problem—not spending their day feeding a bureaucracy.

Don’t mistake activity for progress

This may be the biggest problem I see.

A system can be extremely busy and still fail to solve the underlying problem.

We can have:

more assessments,
more meetings,
more referrals,
more case plans,
more databases,
more dashboards,
more reports,
more coordinators,
more navigation,

and still not have enough places for people to live.

Activity isn’t the same thing as progress.

If we want to reduce homelessness, we ultimately need people to become housed.

Not assessed.

Not referred.

Not entered into a database.

Not placed on a waiting list.

Housed.

Let’s simplify the question

Instead of asking only:

How many people did we contact?

Let’s ask:

How many people got housed?

Instead of asking:

How many case-management contacts did we make?

Let’s ask:

How many people moved into stable housing?

Instead of asking:

How many people entered the coordinated-entry system?

Let’s ask:

How many people exited homelessness permanently?

And instead of simply asking:

How much money did we spend?

Let’s ask:

How many homes did that money create, preserve, or make available?

Those are much harder numbers to hide behind.

We don’t need to stop helping people.

We need to stop making the system so complicated that we lose sight of the person it was created to help.

There is a place for HMIS.

There is a place for Coordinated Entry.

There is a place for case management.

There is a place for CalAIM.

There is a place for mental-health and substance-use services.

There is a place for shelters.

There is a place for outreach.

But none of these things can substitute for a place to live.

We need more housing.

We need more choices.

We need better treatment options.

We need appropriate shelters.

We need individualized help.

We need to use technology to eliminate unnecessary bureaucracy.

And we need to follow the money closely enough to know whether our programs are actually producing the outcomes we say they are designed to produce.

Let’s make homelessness easier to solve—not harder to manage.