DATE: September 22, 2015
TO: Mayor and City Council
FROM: Director of Library and Community Services
SUBJECT
Title
Update on Regional Efforts to Address Homelessness in Alameda County and Next Steps in the City of Hayward’s Participation in Those Efforts.
End
RECOMMENDATION
Recommendation
That Council reads this report and its attachments and comments on the information contained therein; and provides guidance and direction in response to staff’s questions at the end of the report.
Body
PURPOSE OF THIS REPORT
The purpose of this report is to frame the dimensions of homelessness in Hayward and to provide Council an update on regional efforts to address homelessness in Alameda County, along with potential next steps in the City of Hayward’s participation in those efforts. This report does not purport to contain easy or definitive solutions, nor does it attempt to be a comprehensive or perfect encapsulation of one of society’s most difficult and intractable issues. Rather, it is intended to provide Council with an understanding of staff’s ongoing work on the homelessness issue; updates on recent strategies used in Alameda County and elsewhere; and to frame some key questions for Council’s consideration. This is expected to be only one of many discussions with Council and the Hayward community on this topic going forward.
Homelessness is an extraordinarily complex and challenging problem that affects cities across America. In many ways, homelessness has grown in scope and intractability to become a defining issue of the late 20th and early 21st century society. Cities have struggled for many decades with limited success to productively address this issue and the adverse impacts it has had on those enduring homelessness as well as their associated communities.
Homelessness also is a very personal and emotionally charged issue for many people. It is our nature as human beings to seek and maintain a stable domicile for ourselves and our families. This natural desire for home and hearth extends to the community of people around us. Our own feelings of safety and security, our own sense of health and home, are intrinsically connected to the safety and living conditions of the people around us in our community. When we see people around us who do not have a home, regardless of the reason why or how they came to be in that
situation, it is only natural for us to respond with complicated and often conflicting feelings.
When faced with such a complex and visceral issue, it is in our nature to want to act immediately, to fix the problem as quickly as possible. For this reason, and perhaps more than any other issue, homelessness is one about which everyone seems to have an opinion and suggestions for how we should address it as a society. Those views and opinions span a wide, varied, and sometimes conflicting spectrum.
As stated above, this report is intended to provide Council with an overview and foundation of current research and strategies regarding homelessness to help facilitate Council discussion of this extraordinarily complex and multifaceted issue. This report does not purport to be a comprehensive overview of all known research on this topic, nor does it attempt to include or mention every model or strategy in use today. What it does attempt to do is to provide a sufficiently broad and substantive overview of relevant data and prominent current strategies for Council’s consideration in as succinct a form as possible given the depth of the topic.
To that end, the main body of the report is divided into the following sections:
I. Definition of Homelessness
II. Featured Study. Home Not Found: The Cost of Homeless
III. National Trends and Strategies in Other American Cities
IV. Regional Efforts to Address Homelessness in Hayward and Alameda Country
V. The EveryOne Home/Alameda County Homeless Count
VI. Overview of the Current Service Delivery Network in Hayward/Alameda County
VII. Interdisciplinary Working Group on Homelessness, Hunger and Street Behaviors
VIII. Next Steps and Project Objectives
I. Definitions of Homelessness
When beginning the conversation about homelessness, it is imperative to understand the varying terminology and definitions of homelessness. These terms and definitions are critical with respect to available funding sources, in particular federal sources, which are by far the most significant in size and potential impactfulness.
On May 20, 2009, President Obama signed into law the Homeless Emergency Assistance and Rapid Transition Act, also known as the HEARTH Act. Primarily administered by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the goal of the HEARTH Act is threefold: 1) consolidate federal homeless assistance programs into a single program with specific eligible activities; 2) codify the “continuum of care” planning process as a required and integral function of local strategies to end homelessness; and, 3) set a federal goal for HUD to standardize and finalize the definitions of homelessness contained in the HEARTH Act. The resulting definitions affect which individuals and programs are eligible for HUD-funded homeless assistance programs.
On December 5, 2011 HUD finalized its definitions of homelessness in the Federal Register and implemented them starting on January 4, 2012. The HUD definitions include four broad categories of homelessness:
1. People who are living in a place not meant for human habitation, in emergency shelter, in transitional housing, or are exiting an institution where they temporarily resided. People are considered homeless if they are exiting an institution where they resided for up to ninety days and were homeless immediately prior to entering that institution.
2. People who are losing their primary nighttime residence, which may include a motel or hotel or a doubled up situation, within fourteen days and lack resources or support networks to secure other housing.
3. Families with children or unaccompanied youth who are unstably housed and likely to continue in that state. This is a relatively new category of homelessness, and it applies to families with children or unaccompanied youth who have not had a lease or ownership interest in a housing unit in the last sixty or more days, have had two or more moves in the last sixty days, and who are likely to continue to be unstably housed because of disability or multiple barriers to employment.
4. People who are fleeing or attempting to flee domestic violence, have no other residence, and lack the resources or support networks to obtain other permanent housing.
In addition to the above, HUD has defined “chronic homelessness” as a person who is either: 1) an unaccompanied homeless individual with a disabling condition who has been continuously homeless for a year or more; or 2) an unaccompanied individual with a disabling condition who has had at least four episodes of homelessness in the past three years.
“Hidden homeless”
HUD’s current definition of homeless does not include people who live "doubled-up" in housing units, “couch surfing” with friends or family, or living in motels due to economic need. People in these circumstances-technically housed in that they have shelter but are marginally or tentatively housed in fact-are sometimes referred to as “hidden homeless.” While these individuals do not meet HUD’s official definition of the term “homeless” for the purposes of federally supported homeless programs (as opposed to affordable housing and other assistance programs), many people and organizations do consider these individuals to be homeless because at the end of the day they do not have a stable, permanent domicile of their own.
According to a recent report by the National Alliance to End Homelessness, almost seven million Americans now fit into the “hidden homeless” category. This is an increase of 13% over the past year and more than 50% over the past five years. Some of the increase may be attributable to increased awareness and better counting methods in recent years, but it is unlikely that these factors can account for all of the increase.
Some organizations, including the Department of Education and some international human rights monitors, consider people in “hidden homeless” circumstances to be homeless, and include them in homelessness-related strategies and services. Because people in these circumstances generally do not meet HUD’s definition of homelessness, they are not included in HUD’s official homeless count, which is used to designate federal resources for homelessness-related services. At this time, these individuals are considered by HUD and HEARTH to fall outside the scope of federally supported homelessness programs, as opposed to affordable housing programs and other general assistance for low-income households.
A bill known as the Homeless Children and Youth Act (HCYA) has been introduced in the U.S. Senate that would require HUD to align its definitions of “homelessness” with those used by federal programs for low-income families and vulnerable minors; it would also reduce the requirements for proving homeless status. If passed, the HYCA would expand the federal definition of homelessness, particularly when it comes to children, to include couch surfers, doubled up households, and individuals and families residing in motels. If passed, the HCYA would include these “hidden homeless” individuals in HUD’s homeless counts for the purposes of designating federal resources for homelessness related services. Additionally, the HCYA would increase the defined time threshold for “imminent loss of housing” from fourteen days to thirty days.
Anecdotally, part of Hayward’s “hidden homeless” is a population of foster children who have “aged out” of the system and are in temporary housing with small likelihood that they have the resources to sustain permanent housing. It is unknown how many individuals fit this criteria, but it is a perception that Hayward has a larger population of these young people than might be known to service agencies and advocates.
Perspectives on what constitutes or defines “homelessness” vary from person to person and even from agency to agency, and there are experiential definitions of homelessness, emotional definitions of homelessness, and bureaucratic definitions of homelessness. No matter what your perspective, it is important for Council and staff to understand the standard definitions of homelessness set forth by HUD and codified by the HEARTH Act because they are the primary definitions used by the federal government for allocating resources to local communities for the purpose of assisting homeless people to get back into stable, permanent housing.
Opening Doors / EveryOne Home
The primary federal agency working to end homelessness through policy development and resource allocation at the local level is the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH), an independent agency within the Federal executive branch. The agency consists of nineteen Federal Cabinet secretaries and agency heads including the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Department of Labor, Veterans Affairs, and others.
