BEYOND HOMELESSNESS | UPDATE
Mayors Lee, Schaaf and Liccardo offer perspectives
About this project: One year ago, more than 80 news organizations formed the SF Homeless Project, a groundbreaking initiative to focus on our seemingly intractable homelessness crisis. This week, The Chronicle and our media partners will report on what has changed in the Bay Area over the last year and what more could be done to ease, if not end, the suffering of thousands of people living on our streets, and improve the quality of life for all residents. Since its formation, the award-winning SF Homeless Project has been emulated in several cities around the world.
Oakland: Boosting budget and services
Homelessness and housing insecurity are Oakland’s most pressing problems. Anyone who travels our streets knows homelessness is at a crisis level.
That’s why our proposed two-year budget invests $185 million to tackle homelessness in the immediate and long term. Our plan includes: Services for those living on the streets: While we work to transition unsheltered residents into supportive and permanent housing, the city is improving cleanups in and around encampments and adding health and hygiene services on site. Based on the lessons we learned from the Compassionate Communities pilot program, we are adding a dedicated encampment cleaning crew, as well as providing serviced portable toilets and trash pickup. The city is expanding outreach to those living on the streets and suffering from mental illness or addiction. We will help homeless individuals navigate the system to find temporary housing. We also will expand outreach and incentives to encourage landlord participation. Services for those in transitional housing: We intend to invest up to $14 million in a second Navigation Center. Such centers offer low-barrier-to-entry facilities with services that help homeless residents transition to self-sufficiency. Our existing Henry Robinson House has transitioned more than 80 percent of its residents into permanent housing. A second Navigation Center will allow the city to bring an additional 300 residents a year into safe, supportive housing, doubling the number of residents we serve. While the new Navigation Center is being built, the city is working to identify an appropriate site to offer a Safe Haven Outdoor Navigation Center — an outdoor site with security, sanitation and intensive services to facilitate access to permanent housing and other supports. Efforts to create housing for formerly homeless: Thanks to two new voter-approved bonds, Oakland will have 12 times more money to create protected affordable housing than two years ago. We’ll use it to create 200 new permanent supportive housing units, which will triple our current capacity to permanently house formerly homeless residents who are too disabled to work. We’ll also use this funding to protect vulnerable residents from displacement and create another 200 units permanently affordable to Oaklanders making less than $41,000 a year.
Efforts to prevent homelessness: Recent surveys show the most effective thing we can do to prevent homelessness is help tenants stay in their housing. That’s why we more than doubled dedicated funding for renter services and enforcing renters’ rights. Thanks to Oakland voters who overwhelmingly passed Measure JJ, Oakland expanded just-cause eviction and rent-control laws to protect thousands more renters. Property owners subject to rent control now must petition the city to raise rents above the annual allowable increase tied to the federal Consumer Price Index.
We need all hands on deck to end homelessness and fight this affordability crisis. I urge Oakland residents to go to EveryOneHome.org to sign up to join a working committee or donate funds to help deliver critical services.
Every Oaklander deserves safe, affordable housing. And every resident struggling with disabilities, mental illness or addiction deserves to be treated with dignity and care.
San Jose: Building on lessons learned
Nowhere does the painful irony of homelessness appear more palpably than in the heart of Silicon Valley, where more than 4,000 San Joseans lack a bed to sleep in each night. Our recent efforts have taught us a few important lessons:
1. There’s a cost to inaction. San Jose struggles to find dollars to build affordable housing in the nation’s most expensive construction market. Yet keeping people homeless costs even more. Beyond the horrific human toll, we can quantify the cost: $62,473 per individual a year to house just 10 percent of the biggest consumers of fire and police response, emergency rooms and jails. Getting that same individual housed reduces the public burden to about $20,000 annually.
2. We need more affordable housing. But we must build it differently. In San Jose, traditionally effective responses — such as rental subsidy programs — bump up against an extremely constrained supply. In addition to thousands of new market-rate units, San Jose added 325 rent-restricted affordable homes in the past year and a half. In the next year, we’ll fund 526 more.
