Thinking ‘outside the box’ in Lake County
In our “State of Homelessness” project, reporters teamed up to give overview on state of homelessness.
Editor’s note: In our “State of Homelessness” project, reporters from the Santa Cruz Sentinel, Vacaville Reporter, Chico Enterprise-Record, Eureka Times-Standard, Vallejo Times-Herald, Woodland Daily Democrat, Lake County Record-Bee, Red Bluff Daily News and Southern California News Group — which publishes the Los Angeles Daily News — have teamed up to give you an overview on our collective state of homelessness. Stories can be found on each publication’s website.
Rev. Shannon KimbellAuth, the chairperson for this year’s PIT Count for Lake County, said her staff, in conjunction with a myriad of volunteers (63 in total) and site leads from the various locations set up throughout the county to help with the count, didn’t let COVID stop them from their commitment to try to stop the ongoing homeless problem.
Kimbell-Auth, the manager of Hope Center in Clearlake, said the most rewarding part about being involved in this year’s annual count in late January, under less-thanideal weather conditions, was that they were able to come up with creative solutions and by doing so, they became only one of seven Continuum of Cares in the entire state of California to complete the annual count, sending their findings to The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
According to the County of Lake’s website, the Lake County Continuum of Care is a HUD-designated organization that promotes community-wide commitment to the goal of ending homelessness; provides funding for efforts by nonprofits and state and local governments to rapidly rehouse homeless individuals and families while minimizing the trauma and dislocation caused to homeless individuals, families, and communities by homelessness, among other goals.
Kimbell-Auth emphasized in a report to the CoC this spring that this year’s count was also impacted not only by the COVID pandemic, but by the extreme weather which affected significant portions of the county on January 28, the day the count was conducted, including a severe snowstorm and intermittent rain, leading to more difficulties for volunteers conducting the count.
Sites all over the county including Lower Lake, the Northshore, Lakeport and Clearlake provided physical locations where people could call to participate in the surveys, results of which were then sent over to HUD. Additionally, the Veteran’s Administration social worker contacted those veterans they have a working relationship with and helped them complete the survey by phone. Lake County Office of Education (LCOE) did the same for families they identified through the school system as being unsheltered.
According to a report issued by the HUB for Urban Initiatives, despite the difficulties, Lake County CoC conducted an unsheltered count on January 28 similar to the unsheltered counts conducted in past years, which included asking survey questions to obtain HUD required housing type and subpopulation data. The CoC did use a mobile app for the first time to automate data collection.
While 37 or 84% of 44 Continuums of Care (CoCs) did not conduct an unsheltered count during the last 10 days of January after receiving approval from HUD not to conduct an unsheltered count because of the pandemic, Kimbell-Auth said her staff and associates did what a lot of resilient residents and organizations often do, tested by previous challenges such as fire and other emergencies.
“That’s true of Lake County in general,” said Kimbell-Auth about the county residents’ ability to come up with creative ideas and to think outside the box during a time of crisis.
The CoC made use of digital tools for the first time in 2021, mainly Simtech Solutions, a digital counting application used to enter data on the number of people experiencing homelessness doing away with the need for paper and paper and expediting the tabulation and data entry process.
When it was all said and done and after 304 surveys were completed, the average age of respondents saying they lived in Lake County was 21 and a half and 241 people in the county identified as homeless. Some disparities from last year and the current count acknowledged in Kimbell-Auth’s report include the fact that agencies are better at housing people and there was more funding this year. Additionally, Hope Center and Elijah House were not operating last year.
Tales from the front lines
Joey Luiz is a radio personality and a former council member in the city of Clearlake (for two terms in 2010 through 2014) and he shared his experience in the more than seven months he worked with the county’s homeless population at the old Record-Bee building on South Main Street in Lakeport which was briefly converted into a shelter last year before the opening of Elijah House (which offers 31 beds to homeless guests) in Lakeport last summer.
Luiz said he was pushed out of a management position at the shelter in midOctober 2020 and has since filed an Employment Development Department discrimination complaint against the Elijah House nonprofit, the resolution of which is still pending. He went on to say that he is nevertheless proud of some of the work he did while at Hope Harbor before Elijah House took over.
“We were really good preElijah House when it was Hope Harbor at placing people,” said Luiz, adding that something like 30 to 35 individuals were placed in some sort of housing during his tenure. He also gave a lot of credit to Supervisor Tina Scott, who he said has been very involved in combating the problem.
Luiz has lived in Lake County for most of his life and has been involved with trying to help the homeless population in the county for over 15 years. “I have seen that the problem is more visible than it used to be,” he said. As a council member in Clearlake, Luiz went on ride-alongs to encampments in the city to get an understanding of the scope of the problem.
“We dealt with issues around homeless and unsheltered people commonly, I wouldn’t say it was overwhelming but it was common, but now when I see the police logs or the scanner pages in social media, it seems that there’s a lot more calls than there used to be back then, and we are talking not even 10 years ago.”
Luiz said the Valley Fire in 2015 brought in the most homeless to the area in his estimation. “One of our employees was a relocated Paradise Fire survivor. So I think those fires really have had a big impact on the issue. Then the Bay Area housing crisis, all the gentrification and the prices shooting up, it makes it so those are the issues that are causing areas like Lake County, Mendo and surrounding Bay Area to see people come up here because maybe there’s something cheaper here; they come to and it doesn’t work out, they end up in those situations.”
Kimber-Auth’s report to the CoC recognized that this year’s count was not perfect and there were a number of lessons learned from the experience. She noted while the digital platform was helpful, it was not a total data solution. She also noted that the various site locations could have benefited from better signage (not all locations had signs), more training for volunteers and sites taking phone calls and data entry.
“Overall, however, I think we did a pretty good job,” Kimber-Auth noted in her report, “and learned lessons that will serve us better next year.”
The Hope Center housing Navigation Hub in Clearlake offers 20 beds where people can stay while they are looking for permanent housing. More information for Lake County homeless services and resources can be found online at http://www.partnershiphp.org/Community/Documents/Lake/Lake_Housing.pdf
—Freelance reporter Lucy Llewellyn Byard contributed to this report