In 2010, USICH released a groundbreaking report, Opening Doors: Federal Strategic Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness <http://usich.gov/opening_doors/>. A comprehensive strategy to prevent and permanently end homelessness for all individuals suffering that condition, Opening Doors serves as a roadmap for joint action by the nineteen USICH member agencies along with local and state partners in the public and private sectors.
The Opening Doors plan “puts the nation on a path to end Veterans and chronic homelessness by 2015; and to end homelessness among children, families, and youth by 2020. The Plan presents strategies building upon the lesson that mainstream housing, health, education, and human service programs must be fully engaged and coordinated to prevent and end homelessness”.
Significantly, in 2015 HUD issued a letter to Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) entitlement grant jurisdictions including Hayward that directs all CDBG recipients to “use funds from all CPD programs to work towards the goals of Opening Doors: Federal Strategic Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness… for Rapid Re-housing activities to end homelessness for more individuals and families living on the streets and in shelters.”
An overview of the Opening Doors plan is provided as Attachment I to this report. It signals a marked shift in approach to the issue of homelessness nationally, toward the “Housing First” strategy. The full Opening Doors report including background data and amendments are available online at www.usich.gov.
Continuum of Care (CoC)
Starting in the 1990s and continuing to the present day with the passage of the HEARTH Act in 2009, the federal government through HUD has codified the Continuum of Care Program (CoC) to structure coordinated and comprehensive local responses to problems surrounding housing and homelessness.
Counties and major cities across the country have formed into regional CoCs to ensure coordinated strategic planning efforts with diverse local stakeholder involvement including government agencies, service providers, faith-based organizations, community members, and homeless individuals.
CoCs include a lead agency that is tasked with overseeing the development and implementation of its community’s shared strategy, coordinating collective efforts, and ensuring accountability throughout the system. In Alameda County, the lead agency is EveryOneHome. Additional discussion of the EveryOneHome and the Alameda County CoC can be found in Section IV of this report.
Regardless of any plan or specific strategy that may be implemented locally, federal funding is critically important to making a significant impact on the homelessness issue locally.
II. Featured Study. Home Not Found: The Cost of Homelessness
In May 2015 the County of Santa Clara released a comprehensive report Home Not Found: The Cost of Homelessness in Silicon Valley. The report analyzed twenty-five million records from 2007 to 2012 for any and all residents who experienced homelessness at any point during that time period in Santa Clara County.
The records and information of the 104,206 individuals who fit this criterion included demographic and medical information of each person, justice system histories, services received by public and private agencies and the cost of said services.
With information about over one hundred thousand individual people tracked over six years including detailed records from each service provider, the Home Not Found report is the largest and most comprehensive body of information that has ever been assembled in the United States regarding the public costs of homelessness.
The Cost of Homelessness in Santa Clara County, 2007-2012
The Home Not Found report found that the Santa Clara County community spent $520 million a year providing services for homeless residents, a total cost of $3.12 billion over the six years covered by this study. Health care costs accounted for 53% of expenditures for homeless persons. Social welfare agencies including nonprofit service providers and county Social Services accounted for 13% of expenditures. Justice system agencies accounted for 34% of expenditures, most of it for jail costs. Outpatient health care is the most frequently used service supporting over half of homeless residents. Over a quarter used the emergency room; 17% used mental health services; 14% were hospital inpatients; 13% used drug and alcohol rehabilitation services; and 6% used emergency psychiatric services.
The highest public costs across all services were associated with individuals experiencing persistent homelessness. In a given year during the study period, there were approximately 2,800 persistently homeless residents of the targeted area, with average public costs of $83,000 per year. Report authors conclude that prioritizing housing opportunities for these individuals would make it possible to obtain savings that more than offset the cost of housing. These findings are in line with the housing first model and data currently available nationwide regarding cost savings of permanent supporting housing for chronically homeless individuals.
The highest public costs for homeless residents are in the health care and jail systems. If a homeless individual experienced any of the following over a two-year period, they were more likely than not among the top 5% of most cost-intensive recipients of services:
- seven or more hospital inpatient days,
- eleven or more emergency room visits,
- four or more emergency psychiatric service visits.
Comparable benchmarks for jail stays over a two-year period include:
- seven or more days in the jail mental health facility
- ten or more days in jail medical facilities.
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Destination: Home (Permanent Supportive Housing)
The Housing 1000 Permanent Supportive Housing initiative was established by Destination: Home in 2011, in partnership with Santa Clara County, the City of San Jose, and the Santa Clara County Continuum of Care, to provide supportive housing to homeless residents. The Housing 1000 Initiative identifies chronically homeless individuals who have high rates of cost-intensive emergency service contacts, and works with these individuals to place them into permanent supportive housing as quickly as possible, thus greatly reducing the frequency and intensity of emergency service contacts while also increasing the effectiveness of the supportive services provided to the individuals after they are safely housed.
The Home Not Found report analyzed data regarding public expenditures on 469 individuals who were housed under this program. Half of homeless residents who were housed through this program were in the top fifth of the cost distribution for homeless persons. Three quarters of the individuals housed by Housing 1000 remained housed, while one quarter exited housing. Strengthening post-housing supportive services offers the potential to future increase housing retention rates. For the 103 homeless residents in the tenth cost decile who were housed through Housing 1000 program, the estimated average annual pre-housing public cost was $62,473. The estimated average post-housing cost was $19,767.
Study Conclusions and Recommendations
The Home Not Found report provides the following recommendations based upon the available data and results surrounding permanent supportive housing.
- Give priority access to permanent supportive housing for persistently homeless residents with high public costs.
- Strengthen post-housing supportive services to increase housing retention.
- Enlist all public agencies that serve homeless residents in documenting homelessness.
- Enhance support for foster youth with mental disorders and justice system involvement.
- Provide scaled support for lower-cost, persistently homeless residents
- Create more housing subsidies without supportive services (affordable housing).
- Facilitate access to expert help in qualifying for Supplemental Security Insurance.
- Continue linking records of homeless residents to understand needs and plan services.
The full text of the Home Not Found report is included as Attachment II.
III. National Trends and Strategies in Other American Cities
The goal of this research was to flesh out what cities and counties are doing outside of Hayward and Alameda County to reduce homelessness in their communities, what is working, what has not worked, and where the challenges still lie. Best practices are discussed and, where possible, efforts focused on communities with similar population counts and climates to Hayward and Alameda County. Also included for comparative purposes are the communities that may be less similar to Hayward in population, climate and other characteristics, but whose successes and insights may be relevant and therefore of value to efforts in Hayward and Alameda County.
Research consisted of in-depth online investigation of the policies and services offered by seventeen (17) U.S. local governments; including interviews with relevant local government staff.
Case studies and interviews included the following American cities:
Atlanta (City) - Population 444,000
Austin/Travis (County) - Population 843,000
Dallas (City) - Population 1,241,000
Denver (City & County) - Population 635,000
Hennepin (County) - Population 1,185,000
Fort Lauderdale (City) - Population 171,000
Long Beach (City) - Population 468,000
Los Angeles (City & County) - Population 9,963,000
Palm Beach (County) - Population 1,357,000
Salinas (City) - Population 154,000
San Francisco (City & County) - Population 826,000
San Jose (City) - Population 983,000
Santa Clara (County) - Population 1,838,000
Seattle (City) - Population 635,000
Seattle/King (County) - Population 2,000,000
Tallahassee (City) - Population 375,000
Tempe (City) - Population 167,000
What follows is an overview of common themes, best practices, challenges and lessons learned from the research and interviews undertaken by City staff. The overview is divided into two sections: Common Themes & Successes; and Challenges & Lessons Learned.
Common Themes & Successes
This section discusses the common ways in which local governments are working to successfully reduce homelessness in their communities, as well as unique and/or innovative solutions that jurisdictions reported to have proven successful.
The Housing First Approach and Permanent Supportive Housing
For approximately the last decade, cities and counties nationwide have focused their energy and resources around “Housing First” strategies to reduce homelessness in their communities. Previously, homeless services used a “housing readiness” approach and required individuals to address those issues that had led them to experience homelessness before finding them housing. In contrast, the Housing First model is based on the premise that the first step to reducing homelessness is to provide stable, secure, and affordable housing for those in need.
