Santa Clara County is poised to spend more than $122 million on homelessness this fiscal year, and most of the money is going to one nonprofit.
A San José Spotlight review of documents from the county’s Office of Supportive Housing (OSH) shows Abode Services is the county’s largest homeless support service provider. The nonprofit has 15 of the county’s 67 homeless service contracts with a total value of more than $50 million in the county’s fiscal year 2025-26 budget.
Overall, Santa Clara County contracts with 15 nonprofits to provide services for the county’s 10,711 homeless residents. An OSH spokesperson said the contracts vary in types of service, from wrap-around case management and rental assistance to temporary shelters, including tiny homes, hotels and congregate programs.
HomeFirst is the second largest service provider in the county, with 10 county contracts totaling $20 million for homeless support services. The Bill Wilson Center comes in third, with a total value of about $13 million and 11 county contracts.
Abode Services CEO Vivian Wan said most of their contracts are for rental assistance, going directly toward paying people’s rent and preventing them from falling into homelessness.
“There’s a lot of money going into homelessness, and it’s honestly not enough,” Wan told San José Spotlight. “Housing is really, really expensive here and really scarce. I would say the reason why homelessness continues to increase is we aren’t paying enough attention to the ‘whys.'”
The OSH spokesperson said the county goes through a multistep contracting process, beginning with the list of qualified providers. Then, when there’s a potential contract, a proposal request is sent to this select group. They said the county has used this two-step process since 2023, as it’s faster and more flexible than the standard bidding process.
“There is a limited number of organizations that have the capacity and expertise to provide some housing-related services in Santa Clara County,” Kathryn Kaminski, acting director of OSH, told San José Spotlight. “There are also geographic considerations. For instance, an organization may be focused on providing services only in South County. It’s not going to apply to operate a shelter or deliver services in North County when their core mission is to serve South County.”
The applications to become qualified and bid on support service contracts are reviewed by an internal panel, which can include county employees, homeless people with lived experience, community organizations and government workers from cities in the county.
Kaminski said the office conducts a competitive process every three to five years for its contracts. She said OSH has worked to increase the number of qualified service providers by giving regular assistance and feedback to organizations interested in contracting with the county.
The county has the option to reach out to its qualified providers or revise an application if there’s a low number of bids for a certain contract. This happened when the county-run Sunnyvale Shelter couldn’t find a replacement after HomeFirst pulled out and asked the Bill Wilson Center to take over the contract.
Santa Clara County has some of the nation’s steepest wealth disparities, with nine households holding $110 billion in liquid wealth — 12 times more than the bottom 50% of households in the region. A 2023 year-end report found for every county household housed in 2023, nearly two households became homeless.
While the state sinks billions of taxpayer dollars into homeless support services, it’s been difficult to track the programs’ effectiveness. San Jose is almost a year behind on implementing recommendations from a state audit which found the city doesn’t adequately track its homeless support expenditures or success metrics.
The expensive housing market coupled with the skyrocketing cost of living has deepened Silicon Valley’s income divide. These barriers are being worsened by federal cuts to support services, including more than $1 billion in cuts to the county’s public hospital system.
The county regularly monitors the effectiveness of contractors by interviewing staff and participants, visiting housing sites and reviewing quarterly performance reports, the OSH spokesperson said.
Wan said 94% of participants in Abode’s permanent supportive housing programs have stayed housed for a year or longer. A statement from HomeFirst said 96% of the nonprofit’s permanent supportive housing program participants and 94% of participants in their rapid rehousing programs stay housed.
“Our population and the cost of living are increasing, but the supply of affordable housing isn’t keeping up,” the HomeFirst statement said. “By contrast, we’ve seen what adequate resourcing and service coordination can achieve. Despite national increases in homelessness, the rate of homelessness among veterans continues to decline — a trend we also observe within our programs at HomeFirst as well.”
Betty Duong, who represents District 2 on the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors, said slowing the growth of homelessness requires a multifaceted approach that doesn’t rely solely on homeless support providers, but on alleviating these structural inequalities. Those problems are larger than Santa Clara County, stretching to the federal level where President Donald Trump has pushed policies criminalizing homelessness and cutting safety nets.
She isn’t surprised certain nonprofits have more contracts, and said those organizations have more experience providing these specialized services. She said it highlights the need to have more professionals specialized in helping homeless people.
“The reality that we still face today is that there are not enough clinicians that specialize in helping the unhoused,” Duong told San José Spotlight. “There has not been a defined best model of success and care. No one has cracked this nut yet, no one has figured that out.”
Story updated Aug. 19 at 9:37 a.m. Original story published Aug. 18 at 8:30 a.m.
Contact B. Sakura Cannestra at [email protected] or @SakuCannestra on X.
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