The San Benito County Board of Supervisors received a presentation Tuesday on a 10-year plan to end homelessness in the San Benito and Monterey county area – the outcome of 14 months of planning and meeting between stakeholder agencies in the region.
One of the key reasons to devise the 45-page plan is so that it better positions San Benito County to apply for federal or state grant funding.
“We are now part of the Monterey-Salinas-San Benito continuum of care,” said Enrique Arreola, the deputy director of Workforce and Community Development.
To open it up to more grant funding, the county had to join a continuum of care. The continuum includes government agencies and nonprofits from all the counties that are involved in eradicating the problem. The San Benito Homeless Coalition also had to conduct a census of the homeless population, which they did last winter.
Arreola said that the census found that 401 residents experience homelessness in the county annually, with 193 people living as homeless on any given night. Nearly 40 percent of those surveyed were living without shelter.
A third of the homeless had children living with them. More than half were men and more than half cited losing a job with the reason for their living situation. More than half also said they were homeless for the first time.
Glorietta Rowland, the executive officer of the Coalition of Homeless Service Providers, in Monterey County, discussed the key strategies of the plan, titled “Lead Me Home.”
“I had an opportunity over the summer to go visit some places here where some of the homeless residents congregate,” Rowland said.
She recalled meeting a woman on Park Hill who was homeless, and whose mother was also homeless. She said the woman was separated from her son, who was also homeless.
“Three generations of homeless,” Rowland said. “But she was excited because she had the opportunity to apply and was accepted, approved, for a housing program in Monterey County.”
Rowland talked about the idea of creating a “one-system culture” that would create common practices between all the agencies serving the homeless population. The goal is that all agencies would be using the same methods to process intake of clients, to offer case management and to monitor outcomes. The other goal is to make sure that all resources are being used, from identifying grants, local funding, private resources and more.
Rowland said that the focus of the plan is to create permanent housing opportunities for homeless residents.
“It’s emphasized in the federal administration,” she said. “It’s recognized that all the others are stop gaps. Permanent housing helps (people) immediately and then we can address the other issues.”
The strategies include first getting people into adequate housing through a focus on housing development for the target population, through finding new funding sources for the development of house and focusing on housing development for the target population. The next strategy is to offer services to people once they have housing to keep them in housing. The next is to look at ways to support economic stability through mainstream benefits, on-site support following job placement, and creating economic development opportunities for homeless or formerly homeless residents. The last strategy is to return people to housing such as those aged-out of foster care, discharged from hospitals or from incarceration.
She said that setting goals and strategies, as well as tracking outcomes, would also help the counties to position themselves for when federal funding is available.
Under the new continuum of care, the San Benito County Homeless Coalition has reapplied for funding on 11 permanent housing units. The announcement of those agencies to receive funding will come in February or March of next year.
Jason Satterfield, a staff attorney with HomeBase, out of San Francisco and Cynthia Nagendra, also a staff attorney, attended the meeting. The two offered support during the planning process.
“The key is implementation,” Satterfield said. “It offers structural support for government agencies to signal it is a priority. Resources are helpful, but money is tight. If you make a symbolic gesture to support it, it sets the expectation that it takes a place at the table.”
Margie Barrios, who was involved with the homeless plan Leadership Council in working on the plan, said that she supports the plan.
“I recommend that we support the resolution,” she said. “I want to make sure the work doesn’t sit on a shelf. While San Benito County numbers are small – it’s still growing.”
Anthony Botelho asked about plans for funding the strategies, noting that the San Benito County is strapped for money. He asked if the plan calls for looking at private, state or federal funds.
“The key part is that it positions the counties to better attract those resources,” Rowland said. “We know there’s no magic pot of money. We will go out and address needs. As a group we are looking at faith-based support.”