The second step is to provide wrap-around support services to help ensure that formerly homeless individuals and families remain housed for the long term. Such services can and often include case management, financial assistance, healthcare, job placement, and training/education. Once housed and granted a sense of security and safety, people are more apt to take advantage of the support services they need to remain in housing for the long-term. In many cases, the supportive services and subsidies offered through Housing First programs are short-term.
Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH) has also proven particularly effective for chronically homeless individuals that suffer from mental illness, drug addiction, and similar vulnerabilities that put them at high risk of dying on the street.
The US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Department of Veterans Affairs are major promoters of Housing First programs and have funded and shaped such programs nationwide. The federal government’s goal is to end chronic and veteran homelessness by 2015. (The names of jurisdiction interviewees, contact information and interview transcripts are on file.) Thus, the majority of federal funding is currently focused on these two populations.
Housing First programs have generated impressive results nationwide. One year housing retention rates for formerly chronically homeless people range nationally from 85% to 93%, according to a study conducted by Community Solutions (the highly regarded and influential nonprofit behind the 100,000 Homes campaign). Moreover, local governments all over the country have found that Housing First programs have generated significant public cost savings.
“Work First” Model: Downtown Streets Team
An outstanding example of a Work First model that has been found successful in Santa Clara County is the “Downtown Streets Team.” In this model, homeless individuals work with an outreach team to provide volunteer work experience. The homeless individuals participate in weekly meetings, and begin positive engagement with business and community partners. Team members build dignity and confidence in themselves and become ready to transition into permanent housing and employment. The Downtown Streets Team actively partners with retailers like Whole Foods and others to place participants into permanent part-time and full-time employment. More information can be found on the program website, <http://streetsteam.org>
The structure and outcomes of the “Downtown Streets Team” model make it eligible to receive federal funding in the CDBG Economic Development category. The advantage of the CDBG Economic Development category is that it is not subject to a HUD-imposed spending cap. Council will recall that CDBG Public Services category funding, which applies to most homeless programs and other social services, is restricted to a 15% annual spending cap by HUD, greatly limiting the availability of CDBG funds for most social services programs. City staff has met with Downtown Streets Team representatives to explore some pilot operations in Hayward. Currently, both parties are interested in pursuing this and are jointly seeking possible funding sources including evaluating CDBG funds as a possibility.
Homeless Outreach
When interviewed, local government officials from the City of Long Beach, the City & County of San Francisco, and the City of Tempe indicated that homeless outreach efforts have played a significant role in ensuring the success of their Housing First and Continuum of Care (CoC) programming. Outreach workers engage with the homeless on the street, develop relationships with them, and help them access services. These workers help local governments determine which individuals are in need of which services, including those who fit the definition of chronically homeless and would be good candidates for permanent supportive housing.
Outreach workers also help local governments cut back on unnecessary costs. For example, police officers working for the City of Long Beach have saved time that they would have spent taking homeless individuals to the hospital by working with mental health outreach services. That city has designated two police officers to respond to “quality of life crimes” (i.e., disturbing businesses, drunk in public, etc.), and, rather than taking offenders to the hospital or issuing a ticket, these officers have worked with outreach workers to deliver offenders to the appropriate service site. As a result, officers have spent more time on patrol and less time at the hospital. Staff from the City of Long Beach indicated that this outreach work has not represented a tremendous reallocation of resources and has proven cost-effective.
Outreach workers also help local governments mitigate public complaints about homeless encampments and “quality of life” crimes. The City of Tempe (population: 160,000) has two outreach workers who work thirty-two hours a week, and, when the Mayor and Council receive a complaint, they respond to help connect homeless individuals with services. They also work closely with the police department to help keep homeless offenders out of jail - a humane and cost-effective solution, as the cost of jailing those experiencing homelessness is far greater than the cost of providing them with services.
Project Homeless Connect
Project Homeless Connect first started in San Francisco in 2004 and has been replicated in over 260 cities and counties across the country (including the City of Tempe). It is a free event that occurs at least once a year where nonprofits, corporations, and government agencies congregate in one place to offer services such as basic health care, legal aid, job placement, food, clothing, and more. A person experiencing homelessness months can access multiple services in one day at a Project Homeless Connect event that might otherwise take weeks or months. Project Homeless Connect events are run by volunteers and incur nominal costs. The events also provide a unique opportunity for local organizations to partner and improve the system of care through collaboration and the sharing of resources and best practices. The federal government’s Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH) has declared Project Homeless Connect a national best practice model for major urban centers with large concentrations of homeless services like San Francisco.
Landlord Outreach & Education
Finding and maintaining relationships with landlords who are willing to rent to the formerly homeless is necessary to develop enough affordable housing to meet Housing First goals. As a result, cities and counties across the country have developed various landlord outreach and
education programs, including the City of Tempe and Hennepin County, both of which share similar population sizes to Hayward and Alameda County.
In Tempe (population: 160,000), staff has reached out to landlords who were already involved in the Section 8 housing subsidy program and advised landlords who to contact for resolution if they have any issues with new tenants.
Similarly, in Hennepin County (population: 1.185 million), staff works with landlords directly in cases where tenants are experiencing problems and that county guarantees coverage of any necessary eviction costs. Both Tempe and Hennepin County staff strive to be responsive to any and all issues to ensure that landlords remain engaged and willing partners in their respective housing programs.
Funding Sources
The federal government strongly endorses the Housing First model and that is clearly reflected in its funding priorities. The vast majority of grant funding being made available through the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) are focused toward Housing First programs rather than emergency shelters or temporary housing. As a result, local governments have begun to evolve the services they traditionally have provided through emergency and temporary shelters to better align with Housing First goals and qualify for funding.
For example, the City of Seattle has “enhanced” man of its temporary shelters to also offer on-site assessment for housing eligibility and case management to help quickly transition program clients into housing. The goal of these shelters has evolved toward the goal of helping individuals and families immediately start making the transition from homelessness to more stable, long-term housing.
In the City of Atlanta, available resources for combating homelessness have been examined carefully and repurposed to align with Housing First goals. Unsheltered No More, an initiative driven by that city’s Mayor’s office in collaboration with community leaders to reduce homelessness has partnered with the state to gain access to more housing vouchers, set aside resources for housing the mentally ill, and repurpose some state dollars to provide more intensive case management services. Unsheltered No More has also taken full advantage of the HUD-Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing (HUD-VASH) program funding which provides rental assistance, case management, and clinical services for homeless veterans.
In the planning phases of Unsheltered No More, a Blue Ribbon Task Force in Atlanta raised millions to create more permanent supportive housing. Unsheltered No More staff credits these efforts as the first step in bringing the broader community together around homelessness and setting the initiative on a successful path.
In Santa Clara County, the staff in that jurisdiction noted that without general public support, City Councils can feel pressured by their communities to push through “quick-fix” policies which may run counter to Housing First goals. In seeking to counterbalance this challenge, Rosanne Haggerty, founder of Community Solutions and the 100,000 Homes Campaign, discovered that rallying the broader community around Housing First strategies by emphasizing cost savings and tapping into civic pride was an effective strategy to generate the widespread buy-in necessary to bring about sustainable change.
Like Atlanta and Santa Clara County, other local governments have used various fundraising and outreach strategies to generate financial and community support for homeless reduction and prevention efforts. For example in the City of Tallahassee, residents are invited to make a monthly contribution to homelessness prevention and reduction efforts as part of their utilities bill. Similarly, the City of Long Beach reaches out the residents by mail annually for donations to a “Mayor’s Fund” that is used to address homelessness issues in that community.
In the City and County of Denver, various fundraising efforts driven by different community sectors have had a tremendous impact and have cost the City & County very little. Local business leaders started an annual fundraising event - PJ Day - to push for fundraising in the business community and involve school participation. Leaders from both the private and public sector attend the event in their pajamas, signifying the importance of having somewhere to sleep at night. In 2014, over eighty schools and seventy organizations supported PJ Day and the event raised over $280,000.
