The City of Chico’s 2025–2026 Consolidated Annual Performance and Evaluation Report (CAPER) provides a look at how federal Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) and HOME funds were used during the year.

It is a useful report because it tells us not only where money was spent, but also what the programs actually accomplished.

And one number stands out:

According to the CAPER, the number of new housing units produced through the CDBG/HOME affordable-housing program during the reporting period was zero.

More than $1.4 million in CDBG and HOME expenditures

The report shows approximately:

$825,740 in CDBG expenditures
$596,902 in HOME expenditures
$1.42 million combined

That money supported a variety of activities, including public services, administration, housing rehabilitation, rental assistance, and other community-development programs.

Not all of this money was intended to directly house people experiencing homelessness, so it would be misleading to describe the entire $1.42 million as homeless-housing money.

But the results reported in the CAPER are still worth examining.

Zero new housing units reported

The CAPER’s affordable-housing outcome table shows:

Activity	Goal	Actual
Production of new housing units	5	0
Rental assistance	15 households	17 households

So while the program exceeded its rental-assistance goal, no new housing units were reported as produced during the program year.

This is an important distinction.

The City does report that 1,117 affordable housing units have been added in Chico since 2022, with additional units under construction. But that is a cumulative figure covering multiple years. It does not mean that 1,117 units were added during the 2025–26 CAPER period.

What happened instead?

The CAPER shows considerable activity providing services to people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness.

For example:

689 people were served at the Torres Emergency Shelter.
61 people were served through Esplanade House’s case management and housing-navigation services.
19 people were assisted through CHAT’s Harmony at Home program.
17 households received Tenant-Based Rental Assistance.
Of those 17 households, 4 came from homelessness.

These are important services. A shelter bed can provide safety. Case management can help someone navigate the system. Rental assistance can help someone obtain housing.

But these outcomes are different from creating new housing.

Housing rehabilitation is not the same as new housing

One of the larger housing investments reported in the CAPER was Turning Point Commons, a 66-unit affordable housing project.

The City reported a $225,000 CDBG expenditure and a $500,000 HOME commitment toward the project.

That is a significant housing investment. However, the project was still being rehabilitated during the reporting period. It therefore should not be counted as 66 new units that came online during 2025–26.

This is an important distinction when looking at housing numbers:

Funding a housing project, rehabilitating housing, providing rental assistance, and building new housing are four different things.

The question the CAPER raises

The CAPER does not show that nothing was accomplished.

It shows that hundreds of people received shelter and services, households received rental assistance, and money was invested in affordable housing.

But when we ask a different question—

How much additional housing actually became available during the year?

—the answer reported in the affordable-housing outcome table is zero new units produced.

And when we ask:

How many households experiencing homelessness were specifically identified as moving into the rental-assistance program?

the CAPER identifies four households.

That doesn’t mean only four people in Chico found permanent housing during the year. The CAPER simply does not provide a comprehensive number for everyone who moved from homelessness into permanent housing.

Services matter. Housing matters too.

There is a legitimate need for shelters, case managers, food, outreach, transportation, rental assistance, and other services.

But those services do not eliminate the underlying shortage of housing.

The CAPER itself acknowledges that limited housing supply is a challenge for people receiving rental assistance and that transitioning people experiencing homelessness into permanent housing remains a challenge.

That leaves an important question for Chico:

If we are spending millions of dollars across housing and homelessness programs, how much of that investment is actually increasing the number of places where people can live?

The 2025–26 CAPER gives us some of the numbers needed to begin answering that question.

And for the specific CDBG/HOME affordable-housing production goal reported in this year’s CAPER, the number of new units was: