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The Bay Area won more than $5 million in grants to help house homeless families — the latest funds allotted from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s $12 billion package to address the statewide crisis.

The California Interagency Council on Homelessness recently doled out a total of $17 million to 10 cities and counties around the state. Oakland, Livermore and Santa Clara County were among the recipients.

“No child should have to spend their formative years experiencing homelessness,” Newsom said in a news release. “With these grants, communities throughout the state will have the resources to innovate and find solutions to family homelessness so that all of California’s children can go to bed each night with a roof over their head.”

Santa Clara County won about $2.5 million to serve 318 unhoused pregnant women and families with infants that are on housing waitlists or receiving housing vouchers. Some of that money is expected to go toward paying for childcare, said Consuelo Hernandez, director of the county’s Office of Supportive Housing. The rest is set to create a pilot program dedicated to providing services such as case management, mental health care and more to pregnant mothers and families with children.

The county has set an ambitious goal of ending family homelessness by 2025. That would require creating enough placements for every unhoused family with children — and mean that when new families become homeless, they could receive help immediately without prolonged stays in shelters, on the street, sleeping in cars or in other unsafe, temporary situations. The county estimates about 600 families become homeless every year.

The state funding is crucial because it gives the county the money and the flexibility to test out new programs, which then can be scaled up if they work, Hernandez said.

“It’s really exciting because it’s competitive,” she said of the grant, “but also I think it’s helping more families quicker than the goal of 2025.”

Oakland received $2 million to serve 165 families who have been impacted by substance abuse. The money will go toward housing them in recovery-focused interim housing units and providing services such as crisis therapy, workforce support and housing navigation.

It won’t be enough to help everyone who needs housing, acknowledged Daniel Cooper, Oakland’s new homeless administrator. But he said the city is grateful for the much-needed funds, and will make the most of them.

“Thank you,” he said to the governor and administration, “and we appreciate the opportunity to serve more families here in Oakland.”

Livermore received $581,000, which will be used to rehouse 25 students and their families. Salinas, Sacramento, San Diego, Los Angeles, Pasadena, Fontana and Mendocino County also received funds.

The grants were competitive, and the state fielded 32 applications requesting a total of $55 million — far more than was available. In the end, the state approved 10 applications.

With the exception of in San Francisco, homelessness has increased across the Bay Area since 2019, according to the latest census results released earlier this year. The number of unhoused people counted increased 35% in Contra Costa County, 22% in Alameda County, 20% in San Mateo County and 3% in Santa Clara County.

Communities that can prove their family homelessness programs are successful can apply for a share of an extra $15 million next year.

“With this initiative, we are empowering local partners to design local solutions to safely house and serve the needs of local families with children,” Lourdes Castro Ramírez, secretary of the Business, Consumer Services and Housing Agency and co-chair of Cal ICH, said in a news release. “Family homelessness cannot be solved by one single agency. It requires state and local governments, schools, non-profits, and local businesses to work together to lift up struggling families and help them quickly regain permanent housing.”

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The massive tent encampments and dilapidated RVs lining neighborhood streets make it clear there’s a problem, but according to a new report, the Bay Area’s homelessness crisis is even worse than previously thought.

An estimated 25,951 people were living without homes in the Bay Area last year, researchers with housing and real estate website Zillow calculated in a report released Tuesday. That’s over 6,000 more than were officially counted by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Zillow analysts built algorithms that took into account cities’ populations, poverty rates, rent affordability and other metrics, and calculated by how much the official counts were likely to be off. The company hopes the new numbers can give struggling cities a more realistic picture of homelessness in their communities, and help them come up with better solutions.

“To really get the scope of this problem, having more accurate numbers is important — to really justify that this is an issue that deserves attention,” said Skylar Olsen, director of economic research and outreach for Zillow.

Homelessness experts have long agreed that the HUD-mandated “Point-in-Time” homeless counts — which rely on volunteers and city and county staff performing a visual count of homeless residents every two years — under counted communities’ homeless residents.

“Just think about the sheer logistical challenge of counting a population which is transitory, possibly moving around, and could have every incentive to hide themselves,” Olsen said.

Zillow estimates there were 10,121 homeless residents living in Santa Clara County last year — up from the 7,394 counted by the HUD census. In Alameda County, Zillow estimated there were 6,975 homeless — compared to 5,629 counted by HUD. And in San Francisco, Zillow estimated a homeless population of 8,855 — up from the 6,858 counted by HUD.