Denver also developed a Donation Meter Program in which residents and visitors to that city can make donations toward homeless services through parking meters. The program helps raise public awareness about that city’s efforts to combat homelessness and proved to be more effective than a recent anti-panhandling campaign, as it gives people a chance to give to a solution instead. Similarly, Denver International Airport donates the change left behind by passengers at TSA security checkpoints to Denver’s Road Home, the name behind the City & County’s ten-year-plan to end homelessness. The airport’s donations amount to approximately $82,000 a year.
Homeless Resource and Assessment Centers
Providing a “single point of entry” into a Continuum of Care (CoC) system for people experiencing homelessness can help ensure “one stop access” for all the services that CoCs provide, in particular the Rapid Rehousing and Housing First programs, which are not yet widely known or understood. These single points of entry have been identified by USICH as a national best practice.
Local governments such as the Palm Beach County and the City of Long Beach have created Homeless Resource and Assessment Centers as single points of entry in their communities; these centers include healthcare, mental health services, showers, laundry facilities, case
management, and referrals to shelters and most importantly, housing programs. People experiencing homelessness are assessed by case managers at the centers to make appropriate housing and service referrals.
The goal behind these centers is to quickly transition visitors into housing and other important services and not to let them linger onsite. Nonetheless, NIMBY (an acronym for location-based resistance to certain services, from the statement, Not In My Back Yard) resistance recently prevented the City of Tempe from creating a similar type of center. The City of Long Beach was able to counteract NIMBY resistance in part by highlighting the cost-benefit appeal of such centers and successfully illustrating how the public stands to directly benefit from the cost savings that the City generates from housing people.
Mitigating Eligibility Barriers
Homeless individuals that have spent time in jail or prison tend to have a more difficult time accessing housing and services because of their criminal backgrounds. In an effort to mitigate this issue, the city of Atlanta created minimal eligibility requirements for Housing First programs and shortened the criminal background check to two years so that more people are eligible for Section 8 housing.
In the same vein, the City of Dallas developed Project Reconnect, a comprehensive outreach program that provides reentry case management and community referrals to non-violent offenders on parole transition into the Dallas community from a state or federal prison.
Case Management
Comprehensive, supportive case management was consistently referenced in interviews as a key factor behind successful Housing First programs. Staff from Santa Clara County’s Destination: Home particularly emphasized the importance of robust case management services to help people experiencing homelessness overcome the significant challenges they face when attempting to navigate and access even basic benefits on their own. Benefit program requirements can be highly complex and difficult to interpret, especially for those that may not have a phone, address, or suffer from mental health or addiction problems.
Case managers also serve an important role acting as inter-agency coordinators and breaking down silos, especially with service providers that remain resistant to the Housing First model. As a result, case managers are able to help people experiencing homelessness access their benefits much more quickly than they would be able to on their own. Moreover, case managers serve as ongoing support to ensure that, once housed, those at risk of homelessness continue to have access to the services they need to remain housed.
Other Common Strategies and Best Practices
Other common practices among local governments demonstrating success in combating homelessness include the following:
Announcing a goal to house a certain number of people by a certain date. Creating this concrete goal acts as a powerful rallying tool and it has been identified as a best practice.
Including on city and county websites a list of resources for people experiencing homelessness, complete with contact information. Cities also commonly indicate that those in need of assistance call 2-1-1.
Housing people in scattered locations so as not to create a dense congregation of formerly homeless. This practice has not only led to healthier communities, but also helped to combat NIMBYism. Moreover, housing different types of formerly homeless together has also proven more successful than, for instance, only housing veterans together.13 Those experienced in managing affordable housing projects indicate that buildings that include a diverse population are usually healthier buildings (with the exception that buildings for seniors tend to work better if they are just for seniors).
Offering a bus ticket home to help reunite homeless people with family and friends who are willing and able to help them end their homelessness. Such programs, however, are unlikely to have much of an effect in most communities where the far-reaching majority of those experiencing homelessness are originally from the area. The City and County of San Francisco, on the other hand, is unique in that it does attract some homeless people that are from out of town (mostly young people); it is for that reason that San Francisco offers a free bus ticket home through a Homeward Bound program.
Challenges & Lessons Learned
This section discusses the common challenges that local governments reported that they continue to confront in reducing homelessness, and the lessons learned in the process.
Overcoming the misperception that Housing First is “just housing.”
There is some resistance among service providers to the idea of Housing First, but it seems that this resistance largely stems from a misconception about what the Housing First model entails:
“What we’ve found [in Atlanta] is that people said Housing First doesn’t work because they thought that they just [had to] put someone in a house and then they were done. That didn’t work because [clients] didn’t have the intense support services that they needed.” (Atlanta jurisdiction interview)
Providing housing to people experiencing homelessness is only half of the story. Housing First also calls for comprehensive wrap-around services to ensure that people stay housed. It is important that this supportive service piece is not forgotten or underestimated; it is absolutely critical to the success of any Housing First program.
Getting everyone on the same page and coordinating effectively.
Another reason for resistance in the provider community is that the move toward Housing First strategies represents a “seismic shift” in homeless service culture:
“The shift [toward] Housing First has been an ongoing challenge. The hesitancy among the providers is just that they don’t know how to do it. They are asking ‘What’s my place now? How do I fit in to the new model that you’re doing?’ ” (Atlanta jurisdiction interview)
Achieving widespread buy-in can be a slow process. Nonetheless, many local governments recognize the importance of getting relevant stakeholders on board:
“One of the things that has been a challenge [for us] has been working with advocacy groups. They have the best of intentions, but [they] can make it difficult for the City to achieve progress. [They also] have credibility in the community, so how do you align [what you are doing] with their goals and priorities? It’s really about relationship building. “ (Long Beach jurisdiction interview)
Without such stakeholders at the table, homeless services will remain fractured and uncoordinated. Thus, relationship building represents a key component to achieving Housing First goals.
Even after widespread community buy-in has been achieved, breaking down silos and creating the conditions for effective inter-agency coordination can remain challenging:
“Getting the affordable housing programs to share resources has been difficult. We are working on an attitude change. [It is a] paradigm shift to go from [thinking] ‘my clients’ to [thinking] ‘our community.’ [We are currently] working on coordinated assessment, which will require agencies to work together. [We] hope the attitude shift will happen naturally [because of] coordinated assessment.” (Austin jurisdiction interview)
A key component to achieving Housing First goals is achieving coordinated assessment - a system in which all programs within a Continuum of Care (CoC) work together to assure that services are accessible and well targeted to the immediate needs of the client. Understandably, developing such a system can be challenging and time-consuming. Led by EveryOne Home, Alameda County’s CoC is in the process of developing a coordinated assessment system.
Long-term planning
Many local governments have developed ten-year strategic plans for creating permanent solutions to homelessness in their communities, but staff at Denver’s Road Home thinks that this timeframe should be shortened:
“Ten years is a really long time. We didn’t know that the recession and the housing crisis would happen. We’re trying to remain nimble and adjusting to that, but now we’re seeing a huge rise in family homelessness. Next time, we will probably develop a 2- to 5-year strategic plan.” (Denver jurisdiction interview)
While the strategic planning process can be long and arduous, it will not achieve its intended purpose if the plan that it develops is allowed to become irrelevant. Shortening the length of time between strategic planning processes will help ensure that local government homeless policy remains up-to-date and focused.
Locating funding and using resources effectively
Much of the funding available to homeless services is limited and restricted in its use. For example, at the moment federal dollars are most heavily invested in housing homeless veterans, so finding sufficient resources to meet the needs of other homeless populations is a commonly cited challenge. As a result, local governments frequently must develop creative funding mechanisms but are careful to use limited resources as effectively as possible:
“It’s not just about making vouchers available, it’s about making them usable for veterans with major barriers and allowing people to use them that wouldn’t be normally be able to. That has been key. It’s about the commitment and ability to use the vouchers in the correct way.” (Hennepin County jurisdiction interview)
Likewise, the City of Long Beach has watched closely to assure that Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funds are used effectively:
“The more that you can direct CDBG funds to going toward homelessness, the more impactful you can be. We monitor our agencies pretty closely and have had to terminate contracts with some of our agencies [for performance and reporting issues].” (Long Beach jurisdiction interview)
Local governments are not only seeking new funding mechanisms, but they are also working to ensure that available funding is used as effectively as possible, in a way that ensures accountability and focuses on outcomes.
