The Central Coast Collaborative on Homelessness is seeking a 10 percent boost in funding from the city of Santa Maria, which Executive Director Chuck Flacks said would help double the organization’s case load in the city for the 2017-18 financial year.
“It truly takes a village to house people who are homeless,” Flacks said at the March 21 Santa Maria City Council meeting.
For the past year, the collaborative—known as C3H—has worked closely with 10 chronically homeless people in Santa Maria, and found housing for five of them.
“It surprised me how we were able to do that,” Flacks said. “I think it has a lot to do with this notion of getting to know people well individually, identifying what their needs are, and case managing each person on a very individualized level. It’s intensive and sometimes very difficult, and it’s often one step forward, two steps back. But we’ve found that the persistence pays off.”
Of C3H’s five remaining cases for this year, one is in a shelter, and two are still on the streets but keeping weekly contact with the organization. Another two found housing on their own, but C3H will continue managing those cases for another 18 months to ensure their situations are stable.
Flacks said C3H would like to increase its caseload to 20 people for the next financial year, including its current 10 cases. This would cost $76,000 to the organization, where Flacks said “resources are very finite.”
“We’re going to have to liquidate C3H in order to survive,” he said. “C3H is on the ropes financially. When we developed this strategy, I knew a year ago that we didn’t have enough funding to continue it. The way we’re structured is unsustainable.”
He added that he’s optimistic the organization will be able to partner with other agencies to bring in the revenue necessary.
Data from C3H estimates that 338 people in Santa Maria are homeless—a 4 percent increase over last year’s numbers, making up about 23 percent of Santa Barbara County’s total homeless population. The city also has the county’s largest population of children who are homeless, the conservative estimate being 74, according to Flacks.
Countywide, the homeless population has remained steady at about 1,500 for the past eight years, Flacks said.
“I find this a little puzzling, to be honest,” he said. “The time is now to really figure out a way to really enhance the revenues that are coming to our community, to really address the problem so we’re not just at a steady state, but that we start to really see significant decreases in the number of people who are homeless.”
C3H’s request for additional funding will come under consideration by the City Council at its mid-cycle budget review in June.
This article appears in Mar 30 – Apr 6, 2017.