Continuum of Care will be reviewed
Chico city manager says ‘things have been mended’ regarding program
CHICO >> Chico staff will be reviewing Butte County’s Continuum of Care, as statewide audits argue these systems have often failed at being effectively managed.
Chico’s Mayor Andrew Coolidge asked for a review of the Continuum of Care at the March 2 meeting of the Chico City Council, which he said is another instance where he wants to review the agency and its transparencies.
Emails obtained by the Enterprise-Record exchanged between City Manager Mark Orme and staff of the Continuum of Care indicate some disagreement in meetings with the city’s enforcement of its revised park ordinance and how the enforcement operations sweeping parks and city lots affect unsheltered people living in camps.
In an email to the staff of the continuum on Jan. 12, Orme described a situation of what he called attempted criticism of Homeless Solutions Coordinator Suzi Kochems — who had not been on the call at the time — and a miscommunication about a flyer his personal information was on.
“She got onto the (continuum) meeting as soon as possible and found there had been a deliberate attempt to criticize her for not being at the meeting and she was also confronted with an aggressive criticism of the city of Chico for the actions being taken to enforce the new Parks Rules and Regulations Ordinance,” Orme wrote.
He added a flyer had been circulated with his name and phone number on it, as a resource for people to “understand their ‘rights’”, as he put it, which the continuum claimed to have no knowledge of. He was told Legal Services of Northern California had circulated the flyer, for which Housing and Homeless Administrator Don Taylor apologized and took full responsibility for his staff, adding the legal services agency is an
attendee and participant, not a member of the Continuum.
“I will continue to encourage the county to step up to help in this entire issue of creating avenues for success on delivering essential social services, mental health services that they receive funding for (or are the fiduciary of such funding) to help service providers find long term solutions to these controversial and vital issues that have been trying on this city and region,” Orme added in his email.
Orme added Wednesday, “The city staff continues to work with the continuum attempting to collaborate where we can. As a whole the city looking to better understand the Continuum of Care system and governance.”
Of the former miscommunication, he added, “I think things have been mended since then.”
In response Ed Mayor, executive director of the county’s Housing Authority and vice-chair of the Continuum of Care, said Wednesday the city has every right to ask about what the continuum does and how.
“We think of ourselves as the Switzerland of homelessness,” he said. “That means any party can come to us with services, and we will do everything we can to optimize coordinating services throughout the county and that includes the city of Chico.”
“The (Continuum of Care) is taking limited resources and doing its best to distribute them equitably,” Mayor added.
“The Housing Authority perspective is we think we’re only able, with the resources we’re provided, to serve one in 10 who are homeless. We’re doing a terrific job with the money we have, but it falls far short of what’s needed.
“We’re outmanned and outgunned … with a terrible homelessness crisis, that’s terribly aggravated and magnified by the Camp Fire disaster,” as well as the impacts of the North Complex fires, he said.
State audits
Statewide, Continuum of Care systems have been found to be lacking efficacy in multiple ways, according to the California State Auditor Elaine M. Howle’s Feb. 11 report “The State’s Uncoordinated Approach to Addressing Homelessness Has Hampered the Effectiveness of Its Efforts.”
The auditor did not name Butte County’s Continuum of Care in any part of the report but found the state’s approach to combating homelessness “fragmented.” And the state currently does not have a comprehensive understanding of how it is spending state funds to address homelessness, with no single state entity that comprehensively tracks the sources of funding, the intended uses, or related expenditures for these programs.
California also does not currently have a statewide system to collect data on local or statewide efforts to combat homelessness, and falls short of providing adequate support and guidance to effectively address homelessness locally. In fact, Continuum of Care operations are largely unsupervised by any state agency.
The state is making an effort to establish a statewide data warehouse. In November 2020, the Business, Consumer Services and Housing Agency contracted with a firm to design, develop, implement and support the Homeless Data Integration System. According to the contract, the system will provide a statewide data warehouse to produce an unduplicated count of those experiencing homelessness in California, gain insights into the characteristics of people experiencing homelessness, determine patterns of service use and evaluate the impact of and gaps in services.
At least nine state agencies provided funding through 41 programs to address homelessness in California during the past three years. The auditor noted the homeless council “has not prioritized” coordination of existing funding and applications for competitive funding, and recommended having a single entity work with different state agencies that administer programs to provide homelessness funding, to better understand how funds are being used. Such information could be used to better allocate various funding sources more effectively to build on projects demonstrating successful outcomes and make informed policy decisions.
“Although the state established the Homeless Coordinating and Financing Council (homeless council) in 2017 to coordinate existing state and federal funding, among other goals, the homeless council lacks a comprehensive approach to do so,” the report added. “It also has not taken steps to prioritize all of its numerous goals and has not yet finalized its action plan that it asserts will help the homeless council pursue the state’s work to prevent and end homelessness.”
The auditor added according to homeless council staff, the homeless council “likely still lacks the necessary resources” to be able to address all goals. Although the homeless council requested and received additional staff in the state’s fiscal year 2020-2021 budget, staff explained that as of January it is still in the process of filling 10 vacant positions. Staff stated even with these positions filled, they believe the homeless council likely will not have enough staff to achieve all goals.
On Tuesday, the Butte County Board of Supervisors approved a plan the continuum was involved in with Chico to create a new sheltering solution and use anticipated COVID-19 relief funds. A date has not yet been set by Chico city staff to follow Coolidge’s request to review the Butte County Continuum of Care.