The need for more affordable housing
Local governments across the country are having difficulty providing enough affordable housing to meet the needs of their homeless population, especially in areas where occupancy and market rates are high like the Bay Area. In such communities, turnover is low, available units are scarce, and it is much harder to convince landlords to take a chance on tenants that have been identified as chronically homeless and most in need.
Hennepin County has confronted such challenges by soliciting the City of Minneapolis’ support in bringing new affordable housing projects to fruition. As a result, Minneapolis allocates $10 million in CDBG funding annually to providers that develop affordable housing. The City has also invested in non-affordable units to make them affordable. These units are located in attractive buildings that are not an eye sore in the community, unlike the archetypical affordable housing complexes of years past.
Minneapolis is also reexamining zoning ordinances that have made it difficult for affordable housing projects to get off the ground. Eliminating unnecessary procedural barriers has been key to developing more affordable housing in the area.
IV. Regional Efforts to Address Homelessness in Hayward and Alameda County
The City of Hayward, like many other Bay Area communities has invested significant time, effort, and resources to help address the issue of homelessness. Financially, the City provides an average of $250,000 per year towards homelessness and hunger-related programs and services in Hayward from various funding sources such as Community Development Block Grant (CDBG), Emergency Solutions Grant, and the Social Services Grant Program. Cumulatively, this is an investment of millions of dollars over the past decade alone.
The issue of homelessness is intrinsically regional in scope, especially in a heavily urbanized region like the Bay Area. As a result, despite this significant ongoing outlay of local municipal resources, any unilateral efforts carried out by only one jurisdiction will have limited impact.
Regional Coordination - EveryOne Home
To better coordinate efforts across jurisdictions, in 2006 local governments within Alameda County formed the EveryOne Home coalition of agencies (www.everyonehome.org <http://www.everyonehome.org>) with the stated goal of ending homelessness in Alameda County by 2020. Local government jurisdictions throughout Alameda County including the City of Hayward and the County of Alameda have formally adopted the EveryOne Home plan. In so doing, each jurisdiction has agreed to employ the key strategies of EveryOne Home in their own jurisdiction and in collaboration with others to proactively address homelessness.
Even when working in coordination with other local jurisdictions, community-based organizations, and other partners in the region as the City has done for many years, it is unrealistic to think that we can eliminate homelessness, hunger, and negative street behaviors entirely. These issues have been an intractable part of human society in varying degrees since ancient times. However, we can and do continue to strive toward the goal of minimizing these uniquely human issues and as many of the negative impacts as possible at any given point in time; including having any one person or family homeless for as short a period as possible
The magnitude of the regional homelessness issue is such that no comprehensive plan to resolve it, not even a highly coordinated regional strategy like EveryOne Home, can hope to be effective without significant financial resources on a scale only available through the state and especially federal government.
Alameda County Continuum of Care
In Alameda County, the CoC is led by the organization EveryOne Home. EveryOne Home and other lead CoC agencies nationwide also conduct point-in-time counts on an annual or biannual basis to register how many people in their communities are experiencing homelessness and outline their demographic characteristics. These point-in-time counts allow CoCs to: 1) identify the most vulnerable and/or those at risk of dying due to homelessness and immediately place them in permanent supportive housing; and, 2) coordinate services to align with the specific needs of the homeless population in that specific region.
Regardless of any plan or specific strategy that may be implemented locally, federal funding is critically important to making a significant impact on the homelessness issue. For this reason, the City of Hayward and its local partners in the EveryOne Home coalition must remain in alignment with the federal strategy in order to access the resources necessary to help homeless Hayward residents find and sustain stable, permanent housing in a substantial and sustainable way.
In addition to collaborative efforts focused at the consumer or provider level; the EveryOne Home Plan also looks at coordination at the systems level. The creation of an integrated, regional response offers a number of measureable, outcome-oriented alternatives, including:
1. Increased efficiency and effectiveness of local and regional housing and supportive service programs through sharing of information, planning, clients, resources, and responsibility across the multiple systems that must work together to address common issues.
2. More coordination of government and philanthropic funding. National research has demonstrated that an integrated approach to long-term homelessness can significantly reduce overall expenditures. An example of the collaborative efforts undergone in Alameda County was the Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program (HPRP) county-wide collaborative, funded by the federal government through the economic stimulus.
3. Increased local capacity to attract competitive grants from federal, state and philanthropic sources that can augment existing housing and service systems and support the replication of emerging promising practice models.
4. Increased public interest and support for creative solutions to homelessness, excitement about and involvement in regional efforts, and willingness to support the creation of a new local or regional revenue stream. For more detailed information please refer to the Alameda County EveryOne Home Plan at www.everyonehome.org <http://www.everyonehome.org>.
Per the direction set forth by HUD and codified in the HEARTH Act, the City of Hayward works in coordination with its jurisdictional and agency partners in the Continuum of Care (CoC) to address the needs of homeless persons and persons at risk of homelessness throughout the Alameda County region and specifically in Hayward.
Emergency Solutions Grant Program
The Emergency Solutions Grant (ESG) program is administered federally by HUD, and provides funding to: 1) engage homeless individuals and families living on the street; 2) improve the number and quality of emergency shelters for homeless individuals and families; 3) help operate these shelters; 4) provide essential services to shelter residents, 5) rapidly re-house homeless individuals and families, and, 6) prevent families/individuals from becoming homeless.
The City of Hayward is not an entitlement Emergency Solutions Grant (ESG) grantee as it is with Community Development Block Grant (CDBG), but the City was a sub-recipient of competitive ESG funds in FY 2015. The City works in collaboration with the local CoC and partner agency Abode Services to provide outreach services and access to permanent supportive housing to chronically homeless individuals in Hayward.
The City consults with the Continuum of Care to develop performance standards and evaluate the outcomes of projects and activities funded with ESG in alignment with HUD goals. In implementing the ESG grant program, the City of Hayward utilizes the Alameda County Priority Home Partnership ESG Policies and Procedures Manual, which outlines policies and procedures for all ESG recipients and sub-recipients operating programs within Alameda County.
Hayward AC Impact: Program Overview and Comparative Cost Analysis
Stable, permanent housing is a critical cornerstone to the health and well-being of homeless and at-risk people, as it is to the health and well-being of the community overall.
To this end, in FY 2012-13 HUD initiated funding support to EveryOne Home partner Abode Services to lead the implementation of a multi-jurisdictional “housing first” pilot program in Alameda County. After the initial planning phase was completed, the “AC Impact” pilot program was implemented in FY 2013-14 to provide stable housing and coordination of supportive services for fifty high-need, chronically homeless individuals countywide, including eight individuals in Hayward.
The goal of AC Impact is to permanently and supportively house chronically homeless individuals throughout Alameda County, thus ending their homeless condition. A key feature of the program is the collaboration between local police and fire departments, community services city staff, and outreach workers to identify program participants.
Efforts are targeted to chronically homeless individuals in highly visible parts of downtown areas in Hayward, Oakland, Fremont, and Livermore who are the source of numerous public safety and emergency medical contacts, and who therefore generate significant response-related costs to the community. These individuals are placed in stable, permanent housing (typically a leased apartment) and then are provided critical in-depth supportive services to address underlying issues including substance addiction, mental illness, and trauma.
By placing these high-contact individuals in stable housing first and providing supportive services after they are safely housed, the problematic street behavior, emergency calls, and frequency of arrests are dramatically reduced, resulting in a significant cost savings to the community. Additionally, those provided with supportive services have significantly higher rates of retention and success, resulting in an increased quality of life for the individual and a reduced likelihood of return to homelessness.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) provides major funding for the project, with additional matching support provided by the participating jurisdictions. Each Everyone Home partner jurisdiction contributes match funding needed for local coordination and street outreach - including $30,000 of CDBG funding from the City of Hayward - to support the AC Impact program. HUD provides a permanent housing subsidy for each formerly homeless individual. Abode Services leverages funds to support the delivery of housing placements, building upon established relationships with housing providers.
