SLO County supervisors approve ‘battle plan’ to reduce homelessness by 50% in 5 years
On Tuesday, the San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors approved a plan to decrease homelessness by half in five years.
“We need ways to get roofs over people’s heads that don’t take five to seven years and six to eight sources of funding and half a million dollars to build,” Homeless Services Oversight Council Chair Susan Funk said at the meeting.
Before this plan, the county had more of a fragmented response to homelessness — where the county, cities and non-profit organizations all worked to support the unhoused community, but had no framework to work together.
The five year plan, however, unites these groups under the county’s leadership for a more targeted response.
“The county is organizing for action,” Funk told The Tribune on Monday. “When is the last time you saw the county show up to a discussion of homelessness with a battle plan? That’s what we’re doing.”
Right now, there’s only enough shelter in the county to house 20% to 30% of the unhoused community each night, Funk said.
“We brought a garden hose to a house fire,” Funk said at the meeting. “We’ve got a thousand-person gap every night in between the number of people who are out there homeless and the number of people we can offer any kind of shelter to.”
The plan assumes that about 2,100 people are unhoused in SLO County in 2022, with 200 more people losing their homes each year.
The county’s goal is to house 2,050 people over five years with a variety of approaches, including building more housing, expanding mental health and addiction services, and improving county-wide collaboration.
The board voted 5-0 to support the plan.
“This is a really big moment for us,” Supervisor Dawn Ortiz-Legg said.
Supervisor John Peschong compared the five-year plan to the county’s old 10-year plan to end homelessness, noting that reducing homelessness by half is a more realistic goal that eliminating it altogether.
Supervisor Bruce Gibson said he supports the plan and hopes the county moves quickly to implement it.
“This is a great vision for the future, a great plan for the future, and hopefully the near future,” Gibson said. “The crisis is now. I think we just need to keep in our heads and our hearts the urgency of dealing with this incredible human tragedy that we face.”
What does the plan do?
The plan calls for a variety of strategies to tackle homelessness. Here are a few of the goals:
Build more housing, from tiny homes and palette shelters during the first half of the plan to developing affordable housing projects closer to the five-year mark.
Expand mental health, addiction and case management services.
Identify new sources of funding, including grants and private donations.
Improve the county’s data collection and management system.
Establish a citizens advisory oversight committee to hold the county accountable for its commitments in the plan.
During the first year of the plan, the county emphasizes building more interim housing like tiny homes, safe parking sites and pallet shelters.
The plan calls for an expansion of the safe parking facility on Oklahoma Avenue and Kansas Avenue during the next year. The county also plans to build a tiny home village on Oklahoma Avenue, which should be completed by February 2023 and include 20 to 30 homes, County Administrative Officer Wade Horton said. The project will be presented to the Board of Supervisors later this year, he said.
The county also plans to repurpose the existing animal shelter at 885 Oklahoma Ave. into a counseling center to support folks living at the tiny home and safe parking facility, Horton said. The county is building a new animal shelter that is nearing completion.
Meanwhile, the Five Cities Homeless Coalition (5CHC) is making progress on a pallet shelter on the corner of 16th Street and Long Branch Avenue in Grover Beach; the facility is scheduled to open on Sept. 15. The shelter will include 20 cabins, a community center with a dining hall and allow pets. They hope to offer addiction recovery services onsite and partner with 40 Prado Homeless Shelter to provide meals, according to a presentation from 5CHC staff.
The county will also work to expand services for case management, mental health and addiction to supplement housing.
“Housing first is essential, but housing alone is insufficient,” Funk told The Tribune in July. “You have to have a marriage of the housing and the services that support people.”
Gibson motioned to direct the Behavioral Health Division to build a strategic plan to improve mental health services in the county. He suggested that the plan start with a survey of what services are offered by the behavioral health system, where the gaps are, and how the county can fill in those gaps. All five supervisors voted to support the motion.
“We never have a homeless conversation without talking about mental health and addiction,” Ortiz-Legg said.
A new Homeless Services Division
The Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to established a Homeless Services Division under the Department of Social Services. The new division will implement the five-year plan.
The division will include 23 employees. Eight of those positions already exist withing the Department of Social Services, six positions will be transferred to the division from the Department of Planning and Building, and nine positions are new, according to county documents.
CEO of El Camino Homelessness Organization (ECHO) Wendy Lewis said that organizing the county’s homeless services into one department makes operations easier for her organization — as they can go to one place for grants and other assistance.
“We appreciate the fact that all of this is being put into one department,” Lewis said. “Not often things come around in our work in homeless services that make our jobs easier.”
This story was originally published August 10, 2022 at 11:12 AM.
