Santa Cruz bolsters homeless plan with new hires
SANTA CRUZ >> City leaders agreed Tuesday to bolster its workforce in order to carry out efforts spelled out in the new three-year Homelessness Response Action Plan.
Funding for the hiring of six positions plus several outsourced jobs will come out of a $14 million state set aside grant for the city of Santa Cruz. This week's additional spending approvals, amidst a quarterly homelessness response update, monopolized the Santa Cruz City Council's evening meeting agenda.
The new positions include a benefitted part-time community relations specialist, at nearly $112,000, and five public works employees under a newly-created homelessness response field division, costing a combined $453,000. The new public works division would include a part-time shelter maintenance worker, two field workers focused on homelessness-related cleanup and refuse management, a field supervisor and a senior field worker. According to the city, no funding yet exists to retain these jobs past the first year.
The new-hire requests come two months after the council implemented the Homelessness Response Action Plan. At that time, the council also had authorized an initial wave of hiring, including filling the vacant deputy city manager role, making permanent existing temporary positions for homeless services coordinator and two homelessness response outreach and shelter specialists and recruiting two additional police community service officers.
In an update on the plan's implementation, Homelessness Response Manager Larry Imwalle said the city was running into a roadblock in tracking its progress due to a lack of a city-accessible data collection and data sharing infrastructure. Imwalle also shared that the city's new “Armory Overlook” tent encampment in DeLaveaga Park was due to open with an initial 20 participants next week. The program, under the oversight of the Salvation Army, is expected to grow to 65 regular participants at full capacity, plus an additional 10 emergency overnight drop-ins. Imwalle said city officials also are eying taking over the county's 60-bed shelter nearby, inside the National Guard Armory, after its planned June 30 closure.
Imwalle also updated city leaders on plans to purchase 15 to 18 stand-alone Pallet shelters for placement on the Housing Matters property on Coral Street, with Santa Cruz County coffers expected to support the Housing Matters operation of phase one of the shelter expansion.
In a motion to authorize the proposed new staffing positions, councilwoman Shebreh Kalantari-Johnson added a request to have the council send a letter requesting the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors reiterating the need for transitional facility bridge-housing and safe vehicle parking spaces countywide.
“The collaboration is huge for the city and county, as many of us brought up, because the county is where our health department lies, where our behavioral health department lies, where our human services department lies, where our Housing for Health department lies,” Mayor Sonja Brunner said before joining in the unanimous vote. “As a city, as a municipality, we are small but mightily treading forward with great efforts to really put infrastructure in place, getting us to work more efficiently to help folks
and continuing to move forward to support our community….”
The council also on Tuesday green-lighted the outsourcing of several positions, including contracting with Santa Cruz County to expand its mental health
field liaisons from two to four workers for $188,000; planning and technical consultants assigned to oversee the homeless action plan's implementation for $336,000; a legislative advocate for $150,000; an encampment cleanup contractor for $552,000; and an abandoned vehicle abatement contractor for $37,500.
Councilmember Donna
Meyers thanked city staff members for their progress on the homelessness response plan.
“This is really amazing and you guys have worked really hard and we're going to change this dynamic in this town and we're done being hands-off. We're more into being active and hopefully getting people into more successful lives from here on out,” Meyers said.