SLO is drafting a 2-year plan to reduce homelessness. Here are its goals
The city of San Luis Obispo is crafting a two-year plan to address homelessness in the community.
“We’re trying to reduce homelessness, and we’re trying to help people have access to the many resources within the county,” San Luis Obispo Mayor Erica A. Stewart said at a San Luis Obispo City Council meeting Tuesday night.
The city hopes to better connect homeless people with housing and support services via a variety of methods — including collecting data, collaborating with San Luis Obispo County and securing more funding, SLO homeless response manager Kelsey Nocket said.
The city also wants to improve communication with both housed and unhoused community members, Nocket said
City staff gave an update on a draft of the plan at Tuesday’s meeting.
Here’s a closer look at the plan and what the city hopes to achieve.
City plans to collaborate with SLO County to reduce homelessness
In August, the San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors approved a five-year plan to reduce homelessness by half.
The county’s plan involves levering funding to build a spectrum of housing, from tiny homes to affordable housing developments, while expanding support services.
SLO County is responsible for creating services to address homelessness — from starting new behavioral health programs to building housing, Nocket told The Tribune on Wednesday, and it receives funding from the state and federal governments to do so.
The city receives limited funding that can be allocated to homelessness, so its job is to connect folks with services offered by the county and nonprofit organizations, Nocket said.
“The vision statement focuses on being a connector to service, rather than a provider of service,” Nocket explained.
The city connects folks to services through programs such as its Community Action Team, featuring a social worker and police officer or firefighter who respond to service calls related to homelessness.
Since the city may have enough funding to start programs, but not enough to manage them for multiple years, San Luis Obispo prefers to launch pilot programs that can eventually be passed to the county — which has more stable funding that can support long-term programs, Nocket said.
“The city is leading by example to show what’s working, so the county can take a fully vetted program and amplify it,” Nocket said.
For instance, Nocket said, the Community Action Team was originally a pilot program started with city funding. Now the county funds the case manager position, so the city and county collaborate to support the program.
The city will soon hire two more case workers to the Community Action Team program, Nocket said.
What is SLO doing to address homelessness?
Though the City Council hasn’t yet finalized the plan, staff have already started taking steps to address homelessness, she said.
“We’re not waiting for a written plan to start taking action,” Nocket said. “There’s urgency to this issue.”
City staff designed a paper pocket guide with a list of resources that people who are homeless may need, including bus routes, instructions for securing state identification and information about resources such as 40 Prado Homeless Services Center, which offers shelter and emergency services.
The pocket guide is currently only available in English, but city staff are working on publishing versions in Spanish and Braille as well, Nocket said.
The pocket guide can be given to people who are homeless and looking for services, or community members looking to support them.
Vice Mayor Carlyn Christianson said the city should include a non-emergency police department phone number in the pocket guide, so folks can call for help if there’s a disturbance in their neighborhood but don’t want to call 911, she said.
The city is also developing a data collection app that tracks what contact unhoused folks had with support services in the area.
For example, if a city staff member enters a person’s name into the app, the staffer can see if that person was referred to the 40 Prado homeless shelter, if they went to the shelter for service, had access to a bed, and if they decided to stay at the shelter.
This will help the city identify what types of support different people have connected with, and what other resources they may need, Nocket said.
City Council members weigh in on vision statement
The draft plan includes two goals in its vision statement.
The first goal involves empowering community members to “successfully prevent and address concerns related to homelessness through equitable access to a variety or resources.”
The second goal entails reducing periods of unsheltered homelessness in the city through “timely outreach” and connection “to a range of emergency and transitional shelter/housing options.”
The city hopes to achieve this vision through five components: data, communication, pilot programs, regional collaboration and funding.
At Tuesday’s meeting, each of the city council members suggested edits to the vision statement.
Stewart asked staff to simplify the vision statement — pointing to the county’s homeless plan as an example — and to incorporate more specific and measurable goals in the plan.
Stewart wondered if the city has the capacity to reduce unsheltered homelessness, as it doesn’t have funding dedicated to homelessness like the county does. Unsheltered homelessness is when a person does not have any access to shelter.
Stewart suggested that the city include reducing unsheltered homelessness as a bullet point in the draft plan that it can collaborate with the county to achieve, rather than as an item in the plan’s vision statement.
Councilmember Michelle Shoresman agreed.
“In a two-year period, (reducing unsheltered homelessness) seems like a pretty tall order for the city to be able to take on ourselves, knowing that we aren’t the main provider of that full range of services to transitional to emergency to traditional shelter and housing,” Shoresman said.
Christianson asked staff to create more specific, measurable goals in the plan, especially when it comes to funding.
Spending more money on reducing homelessness doesn’t necessarily mean the city is doing a better job at getting people off the streets, she said, so allocating more funding to homelessness issues may not be a strong measure of success.
“As I have said a number of times from the dais, you could pour every dollar that we have in the general fund into homelessness issues and responses and you would still have a homelessness problem,” Christianson said.
Councilmember Jan Marx said she wants the vision statement to address how the city will support housed people who feel unsafe and upset about homelessness in the city, in addition to how the city plans to support people who are unhoused.
“There’s a lot of aggressive behavior out there that the general public has to deal with,” Marx said. “The permanent residents need to know that they’re supported and protected.”
Stewart suggested that community impacts are included in the context portion of the plan rather than the vision statement.
“In the end, this is a homelessness strategic plan, so I think if we start involving every other item, it’s going to potentially get watered down and lost,” Stewart said.
Councilmember Andy Pease suggested that the plan include context on historical racism and classism that continue to impact people’s access to public health and housing, and make some people more vulnerable to homelessness.
The City Council will vote on the finalized plan in January 2023, according to council documents.
