LA MESA MOVES FORWARD WITH OUTREACH PLAN FOR HOMELESS
Council approves program that includes full-time case worker and a mental health expert
LA MESA John Jacoby said he catches two buses each morning from Linda Vista to reach his favorite spot in La Mesa: Collier Park. There, in the shade of eucalyptus, sycamore and jacaranda trees, Jacoby sits at a picnic bench, reads the newspaper and catches up with friends.
Homeless since his wife passed away in 2005, the graying Vietnam veteran with blue eyes says he is doing alright despite suffering from PTSD and other mental and emotional health challenges. Jacoby said he remains hopeful that at some point soon he will be able to find the help he needs, and maybe even a place to call home again.
The 66-year-old said he loves La Mesa. For homeless people like Jacoby, right now that city seems to be a better place than most.
The La Mesa City Council on Tuesday unanimously approved a program called HOME — Homeless Outreach Mobile Engagement — that specifically reaches out to homeless individuals to offer help and hope. The program will be modeled on a system
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that has been in place for 31 years in Eugene, Ore., called “CAHOOTS” (Crisis Assistance Helping Out On The Streets).
CAHOOTS is a mobile crisis intervention team serving Eugene and Springfield, Ore., that was designed as an alternative to police response for non-violent crises, including mental illness, homelessness and addiction. CAHOOTS workers are not trained in law enforcement and do not have the same authority as police but works in partnership with police in those cities.
Assistant City Manager Carlo Tomaino and acting Police Chief Matt Nicholass told the City Council that HOME will be rolled out in two phases.
The first phase involves reaching out to its part-time partner, People Assisting The Homeless, working with the group to broaden its homeless outreach services. The city will direct PATH to provide a full-time outreach worker and a fulltime mental health expert for up to a year.
Earlier this year, the City Council authorized staff to use a little over $260,000 in Community Development Block Grant Coronavirus funds for homeless services. That money will go toward expanding PATH hours and personnel assigned to work with the La Mesa homeless population as well as provide transitional housing services and other activities to support the program.
PATH currently works part time in La Mesa under a grant provided through the San Diego Regional Task Force on the Homeless with one-time state Homeless Emergency Aid Program funding. Using the block grant money will allow PATH to broaden its scope, increase its hours and work more closely with the La Mesa Police Department in outreach efforts.
The second phase will be an in-house HOME program with the ongoing support of the Police Department, Nicholass explained. That will include the city hiring a full-time outreach worker and a medical professional to work between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. Monday through Friday to be part of the HOME team.
As part of that second phase, La Mesa will outfit a dedicated vehicle for the outreach team to directly connect it with Police Department dispatch services. The team will coordinate daily with the police and address as many calls as necessary. Nicholass said the outreach team is expected to handle about half of the Police Department’s calls for service that are related to homelessness and mental health — five to 10 calls a day.
Nicholass said that in 2019 La Mesa police handled 2,182 calls for service related to homelessness — 3.3 percent of all calls for service that year, and a 14 percent increase in calls related to homelessness compared to 2018.
He said that last month, from a sample of 275 calls related to homelessness that the Police Department received, 159 of those could have been handled by a CAHOOTS-LIKE response. He also said that La Mesa officers responded to 353 mental health calls for service in 2018, 394 in 2019 and 208 through August 2020.
It is hoped that the phased-in HOME plan will free up the police from homeless calls that are nonthreatening in nature, and allow it to reallocate its time to focus on community policing efforts, community engagement programs and core services.
Staff estimates the firstyear cost of the program will be $220,000 to $250,000, with a recurring annual cost of $169,000 to $180,000, but Nicholass reminded the City Council that there are several different types of grants that La Mesa may be eligible for that could offset program costs.
Those include Permanent Local Housing Allocation funds (estimated to be about $200,000 per year) and future Community Development Block Grant funds.
karen.pearlman@ sduniontribune.com