SAN JOSE, Calif. - September 22: A view of HomeFirst’s Emergency Interim Housing site at Rue Ferrari in San Jose, Calif., is photographed on Wednesday, Sept. 22, 2021. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)
A recent decision by Santa Clara to forego sponsorship of a Project HomeKey development for homeless families leaves the fate of a proposed 30-unit interim housing complex in the hands of the more experienced, better equipped Santa Clara County, which will vote on the project next week.
The Board of Supervisors will decide Tuesday whether to take on the responsibility of serving as the co-sponsor with the nonprofit LifeMoves on an application for critical state funding through Project HomeKey, the pandemic-era initiative that has helped convert and create housing for homeless individuals in California.
Consuelo Hernandez, the director of the county’s office of supportive housing, said cities sometimes do not want to take on that role because, unlike the county, they don’t have dedicated resources for homelessness.
“The county receives funding from the state that is supposed to be distributed county-wide,” she said. “For Santa Clara, that risk of having to be responsible for the operations and not really having a dollar amount at this time, the unknown of the risk was too much. For us, this would be our fourth or fifth HomeKey site, and we have the opportunity of leveraging all the other resources the county has access to for homelessness.”
The Santa Clara City Council voted 4 to 3 on May 2 to contribute money and support a transitional housing project on county-owned land on the corner of Lawrence Expressway and Benton Street. But due to financial concerns, the council declined to sign on as a co-sponsor.
County Board President Susan Ellenberg, whose district encompasses Santa Clara, said the recent “point-in-time” homeless count made a strong case for the need for interim housing for families. The Lawrence and Benton site is expected to house families for three to six months until they find more permanent housing. Each unit will be equipped with a bathroom and kitchenette.
Earlier this week, Santa Clara County released its preliminary numbers for the homeless count, conducted on a night in January. While the county’s unhoused population remained about the same from last year — with roughly a 1% dip — the number of homeless families skyrocketed by 36.5%.
Ellenberg described the change as a “really significant and worrying statistic.”
“A lot of focus on homelessness has been on individuals and very often individuals with substance use disorders, with mental health challenges and with other significant needs,” she said. “Family homelessness is really a different category, and this project at Lawrence and Benton would be the first interim project for homeless families that the county would be supporting.”
In Santa Clara, the proposed project has received fierce backlash from residents who showed up in force at recent council meetings with concerns over safety because of its close proximity to neighborhoods. Others voiced unease that there would be low barriers to access the housing or that the county would go back on its word and decide to use the space for homeless individuals rather than families.
But Hernandez said there’s a “general misunderstanding” in what the county means when they say they want there to be low barriers to entry in accessing interim housing.
“What we are referring to is not wanting to implement any strict policies that would actually lead us to not meet the objectives of the interim housing,” she said. “The idea is that we want people to come indoors so that they can get connected to services and housing, and if we’re putting in policies that are preventing them from coming inside, then those are barriers to entry that we don’t want to see.”
Hernandez said one example of a barrier that would prevent people from accessing housing is not allowing pets.
Any change in use that would move the interim housing from families to individuals would also be highly unlikely since there are few options for families and any change would require both board and state approval.
Originally published at Grace Hase