Meet Chico’s new coordinator for homeless solutions
CHICO » Chico City Manager Mark Orme announced the hire of Joy Amaro for the new position of homeless solutions coordinator on Tuesday.
maro worked with True North Housing Alliance for over two years and as the executive director of the Torres Shelter after serving as the executive director of First Five Glenn County. Her position is brand new to Chico, due to the developing coronavirus pandemic.
“To bring on board someone who has the breadth of knowledge and experience in understanding the complex needs of
Chico’s homeless population, in conjunction with
the community’s vocal concerns surrounding homelessness, is truly a blessing,” Orme wrote in a news release Tuesday.
Amaro will work with Chico staff, Butte County, the North Valley Continuum of Care and local service providers “to assure reasonable deployment of state funds and service providers,” Orme added in an interview Thursday.
Amaro will also “commence evaluating longrange solutions for alternatives the City Council has recently considered” for housing the unsheltered during the coronavirus pandemic, Orme said.
At the most recent emergency meeting of the Chico City Council on March 25, councilors discussed “a lot of different ideas such as camping, parking lots for those without a house,” Orme said, all of which require Amaro’s evaluation before a final consideration.
Amaro’s position is also designed to “build stronger working relationships between public and the city on homelessness as a bridge for reasonable solutions that the public can understand.” She will address “questions like, how do we continue to support housing of that population, what would those costs potentially be? Is it sustainable?” he said.
Unique experience
In her time serving with the Torres Shelter, Amaro said she thinks she “got very well-versed on how to navigate the system, leaning on fellow colleagues to help and house people that are experiencing homelessness.
“I’ve gotten to be pretty creative with funding and have an incredible relationship with the Department of Employment and Social Services,” she said.
This is a short-term position “due to COVID-19.” Released from her position as executive director at the Torres Shelter, Amaro said she hopes to bridge gaps in communication between the city, the county and service providers in ways she had not been able to in her previous position, due to now having “direct connections.”
“The city isn’t a direct service provider,” Amaro said. “There was a gap in communication between the city and the county. It’s no one’s fault, just the way the system is set up. It’s incredibly important to coordinate services between all these multiple agencies to protect the health and safety of our most vulnerable.”
After just two days in her new role, Amaro mentioned what she considers to be a “huge win” Wednesday: connecting the Butte County Public Health Department, Enloe Medical Center and True North
Housing Alliance for coordinating hospital discharges of unsheltered patients.
“When clients are being discharged from the hospital who might have been tested or need to be quarantined, we have to have proper protocols for health and safety,” Amaro said. “We were able to establish that yesterday through calls.
“Having a point person is huge because Enloe operates in the city of Chico and as we’re discharging clients who tested positive, we’re able to ensure that ultimately our community is safe.”
To accomplish that goal safely, Amaro plans to rely on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s guidance called Project Room Key, designed to shelter people who need to be isolated while waiting for test results in local hotels.
This early in her role, Amaro can’t yet take decisive actions but said that “we are also gearing up to conduct outreach and provide necessary supplies for housing, sanitation and best practices for encampments.” Currently, Chico has temporarily allowed such encampments in tents, cars or other means to allow people to shelter in place, following recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Amaro said other measures like providing food as well as sanitation supplies to these encampments for the unsheltered is hoped, but as the Federal Emergency Management Agency is now involved, “there’s a whole other set of regulations.”
“We are ready to engage in these activities as soon as we get a go-ahead,” Amaro said.
“The main goal is keeping people healthy, getting people talking who have never talked before, on behalf of the most vulnerable and being their advocate,” she said. “It’s time to think outside the box — you have to streamline resources to maximize your dollars.
She advocated for members of the housing community to consider offering their empty units at this time.
“A large measure I would really like to push is for any community member in the county that has available units, that they’re willing to rent to CHAT as a master lease so we can house our most vulnerable, because people really need to consider that. We know that college kids have moved home … so anyone that has vacant units should contact CHAT so they can discuss how to master lease their unit to people who are experiencing homelessness.
“It’s the only way to solve homelessness and the only way to flatten the curve, through housing,” she said.