SHELTERING SOLUTIONS IMPROVING, OFFICIALS SAY
CHICO >> Amid what local housing administrators have referred to as a worsening homelessness crisis, Chico’s mayor and vice mayor said Thursday Butte County is doing well for shelter beds compared to other counties.
Mayor Andrew Coolidge said his goal was to bring California data about how Butte County’s Continuum of Care shelter bed data compares to all 44 Continuum of Care systems in the state, forward to inform the community about current sheltering opportunities. The data he quoted is from the state’s Continuum of Care website under the California Department of Housing and Urban Development accumulated 2019-2020 which was last updated April 2020 as newer data is not available.
“Solutions are drawing near,” Coolidge said, adding he wants the state and governor to help with more solutions.
The data he used shows of a countywide population of 219,186 in 2019, 931 beds were available year round, a percentage of 0.425%. This compared to a percentage of 0.14% in Yuba City and Yuba County combined with Sutter County and 0.132% in Glenn, Colusa and Trinity counties. It also places Chico 10th out of 44 Continuum of Care systems, above the one in Humboldt, Marin, Imperial and Sacramento counties at the time.
Coolidge acknowledged this is not current data and does not take into account multiple factors such as current numbers of local unsheltered individuals and the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic (which caused the Torres Shelter to restrict access to new clients for a period of time). Vice Mayor Kasey Reynolds added the data also does not necessarily include beds provided at religious or private organizations which do not use state or federal funds and may not report to the Continuum of Care.
Coolidge and Reynolds said they had not spoken about the data to the Butte County Continuum of Care’s chair and vice- chair, Anastacia Snyder and Ed Mayor, respectively.
“We realize that just because we rank 10th in the state on a percentage basis for beds that does not mean that we don’t have an issue, as it is evident we do,” Coolidge said.
“We must be careful that the kindness present in our community and that lack of beds in surrounding areas does not make us a destination for service in the years to come.”
Reynolds added several sheltering solutions are becoming more available as restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic have loosened in Butte County.
“We are constantly being asked and accused of not doing enough,” Reynolds said. “Please know many, many hours of meetings, hard work are constantly happening while we’re working on forward solutions, while in large part the state has made it difficult at every single turn.”
Reynolds said the Torres Shelter will open with 60 beds, doing temperature checks before allowing people to enter. The facility’s expansion of an additional 50 beds is also approved although the timeline has not yet been set.
She also mentioned the Jesus Center’s move to the new location Renewal Center in April or May for 60 beds of sober sheltering, although the Jesus Center will no longer have open access sheltering or onsite meals and showers available to those not in the sober shelter.
Another 40 to 50 noncongregate beds will be open at Chico Housing Actions Team’s lease of the Town House Motel, when that facility moves forward, which was approved to use $282,933 of Community Development Block Grant Coronavirus federal funding from the state, when the city receives it. If the nonprofit purchases the property, additional beds could be built, Reynolds said.
The nonprofit is also working on Everhart Village with Butte County Behavioral Health, with hopes for 20 to 25 tiny home units off Rio Lindo Avenue in Chico to be completed in December.
Additionally, countywide, 1,192 affordable housing units have been approved to begin moving forward, with 621 to be built in Chico and two complexes breaking ground, to hopefully be completed by 2023.
Housing authority disagrees
The statements made Thursday by city leadership met with disagreement from county housing administrators who have studied the crisis for years and say the two disastrous fires contributed to the crisis’ severity.
Butte County Continuum of Care Chair Anastacia Snyder said the data needs more context for examination.
“We just want to make sure accurate information is presented,” Snyder said. “For example, if this is (Point in Time) numbers, which I believe they may be, they represent a number of different kinds of bed in our county, such as Emergency Housing, Transitional Housing, Rapid Rehousing and Permanent Supportive Housing, many of which are filled and not emergency shelter in nature.”
Ed Mayor said even with just a rough assessment possible this year — with the Point in Time survey on hold due to the pandemic — there are many more displaced by not just the Camp Fire, but the North Complex fires in 2020.
“Prior to the Camp Fire, we had an effective vacancy rate of 0 percent,” he said, “and 900 to 1,100 households without regular shelter, in the whole county.”
After the fire, which displaced about 50,000 people, he said two subpopulations, those insured and those not, emerged. Those who weren’t insured were very likely to be in the extremely low income bracket, “with no resources and no recourse.”
As a result of both fires, “Our estimate is as many as 6,000 to 7,000 households still living in the Chico and Oroville area are not in housing …. who are living in trailers, tents,” Mayor said, adding about 500 school aged children are homeless.
He also pointed to the most recent Butte County Point in Time data which has shown the majority of people who are unhoused have lived in Butte County for years.
