How Santa Clara County, California, prevented over 33,000 at-risk residents from becoming homeless

A unique partnership between local leaders and nonprofit partners is improving lives and saving taxpayers money

As the Director of Results for America’s Economic Mobility Catalog, I spend a lot of time writing about local governments and nonprofits implementing proven solutions, what they’ve tried, what’s worked, and how they’ve adapted along the way. I wouldn’t say the homelessness prevention system in Santa Clara County, California, is my favorite case study – that would be like picking a favorite child – but it’s one that I find myself revisiting often.

Partly that’s because of the scale of the intervention’s impact: more than 33,000 people prevented from becoming homeless, with 94% still housed after one year and 91% still housed after two. But it’s also because that impact was achieved through an extraordinary partnership among county and city governments and local nonprofits. That collaboration allowed a small, mostly privately funded pilot to grow into a robust, largely publicly funded program that’s changing lives and reshaping how communities across the country might approach homelessness.

“What I really love the most about the homelessness prevention system that we’ve built as a collaborative effort in Santa Clara County is that it works…. It’s effective at preventing people from becoming homeless in the first place.” – Chad Bojorquez, Chief Program Officer, Destination: Home

The Larger Context: Financial Fragility and Everyday Pressures

Too many Americans today teeter on the edge financially. Nearly half of all renter households in the United States are cost-burdened, spending 30% or more of their income in rent. The recent elections in New York, New Jersey and Virginia underscored how deeply people are feeling the squeeze, from housing to child care to utilities. When budgets are this tight, one unexpected cost or a sudden loss of income can force impossible choices between shelter, food, medical care or child care.

Santa Clara’s homelessness prevention system was built to change that calculus by stepping in with fast, flexible financial assistance before a housing crisis becomes a homelessness crisis.

Santa Clara County includes San José, the high-tech corridor of Silicon Valley, and surrounding suburbs and rural communities. It also has the fifth-largest population of people experiencing homelessness among U.S. metro areas. In 2016, for every household that moved into housing, three more became newly homeless. Destination: Home, a public-private partnership working to end homelessness in Silicon Valley, realized that lasting progress required stopping people from falling into homelessness in the first place. That meant intervening earlier and providing aid quickly, right at the critical moment of a financial emergency.

From Pilot Program to Public System

In 2017, Destination: Home launched a pilot homelessness prevention program with $1.6 million in mostly private funding to serve 215 households. From the beginning, the effort focused on three key principles:

1. Meet immediate needs with speed and flexibility. The program provided uncapped, fast financial assistance, averaging nearly $8,000 per household today, along with help accessing public benefits and legal aid for eviction proceedings.

“We want to give folks what they need to solve their problem, not just chip away at their problem.” – Jennifer Loving, CEO, Destination: Home

2. Build a strong network of partners. Over 20 nonprofit organizations joined forces with county and city governments, each bringing unique expertise and reach. Each of these nonprofits is able to draw from a pooled set of resources to provide emergency financial assistance and other supports to households facing eviction.

3. Prove the model works. Notre Dame’s Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities rigorously evaluated the program. A 2023 randomized controlled trial found that households receiving assistance were 81% less likely to experience homelessness within six months than those in the control group. The study also found the program to be highly cost-effective, returning $2.47 in public benefits for every $1 invested.

With clear evidence in hand, in 2024, Destination: Home successfully transitioned the program to the County of Santa Clara, which now operates a $32 million homelessness prevention system that will serve 2,500 households this year.

“The County now has taken on a leadership role as the convener or coordinator of the homelessness prevention system, which we are thrilled about. Frankly, this would have been difficult to do had there not been so much evidence and support demonstrating that this intervention works.” – Kathryn Kaminski, Director, County of Santa Clara Office of Supportive Housing

The results are visible: In 2016, 5,275 people entered the county’s homeless system for the first time; by 2024, that number had dropped to 4,098. The problem isn’t solved – affordable housing remains scarce – but the progress is real, and it’s making a difference in people’s lives and in how they view government.

Linda Nguyen, a recipient of the program’s services, recently told her story in The Christian Science Monitor, saying that she was grateful not only for the rental assistance she received but also for “restoring her trust in community programs.”

The success of Santa Clara’s homelessness prevention system offers lessons for the many communities nationwide struggling to address growing homeless populations, including:

• Helping families before they lose their homes is not only vastly preferable for members of that household but also saves taxpayer dollars otherwise spent on shelters, emergency rooms and other downstream public systems.

• The alignment of public and nonprofit partners allowed the program to grow sustainably and build trust with residents.

• Rigorous evaluation helped a promising pilot become a publicly funded system.

Santa Clara County is also showing that government can act quickly, compassionately and cost-effectively.

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