To date, the county-wide program has successfully placed fifty chronically homeless residents into permanent supportive housing. The City of Hayward has contributed $30,000 annually over the past two years to help support eight permanent supportive housing units for Hayward homeless residents. Of the current eight Hayward participants, five have come off probation. Of those five, two are now currently employed and contributing toward their own rent. Of the original eight, two people are now deceased and others have taken their places, and the remaining individual still struggles to remain housed. Each participant is in their own apartment, receives wrap around case management, and their interactions with public safety have been practically eliminated.
Comparative Cost Analysis Overview
At the mid-point of the initial FY 2014 pilot year, a comparative cost analysis was completed to assess the program’s performance in its first six months. The AC Impact program had successfully placed the first four long-time chronically homeless Hayward residents into permanent supportive housing at that time. Extensive data regarding service costs for these four specific individuals prior to placement in supportive housing was compared to the service costs after their placement into supportive housing for six months.
Because of the many challenges experienced by the chronically homeless population, extensive documented histories of interactions with the Hayward Police Department (HPD), Hayward Fire Department (HFD), and Emergency Medical Services (EMS) exist for each of these four individuals. The data utilized in the comparative cost analysis was made available as the result of a unique collaboration between the Community Services Division, the aforementioned city departments, and local non-profit service providers.
Using actual 2012 and 2013 data as baseline years, the four individuals had a combined total of 105 arrests/citations and thirty-eight fire/emergency calls when they were living on the streets of Hayward during those two years, generating an estimated $602,000 in public safety and emergency medical response costs.
Often times, HPD receives a call for social nuisance behavior and disorderly conduct involving homeless individuals. The calls often lead to an arrest and overnight stay at the Hayward Detention Facility. HFD and Emergency Medical Services (EMS) are regularly called to assess the physical condition of the homeless individual. The table below (Figure 2) illustrates a snapshot of the actual costs of providing these emergency services to four specific individuals within the AC Impact program within the first six months of the pilot program.
The total actual cost of providing emergency services to these four chronically homeless individuals over the six months prior to their entering the program was $152,537.72. In the lower portion of the same table are the total costs of providing permanent supportive housing to these same four individuals over their first six months in the AC Impact program. The difference between the six-month costs of providing emergency response services to these four individuals when they were homeless and the six-month cost of safely and supportively housing them was dramatic: permanent supportive housing costs were 94% lower than the costs of emergency response services.
(See to Attachment V, Figure 2: Hayward AC Impact Comparative Cost Analysis: Six Month Costs, 2014)
Police arrests and citations, fire and emergency dispatch, bookings in the detention facility, and overnight jail stays were frequently experienced by the AC Impact participants prior to being housed. These incidents sharply declined after they were permanently and supportively housed.
The table in Figure 2 uses actual HPD, HFD, and EMS data history and expenses associated to the four AC Impact participants housed. The averages of 2012 and 2013 figures are used for a comparable time frame in comparison to the time housed. Note that this analysis includes ambulance transports and hospital costs. Chronically homeless individuals are generally uninsured, and therefore these costs are wholly subsidized and/or absorbed by the community.
Limitations and Next Steps in Comparative Cost Analysis
The comparative cost analysis incorporates data available through the division’s partnerships with other city departments and service providers in the EveryOne Home Continuum of Care. Because we have not finalized expenses for referrals and treatment in the Alameda County Behavioral Health Care Services system for the AC Impact participants, those costs are not included in this preliminary analysis.
Additionally, there were multiple occasions when HPD and HFD were dispatched for calls other than disorderly conduct. In these instances, the individual was transported to the Santa Rita County Detention Center. The costs to transport and secure the individual in the county-operated detention center are not included in the above analysis.
A result of providing stable housing is a decrease in need for case management and support services the longer an individual has been housed. The cost to house a person would therefore likely also decrease over time. When these factors are taken into account, the indication is that these cost savings projections are likely on the conservative side.
Additional effort is needed to acquire missing data points as mentioned above. Case managers from Abode Services will continue to provide services and track the status of all AC Impact program participants to ensure that housing is sustained.
A second comparative cost study is in the planning stages, and will focus on all eight individuals currently receiving AC Impact housing placements in Hayward including new individuals who entered the program after the initial 2014 pilot analysis. The time period for the second study has not been determined as of yet, pending coordination of data collection with the various emergency response agencies, but it likely will study costs over a six- or twelve-month period in 2015. Additionally, the research will be compared to similar Housing First programs throughout the nation, in particular the Home Not Found report released by Santa Clara County in May, 2015.
Other Strategies in Alameda County: Housing Resource Centers
Since the dissolution of Redevelopment Agencies, the County of Alameda has received an average of $13.4 million per year in residual property tax revenue (a.k.a. "boomerang" funds). In addition to the ongoing residual property taxes, the County has also received "one-time" residual funds that were derived from sweeps of "housing" and "non- housing" fund balances and the sale of properties. Presently, there is $9.8 million in swept housing funds, and $23.2 million in swept non-housing funds; all of these are now County General Fund monies, which may be used for homelessness and housing-related purposes pending review by the Alameda County Board of Supervisors at a later date yet to be determined. The County has opted to direct some of these funds toward the creation of Housing Resource Centers (HRCs). These proposed Housing Resource Centers are intended to serve as a countywide system of coordinated intake and assessment centers for homeless housing and related services. The project is being led by the County’s Housing and Community Development Department (HCD). The project is in the proposal stage at this time; neither the exact scope nor the locations of the proposed site are known as of yet.
Other Strategies in Alameda County: Shelter Plus Care
Shelter Plus Care is a permanent supportive housing program of Alameda County funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Rental assistance and support services are provided for homeless individuals who meet the following federal eligibility criteria:
• Resident of Hayward / Alameda County
• Are living on the street or other places unfit for human habitation, in emergency shelter, or in eligible transitional housing with verification that the applicant was living on the street or in shelter prior to entering transitional housing
• Homeless for at least six months out of the last two years
• Are disabled by chronic substance abuse, serious mental illness, and/or HIV/AIDS
• Have a household income at or below 50% of Area Median Income (AMI)
• Willing to participate in supportive services.
The Shelter Plus Care program is part of a growing national trend that emphasizes permanent supportive housing as the best practice model to end chronic homelessness. The program is funded by HUD and operated locally by the Alameda County Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD). The City of Hayward has partnered with HCD for many years on a wide range of housing and human services needs in Hayward, including the current Interdisciplinary Working Group on Homelessness convened by the City of Hayward.
More information about the Shelter Plus Care program is available online at <http://acgov.org/cda/hcd/homeless/permanent.htm>.
V. The EveryOneHome/Alameda County Homeless Count
Every two years since 2003, Alameda County via EveryOne Home conducts a boots-on-the-ground research study to count the number of people homeless in the county and several key characteristics of those who are unhoused. EveryOne Home organizes field work and surveys that generate a report on two variables:
• Homeless status, i.e., unsheltered, sheltered in emergency and transitional housing, other homeless situations
• Enumeration and subpopulations i.e., counts of total persons, number of households with children, number of households without children, chronically homeless singles, severe mental illness, chronic substance abuse, veterans, HIV/AIDS, domestic violence, unaccompanied youth under the age of 18
This information is crucial for the purposes of planning, reporting to funding agencies, and informing local decision making regarding services and housing. The count is intended to complement data already available on the Homelessness Management Information System (HMIS) in place at shelter and transitional housing services operating under contract with public agencies within Alameda County. Administrative data for other program sites were acquired on a one-time basis in January 2015. This data was then added to data from HMIS and other service provider records to get a full perspective on homeless persons in the county.
