SLO creates first plan to manage homelessness. Here are 4 things to know about it
The city of San Luis Obispo has a new plan to manage homelessness.
The San Luis Obispo City Council unanimously adopted the city’s first-ever Homelessness Response Strategic Plan at its March 21 meeting.
The plan outlines the city’s response to homelessness through 2024, and emphasizes its role as a “connector” between homeless residents and service providers — from nonprofit organizations to San Luis Obispo County’s Homeless Services Division.
“There are times that I feel really hopeless about the homeless situation, but this strategic plan is at least ... a roadmap of things that can be done,” San Luis Obispo Vice Mayor Jan Marx said prior to the March 21 vote. “We can’t solve everything, we can’t help every single person who needs help, but at least as a city, this is a way forward.”
SLO creates first homelessness response plan
This is the first time the city of San Luis Obispo has put its own plan for managing its homelessness crisis into action.
The city’s 2021-23 financial plan required it to create a strategic homelessness response plan, acting Homeless Response Manager Daisy Wiberg told The Tribune.
Wiberg said the city’s “overarching objective” was to align with the county’s Plan to Address Homelessness, which was approved in August 2022.
That plan outlines SLO County’s homelessness response policies through 2027, and aims to reduce homelessness in the county by 50% over its five-year run.
“The city felt it was the right time to formalize our homelessness response strategies,” Wiberg said.
As the city of San Luis Obispo was considering the best ways to lower the number of people experiencing homelessness, the city consulted local stakeholders — including homeless and housing services providers, healthcare providers, activist groups, faith-based groups and the business community — as well as residents.
Using all that feedback, the city crafted a plan that would ultimately ensure “all community members in SLO city are empowered to successfully prevent and address concerns related to homelessness through equitable access to a variety of resources,” the plan read.
The city hopes to do that in five main ways: regional collaboration and engagement; communications; data; pilot programs and funding.
Collaboration with SLO County is key for plan’s success
A key part of the plan is going to be collaboration with the county to promote “proven best practices” for addressing homelessness.
That means working with the county’s Homeless Services team, advocating for policies and strengthening relationships with stakeholders.
It also involves coordinating regional encampment and street outreach and cleanup efforts with the county and service providers.
Under the response plan, the city will develop a digital homeless encampment management tool to streamline outreach, referral and response efforts.
Findings from this data management tool will be shared with the county and other regional homelessness partners to support the countywide Coordinated Entry system and Homeless Management Information System.
The city will also coordinate visits with the county to homeless encampments to figure out the city’s data needs and which barriers are stopping unhoused residents from accessing services they need.
The city will also use those visits to move homeless residents through a referral system that connects them to service providers.
To make data easier for the public to access, the city will also update its website pages on homelessness outreach efforts.
Keep an eye on SLO’s homelessness response pilot programs
Under the new plan, San Luis Obispo will continue developing its pilot programs and, much like its data collection efforts, will share those developments with the county “for potential regional implementation if proven effective.”
The Community Action Team and Mobile Crisis Unit programs will continue their outreach efforts in homeless encampments, according to the plan, and will meet regularly with the county’s Homeless Services Department to evaluate their readiness for county-wide implementation.
Those programs will receive ongoing support from General Fund allocations through the 2023-25 Financial Plan, Wiberg told The Tribune.
“The goal of those pilot programs is to demonstrate their effectiveness, develop strategies for long-term sustainability and advocate for county-wide adoption of successful programs, including reliable funding streams,” Wiberg said.
Those programs will be paid for through the city’s General Fund.
The plan also recommends collaborating with the county to expand the city’s hotel voucher program — which provides applicants with temporary shelter in area hotels — while developing transitional housing opportunities.
This would help make more emergency housing immediately available for unhoused residents, and help combat the lack of local shelter space.
According to the plan, the city will also coordinate with the county to “identify, develop and implement new pilot program opportunities” for shelter and housing for chronically homeless individuals, medically vulnerable individuals and families.
These efforts may include working with local faith-based groups to implement safe parking programs — as Arroyo Grande is considering — and tiny home communities, as well as researching emergency and transitional shelter programs to be developed as future pilots for the city.
Funding, approaches will be updated in future
Wiberg said the response plan will be funded through the city’s General Fund, with resources for homelessness response allocated through a variety of city departments.
In the 2022-23 financial year, the city set aside nearly $3.12 million in funding for homelessness response, drawing on money from the American Rescue Plan Act, Community Development Block Grant, Human Relations Commission Human Services Grant and General Fund.
Outside of existing funds, the city will apply for additional funding to combat homelessness, including donor partnerships and applying for one-time funding and grant opportunities, according to the plan.
Future funding allocations will be made in the 2023-25 financial plan, Wiberg said.
At the conclusion of the plan in 2024, Wiberg said, the city will examine how it went to figure out future approaches to homeless response.
At the March 21 meeting, City Council member Michelle Shoresman said she expects further updates to the plan over the coming years.
“It’s only a two-year plan,” she said. “We’re already halfway through the period, so I know that there will be revisions and changes coming, and hopefully by that point the county’s plan will have been implemented for awhile, so there will be more opportunities to find the nexuses and the partnerships and the greater coordination and greater support for the county-wide plan.”
This story was originally published April 1, 2023 at 5:30 AM.
