Tipped off that both state and federal investigators have initiated a focus on potential criminal diversions of funds earmarked for homeless assistance programs, San Bernardino County officials this week embarked on a low-profile change in how it will go about seeking to put roofs over the heads of the region’s dispossessed.
By making a show of a sincere effort to house the homeless, county officials are hoping they can achieve tangible results in a short enough timeframe to dissuade the California Attorney General’s Office or the U.S. Department of Justice from following through with prosecutorial action against those who misappropriated money meant to get the indigent off the streets which was never applied toward the purpose for which it was intended. Many of the recipients of that money were closely associated with the county’s most powerful officials.
In the official tally of the homeless conducted in San Bernardino County on January 22 of this year, an exercise known as the 2026 Point-in-Time count conducted at the behest of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, a total of 3,718 adults and children were found to be experiencing homelessness within the county’s 20,105-square mile confines. That represents roughly 0.16677percent of the entire 2,229,418 population of the county, or one-and-two-thirds people for every thousand.
The strategy prepared by county staff and approved by the board of supervisors is one that is moving it toward more data-driven and targeted interventions rather than just expanding services across the board and without strict monitoring.
Some of the most notable elements in the plan include:
• Real-time tracking of shelter bed availability across the county;
• Regional analysis to identify disparities in services and homelessness rates;
• Stronger requirements for culturally competent care among providers; and
• Greater emphasis on programs with demonstrated success records.
Of some note and potential controversy is that despite the consideration that the lion’s share of homeless in San Bernardino County are men over the age of majority, the new program calls for intensified and specialized approaches specifically for senior citizens, women, youth and former foster youth, Native American populations, veterans and those who were recently arrested, jailed, imprisoned, placed on probation or paroled.
One of the more significant contextual details is that homelessness numbers in the county have declined for two consecutive years — something officials appear to be using as evidence that recent strategies may be having an effect.
According to the January 22, 2026 point-in-time count the total homeless population in 2025 was 3,718, down 3.1 percent from 3,837 in 2025. Because of multiple issues impacting how the count was carried out, that number might not be accurate. Based on the number of those homeless who were in shelters of some sort on January 22, the county’s unsheltered population was calculated at 2,448 in 2026, down from the 2,636 counted in 2025. That represented a downward trend of 7.1 percent. Those who are unsheltered generally stand higher risks related to health, safety, emergency services use, and mortality.
The comparison of 2026 homeless numbers with neighboring Riverside County is of some significance and relevance when considering the survey’s accuracy. Riverside reported an increase in homelessness in its 2026 count, while San Bernardino reported a decline.
The larger question going forward will be whether the county can maintain these reductions while housing costs, behavioral health challenges, and economic pressures continue affecting inland Southern California.
The county says the plan was shaped through community surveys, focus groups, and regional steering committees involving both residents and government stakeholders.
More than two-and-a-half years ago, on October 3, 2023, the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors approved providing $5 million to Water of Life Community Church from the county’s $15 million Housing Development Grant Fund. The funds went toward the CityLink Campus — a multi-use community homeless support outreach center and supportive housing site located at the corner of Arrow and Citrus on a 4.5-acre site in Fontana, which lies within the portion of the county represented by Second District Supervisor Jesse Armendarez.
Water of Life Community Church, founded in 1990 by Pastor Dan Carroll, is a non-denominational, charismatic, evangelical church based in Fontana. Its CityLink outreach campus, which was set up in 2009, is touted as one of the largest faith-based social service providers in San Bernardino County. Among its parishioners is Jesse Armendarez.
Armendarez, a successful real estate agent, in the years immediately following Fontana Mayor Acquanetta’s Warren’s jump from the city council to the mayoralty in 2010, established himself as one of her major campaign donors as well as a primary fundraiser for those on her political team. In 2014, Warren rewarded Armendarez by promoting him as a candidate for the Fontana Unified School District Board of Trustees. With the mayor’s backing and endorsement, and the application of his own money, Armendarez was elected to the school board. In 2016, again with Warren’s backing and endorsement, he ran successfully for a position on the city council. Armendarez instantly became a key member of Warren’s ruling coalition.
As a councilman Armendarez became heavily involved, as was Warren already, in the pursuit of publicly-subsidized housing and other efforts to mitigate homelessness in the community. As a city councilman, Armendarez held the adjunct position of vice chairman of the Fontana Housing Authority .
Warren, as well, served on multiple agencies, committees, subcommittees and joint powers authorities that were involved in seeking solutions to the homelessness crisis. One such appointment conferred on Warren was membership as a member/Fontana’s appointed voting representative on the San Bernardino Regional Housing Trust Board of Directors .
In their adjunct roles, both Armendarez and Warren found themselves seeking to tap into all available pools of affordabe housing/homeless assistance funding, both from governmental and charitable sources.
In 2020, Armendarez left the city council for an unsucessful run for Fifth District San Bernardino County supervisor. Two years later, when the boundaries for the county’s supervisorial districts were altered, Armendarez ran for Second District County supervisor, this time successfully.
Once Armendarez was settled in as county supervisor, he hired Warren, who after sixteen straight years remains in office as the longest-serving mayor in Fontana’s 74 year history, as the director of special projects on his county-paid staff.
Meanwhile, the Water of Life Community Church and its CityLink outreach campus were tapping into some heavy duty subsidizations, courtesy of the advocacy of the county’s Second District supervisor, a congregant of the church, and Fontana’s mayor, who also a Water of Life Community Church member. Armendarez was able to convince his board colleagues to go along with the aforementioned disbursement from the San Bernardino County Housing Development Grant Fund in October 2023 because, he said, “the estimated $13,000,000 project has a $5,000,000 funding gap.” In addition, the church received California State Round 2 Homeless Housing Assistance and Prevention Program funds routed through the county, a California State Family Homelessness Challenge Grant  and City of Fontana grants for  rental assistance, utility assistance, shelter programs.
