Lodi declares shelter crisis to be eligible for homeless funds

California’s State Legislature has set aside $500 million in grant funds to help cities throughout the state tackle homelessness, with a little over $7 million in onetime funding headed for San Joaquin County.

To make the city eligible for a piece of that pie, the Lodi City Council on Wednesday evening adopted a resolution declaring a shelter crisis in the city.

With the declaration, eligible programs in the City of Lodi would be able to submit projects to the San Joaquin Continuum of Care for potential funding — but there are strings attached.

For example, programs offering temporary housing wouldn’t be able to discriminate against residents with substance abuse or mental health challenges.

“You can be homeless, and if this moves forward — and I hope it does — you won’t have to be in a program like Salvation Army,” Councilman Doug Kuehne said.

This kind of “housing first” strategy would get people into housing, potentially giving them a chance to seek help — and keeping them from needing to sleep in city parks and alleys.

“It really is designed to get people off the streets first so they can deal with their other problems,” Adam Cheshire, the county’s programs administrator for Homeless Initiatives, told the council.

There are some loopholes — a housing program wouldn’t be required to place drug users as neighbors of someone in a drug treatment program, for example, he said.

But even with those strings, designating a shelter crisis in Lodi is worthwhile, city staff said.

The city doesn’t have to do anything moving forward, City Manager Steve Schwabauer said. It need never apply to use any of those funds. The designation simply allows city programs to be eligible for the aid if an opportunity arises.

“Most of the cities in the county are working pretty collaboratively to try and leverage those dollars,” he said.

All applications for funding would be submitted to the county’s Continuum of Care, which would be responsible for applying to the state organizations administering the funds.

Should programs choose to apply for grant funding, the money could be used to create temporary housing that doesn’t necessarily meet state building requirements.

This doesn’t mean that housing would be able to ignore them completely, Schwabauer noted. Buildings would still need to meet certain safety standards — no illegal wiring or dangerous conditions — but it would allow the city to, for example, renovate a building that may not meet the most recent Americans with Disabilities Act requirements.

“We don’t imagine building that kind of a project in Lodi,” Schwabauer said.

Without adopting the resolution, however, Lodi would be shutting off those possibilities, he said.

“We have a homeless population that I hope everybody recognizes is countywide,” Councilman Bob Johnson said, expressing his disappointment that Tracy and Manteca have declined to declare shelter crises of their own. “I think we should be all

in on something like this.”

Cheshire and John Ledbetter, who serves on Lodi’s Committee on Homelessness, encouraged the council members to adopt the designation.

“This is by far the largest source of funds that we have available to us right now for homeless services,” Cheshire said.

Ledbetter noted that the designation

allows Lodi to continue working in a partnership with the county, the City of Stockton and other agencies. Lodi has been working for years to build that partnership, he said.

“The bottom line is, if you aren’t at the table, you can’t play the game,” he said.

The city council adopted the resolution 5-0.