The difference between the north and south ends of Santa Barbara County may have affected the numbers in the January Point-in-Time Homeless Count, according to Santa Maria City Councilmember Jack Boysen.
During the council member reports at the end of the March 3 City Council meeting, Boysen said that the numbers reported to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development were too low and didn’t accurately reflect Northern Santa Barbara County’s situation.
“It appeared that South County has substantially more homeless population than we do, and that’s simply not the case,” Boysen said during the meeting.
The count puts the Santa Maria homeless population at 324 people in 2015, while Santa Barbara’s homeless population sits at 893. Boysen said a big problem with the survey is how people are counted. One of the survey’s questions asks people whether they have a family. Even if a homeless person answers yes to that question, he or she is only counted as one person.
“The primary issue is they only counted adults,” Boysen said. “If you talk to [Superintendent] Phil Alvarado, 4,700 children in the Santa Maria-Bonita School District are considered to be homeless; they do not have a permanent residence.”
Boysen serves as the Good Samaritan Shelter’s financial officer, and said their shelter alone served 400 people last year. He said the biggest difference between the county’s north and south halves is that Santa Barbara’s homeless population is mostly made up of individual transients, whereas Santa Maria’s homeless is made up of a lot of families.
“It’s a real difference in North County,” he said. “I think this is one of the problems we have with funding in North County.”
Federal funding that serves homeless populations is allocated to areas based on need. That need—according to homeless count numbers—is more than twice as great in Santa Barbara than it is in Santa Maria.
Mayor Alice Patino agreed with Boysen’s assessment of the situation.
“I noticed the numbers were really low in Santa Maria, and now I know why,” she said during the meeting.
Boysen said he plans on getting together numbers that more accurately reflect Santa Maria’s homeless situation and will keep the City Council in the loop.
This article appears in Mar 12-19, 2015.