Tulare County details CalWORKs housing help, limits for families experiencing homelessness

Laurie Catuto, CalWORKs program specialist for the Tulare County Health and Human Services Agency, told the Tulare County Homeless Task Force that CalWORKs provides temporary and permanent housing assistance only to families with an eligible child and that program rules and recent state changes limit who can receive help and for how long.

"First of all, for the CalWORKS program, there has to be a child in the home, in the family," Catuto said, describing the program's core eligibility requirement. She said a child must be "deprived" of parental care or support — for example, because a parent in the household is unemployed or absent — for the family to qualify.

Catuto gave a line-by-line explanation of the county's housing assistance offerings and the limits the county must follow. She said temporary hotel or shared housing is available for up to 16 days at up to $85 per day (with an additional $15 per day for a fifth household member), and that permanent-assistance payments cover last month's rent, security deposits and application fees but do not cover first month's rent.

The county's rules also include financial limits. Catuto said the state raised the CalWORKs resource limit to $16,000 for a family and that vehicles are largely excluded from that resource calculation — each vehicle may be worth about $34,000 without counting toward the $16,000 resource limit. She said the program will not pay for permanent housing where rent exceeds 80% of a household's monthly income.

Catuto reviewed rent-arrears assistance: CalWORKs can pay up to two months of past-due rent or mortgage when doing so will prevent homelessness. She said the county also allows shared housing with a valid lease after a state change that Tulare County supported, meaning a family may receive CalWORKs housing payments for a shared household when a valid lease exists.

Catuto described a separate state-authorized exception for domestic violence victims tied to Assembly Bill 557. Under AB 557, she said, applicants fleeing domestic abuse can receive temporary housing without the office counting the abuser's assets or income; an applicant can receive 16 days under AB 557 and then additional CalWORKs temporary housing if still homeless. "It is not once in a lifetime. It used to be once in a lifetime, but now it's every 12 months with exceptions," she said, listing domestic abuse, uninhabitable conditions and disasters among possible exemptions.

The county uses a state-funded Housing Support Program, administered locally by CSET, to extend assistance and provide case management, life-skills training and material supports. Catuto provided fiscal-year statistics: the CalWORKs program issued 1,089 temporary-homelessness assistances and helped 445 families obtain permanent housing; she said 664 families were housed or prevented from eviction through CalWORKs last fiscal year. For the Housing Support Program, she said the county referred 720 families to CSET, of which 322 completed intake; 32 completed life-skills training; 119 families were housed or prevented from eviction (441 individuals); and 182 families remained active in the program at the time of the report.

Catuto also told the task force that the county has drawn down state housing support funding that was appropriated and carried over; she said the county has been using those funds and expects some funding to be available through December 2025.

Task force members asked several operational questions during the presentation, including whether applicants must provide leases for shared housing, how the county verifies payments and whether outreach materials about AB 557 and CalWORKs are available; Catuto said the AB 557 outreach materials were pending from the state and that caseworkers obtain receipts and landlord verification as part of the program's administration.

Catuto closed by saying the county and CSET braid services — short-term CalWORKs assistance, referrals to the Housing Support Program and employment or training services — to try to make households stable in the longer term.