Questions attend Warren’s role as the mayor of Fontana , her role as a director on the San Bernardino Regional Housing Trust Board of Directors  and as Armendarez’s director of special projects. Fontana pays annual administrative fees into the San Bernardino Regional Housing Trust, which makes the city eligible to compete for the trust’s gap financing. Simultaneously, she is a paid employee of the county supervisor whose district includes Fontana. As mayor, Warren holds considerable sway in governing a city with a direct financial stake in San Bernardino Regional Housing Trust decisions. As Armendarez’s speical projects advisor, she works inside the office of the county supervisor who is a member of her church’s congregation and whose district received $5 million in county funds for that church. As a voting San Bernardino Regional Housing Trust board director, she participates in the body that will decide which developers receive millions in regional housing gap financing. Beyond the basic question of whether a sitting elected mayor can simultaneously hold paid employment in the office of the county supervisor who represents that city at the county level, is what legal and ethical boundaries have been crossed when that mayor advocates for her city when it is competing against other cities for money from the same pool of grant-funding or funds earmarked for community projects and whether, when she is dealing with issues that directly impact Fontana’s interests or her church’s interests, she can be fair to the other entities competing for the same resources.
On the surface, it appears that Warren had at least an ethical conflict of interest if not a technically legal one. Her influence in pushing the county’s vote to provide the $5 million to Water of Life Community Church appears manifest. Warren publicly credits Water of Life with playing “a pivotal role” in Fontana’s homelessness strategy on her mayoral website. The $5 million county grant to Water of Life came from the board on which Armendarez — her employee’s boss — sits. As his director of special projects at the time, it certainly appears she was involved in advancing or recommending that grant. Warren does not recuse herself from San Bernardino Regional Housing Trust votes involving Fontana. Indeed, she has touted her effectiveness in representing Fontana on the San Bernardino Regional Housing Trust Board of Directors.
Warren built Armendarez into the political colossus he has now become. Armendarez now controls county housing dollars flowing into institutions Warren built. Warren now sits on the board that controls the next round of regional housing dollars. And she does all of this from inside a county supervisor’s office, drawing a county paycheck, while running the city which hosts a project or projects that compete for those same dollars.
What has been promised at the CityLink Campus through the project’s master plan perhaps explains why and justifies the public participation in the effort. According to that master plan, Building 1  is to house  support services, classrooms, food pantry, counseling rooms and showers. It was supposed to be completed by mid-to-late 2024. One report is that the project  is now near completion, funded in significant part by the $5 million county grant. Building 2, a three-story structure envisioned to hold up to 36 apartments, was to be completed by 2027-28. Whether the funding to complete the facility has materialized is subject to question, and the best prediction now is that phase 2 will not reach completion until 2029, if ever. The revelation that the county put up the $5 million in state funds, some of which originated with the federal government, on the basis of a fraudulent assurance given in 2023 that there was $8 million in hand to cover nearly 62 percent of what was then the total estimated $13 million project cost is what is now animating state and federal authorities.
At the very least, given their efforts to obtain public funding for Water of Life Community Church, the delay in completion and possible abandonment of the homeless shelter project has raised doubts about Armendarez’s and Warren’s judgment. Others, particularly Armendarez’s and Warren’s political opponents, see something far more serious in what occurred, extending to suggestions of criminal culpability.
The circumstance with the Water of Life Community Church is but one example where money intended to assist the homeless has been diverted into the pockets of greedy conmen and developers who promise the world and deliver nothing while kicking back to politicians, critics of San Bernardino County governance say.
In the highly partisan atmosphere of San Bernardino County, there are doubters who have read something sinister in the way in which Armendarez and Warren, who are both Republicans, have taken money from certain deep-pocketed developmental interests, who are themselves affiliated with the GOP, and then provided them with public money to build affordable housing or homeless shelters that have yet to materialize.
“Republican Jesse Armendarez has been caught hiding the source of his contributions in direct violation of California’s campaign finance laws,” the San Bernardino County Democratic Party stated. “Armendarez is another cynical, lying, corrupt politician backed by secret special interests hiding in the shadows.”
While both the executive and legislative branches of the federal government are currently under Republican control, state government in California is dominated by the Democratic Party, such that every state constitutional position, including that of the California attorney general, is held by a Democrat and the Democrats have a supermajority in both houses of the state legislature.
With the California Attorney General’s Office reviewing the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors’ decisions with regard to how money entrusted to the county for the purposes of creating low-cost housing and homeless shelters, how some of that money ended up being provided to the friends and associates of – and political donors to – the supervisors and whether that housing was ever built, the board of supervisors on Tuesday voted to approve the 2026 San Bernardino County Homeless Strategic Plan, an update of what it had done in 2022.
In taking the action on May 19, 2026, it did so without fanfare, approving the plan as an item on the board meetings consent calendar. The consent calendar is reserved for what public officials deem to be non-controversial issues. By placing the item on the consent calendar and asserting the plan was derived using input from individual and collective residents throughout the county, those impacted by homelessness in the community at large based on regional steering committees, focus groups and surveys, the board avoided any overt attention being drawn to the underlying issues that if exposed could complicate matters for county officials and become further grist for the California Attorney General’s Offices investigative mill.
-Mark Gutglueck