‘The elephant in the room is we don't have enough.’ Local officials share strategies for reducing homelessness
By Brian Hendershot, Cal Cities Advocate managing editor
Sen. Catherine Blakespear joined local officials at the City Leaders Summit to discuss best practices for moving people out of encampments and into shelters or housing. According to her, one of the biggest challenges — apart from a lack of housing — is a lack of coordination and ownership of the problem.
"We don't have any level of government that fundamentally is owning the problem and putting their arms around it and saying we are going to solve this,” Blakespear argued.
She and other panelists said that resolving encampments is a complex task. They often span jurisdictional boundaries and public opinion is often split on how best to address them. Blakespear noted that the city of San Diego receives 300 complaints a month about encampments that are on the state’s rights-of-way.
Earlier this year, Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order encouraging cities to address encampments or risk losing access to state homelessness funding. But for Blakespear and others, the state has been slow to follow the order.
That’s one of the reasons she is working with San Diego and Cal Cities on a measure that would improve coordination between state agencies and cities when addressing homeless encampments on state properties.
There’s no magic bullet for ending homelessness. But coordination and funding are cited as two starting points. Sacramento Council Member Caity Maple said her city’s reduction in homelessness is due largely to state funding and better partnerships with other agencies and community groups.
“It's not that big of a secret that we historically had a pretty challenging relationship with the county on this issue of homelessness,” Maple said. “A few years ago, we created the city-county Partnership Agreement. That was a pretty landmark agreement for our area because we hadn't historically had anything like that.”
That partnership marked a big shift in how the city approached homelessness. Instead of working in a silo, it began operating in tandem with the county. Sacramento also invested in more efficient, coordinated outreach services that meet people where they are.
But the way to truly end homelessness, Maple argued, is to provide people with a safe, sanitary, and affordable place to live.
“The elephant in the room is we don't have enough,” Maple warned. “Every single one of our shelter beds is full every single day, night of the week. We have that housing waitlist that's 1000s of people long. … If we don't have a roof for someone to have over their head, in the long term, they're going to be cycling in and out for shelters. And it's very costly for us to do that.”
City officials from Petaluma echoed Maple’s advice. In recent years, the city has ramped up its efforts to boost housing and reduce homelessness. Peggy Flynn, the city manager, says when she first arrived, the city was spending just $25,000 in federal funds on shelters. Since then, it has directed millions of dollars to housing and homelessness, with the goal of reaching functionally zero homelessness.
Like Sacramento, the city has found success by focusing on better coordination and meeting the many needs of impacted individuals. “It's about partnership,” Flynn said. “It was about regionalization and seeing what the gaps were, and then just looking at the continuum.”
Panelists also noted that smaller cities can face outsized burdens due to their limited budgets and staff capacity. They also do not receive direct funding from the state to reduce homelessness.
It’s a big problem for Bell Gardens, a city of about 40,000 in Los Angeles County where the median household wage is $55,000. The city is surrounded by riverbeds, railroads, and freeways — all outside its jurisdiction.
Like many cities, Bell Gardens has invested heavily in housing and homelessness. The city has passed rent control ordinances — most of the city rents — and has a dedicated housing department.
The key, Mayor Jorgel Chavez argues, is to prevent homelessness before it happens. “We have to get the folks before they become unhoused,” he said. “We're looking at the indicators. … We need to make sure this issue doesn’t get worse.”