The University of California, Berkeley was contracted to design and select the survey sample, to clean and analyze the data, to create weights, and to report on the number and characteristics of the homeless population of Alameda County. This same group drew a sample of facilities that provided non-residential services to the homeless and gave EveryOne Home a target sampling fraction for each selected site. They also created site-level weights, to compensate for differences in selection probabilities and for differential non-response within sites. Because of the intensive data analysis required, the summary 2015 report was only recently released in July, 2015, six months after the actual count occurred. The complete report is not expected until late 2015. What follows are excerpts from the report’s key findings:
The estimated number of people who are homeless in Alameda County has remained about the same as in 2013. 4,040 people were homeless on a single night in January 2015 as compared to 4,264 in 2013. The 2015 count is essentially unchanged from 2013 when statistically examining the data.
(See Attachment V - Figure 3: Total estimated number of homeless individuals in Alameda County by year. & Figure 4: Total estimated individuals in key homeless subpopulations.)
The system served 9,123 people in 2014, just over half of whom were still in services at year end. Nearly 60% of persons still in services were those being assisted with Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH) and services to stay housed. PSH ensures that people with disabilities and histories of homelessness, many of whom were homeless for twelve months or more, are now housed with the supports to stay there. In 2014, 96% of people living in PSH retained their housing or moved to other permanent housing.
A greater portion of people served by the system exited to permanent housing, and did so faster. 2,303 people exited the system to permanent housing; more than half of all the people exiting the system (51%). 59% of the people who exited from a shelter to permanent housing did so within ninety days or less, while transitional housing programs show a 12% decrease (forty-four days fewer) for people who exited to permanent housing.
A larger percentage of people who left the system for permanent housing are returning within twelve months. The rate of returning to homelessness increased from 13% in 2013 to 16% in 2014. Rapid Rehousing programs continued to see the lowest rates of return to homelessness with a rate of 9% in 2014. Many factors could be contributing to this change, such as a shrinking and increasingly expensive rental market or the need for more supports to keep people stably housed. The national goal is a rate of 10% or less for returns to homelessness.
As accurate data will provide the foundation for any plan of action going forward, it is the opinion of the Interdisciplinary Working Group that next steps should be discussed upon the release of the full Alameda Homeless Count report which is expected in late 2015.
V. Overview of the Current Service Delivery Network in Hayward and Alameda County
Staff has compiled an interactive map of the current service delivery network in Hayward and Alameda County. The map is available online here: <http://bitly.com/homeless-resources>. It shows the locations of various types of homelessness and hunger supportive services including: emergency shelters; food pantries and meal sites; transitional housing; permanent supportive housing; support services; public/private restrooms; affordable housing, and other related services. Staff has compiled the best available data to provide a reasonable snapshot of the service delivery network for discussion purposes only and to help identify strengths, gaps, and potential opportunities in the local service delivery network.
The map is not intended to be a comprehensive or perfect listing of all available resources in Hayward and Alameda County. It is not intended to be used as a referral tool for homeless individuals or others in need of services. For referral to available social services in the community, residents are encouraged to call 2-1-1.
Emergency Shelters
An emergency shelter is any facility whose primary purpose is to provide temporary or transitional shelter for the homeless in general or for specific populations of the homeless for a period of ninety days or less. Within Hayward, there are 100 emergency shelter beds, provided by four non-profit agencies, available to serve different segments of the 1,100 homeless people staying in mid-County.
- Family Emergency Shelter Coalition (FESCO) provides shelter and support to homeless families (twenty-four beds)
- South County Homeless Shelter operated by Building Opportunities for Self-Sufficiency (BOSS) provides shelter and support services to single adults, who suffer from mental health problems and are also addicted to drugs and/or alcohol (twenty-four beds).
- Women on the Way Recovery Center provides emergency shelter and drug and alcohol recovery services to homeless women (ten beds).
- Ruby’s Place provides emergency shelter and supportive services for women and children who experience domestic violence, homelessness, and human trafficking, with twenty-four hour emergency pick up available for clients (forty-two beds).
All the emergency shelters located in Hayward have made accessibility modifications to their facilities (some with City of Hayward CDBG funds) to improve accommodation for homeless people who have physical disabilities.
Additionally, South Hayward Parish in recent years has operated an occasional cold-weather overnight “warming shelter” with twenty mattresses. This service is made available on winter nights when the temperature is below thirty-nine degrees or if there is rain, not showers. According to reports submitted to the City by South Hayward Parish, the warming shelter was opened seven total nights during the winter of 2014-15.
Transitional Housing
Transitional Housing is a model that is designed to provide housing and appropriate supportive services for homeless persons to facilitate movement to independent living within twenty-four months. In addition to programs that provide emergency shelter and support services, there are sixty units of transitional housing, provided by four non-profit agencies:
- Building Opportunities for Self Sufficiency (BOSS) /Pacheco Court provides ten transitional housing units for mentally ill homeless adults with families and/or single adults.
- BOSS/South County Sober Housing is a transitional housing project for twenty-one single adults dually diagnosed with substance abuse and mental health disabilities.
- FESCO also provides four units of transitional housing, as well as co-housing facilities for eleven additional families at its Banyan Street project.
- Shelter Against Violent Environments (SAVE) operates fourteen units of transitional housing for female survivors of domestic violence and their children.16
Permanent Supportive Housing
Permanent supportive housing is safe, affordable, clean, community-based housing that provides tenants with the rights of tenancy and links to voluntary and flexible supports and services for people with disabilities who are experiencing homelessness.
• With City of Hayward’s CDBG funds, the Abode AC Impact’s permanent supportive housing program serves eight Hayward clients, and fifty County-wide. The participants are identified by law enforcement, emergency services, and local jurisdictions as individuals who are most visible and costly to the community through their high level of interaction with law enforcement and emergency services. The primary goal of this program is to help clients increase stability in health, housing, finances, social supports, and other daily living areas, and decrease use of emergency services.
Food Access
Food pantries, meal services, and nutritional meal programs are available in many locations throughout Alameda County, including over 20 locations in Hayward. For FY 2015-2016, the City of Hayward’s CDBG program includes $40,000 in funding earmarked for six organizations to buy food through the Alameda County Community Food Bank (ACCFB). ACCFB will leverage food purchases at a $1 to $6 ratio, meaning the $40,000 earmarks will help these six organizations buy $240,000 worth of nutritious food items for Hayward residents at the following City-funded sites:
- BOSS currently provides meal services for individuals at the emergency shelter and transitional shelter
- Bridges of Faith currently offers breakfast at 8am Monday and Friday and 11:30am Friday food pantry
- Magnolia Women currently provides meal services for individuals using their services; access is associated with participation in Magnolia programs
- Salvation Army currently offers hot lunches for seniors for $3.50 Monday through Friday, bag lunches for all Monday through Friday, and Sunday dinner at 4:30pm
- South Hayward Parish Food Pantry currently offers lunches for seniors at 12pm Monday, and a food pantry at 3pm Tuesday through Friday
- United Smith currently offers a food pantry every second and fourth Saturday from 10am-2pm
An additional 14+ locations in Hayward also provide food access but do not receive City funding.
(See Attachment V, Figure 5: Food Access Locations in Hayward*)
Restroom Access
Approximately fifty-five public restroom locations are available in Hayward. They are shown on the interactive online map as standard restroom icons. The public restrooms are mainly located in government-operated facilities including City and County public buildings, Hayward Area Recreation and Parks District restrooms, federal and state buildings such as DMV, etc.
In addition to the public restrooms, some private/commercial restrooms are shown on the map and are indicated as dots. The private/commercial restrooms include locations of national chain restaurant and coffee shops operating in Hayward, cross-referenced and combined with current listings in the restroom finder smartphone apps, “Sit or Squat,” “Where to Wee,” and “Nearest Toilet”.
(See Attachment V, Figure 7: Public and Private/Commercial Restrooms in the Hayward Area*)
Support Services
Direct services through Alameda County and additional support services in Alameda County for the homeless population include:
- Legal consultation and advocacy (nineteen locations)
- Counseling and mental health services
- Medical and dental services
- Services for individuals seeking sobriety (six locations)
- Shower access
- Mobile phones: low or no-cost mobile phones.
