Homelessness is one of those issues that’s easy to talk about and hard to solve.
It shows up in council meetings as data points and funding charts. It shows up in community conversations as frustration, fear, and heartbreak. And it shows up on Fairfield’s streets every day in the form of real people and real families whose lives have come undone in ways far more complicated than any single solution can address.
At our most recent Fairfield City Council meeting, we dug into the homelessness picture in Solano County with the kind of detail and honesty you deserve to see more of. Homelessness Services Manager Samantha Burroughs walked us through the current state of the system, the funding landscape, and the hard choices ahead, and I pushed the conversation as far as I could. Here’s what was said and what it means for Fairfield.
The Numbers Behind the Crisis
Fairfield’s most recent Point in Time count gives a partial snapshot of who is unhoused on a given day. But as Samantha Burroughs made clear, it misses a significant portion of the population: families couch-surfing between friends, seniors living in their cars, people in motels outside the emergency shelter system. The count captures what it can see, not everything that’s actually happening.
The more revealing numbers came from other sources. Three hundred Fairfield households sit on the coordinated entry housing queue right now. They’ve been assessed as potentially qualifying for permanent supportive housing or rapid rehousing, and they’re simply waiting because the resources aren’t there. Fifty-seven households were on the waitlist for emergency shelter beds as of the meeting date, and thirty-seven percent of those are families with children.
Nationally, homelessness dropped by about 3.3 percent, the first decline since 2016. But California still counts roughly 46 unhoused individuals per 10,000 residents, more than double the national average. Fairfield isn’t an outlier. We’re a city navigating a statewide crisis with local tools that are never quite enough.
Burroughs also cited this: every $100 increase in rent drives homelessness up by 9 percent. That’s the math behind what Fairfield families are living through right now.
The Funding Picture Is Getting Harder
One of the most important parts of the meeting was an honest accounting of where the money comes from and what’s changing. The state had about $6.9 billion flowing into homelessness programs during COVID. That declined to $2.5 billion in 2024 and roughly $1.5 billion last fiscal year. Federal funding through HUD’s Continuum of Care program faces legal challenges, and programs cities have relied on are shifting their eligibility requirements in ways that affect what Fairfield can apply for and realistically win.
There was some good news. HHAP 7, a state homelessness funding program, came through at $900 million, a genuine surprise in this budget climate. Fairfield was also awarded $2.1 million through HHAP 6 for one-time use, targeted toward interim housing, emergency shelter, and rapid rehousing.
But one-time money doesn’t solve a structural problem. And as Burroughs noted, her entire homelessness services team is two people managing grant applications, contract oversight, data systems, calls from residents in crisis, coordination with the HIT team, and the daily work of moving people through a system that’s bottlenecked at nearly every point.
The bottleneck isn’t a mystery. People can get into emergency shelter. Getting them out and into stable housing is where the system breaks down, because affordable housing simply doesn’t exist at the scale the need requires.
What I Pushed For
I asked Burroughs to explain what “uncaptured populations” actually means in practice: who the Point in Time count misses, and why. She confirmed what I had suspected. Families are the most significantly undercounted population in Solano County, and school district data offers a more honest picture than the official count does.
I also raised something that doesn’t come up often enough in policy conversations about homelessness: predictors. I asked whether the city tracks evictions and foreclosures as leading indicators of housing instability, not just the moment someone ends up on the street. Burroughs acknowledged that eviction data is difficult to capture comprehensively, but confirmed that the delayed fallout from COVID-era eviction moratoriums is now showing up in real time.
Then I shared something personal.
I run a transitional housing facility. In my own building, I’m seeing more women and children living in cars. I’m seeing seniors, some my own age, coming in with chronic health conditions after losing housing they thought was stable. And I’m seeing women who aren’t just unhoused but actively unsafe on the streets, experiencing violence, choosing not to sleep because the risk of being harmed while asleep is real.
I didn’t say those things to make a political point. I said them because I see what’s happening beyond the data, and I wanted that reality in the room.
I made a direct ask of my colleagues: pursue the Violence Against Women Act funding referenced in the presentation. Push aggressively for funding that specifically serves the women and children being missed by programs designed around other populations. And keep money in reserve as matching funds for grant opportunities, because having skin in the game significantly increases our chances of winning competitive grants.
I also praised Mission Samoa and Bay North for the quality of their work and asked the council to stay on top of application deadlines so both programs can operate at full capacity. And I was specific about Shelter Inc., an underutilized facility I called “a bad look for us” given the length of the waitlist and the urgency of the need. I asked the council to put serious attention on getting it running at the level it’s capable of.
The Prevention Conversation
One of the most meaningful exchanges came when Pastor Morris spoke during public comment. He described a trifecta of financial pressure his ministry sees constantly: people who can’t pay their PG&E bill, people whose car payments are about to lapse, people one mortgage payment away from losing their housing. His ministry pays those bills with its own resources, without reimbursement. And he made the point plainly: it’s far cheaper to pay someone’s utility bill and keep them in their home than to house them again after they lose it.
I picked that up immediately and proposed adding reimbursable grants to the short-term solutions discussion: a way for faith organizations and community groups to receive city or grant funding for exactly these prevention interventions, documented and reported back so the impact is trackable.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and with homelessness, the math backs it up. Prevention is cheaper, faster, and less traumatic than recovery. The city needs to fund both ends of the continuum, not just the visible crisis.
Stable housing and economic stability are inseparable. You can’t address one without the other. I wrote more about that in Housing Affordability in Fairfield CA.
What Comes Next
The council didn’t make final funding decisions at this meeting, but we did get specific, which matters more than it might seem. We agreed to pursue Mission Samoa’s request to expand to ten beds, a meaningful increase given the current waitlist. We flagged the Violence Against Women Act funding for immediate pursuit and discussed reimbursable prevention grants. And we pushed the city manager to return with a clearer picture of how available one-time funds can go to the programs that are demonstrably working.
Samantha Burroughs and her two-person team will keep tracking data, managing contracts, fielding calls, and looking for every funding opportunity that fits what Fairfield actually needs.
And I’ll keep pushing: for the women living in cars, the seniors on fixed incomes, the families on a 300-household waitlist, and the faith organizations doing prevention work the city hasn’t yet found a way to fund. Showing up isn’t just attending meetings. It’s bringing the reality of the people we serve into the room where decisions get made.
For campaign and election information, visit ElectKPatriceWilliams.com.
Learn more at kpatriceforfairfield.com and connect with me on LinkedIn.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. How many Fairfield households are currently on the emergency shelter waitlist?
As of the council meeting, 57 households were waiting for emergency shelter beds, and 37 percent of those were families with children.
2. What is rapid rehousing and why does it matter for Fairfield families?
Rapid rehousing combines short-term rental assistance with case management to move people out of homelessness quickly. National data shows mid-to-high 90 percent success rates, particularly for families with children.
3. What is Hazel’s Tranquility Place and how does it relate to this discussion?
I founded Hazel’s Tranquility Place and named it after my mother. It provides transitional housing for formerly incarcerated women and children in Solano County, and it gives me firsthand knowledge of the populations our city’s homelessness system isn’t fully reaching.