NONPROFIT TRYING TO GET HOMELESS OFF STREETS
Goal is to get hundreds of people forced to live in their cars into permanent housing
MOUNTAIN VIEW » In a city that’s home to Google and other global tech giants and where houses sell for $1.5 million on average, officials estimate there are about 300 cars and RVs occupied by homeless individuals and families that park on neighborhood streets every day.
Now a Mountain View nonprofit is experimenting with allowing these vehicles into the parking lots of several churches around town, starting next month.
Under the plan, not only will people who live in their vehicles have a safe haven out of neighbors’ sight but they’ll receive services designed to help steer them on a road out of homelessness.
The goal is not to merely given them a safe space, but to get them out of their vehicles and into permanent homes. Everyone who participates will have to sign up for housing and demonstrate they are serious about the task.
The experiment, called the Lots of Love Safe Parking Program, will start out small, with just three churches providing space for up to four vehicles each. St. Timothy Episcopal Church has already signed on and two other churches are expected to ink agreements before the program’s July 2 start. It’s an interfaith effort, according to the nonprofit, and eight other religious institutions have expressed interest.
The goal is to increase the number of lots to 10 by January 2020, enough space for 40 vehicles.
“That’s 100 people that are off the streets,” said Joe Simitian, president of the county Board of Supervisors, which last week unanimously approved $287,525 toward the safe parking program. The city has already contributed $55,000. “This is a relatively modest but still significant way to address the challenge.”
Simitian began working on the idea in 2015 with Lord’s Grace Christian Church pastor Brian Leong, who is president of Move Mountain View, the nonprofit overseeing the program. Simitian said if the experiment goes well, he envisions the program expanding to more parking lots, even business lots, or having the city waive a permit needed to allow more than four occupied vehicles to park in each lot.
Leong said he isn’t worried about finding more money or locations to expand the program and considers 40 spaces to be the bare minimum.
But he said he’s concerned people who live in their vehicles won’t want
to participate, either because they’re suspicious of religious institutions, won’t agree to the rules or won’t realize that the intent is to get them into housing.
“My main worry is they’re not going to know what this is and they’re not going to want to do it,” he said.
Move Mountain View is partnering with Community Services Agency, another Mountain View nonprofit focused on ending homelessness that will provide services to people who live in their vehicles. The reason the program focuses on them, Leong said, is that they don’t get the outreach that other homeless receive. Partly, because they tend to be more mobile, moving from street to street, making them elusive to intervention.
In a city survey conducted in 2016, roughly 70 percent of people who live
in their vehicles said they had been homeless for less than a year. About the same number of people said they didn’t know support services were available or felt that their situation was temporary and didn’t bother to sign up for services.
“I think the economic reality has changed so drastically that people mentally aren’t catching up with it,” Leong said.
The simple step of forcing participants to sign up for housing and check in regularly to see where they are on the wait list is key to the program’s success, Leong said. He cited a similar program in operation for a decade in Santa Barbara that is also the model for the Mountain View experiment. Of 123 vehicles enrolled in Santa Barbara’s program in 2016, individuals and families in 63 of those vehicles
were placed in permanent housing that same year, he said.
“By using a monthly permit system where people have to check in regularly, that’s why they’ve been so successful,” Leong said.
To be eligible, participants must have working vehicles, valid registration, drivers license and insurance. No drugs, alcohol or weapons are permitted. Each site will provide restroom access or portable toilets, Community Services Agency will provide mobile showers up to twice a week and Hope’s Corner may provide meals once a week. Move Mountain View will monitor each site to make sure rules are being followed.
County supervisors also last week approved $505,000 for Amigos de Guadalupe to operate a
similar safe parking program in San Jose, which also aims to house 40 occupied vehicles. The amount is higher because Amigos de Guadalupe anticipates it will serve larger households with more children than Move Mountain View, according to a staff report.