'Response' To Homelessness Announced In Santa Cruz County

SANTA CRUZ COUNTY, CA — The County of Santa Cruz recently announced actions aimed at improving its response to the region's homeless crisis.

The effort is a collaboration — called the Homeless Action Partnership — between the county, each city within it, and local homelessness service providers. Together, the group identified strategies to undertake countywide beginning in early 2020:

1) Retooling of the Smart Path, which is a system to assess homeless people and refer them to the most appropriate services, with a goal of more quickly moving vulnerable individuals into services that ultimately reduce homelessness
2 Enable homeless individuals or those facing homelessness to utilize existing resources and networks to avoid becoming homeless
3) Revise existing shelter strategies to maximize effectiveness and accessibility of housing resources to more quickly move people from shelters into permanent housing, as well as increase the efficiency of shelters to serve more clients
4) Redesign street-level outreach to those experiencing homelessness, based on a new coordinated and standardized approach, that brings together outreach teams and their funders to share information, methods and measurable outcomes
5) Restructure interagency homelessness governance to more effectively and efficiently address decision-making, planning, funding and outcomes

The goals were identified with input from the consulting firm Focus Strategies, which was hired by the county.

“Through partnership, community input, study sessions and review by the board of
supervisors, these strategies represent the first phase implementation of a coordinated,
system-wide approach to addressing homelessness in Santa Cruz County,” said Rayne Peréz, County of Santa Cruz Homeless Services coordinator. “We’re committed to demonstrating improvements and tangible results through this proactive and evidence-based approach.”

According to the 2019 Point-in-Time Count report, there are 2,167 homeless persons
living in Santa Cruz County. Nearly one-third are currently employed, and three-quarters
were previously housed in Santa Cruz County before becoming homeless. Thirty-nine
percent reported a disabling condition impacting their ability to live independently;
approximately 30 percent reported suffering post-traumatic stress disorder, substance
use disorder, and/or other psychiatric or emotional conditions.

Loss of employment was the leading cause of homelessness, according to the report.

One in 10 reported increasing rent as the cause of homelessness, a figure that has more than doubled since the last report.