SANTA CRUZ — Popping out of a punishing winter and the tip of the coronavirus pandemic’s state of emergency, Santa Cruz County’s homeless inhabitants has remained extremely seen and but considerably dwindled, in accordance with outcomes of a current examine.
The area’s annual homeless point-in-time depend, performed by volunteers on a single day in late February, recorded a one-year lower of greater than 21%, bringing the census to the county’s lowest recorded inhabitants of 1,804 unhoused people. The most recent survey numbers had been revealed Thursday, greater than a month after native governments set in movement their funds plans for the approaching fiscal years.
With the help of ongoing state {dollars} and a twisting labyrinth of specialised grants, Santa Cruz County’s efforts on the homeless entrance have expanded in areas of broader root-cause points reminiscent of behavioral well being and drug dependancy challenges, along with tackling the native ongoing inexpensive housing provide scarcity.
Limiting inexpensive housing efforts was the truth that Santa Cruz County continued to sit down among the many highest ranked in research of rental housing affordability, together with prime slots within the 2022 report by the Nationwide Low Earnings Housing Coalition and the Nationwide Low Earnings Housing Coalition’s 2023 Out of Attain report. The county’s Rehousing Wave effort, working in collaboration with the Housing Authority of Santa Cruz County, positioned 295 previously homeless households — representing greater than 425 individuals — into properties between October 2021 and early 2023.
Two of the three everlasting supportive housing tasks receiving funding from the state’s Challenge Homekey grants have opened their doorways to tenants, together with an preliminary providing from the deliberate 20-unit Veterans Village in Ben Lomond and the seven-unit Casa Azul in Santa Cruz. The third, a 36-unit Park Haven Plaza modular house undertaking in Aptos, stays below development.
Each jurisdictions are working via multiyear strategic plans to handle native homelessness.
Shelters vs. the streets
This 12 months’s obvious enchancment within the native homeless inhabitants — the survey was “performed below difficult winter circumstances,” in accordance with a launch from the collective Santa Cruz County Housing for Well being Partnership — got here a 12 months after the county recorded a 6% uptick in homelessness. That survey occurred whereas Santa Cruz County as an entire was within the midst of its largest effort to shelter homeless people, at its peak greater than doubling its non permanent mattress depend to over 1,000 with the assistance of state and federal coronavirus pandemic aid funds. As these funds ran out and resort shelters shuttered, a long-standing metropolis out of doors encampment in Santa Cruz’s San Lorenzo Park grew to become a focus of the realm’s persevering with want.
In keeping with this 12 months’s homeless census, 79% of individuals experiencing homelessness in February had been unsheltered.
Then, in September, metropolis officers accomplished a multimonth effort to filter San Lorenzo Park’s Benchlands encampment’s occupants, providing various shelter choices as every camp phase was fenced off and bulldozed. The camp’s estimated inhabitants reached, by some counts, greater than 300 people at its peak and had at the very least 225 individuals as clearout efforts started in earnest, metropolis outreach employees mentioned. Occupants had been supplied help in looking for various shelter choices, together with choices on the city-funded Overlook shelter effort on the Nationwide Guard Armory in DeLaveaga Park with 135 indoor and out of doors areas, which complemented a extra established self-governed camp for 27 individuals in a metropolis lot at 1220 River St.
Many camp occupants didn’t go to or stay for lengthy within the metropolis shelters, leading to a focus of tent encampments within the metropolis’s Pogonip park and close by, alongside the Freeway 9 hall main out of city. The encampment continued earlier than and after in depth winter storm harm to the realm, till an identical metropolis encampment clearing undertaking — begun at Pogonip in Might — concluded in July. Town estimated that there have been 65-75 occupied tents within the park on the cleanup’s begin and that 35 individuals had been linked to shelter providers by its conclusion.
Along with placing Santa Cruz, a serious winter storm in March and subsequent breach of the Pajaro River levee close to Watsonville heightened the concentrate on individuals dwelling in tents alongside the riverbed. Even earlier than dozens of households had been put out of their properties on account of flood damages, Watsonville itself was the one metropolis within the county that recorded a rise of individuals experiencing homelessness this 12 months. In keeping with the point-in-time depend, the recorded homeless inhabitants went up by 15% from the 12 months prior, to 421 people.
In June, the state introduced its award of a $8 million encampment decision grant to joint recipients Santa Cruz and Monterey counties plus town of Watsonville and the Pajaro Regional Flood Administration Company. The grant will fund placement of a brand new micro-home village shelter undertaking to serve these dwelling with out shelter within the Pajaro River mattress.
Past tent encampments, practically half of these dwelling with out shelter in February’s depend had been sleeping of their automobiles. In the meantime, an effort to limit town’s proliferation of individuals dwelling inside massive automobiles — typically RVs — gained traction previously 12 months as a 24/7 RV protected parking program for about 14 automobiles was established in September and a handful of extra “Tier 1 and Tier 2” overnight-only parking websites had been put aside all through town.
The complement to the parking program was a brand new metropolis regulation, the Outsized Car Ordinance, that may ban all unpermitted massive automobiles from parking in a single day on metropolis streets within the coming months. The California Coastal Fee finalized a one-year allow clearing the way in which for town’s contested regulation to be enacted in areas closest to Monterey Bay in June. Beforehand, nonetheless, town should type a stakeholder committee and produce a rollout plan earlier than launching enforcement efforts.
Ongoing funding efforts
Within the metropolis of Santa Cruz, which sustains the best focus of homeless people within the county, metropolis leaders confronted a turning level in June after they pledged hundreds of thousands of recent metropolis {dollars} towards a continued dedication to responding to homelessness. The transfer, mirrored in a cumulative $2.7 million of common fund spending from town’s 2023-2024 funds, comes whilst two massive grants — one federal and one state — are practically depleted.
In April, the Santa Cruz Metropolis Council included addressing homelessness as one in all its prime strategic objectives. In June, the council adopted up on that dedication by approving a 2023-2024 funds that rolls over some $6 million remaining within the state and federal grant funds and provides its personal {dollars}. The funds will double down on present packages and canopy ongoing homeless response personnel prices for its homeless response motion group, police group service officers, outreach employees and contributions to the countywide homeless continuum of care.
Spending priorities for the approaching 12 months will embrace, most importantly, the $4.8 million wanted to proceed working the Metropolis Overlook on the Armory. Different areas of deliberate spending embrace the three-tiered protected parking program, at practically $530,000, the $230,000 storage program, $142,000 for extreme climate shelter and the $80,000 transitional group camp at 1220 River St. Nevertheless, efforts together with buying small “pallet” shelters for the Housing Issues campus, a leisure automobile dump station, an extra transitional housing group camp, improvement of an extra indoor shelter and a cellular disaster response group will likely be placed on the again burner till town can safe new funding with the assistance of a state lobbyist.