Yet we’re still not building enough to meet the need. To overcome rising cost barriers of doing so, we need to embrace innovation.
This year, we’ve converted two motels into more than 100 apartments for the homeless, and we’ve obtained an exemption from California building codes to develop “tiny home” projects. We’ll launch an effort to provide transitional housing with prefabricated units with county-provided supportive services. We’re also learning more about how best to deliver those services — such as drug rehabilitation and mental health — by integrating them into new affordable housing.
3. We do better together. After years of nonprofit and public agencies tripping over each other, we’ve found that a focused, coordinated approach to getting chronically homeless individuals housed benefits all. Regional coordination has enabled us over four years
to reduce several chronically homeless and homeless veteran populations. (Our “All the Way Home” campaign aims to end homelessness among vets by 2018.) A sharp increase in homeless youth, however, reveals where we need to focus our energies next.
Collective action also enables expansion of resources. In 2015, the city of San Jose required market-rate developers to include affordable housing in their new developments and pay impact fees that will generate $20 million annually for the city. Santa Clara County Supervisors Cindy Chavez and Dave Cortese led a $950 million housing bond in November. Housing Trust Silicon Valley leverages millions of dollars in philanthropy to finance affordable housing.
Confronting our crisis requires getting everyone onto the playing field. We’ve housed more than 700 homeless veterans with the help of local nonprofits, the local housing authority, county, city, 24 faith organizations and 289 landlords. We need your help, too. Please go to http://destina tionhomescc.org/ allthewayhome. We’ve got much work to do — together.
San Francisco: A multifaceted policy
Homelessness has confronted every San Francisco mayor for the past 50 years. It is not a new, but an evolving, phenomenon. While the issues plaguing our streets are undeniable, they are not unique.
The surge of opiate abuse and addiction on the street, decreasing support from the federal government for affordable housing programs and the generational lack of home building has placed the Bay Area in the position we are today.
To meet this challenge, we need flexibility, adaptation and commitment. Homelessness is a complicated issue that requires a multifaceted approach. Our efforts provide targeted services and resources to the various segments of our homeless population.
Last July, I created the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, which has a singular focus of ending homelessness for every individual it touches. In the past year, the city has ended homelessness for 1,813 people and placed 750 people into permanent supportive housing.
In addition, we launched our Encampment Resolution Teams, whose mission is to move individuals from unsanitary living conditions to safe, stable situations. In the past year, these teams resolved 12 encampments, moving 359 people off our streets.
We also expanded our Navigation Center system. This national model provides support and resources to help place individuals into situations best suited for their needs. Nearly 70 percent of those who enter our centers are transitioned into permanent housing, moved into safe temporary placements or reunited with family.
In the next two years, we will build on the services we know are working while deploying new strategies to address changing conditions.
With the opening of the Dogpatch Navigation Center last month, and the planned opening of three new Navigation Centers in the next year, we are increasing the number of beds at those facilities by 149 percent. Among those will be the first Navigation Center tailored for individuals experiencing mental health issues and addiction.
We are expanding our outreach teams, which offer coordinated responses to homelessness issues, and stepping up our encampment resolution teams.
For families experiencing homelessness, we are adding nearly $2 million to open a new shelter and $3 million in rapid re-housing subsidies to avoid displacement. We have allocated $4 million to expand our city’s homeless child care program.
We are also increasing investments for youth homelessness programs to add drop-in hours at the SF LGBT Community Center and rental subsidies for vulnerable young adults. We will help move these young adults into homes and services.
By the end of this year, we have vowed to end chronic homelessness among military veterans, and by 2019 we are committed to finding housing for 800 families experiencing homelessness through our Heading Home campaign.
We are partnering with Tipping Point, a private nonprofit organization, on a $100 million initiative to reduce chronic homelessness by half during the next five years. Tipping Point will invest in and expand city programs with proven success.
Our approach to homelessness is one of compassion and common sense. This is the great challenge of our time, and San Francisco will rise to the task.