“That’s who we see in our parks, in addition to that original population,” he said. “The homeless crisis if anything is growing. Because of the basic systemic socioeconomic issues in our society.”
“Butte County, by nature of the fires, accentuated that picture of a lack of available housing,” he added.
“We haven’t given displaced households a place to go, a sanctuary place. Even if we wanted to provide a house to everyone homeless, there aren’t enough houses out there,” he said, cited available quantity, pricing and capacity.
Those who are the most vulnerable, like the elderly, disabled, victims of abuse, veterans and homeless youth, always lose, he said — “Anyone shy of resources, family and friends.”
Mayor said two strategies must be followed, a triage center where people can stay for transitional housing, like a sanctioned campground with services, and then building much more housing. When asked by Point in Time survey workers in 2019 what they would choose for shelter if given only one option, 69% of those surveyed wanted a small house or tiny home, followed by a shared apartment or house.
“The demand for studio and one bedroom units outstrips supply by about 10 to 1,” Mayor said. “The bad news is, we estimate while producing those units, to truly stabilize our area’s population it might take as many as 6,000 units.”
He said the county’s “earnest hardworking service providers are doing the best they can to do as much possible with as few resources we have.
“As much as we’re doing, it’s not enough.”
WASHINGTON >> The Senate voted on Thursday to advance President Joe Biden’s nominee for health secretary as Democrats muscled past Republican opposition using a new procedure put in place to avoid gridlock in the evenly divided Senate.
The Senate Finance Committee split along party lines, 14-14, earlier this month on the nomination of Xavier Becerra. While a tie vote in the past has often stalled a nomination, it proved to be more of a speed bump for Democrats than a stop sign under the Senate’s new rules.
Senate Majority Leader C hu c k Schumer, D -N .Y . , forced a vot e to discharge Becer ra’s nom i n a - tion Thursday that succeeded 51- 48. The vote clears the way for floor debate on confirming him to the position.
“I’m perplexed that none of my Republican colleagues would vote for him,” Schumer said before the vote. “He’s a capable man. He’s worked hard to make sure that people get health care.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., noted that Biden’s prior Cabinet nominees had so far received bipartisan support.
“There’s a reason Mr. Becerra could not get one single Republican vote to move out of committee,” McConnell said. “It’s because he’s such a thoroughly partisan actor with so little subject matter expertise.”
The action puts Biden one step closer to filling the top position at the Department of Health and Human Services, a department that is playing a key role in the federal response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, was the lone Republican to vote for advancing Becerra’s nomination.
Becerra now serves as California’s attorney general and previously represented the Los Angeles area for more than 20 years in the U.S. House. As attorney general, he specialized in trying to block Trump administration actions, filing nine lawsuits alone on Trump’s final full day in office and taking the Trump administration to court more than 120 times in four years.
Sen. Ron Wyden, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, cited Becerra’s experience as a lawmaker on the House Ways and Means Committee and as attorney general while urging the Senate to support Schumer’s discharge motion. He said that Becerra has been in charge of a $1 billion budget and more than 4,000 employees.
“This is the work of somebody who really knows how to run a mammoth government agency,” Wyden said.
Republicans voiced concern about Becerra’s record in support of abortion rights. Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., said Becerra as attorney general “aggressively crusaded in favor of abortion” and repeatedly inserted California into abortion litigation involving other states.
At first, it was expected to be brief. At least that was the hope.
Instead, a once-in-a- century pandemic has ground on for a year, throwing millions out of work and upending wide swathes of the American economy. Delivery services thrived while restaurants suffered. Home offices replaced downtown offices. Travel and entertainment spending dried up.
The job losses were swift and harsh. But they hardly fell equally across the economy. Black and Hispanic workers fared worse than others. And many women, mostly mothers, felt compelled to quit the workforce to care for children being schooled online from home. Despite the job cuts, Americans as a whole socked away a record level of savings, buoyed by government aid to the unemployed and income that higher- paid workers, hunkered down at home, managed to squirrel away.
After a year of ghostly airports, empty sports stadiums and constant Zoom meetings, growing signs suggest that the economy is strengthening. Hiring picked up in February. Business restrictions have eased as the pace of viral infections has ebbed. Yet the economy remains far from normal.
Here’s where things stand at the one-year mark:
Job market reshaped
After a flood of layoffs last spring when the economy shut down, more than half the job losses have been regained. Yet hiring since the summer has slowed. The economy still has 9.5 million fewer jobs than before the pandemic — more than were lost in the entire 2008-2009 Great Recession.
Nearly every industry has been hurt but some far more than others. Restaurants, airlines and hotels
have been devastated. The music industry, too, has taken a beating, with concert halls closed from New York to Nashville. The film industry has shed a huge proportion of jobs. Salons and dry cleaners have had to lay off many.
