It would not at all be hyperbole to say that the County of Lake majorly dropped the ball with their poor handling of the premature closure of the Elijah House shelter in Lakeport last week.
As referenced in recent discussions at the Board of Supervisors, the Oroville-based Elijah House Foundation, which had been under contract to operate the shelter for the county since 2020, announced that they would close the facility on Sept. 4, 2022. but would continue to provide case management services at their office located in Lucerne.
The reason given for the Lakeport shelter closure located at the old Juvenile Hall facility is that the nonprofit can no longer afford the $50,000 to $70,000 a month it costs to run the shelter. Even though Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention (HHAP) grant funds from the state have enabled the county to fund the Emergency Shelter in Lakeport and the shelter/transitional housing in Clearlake (Hope Center), the contractor has pulled out of Lake County. In December 2021, the County of Lake and Lake County Continuum of Care allocations were respectively, $569,940 and $610,650.
The Supervisors have asked from the Behavioral Health Services for better oversight and accountability from contractors providing services to the county in the future and we concur. A third round of HHAP funding has been approved, but we feel the public needs more transparency and periodic updates of how these funds are being administered.
The LCCoC and Lake County Behavioral Health Services announced on their website last month the availability of $300,000 through the HHAP rounds two and three program to provide operations of the COVID Emergency Shelter in the North Shore area of Lake County. They added that the parameters of the program are for persons experiencing homelessness including 10% set aside for youth. The deadline for applications came and went and two entities were said to have responded to the county’s Request for Proposal, but a committee is still reviewing them, the major sticking point appears to be the needed funding to run the shelter.
The Lucerne Area Town Hall’s Chair Kurt McKelvey revealed at a meeting of the advisory council last week that Elijah House had been unresponsive to his requests to address the community about their plans for the Lucerne facility. McKelvey stated that the advisory council was initially informed that the facility would be used as an administrative office and not used as a place for people to live, except under emergency circumstances, but the location has been operating as a Sober Living Environment, despite no indications or direction from the county that it was permitted to do so. Moreover, McKelvey invited Elijah House President/CEO Joseph Henderson to speak at Thursday’s Lucerne Area Town Hall meeting but he was a no show, not for the first time.
Perhaps most egregious, as this editorial goes to print, several elderly residents of the Lakeport shelter who had originally been told they would be permitted to stay at the shelter until September 4, are currently staying in a Lucerne hotel, collectively having spent over $1,000 each in the week which has passed since they were prematurely displaced from the Lakeport shelter. We think this is unconscionable, considering talks of more funding coming from the state and in light of Tuesday’s meeting where it was mentioned the county has $10 to $12 million in budget surplus.
—The Editorial Board, Lake County Record-Bee
