Homeless families focus of $2.5M grant

Bezos Day 1 Families Fund designed to stretch 5 years

SANTA CRUZ >> Awarded $2.5 million to “end” homelessness of local families within five years, Housing Matters has begun an outreach effort to gather grantspending ideas.

Last week, Tom Stagg, Housing Matters’ programs director, drew together via video chat a small handful of social service leaders working on local homelessness issues. The effort came on the heels of Housing Matters announcing it was one of 42 nonprofits nationwide receiving the Bezos Day 1 Families Fund grant, a one-time award to shelter and house families.

The Santa Cruz County Homeless Point-in-Time Census and Survey recorded 122 homeless families with 419 members in 2019, the latest year for which that data is available. Per recent enrollment numbers in the Smart Path to Housing and Health assessment system, there were fewer than 100 families enrolled, Stagg said Friday. A “family” is defined as one or more adults with dependent children.

“I will propose, and I know that there’s others who will agree, that ending family homelessness in Santa Cruz is within reach,” Stagg said.

Housing Matters officials said they see an obvious use of the grant to fill in the gaps between traditional existing programs that leave some families out in the cold. The overarching goal of eliminating family homelessness in the next five years is to reach “functional zero,” meaning that the number of new families coming into homelessness, if any, is less than the number being housed.

A similar effort was undertaken countywide in 2017, with federal financial backing, to end veteran homelessness in Santa Cruz County. By the 2019’s Homeless Point In Time Count estimates, the number of homeless veterans

had dropped from 236 counted in 2017 to an estimated 151 in 2019.

Stagg told video call participants Friday that while Housing Matters’ mission includes serving people throughout the county, its Santa Cruz campus location may limit some of its outreach and equity for other areas. However, Housing Matters programs played a part in getting 38 families — amounting to 106 people — into housing during 2020. Both the actual number and the overall percentage — 74% of family members seeking assistance that year — was a record for the nonprofit since it began tracking such statistics four years ago, Stagg said. The count may be somewhat skewed, however, either because some families are enrolled in multiple assistance programs and could be double-counted or because some received help but later obtained housing on their own and were not officially tallied, he said.

Some immediate service gaps that participants offered include difficulty in housing families with numerous dogs and a need to provide updates to families on shelter waiting lists. Others raised concerns that families including undocumented immigrant members or who fear their living conditions could earn child protective services’ attention may not proactively seek housing program as- sistance and need to be approached directly.

From Stagg’s perspective, the largest hurdle to assisting homeless families in Santa Cruz County is the “incredible backlog of need” and said the goal is for families who need help to receive it immediately.

“Currently, when a family finds themselves in the crisis of homelessness, they also find a waitlist for the services and programs that can most effectively help them get back on their feet,” according to a Housing Matters release. “Shelter beds are not readily available, and even case management programs are greatly impacted.”

One Housing Matters priority spending idea include funding an additional evening and weekend support worker and case manager specific to the Rebele Family Shelter, Stagg said. Some additional ideas include an outreach specialist; a flexible “shallow subsidies” fund for needs such as supplemental rental assistance; specific service expansion to families ineligible for other established programs; and local research on family housing outcomes. The bigger dreams, he said, included childcare and permanent supportive housing.

Echoing a comment earlier by Stagg, county senior human services analyst Jessica Scheiner described the grant funding amount “as huge and also small” for all the unmet local needs.