The annual progress report on efforts to address California’s homelessness crisis on the North Coast was presented during a live town hall held by the California Senate, on Tuesday. According to Senator Mike McGuire, who represents the Counties of Trinity, Del Norte, Humboldt, Lake, Mendocino, Sonoma and Marin in the Senate, and who conducted the meeting, the state has recently launched “the largest, boldest homeless housing plan in our state’s history. That was about 24 months ago.”
McGuire said the state will make a bigger effort over the next three years focusing on data driven solutions. “It’s called Housing First – get a homeless resident a permanent home, wrap that home with mental health and addiction services, and get them back on their feet.”
Hundreds of new permanent supportive housing units, all wrapped with addiction and mental health services, have been built between the Oregon border and the Golden Gate Bridge. Dozens of additional permanent housing units in Humboldt, Del Norte, Mendocino, Marin, Lake and Sonoma counties are under construction or will be built over the next 24 months, according to McGuire.
“We’re working day and night to get permanent housing built and to get folks off the street and connected to addiction and mental health services. Obviously, there’s a lot of work ahead – 161,000 Californians are calling the streets of our communities home, in big and small cities. This is simply unacceptable and appalling. We’ve made progress over the past many months, but it’s not enough. We must do more,” said McGuire. “We know that there’s a lot of work ahead. That’s why the State Senate, along with Gov. (Gavin) Newsom, has been investing record funding, including a groundbreaking $12 billion mostly invested in permanent supportive housing in the coming 36 months. We’re going to be adding another $2 billion to that this year to build additional housing and creating new jobs, helping to lift homeless residents out of poverty by offering them a career in cattle trains. The state will be hiring over 10,000 formerly homeless residents and formerly incarcerated residents.”
The event brought together two experts on the matter: the Deputy Director at California’s Department of Housing & Community Development, Geoffrey Ross, responsible for the deployment and engagement of federal housing and community development resources within the State of California, to include long-term Disaster Recovery funds and COVID-19 Relief funding; and the Grants Director at California’s Interagency Council on Homelessness, Victor Duron, an executive leader in human services.
“There’s only one solution for homelessness, and that’s housing,” said Ross, adding that people have to understand what’s driving and creating this crisis. “Our current housing shortage is rooted in historical patterns of housing segregation, opposition to neighborhood change, insufficient land zoning and cuts in federal support,” he said. “The governor and the legislature are working together. Right now, the current proposal on the table is $9 billion for housing and another S8 billion for homelessness, another $431 million for our veterans housing program as well as $ 400 million for the No Place Like Home program.”
“In order to get folks from homelessness to housing and keep them there, there’s a variety of systems that need to come into play, and then need to collaborate,” said Duron. The Senator agreed: “The growing number of homeless residents in the state is most women with kids and women over the age of 65. It’s critical that we have a comprehensive look. We have to focus on where the need is greatest.”
“A lot of the flexible funding that we’ve provided is to what we refer to as barrier reduction. Reducing the barriers to access to a shelter, and that includes making sure that there’s a place to store your property, so that folks aren’t afraid that if they go to a shelter, their handful of belongings will get stolen, that there is a place to take care of their pets. This is part of the solution – making sure that people literally feel like they are better off in one of the shelters that we’re building than in the encampments that they’re currently residing in,” said Duron.
