The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development awarded Santa Clara County eleven point one million dollars to fund a comprehensive response to unsheltered and rural homelessness in the region. The grant, announced in 2023, also included fifty-one stability vouchers that pair rental assistance with intensive case management, giving the county new tools to move people from streets and encampments into permanent housing.

How the Grant Works

The funding came through a first-of-its-kind HUD initiative that combined capital for outreach and services with the vouchers needed to pay rent on a unit once a formerly unhoused person was ready to move in. Traditional HUD funding often splits those functions between different programs, forcing communities to stitch together services and housing dollars from multiple sources.

The County of Santa Clara, the Santa Clara County Housing Authority, and the county's Continuum of Care received the award as partners. The three-way partnership reflects how homelessness response actually works in the region, where county social services, the housing authority, and a network of nonprofit providers each handle different pieces of the continuum.

Targeting Unsheltered Homelessness

Santa Clara County, home to San Jose and much of Silicon Valley, has one of the largest unsheltered homeless populations in the country. A warm climate, high housing costs, and a long-running shortfall of affordable units combine to push thousands of residents into cars, tents, and RVs rather than into shelters or apartments.

Unsheltered homelessness is particularly difficult to address. People living in encampments have often cycled through shelters and short-term programs before, and many have complex health conditions that make traditional settings difficult. Successful outreach requires consistent contact by trained staff, flexibility around move-in logistics, and services that continue after someone enters housing.

The HUD grant was designed specifically to fund this kind of intensive, sustained work. Funds could pay for homeless outreach workers, case managers, short-term and long-term rental assistance, housing navigation services, and flexible dollars for move-in costs such as security deposits and furniture.

Stability Vouchers

The fifty-one stability vouchers attached to the grant are a newer type of HUD rental assistance. They function similarly to traditional Housing Choice Vouchers but come with required supportive services provided by a community partner. Tenants pay a share of their income toward rent, while the voucher covers the balance, and case managers stay engaged to help the household maintain housing long term.

Vouchers alone do not solve homelessness because landlords must agree to rent to holders, and in tight markets, units that accept vouchers can be scarce. Pairing vouchers with landlord engagement work and flexible incentive funds, which the HUD grant also supports, increases the odds that a voucher actually translates to a home.

Part of a Broader Federal Effort

Santa Clara County was one of seventy-five communities nationwide to receive funding through this HUD initiative. The program launched in early 2023 and ultimately distributed more than four hundred eighty-six million dollars across the country. Each community tailored its application to local conditions, with some focusing on rural homelessness, others on tribal lands, and others like Santa Clara on dense urban encampments.

The program represented a shift in HUD strategy toward specifically targeting the hardest-to-serve populations. Traditional Continuum of Care funding flows annually and covers the full range of homeless services. The new grants topped up that funding with dedicated resources for outreach to people living outside, an acknowledgment that those populations tend to be underserved even in well-funded communities.

Local Context

Santa Clara County's use of the grant fit into a much larger local investment in homelessness response. The county and the City of San Jose have both committed substantial local funding to shelter expansion, interim housing, and affordable housing construction. Measure A, a 2016 county bond measure, funded hundreds of millions of dollars in supportive housing development. The state of California has provided additional funding through the Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention program and the Project Homekey initiative, which converts hotels and motels into permanent supportive housing.

The HUD grant added another layer to this stack of funding, specifically strengthening the piece that is often hardest to fund, the outreach and case management work that happens before someone moves into a unit.

Results and Accountability

HUD requires grant recipients to report on the number of people moved from unsheltered settings into housing, the services provided, and the long-term stability of placements. For Santa Clara County, the grant added specific performance benchmarks that the county committed to meet. Success would be measured not just by the dollars spent but by the number of people helped and the durability of their housing placements.

Recent local reporting has documented both progress and ongoing challenges. Some programs have moved significant numbers of people from encampments into housing, while the sheer scale of the problem continues to generate new unsheltered cases. The HUD grant is not by itself a solution, but it represents a meaningful addition to the toolkit.

Lessons for Other Communities

The grant structure, pairing capital for services with vouchers for rent, has drawn interest from other jurisdictions looking for better ways to address unsheltered homelessness. The logic is simple. Moving someone off the street requires a relationship with a worker, a unit that will accept them, and ongoing support. Providing funding for all three pieces simultaneously makes each dollar go further than it would in siloed programs.

For residents concerned about homelessness in their communities, supporting this kind of integrated approach through local funding and advocacy remains one of the most direct ways to make a difference.

Santa Clara County Gets $11.1M HUD Grant to Fight Homelessness