As more Americans have ordered dinners, groceries and household goods online, delivery drivers have emerged as the biggest source of job growth in the pandemic. Online retail has also created more work, mostly by boosting warehouse jobs.
For small businesses, a fight to survive
The “For Rent” signs on storefronts and offices around the world provided a sad illustration of COVID’s ruinous effect on small businesses. With government restrictions and fear of infection keeping consumers out of stores and restaurants, businesses that operate on narrow revenue streams struggled over the past year. Or they vanished altogether, putting millions out of work.
It’s not known how many U.S. businesses have permanently closed, but estimates from economists and the online review site Yelp suggest hundreds of thousands.
Many more may still fail. Womply, a provider of financial and other services to businesses, estimates that one-third to one-half of all bars remain closed in many states, along with at least a quarter of restaurants and a third of health and beauty businesses.
Travel industries hammered
Most travel-related industries suffered a horrendous 2020. Planes and airports were left all but empty. On April 14, the Transportation Security Administration screened just 87,000 passengers at U. S. airports — down a stunning 96% from the same day in 2019. Even early this month, screened passengers were still down 43% from a year earlier.
It’s not clear when — or whether — travel will fully recover. Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly said in December that business travel, a major source of airline revenue, was still down 90%.
Markets defy pandemic woes
Wal l Street soared through much of the pandemic after righting itself from its initial terrifying plunge. Now, nearly a year
after its rocket ride began in late March 2020, many fear that stock market gains might have gone too far, too fast.
Give much of the credit — or blame — for the market’s rally to the Federal Reserve, which slashed interest rates to record lows to help support the economy and financial markets. Ultra-low bond yields lifted hopes for corporate profits and fueled interest in stocks, especially the shares of the largest tech companies.
Entertainment shrivels
Movie theaters, concert halls, and sports stadiums stood largely empty last spring and summer in an initial attempt to help quell the pandemic. The absence of paying attendees cost the jobs of ticket-takers, concession-stand workers and lighting and sound technicians.
Performers were hurt in other ways, too: For musicians who made money performing at weddings or other private events, those side gigs also dried up.
Even as movie theaters have slowly reopened, often at limited capacity, their revenue remains deeply depressed, with many Americans still reluctant to spend two hours strangers.
indoors
Savings soar
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Online food delivery, retail save consumers
The pandemic emptied malls and restaurants and accelerated a trend toward online ordering and delivery. It’s far from clear that shoppers and diners will ever fully return to their old habits.
U. S. e- commerce sales have grown 22.5% faster than overall retail sales since the pandemic, according to Retail Metrics Inc. That’s up from 6% in the decade before the coronavirus.
Online services like curbside pickup, already embraced by discounters like Target and Walmart, were adopted by more stores, including Macy’s and Kohl’s. At the same time, U.S. demand for restaurant meal delivery jumped 137% last year, according to NPD Group. JustEatTakeaway.com, a leading platform in Europe, said its delivery orders more than doubled last year.
Government opens money spigot
With jobs decimated and many households’ incomes plunging, the federal government has stepped in with a flood of financial relief. That assistance has included over $1 trillion in direct checks and stepped-up unemployment aid, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
In a series of legislative packages that have doled out just over $ 4 trillion, the government has also provided forgivable loans to small business, rental assistance and support for health care providers. An additional $1.9 trillion is on the way with President Joe Biden’s economic rescue bill having just won congressional approval.
Much of the financial aid from the government has ended up not as consumer spending but as savings in Americans’ bank accounts, setting up a potential spending boom that could, in turn, speed economic growth.
The distribution of $600 stimulus checks in January, along with $300 in supplemental unemployment benefit aid, helped balloon Americans’ stockpile of cash saved to $3.9 trillion in January. That’s triple the pre-pandemic level.
Poorer households have been spending more of their aid. When $ 1,200 checks were distributed last spring, along with $ 600 in weekly federal jobless aid, Americans in the poorest one- quarter of households initially saved a portion of it. But by October, these households had spent most of it, according to research by the JPMorgan Chase Institute, suggesting that they needed the money for rent, food and other necessities.
Working from home
For years, experts predicted that faster broadband internet connections, video conferencing software and cloud computing would free many employees from the confines of an office and enable them to work from anywhere. It took a pandemic for that vision to become reality.
Before the pandemic, just 7% of Americans were doing their jobs from home, according a Labor Department survey. By last month, about 23% of employees were working remotely because of the pandemic, the government found. ( That figure excluded people who had been telecommuting before.)
Remote work seems sure to become more common after the pandemic. Many companies, mostly tech firms like Salesforce and Spotify, have said they will continue to allow remote work. Others, such as Goldman Sachs, expect a full return to the office.