New policy sought on homeless response
On top of 6-month action plan, Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors agenda focuses on new, safe shelters
Santa Cruz County’s homeless problem has only escalated in the last year, local elected officials such as Supervisor Ryan Coonerty readily admit.
“The county’s housing more than 600 people than we were at this time last year in motels and shelters and sleeping pods,”
Coonerty said. “But the problem is worse. It’s clear we need to increase our efforts.”
Coonerty, in collaboration with Supervisor Manu Koenig, intends to do something about the rising need for shelter with an agenda item ready for their peers on the Board of Supervisors to consider Tuesday. The two are seeking to direct the county’s health division of the Human Services department to work with other county staff in creating policy around temporary shelter, safe sleeping and parking opportunities.
Coonerty said Friday that there is interest from churches and nonprofit organizations to help with setting up multiple temporary housing sites in unincorporated areas of the county, but no specific spots have been identified.
“For too long, essentially the cities of Santa Cruz and Watsonville have borne the burden of providing most of the shelter for
homeless people in Santa Cruz County,” the supervisor and co-author of the report on the effort said. “I think that this is part of making it more equitable. Homelessness is a countywide if not a national issue, and we need the whole county to be part of the solution.”
Santa Cruz Mayor Donna Meyers calls the move an enormous step forward.
“As you know, we have a controversial ordinance in front of us. But that ordinance, in combination with these kinds of partnership efforts, is really what I think helps us put together a better system of care for people that we just haven’t (helped) yet,” Meyers said, adding that the cities of Santa Cruz and Watsonville account for at least 70% of the county’s shelter beds. “There are just no beds left in the city facilities, so we really need that distribution countywide.”
Coonerty said he thinks it’s possible to set up these sites by working together with community partners such as housing advocacy agencies. However, the epidemic that has resulted from a “perfect storm” of failed responses to inherent issues such as mental health disorders, drug use, a lack of housing and livable wages has been handed to local governments with very little resources.
“The city and county frankly cannot solve this issue, but we can do a better job of managing it and hopefully get federal and state support to take efforts further,” Coonerty said. “The systems have failed at the national level and local communities have been left to pick up the pieces. We just need help.”
Coonerty said that the creation of temporary shelters will be done with mindfulness of the coronavirus pandemic. County health experts will be involved with these sites just as they have with unmanaged camps like the one at Highway 1/Highway 9 and San Lorenzo Park, the former of which recently experienced a COVID-19 outbreak.
“The (agency) is doing its best with limited vaccine supply,” Coonerty said. “(The virus) is just one of the reasons why these unmanaged encampments are a bad idea. It’s unstructured and unsafe for both the people experiencing homelessness inside them and the community around them experiencing the impact. That’s why we have to have more managed shelters.”
Planning safe shelters is an important first step toward acknowledging the communal need, Meyers said.
“We have to stop ignoring (the issue), or trying to pretend that having people living the way we see them (near) Highway 1/Highway 9 is acceptable,” Meyers said.
A plan that won’t gather dust
Alongside the policymaking conversation, the Board of Supervisors will also hear the second reading of Housing for a Healthy Santa Cruz, the suggested strategic framework around tackling homelessness in the area and reduce it significantly over the next three years. With the plan comes a six-month implementation plan with tangible actions that will hold the jurisdiction accountable. It won’t be a plan that gathers dust, the leader ensured the Sentinel.
“We are doing our part by looking at creating much better systems and outcomes for our existing services so that when those dollars are invested we can make sure they’re spent well to serve those in need,” Coonerty said. “We’re really talking about everything from better casework and more caseworkers and housing navigation to better systems to track people entering our system to building more permanent supportive housing. It’s really the much more comprehensive approach.”
Bettering the county’s systems now will be vital to its survival beyond the pandemic, Meyers said.
“The problem is growing. More people will lose their homes because of COVID, because of (losing) their jobs, so the state really has to figure out a plan… we need services that have disappeared from communities, health assistance services… Unfortunately, that’s not really what local government does,” Meyers said. “We make sure the trash gets emptied, make sure the stoplights work. We don’t have expertise in any of that.”
Meyers said if the state doesn’t help its localities create a robust support system to support existing issues, the state of homelessness and its intersectional issues will only worsen.
“Out of crisis comes action, and we are in a crisis,” Meyers said. “This is where people start to think about how (to) operationalize these kinds of benefits for people so they can get better.”