(See Attachment V, Figure 6: Support services in the Hayward are (including medical/dental, legal, consultation and advocacy, counseling and mental health, services for individuals seeking sobriety, and shower access)
VI. City of Hayward Interdisciplinary Working Group on Homelessness, Hunger, and Street Behaviors
In service to the City’s desire to engage in and resolve the issue of homelessness to the best of our ability as a municipal government, and to ensure that all the key stakeholders are involved in this important work, staff assembled an Interdisciplinary Working Group to coordinate and develop the groundwork and information presented in this report and work session. The working group includes key staff from Community Services, Police Department, Development Services, Maintenance Services, and the offices of the City Manager and City Attorney, among others. It also includes key leaders of community partner agencies who deliver services to the homeless population including the executive directors of local shelter providers FESCO and Ruby’s Place, food pantry and service provider South Hayward Parish, and housing and homeless service provider Abode Services, among others.
Listing of Interdisciplinary Working Group Participants:
Louis Chicoine Abode Services
Kara Carnahan Abode Services
Liz Varela Building Futures
Kathie Barkow EveryOne Home
Gay McDaniel FESCO
Vera Ciammetti Ruby’s Place
Sue Merrill South Hayward Parish
Betty DeForest South Hayward Parish
Sean Reinhart Library and Community Services
Jim Denholm Hayward Police Department
Lesley Hayes Hayward Police Department
Eric Vollmer Hayward Fire Department
Todd Rullman Maintenance Services
John Stefanski City Manager’s Office
Leigha Schmidt Development Services
David Korth Neighborhood Services
Rachael McNamara Library and Community Services
Monica Davis Library and Community Services
Dawn Jaeger Library and Community Services
Michael Vigilia City Attorney’s Office
The Interdisciplinary Working Group met on multiple occasions most recently in June, 2015, and plans to continue to meet and continue its work with guidance and direction provided by Council at the work session.
The group undertook its work with the clear understanding that it is unacceptable for anyone to be chronically homeless or hungry in the City of Hayward. At the same time, the group maintains an awareness and recognition that all residents, visitors, students, and businesses have the right to a clean and safe community environment that does not threaten their health, safety, or productivity.
In addition to sharing information and perspectives on the issue of homelessness, the working group meetings also focused on identifying strengths, gaps, and opportunities in the current network of services. Subsequent meetings will center around developing realistic options to build on strengths and leverage opportunities to close the gaps, weaving in relevant data, case studies, and best practices to shape and inform the process.
A summary overview of the Interdisciplinary Working Group’s work to date is provided as Attachment IV. What follows is a summary list of the strengths, gaps, and opportunities identified by the group this far:
Strengths in the current service delivery network:
City resources including public HFD, HPD and Maintenance Services
EveryOne Home collaboration and resources
Business and faith community collaboration
HMIS System and data
City Council support
Evidence based practices and examples
Interdisciplinary Working Group
Strong providers currently working in Hayward community
Gaps in the current service delivery network:
Affordable Housing
Transitional Age Youth Services
Transportation
Funding Resources
Outreach Services - Mental Health and Clinicians
Mental Health Services Follow Up
Shelter for Single Men, Women and Teens
Opportunities to leverage strengths and close gaps:
Alameda County Housing Resource Centers project
Shelter Plus Care Program
Current political will to take action
Educating community and stakeholders regarding services currently available
Seek and secure non-traditional funding sources
Multi-jurisdictional collaboration and county working group
Conduct a comprehensive Hayward-specific study and/or gap analysis
Buy in and support from local business and faith communities
Potential for back office collaboration - shared administrative costs between CBO’s
As stated above, this effort stems from the community’s unwillingness to tolerate bad or disruptive behavior in the public right-of-way, on public property, or on private property accessed regularly by the public. It is also based on the community’s desire to assure that no one in the community goes homeless or hungry, particularly families with children. And it is directly linked with the City’s commitment to the EveryOne Home coalition in which the City is an active partner, and with the plan set forth in the Opening Doors report, which is directly linked with the essential sources of federal funding that could potentially be brought to bear toward resolving this issue.
As part of this continuing work, future meetings of the working group will focus on further developing and focusing the above analysis into a set of potential actions for Council consideration in the near future. With guidance and direction from Council received at the work session, within our financial and physical resources and within the political purview of the Council, staff and the working team will carefully identify back a realistic role for the municipal corporation and realistic options to help inform and advise the social/political policy of the Council.
(See Attachment V, Figure 8: Estimated homeless population in Hayward, Mid-County and Alameda County)
It should be noted that the above described Interdisciplinary Working Group operates in close coordination with partners in the EveryOne Home coalition including City of Hayward, Alameda County, Hayward Police Department, and a range of participating homeless service providers in Hayward. This working group is separate and distinct from the Homelessness Task Force group that has been independently organized by homeless advocates. It is staff’s understanding that the group is organizing its own Homeless count focused specifically on Hayward and utilizing the broadest definition of “homelessness”. It is not yet clear how this additional count will intersect or overlap with the work of the larger EveryOne Home coalition and that of the Interdisciplinary Work Group. The data collected by this additional count could potentially be useful in the larger efforts to address homelessness in our community, particularly if the additional count is conducted in such a manner and with methodology that aligns with those used by EveryOne Home and required by federal agencies like HUD, which provide significant funding to localities for addressing homelessness.
Fiscal Impact
The City of Hayward currently provides approximately $250,000 per year in direct funding support to local agencies and programs that work to end homelessness, hunger, and related issues in the Hayward community. This long standing investment of resources comes primarily from the CDBG and Social Services grant programs. In addition to this annual cash investment toward helping homeless residents in need, the City of Hayward invests significant in-kind costs to provide emergency and public safety response to homeless individuals-over $76,000 per individual per year in some cases. Initial comparative cost analysis of AC Impact program participants indicates that this expense could potentially be significantly reduced by as much as 94% through investment in more permanent supportive housing to get more of the chronically homeless individuals safely and supportively housed.
VII. Next Steps and Project Objectives
Given the recent significant developments in the federal approach to the issue of homelessness and the clear direction from HUD and other federal agencies as to how CDBG and other federal funding sources should be used to address the issue going forward, staff has prepared this report seeking Council input and discussion.
The intended outcome for this work session is to receive guidance and direction from Council on the following key questions:
1. Given that homelessness and hunger are regional issues in the Bay Area, what are the respective roles and responsibilities of the City and the County in addressing homelessness and hunger? Are “social services” a core function of a municipality (as opposed to a county jurisdiction)?
2. Should the City continue to align its strategies and programs with the national homelessness strategies outlined by the HUD including permanent supportive housing; and with regional strategies including EveryOne Home, AC Impact, and other federally-funded regional programs? If not, what are the preferred alternatives?
3. Should the City and the Interdisciplinary Working Group continue to develop strategies to address needs in one or more gap areas for recommendation to Council? Understanding that it may not be financially feasible to address all gap areas, which gap areas should receive highest priority?
4. Should staff develop options for potentially refocusing the CDBG and Social Services grant funding process with the goal of closing one or more identified gap areas, within the limited financial resources and eligibility requirements of those grant programs?
At the direction of Council, other potential areas of focus for the upcoming interdisciplinary work could potentially include: possible need for new ordinances and/or improved enforcement; identifying funding sources and making recommendations for use of existing resources; creatively leveraging the regular contact between public safety responders and homeless individuals to improve transitions out of homelessness; establishing or expanding organizational structures and interactions with community and other agency partners to further increase collaboration and shared goals, and other elements related to addressing homelessness, negative street behaviors, hunger, and related issues in our community-with the lofty goal of mitigating and eliminating all of them.
Prepared by: Dawn Jaeger, Community Services Manager
Rachael McNamara, Administrative Analyst
Monica Davis, Administrative Analyst
Staff contact
Recommended by: Sean Reinhart, Director of Library and Community Services
end
Approved by:
Fran David, City Manager
Attachments:
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Attachment A |
Full Staff Report |
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Attachment I |
Opening Doors: Federal Strategy to End Homelessness |
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Attachment II |
Opening Doors: Federal Strategy to End Homelessness |
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Attachment III |
Home Not Found: The Cost of Homelessness in Santa Clara County |
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Attachment IV |
Interdisciplinary Working Group on Homelessness Summary Report |
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Attachment V |
Tables: Figures 1 through 8 |