With the number of unsheltered homeless people on the rise in Santa Barbara County, the cities of Santa Maria and Lompoc are both officially on board with phase II of the county’s Community Action Plan (CAP) to Address Homelessness. Both city councils adopted the plan at their respective May 4 meetings.
The first phase of CAP, which identified key strategies to address homelessness, was adopted by the county Board of Supervisors in 2019. The second phase sought to collect the data needed to get funding and further develop actionable goals to reduce homelessness, according to the county’s council agenda report. The phase II development process lasted from late 2019 to January 2021, involving outreach and input from more than 400 community members, and the board adopted it in February. Now the county is presenting the second phase to local jurisdictions for adoption.
During a presentation at the Santa Maria City Council meeting, Senior Housing Program Specialist Lucille Boss broke down what the county needs from local jurisdictions in order to combat homelessness as a region, much of which centers on increasing affordable and supportive housing. Boss said cities can help by encouraging local businesses to hire those experiencing homelessness, identifying new sites for alternative housing or parking programs, creating inclusionary zoning policies, and maintaining a list of funds dedicated to homelessness.
COVID-19, Boss said, has worsened the homelessness and housing crisis on the Central Coast.
“The number of encampments, the amount of belongings in encampments, and the risks and negative impacts for the person living in an encampment and the surrounding communities are growing,” she said. “Responding to encampments has been increasingly challenging, and the conditions people are living in are distressing.”
Boss added that the number of people using local shelter systems is down, a concerning statistic the county gathered through a point-in-time count in January.
“One year ago, there were 647 persons sleeping in our regular, year-round shelter programs,” Boss said. “In 2021, only 407 persons were guests in the same year-round shelters.”
The decrease in the number of sheltered homeless individuals doesn’t mean the homeless population is going down: County data from over the last 10 years shows that the number of unsheltered individuals in the county is on the rise.
“The number of unsheltered persons living on the streets, beaches, in riverbeds, and in vehicles has been increasing, while the number of sheltered persons has decreased,” the CAP council agenda report said. “This can be correlated to the decreased availability of temporary, emergency shelter beds at the same time as increased rental costs.”
The CAP to Address Homelessness has system level goals, Boss explained, such as dramatically reducing homelessness for specific subpopulations (such as veteran and youth homelessness), increasing housing inventory dedicated to homelessness, and creating a culture of shelter diversion and prevention.
Mayor Alice Patino expressed a few hesitations with the county’s housing-focused approach.
“When you house a person first, and they have not detoxed and they haven’t been in any kind of a program, you just can’t take them off the street with their carts and say, ‘OK, we’re going to give you a house to sleep in and call us when you need us,’” she said.
Patino added that from her perspective, “we can’t build our way out of this.” But she and other council members also expressed their support for the county’s different approaches to combating homelessness, and voted unanimously to adopt phase II of the CAP. Lompoc City Council voted in favor as well, though it was split 3-2.
Councilmember Dirk Starbuck was particularly outspoken against adopting the plan.
“It’s almost like the county can’t do what they’re getting a lot of money to do, and so they’re going to put it on us … to take care of it,” he said.
Councilmember Victor Vega expressed concerns over the mental health aspect of homelessness.
“It’s pretty clear that the county is more concerned with implementing a plan and a way of generating revenue to continually support the homeless, which I understand,” he said. “But it doesn’t seem like they’re focusing on the mental health aspect of the people that are affected out there. … There’s no goal to actually heal or help most of these people here in Lompoc.”
Mayor Jenelle Osborne said she believes the plan does adequately address mental health issues and allows Lompoc to be a part of the conversation.
“It is a comprehensive plan across the county, and we’re being invited to be at the table as part of the discussion, so that we can make sure that the needs that we have are met instead of overlooked,” Osborne said.
Osborne and Councilmembers Jeremy Ball and Gilda Cordova voted to pass the resolution. Vega and Starbuck opposed it.
This article appears in May 13-20, 2021.