2015 Census Results Show Major Decline in Homelessness in Santa Cruz County

L.A. City Council OKs crackdowns on homeless encampments
http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-homeless-sweeps-20150624-story.html

An overwhelming majority of the city's 26,000 homeless people live in the streets. Shelter directors and housing experts say their facilities are full and there is nowhere else for homeless people to go.

The new measures — one governing streets and sidewalks, the other parks — allow authorities to take homeless people's property on 24-hour notice even if they are present and claiming it. "Bulky" items, such as sofas and mattresses, can be confiscated and destroyed with no warning. Homeless people, under a court order, can sleep in the streets from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m., but their tents must be taken down and stored in the daytime.

Seized property will be impounded for 90 days, but the city's only storage facility is on skid row. Advocates complain it's a long haul for those living in other areas of the city.

Given the habitual, forceful drive for counter-productive criminalization (of others) as a central piece of Santa Cruz's 'final solution' (for others), it's surprising to see how little criminalization (of others) is mentioned. Graphs for citations and incarcerations are easy enough, as well as graphs for the wasteful costs of such efforts. Perhaps it's too shameful?

I took part in the Point In Time count this year. My experience showed me that the count is a HUGE UNDERCOUNT. I had a massive area to count from Western Drive to Waddel Creek; from Hwy 1 to Empire Grade. I ask you to take a few seconds to imagine that massive space and all of the nooks and crannies where people might be hiding/camping. Then imagine having fewer than 4 hours to count the people experiencing homelessness in that zone. I did find several veins of camping communities that I didn't previously know existed, but it would've been humanly impossible to count that zone if I had two full days, let alone four hours.
Take the "reduction" of the homeless population with a grain of salt. We'll have to hear about this for the next 2 years, but is it true? I doubt it.

Gimme Shelter!

“Oh, a storm is threat'ning
My very life today
If I don't get some shelter
Oh yeah, I'm gonna fade away”

Beginning at the federal level and transecting almost every effort to support people experiencing homelessness, the “housing first” model has become the mantra for the new “best practices” approach to creating positive outcomes for the homeless community. Notwithstanding my belief that the best practices approach is simply lazy arithmetic when applied to a homeless population that is widely divergent in so many respects, I have serious questions about whether “housing first” is the best, most practicable option? I think not and I’ll tell you why.

In Santa Cruz, we have an institutional group wrestling with a best practices based program called “Smart Solutions” to homelessness. This group, which includes civic leaders, faith community members, local homeless services agency representatives and large nonprofit public benefit organization stakeholders is advocating for a “housing first” model as an answer to the challenge of sheltering our many unhoused residents. However, in my view this approach is impractical in that it all but ignores the present reality of our local housing market and, worst of all, is seemingly heedless to the size, character and complexity of our local homeless community.

According to the recently released 2015 Homeless Census and Survey, there are approximately 2,000 men, women and children unsheltered in Santa Cruz County every night. As an aside, that number is openly acknowledged by the census takers themselves to be underestimated by as much as 50%! And yet in the entire county there are fewer than 700 emergency shelter beds available. And of these, less that 200 can be accurately described as “emergency” short term shelter spaces. In this landscape, advocating for housing first while ignoring the vast, crushing need for simple, safe shelter space is like advocating for a “rehabilitation first” model for those suffering from drug addiction in the absence of any existing programs for that purpose. Simply leaving the most vulnerable to their own devices is not only foolish as policy, it is inhumane in practice. And it’s not just advocates like myself who are giving voice to this systemic problem. Homeless people themselves have been consistently vocal on the issue.

Every Monday night, Calvary Episcopal Church in Santa Cruz, known by all as the “Red Church”, hosts a coffeehouse and meal for between about 100 members of our local homeless community. I help out as a server and we often speak of the need for shelter and the lack of real housing. One comment I hear often is “I’ve been on the waiting list for Section 8 housing for months and don’t know if I’ll ever get housing” or “Even if I get my voucher landlords in Santa Cruz don’t want to rent to a person like me” or “Housing? You’ve got to be kidding. I’m just trying to find some shelter at night” and “All the money they say they are spending on housing. What about some shelter space?” These comments are not in the least unusual and reflect the frustration that permeates the homeless experience in this regard. Yet the glaring lack of safe, available nightly shelter receives scant consideration when “smart solutions” are so singularly focused on a “housing first” model.

And here let me draw the critical distinction between “shelter” and “housing”. Even the most ambitious housing programs, such as the 100,000 Homes Campaign, can only hope to successfully house even a fraction of our HUD defined chronically homeless population. In Santa Cruz, the local campaign partner, 180/2020, has housed 200 plus individuals during the past two and a half years. A fine thing but what of the other 90% of people experiencing homelessness who don’t even qualify for such a program and yet have a continuing, nightly need for safe shelter? And here’s my point. The finite financial resources available to programs created to shelter people experiencing homelessness are almost entirely being devoted to “housing” them. Where are the programs that build shelter space capacity to accommodate the vast majority of our homeless population? Where are the year-round “walk up” shelters? Where are the armory style shelters? Where are the designated family shelters? Where are the Safe Spaces Recreational Vehicle Parking Programs for the vehicularly housed? Where are the Sanctuary-style villages that could provide transitional shelter for those needing a temporary starting point for reentry into the employment market? These options are being ignored, or at the very least discounted out of hand. And this is precisely why “housing first” models are structurally unsound. They do not, and cannot, differentiate between the varied and distinct needs of individual groups within the homeless community. Not every person experiencing homelessness wants to be “housed”. Many would welcome a safe “shelter” space but are not prepared to assume the responsibility that housing imposes. And here I hasten to add that the overarching preference for a housing first model is not borne of statutory or resource restriction but rather is solely driven by political will. Indeed, existing law favors the establishment of a “shelter” first model.

Senate Bill 2 is a California statute enacted in 2008 that provides for designated zoning for emergency shelters. But more than that, it provides that any property or site in a community may be so designated if there is “insufficient shelter space” for the total number of people experiencing homelessness in that community. In Santa Cruz and Santa Cruz County, that means that walk up or armory style emergency shelters can be established anywhere in the city or county without government approval because (and here’s where the arithmetic is not lazy), we have less that 700 emergency shelter beds to serve a population of at least 2,000.

In our homeless community there is a “storm threatening their very lives” everyday. And although many members of mainstream society wish they would simply “fade away”, we must not waiver in the humanitarian effort to recognize their presence and support their needs. There are many men and women of good will who believe that a “housing first” model is the best hope for doing just that and my words here should not be taken to demean those good faith efforts. But in our national rush to house we must not abandon the vision of creating safe shelter space as a fundamental part of a holistic approach to creating positive outcomes for people experiencing homelessness.