“It’s no secret that people doing work in these communities know that the point-in-time count has been a continuous undercount — the methodology is reflective of one night in a year, not the ongoing need,” said Jennifer Loving, CEO of Santa Clara County nonprofit Destination: Home. “I think the real question is: when will the Bay Area realize that we have an extraordinary crisis for folks who need … extremely low-income housing, and when will we collectively respond?”

In September alone, 333 new households came to Destination: Home seeking help finding shelter or paying rent, but housing was available for just 132 of them. That means 201 families fell through the cracks in just one month — possibly adding to the region’s homeless population, Loving said. She urged the Bay Area to invest more money in homelessness prevention, and to prioritize building low-income housing.

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BY HANNAH DARDEN

DECEMBER 22, 2018 03:00 AM,

Julie Hemingway refused to go to a homeless shelter unless she could be with her cat, Tammy. She didn’t want to be separated from the gray tabby, who’s registered as Hemingway’s emotional support animal, in order to get off the street.

She said she camped by the Taco Bell on Northgate Boulevard for three weeks, with nowhere else to go, until a “wonderful” police officer came and told her about the triage shelter in North Sacramento. She’s been there, with Tammy, since early October.

“I would not have come here when the police officer showed up if I couldn’t be with her,” Hemingway said. “Here, these people are angels of mercy.”

The Railroad Drive facility, run by Volunteers of America, is the only shelter in Sacramento that allows displaced people to live with their pets. Beds are organized in pods of eight to ten, with living and storage space for each shelter resident. Many beds have pet crates at the foot.

The shelter on Railroad Drive has been open since last winter, and the city just voted to keep the shelter open through April, though its capacity will be reduced.

Animal services like medical care, licensing, vaccinations and spay and neuter procedures are available to the pets at the shelter. The services are provided by the city’s Front Street Animal Shelter, which also provides services to homeless pet parents at their headquarters near Old Sacramento.

Front Street recently received a $100,000 grant from PetSmart Charities to keep up its work at the shelter. Gina Knepp, manager of animal shelter, that the PetSmart Charities donation is a good sign that large animal welfare groups are paying attention to the plight of homeless pet owners.

“We learned in Katrina that you can’t just take people out of their homes and not give them resources for their animals,” Knepp said.

Knepp said that people are always going to have and love their pets “whether they’re in a house or not.” Because of that, she said, animal care services are necessary in the homeless community.

“Most pet owners have very close bonds with their animals,” Knepp said. “Sometimes that’s all they’ve got.”

Veronica Venzke has been at the shelter for about six months with her dog, Biggie, a large pit mix with a meaty head and a shiny gray coat. Venzke said she’s still looking for housing, but in the meantime she wishes for a dog run to turn Biggie loose in, so he can run off leash.

Before she came to the triage shelter, Biggie wasn’t licensed or neutered, but Venzke said Front Street got it taken care of right away.

Knepp said that every new animal that arrives at the shelter gets paperwork done to match them to their owner, so they don’t get separated.

They also get flea treatment, shots and, if necessary, the shelter can provide muzzles. Knepp estimates that her group has served 300 shelter pets in the last year.

“We started with 100 crates, and it wasn’t enough,” Knepp said. “At one point we had 200 people and over 100 animals.”

Knepp said that they offer spay and neuter services to everyone, and the response is “overwhelmingly yes,” with few exceptions.

They teach the shelter’s pet parents how to disinfect to prevent pet disease, and have a trainer available on Fridays to help train their pets. The idea of the training, Knepp said, is to teach responsibility for the animals, to teach good pet behavior and to deepen the pet-owner relationship so that it’s easier to adjust when they transition into long-term housing.

Hemingway chose to get Tammy spayed and chipped. The vet, Hemingway said, even gave her some calming drops to give Tammy when it gets stressful for her — she’s one of very few cats at the shelter.

Tammy walks on a leash, and Hemingway said she’ll walk right up to the big dogs and will touch their faces with her paws.

Hemingway also runs a nonprofit called ES Advocates, which helps disabled, homeless and displaced people live with their service animals without extra fees. She hopes to build it up and focus on veterans — Hemingway served in the ’80s — after she finds reliable housing.

“The more you help others, the more it helps you,” Hemingway said. “I’ve got the Lord and my kitty. That’s all I need.”

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https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/homeless/article223117590.html

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