With their unconditional loyalty, big eyes filled with nothing but love, and snuggles that bring endless comfort, pets can be the biggest support system for people going through tough times.
But that support system can morph into the biggest barrier when trying to access services to improve their circumstances.
“One of the things we talk about is let’s say you are a person who doesn’t have a house, and you have a dog, and you need to go to a wellness appointment or a probation appointment … but you don’t have anywhere to put your dog,” Santa Barbara County Animal Services Director Sarah Aguilar said. “Do you leave the dog and risk it being taken from you or not go to your appointment? If you don’t go to your appointment, does that cause an emergency later—which causes stress to the system, but it also puts a burden on the person.”
Historically, Santa Barbara County’s human services departments—and those statewide—have worked in silos that often didn’t consider pets in the equation, but Aguilar believes it could be one key to bringing more services to more people in need.
“If we could work with the human service agencies, we could find a solution,” Aguilar said. “There’s just a lot of ways we as a society historically have torn pets and people apart from each other as a way to influence control and it hasn’t worked, so let’s try something else.”
Santa Barbara County Animal Services established a Pawsitive Care coordinator position as part of its efforts to try something new. This role—created through a $200,000 state grant from the California for All Animals program—will be collecting data on how often human service agencies interact with people who have pets, and eventually bring the agencies together to find ways to keep pet families together and avoid surrenders to the shelter, Aguilar said.
Santa Barbara County Animal Services has 131 dogs, 93 cats, and nine other animals in its shelters, and 104 dogs and 146 cats in foster care as of Oct. 14. While capacity is fluid, Animal Services is comfortable at anything under 140 dogs in the shelters, Aguilar said.
“Each shelter knows their frequent flyers. … They are in a cycle trying to get out of [the system], and that’s orchestrating this whole other side,” Aguilar said. “Maybe keeping them together will help them.”
While Aguilar acknowledged that some policy changes may have to occur, particularly around housing and shelter services, she hopes that the data collected will encourage other agencies to make those adjustments to better accommodate pet families’ needs.
“What I would like to see is that the county shelter becomes a place where only animals that truly need these resources are housed here,” Aguilar said. “A reduction in lost pets because they’re going home instead of coming to the shelter; a reduction in pets coming in because people are hospitalized, arrested, or some other resource challenge because maybe we found ways to keep them together.”
Maddy Crowley, the Pawsitive Care coordinator, took on the new role after 12 years of working in the animal welfare industry.
“It’s as exciting as it is a learning curve,” Crowley said. “It hits close to home to me and is something I want to solve, rather than just a job. … I’ve seen really good families lose their pets due to unforeseen circumstances.”
It’s a “heartbreaking experience” that’s as hard on the pets as it is the families, and Crowley wants to prevent that from happening, she said. She’s currently sending out a survey to Santa Barbara County’s human service agencies to understand how many people with pets the county works with and what barriers they experience.
After survey results come in, Crowley and Animal Services want to create new programming to bridge those gaps. She’s looking into possible partnerships with local veterinarians to provide discounted vet care for allergy treatment or “simple issues” that can be taken care of for those who might be limited due to their income status. If people are missing doctor’s appointments because they have nowhere to leave their pet, the county could partner with a doggy day care at no cost to the owners.
On the housing side, the aim is to provide licensing and obedience training at little to no cost to help convince shelters or landlords to allow the pet on-site, she added.
“There’s not a whole lot of information yet; the plan for me is once we get closer to that time before the end of the grant [April 30], I will be making the print plan of this grant or the position,” Crowley said. “The last thing we want is the project to stop mid-process. … Whatever happens, we want this project to keep moving forward and assisting people within the community.”
Sacramento began a similar effort in 2022 with its homeless outreach and assistance program, said Jenna Topper, the program’s coordinator.
Through a $753,230 American Rescue Plan Act grant, Sacramento implemented a new emergency call type for animal control dispatch that specified whether a pet owner was experiencing homelessness to quantify the number of unhoused pet families the city saw. The funding covered six months starting in January 2021.
“Now, instead of neglect or strays, we were able to see it was a pet owner experiencing homelessness. A lot of calls come in with pet owners experiencing homelessness. Just because a call comes in for potential neglect or welfare doesn’t always mean that is the case,” Topper said. “It allows us to approach the call in an intentional way, start addressing our response to better offer care that was needed or whatever resources were needed when we were called.”
Sacramento saw calls related to 603 owners experiencing homelessness in 2021. Since then, those calls grew to more than 5,900 and the city moved $1 million into the shelter operating budget for the 2022-23 fiscal year.
The funding increase allowed Sacramento to expand its program, which now takes a partnered approach between animal services and human services during calls designated as owners experiencing homelessness. The collaboration allows the agencies to address pet needs on-site, rather than taking them in for veterinary care, and connect the pet parent to any services they might need.
“We play the long-term game to get everyone up to date on preventative care with the owner’s consent and buy-in,” Topper said. “Supporting an individual into housing, we play the long game to get them within a reasonable number of pets, all with the owner at the forefront.”
Her team vaccinates and licenses pets to prepare them for housing opportunities and works with corresponding agencies to get their clients to the “top of the line” once something becomes available. Since its full-fledged operation took off in 2022, Topper said she’s seen an uptick in transitional housing opportunities that allow pets.
“The establishment of programming meeting people where they are at and having teams offering assistance have also created an opportunity for more housing to consider pet-friendly locations,” Topper said. “We’re continuing to build relationships with people services, new housing opportunities are on the horizon, folks are reaching out with us in advance to see how they can maintain pet policies and seeking our input.”
While Sacramento’s program is slightly different from Santa Barbara County’s, they share the same goal of keeping pet families together.
“The reality is these pets, dogs and cats too, [are]the things getting these owners up for the day, they’re sharing their meals with these animals,” Topper said. “They’re more than just companions but a lifeline for a lot of these owners. Recognizing this as such, that seeing pets as part of families will help in creating long-term success.”
Reach Staff Writer Taylor O’Connor at toconnor@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Oct 24 – Nov 3, 2024.