Solving Homelessness in Nevada County: A New Plan is Needed, and Metrics to Show Progress
After reading the April 2024 State Auditor’s Report: “Homelessness in California, San Jose and San Diego Must do More to Plan and Evaluate Their Efforts to Reduce Homelessness”, it is apparent Nevada County needs to apply the recommendations outlined in the report.
The report stated: “San José and San Diego identified hundreds of millions of dollars in spending of federal, state, and local funding in recent years to respond to the homelessness crisis. However, neither city could definitively identify all its revenues and expenditures related to its homelessness efforts because neither has an established mechanism, such as a spending plan, to track and report its spending. The absence of such a mechanism limits the transparency and accountability of the cities’ uses of funding to address homelessness.”
Nevada County has had two ten-year plans to end homelessness (2009-2019) & SR 18-1036 Ten Year Plan to End Homelessness, 2018.
The Nevada County Homeless Strategic Plan of 2018 was commissioned by the County of Nevada Board of Supervisors.
“The No Place Like Home funding source requires each county to create a plan that specifies the goals, strategies, and activities that create solutions to homelessness. The NPLH program guidelines require that a county plan include the following elements:
A description of the homelessness situation countywide, including a discussion of the estimated number of residents experiencing homelessness and identifying chronically homeless single adults, families, and unaccompanied youth.
To the extent possible, the estimated number of residents experiencing homelessness or chronic homelessness who are also experiencing serious mental illness.
Special challenges and barriers to serving the target population.
County resources applied to address homelessness, including efforts undertaken to prevent the criminalization of activities associated with homelessness and available community resources.
An outline of partners in ending homelessness.*
Proposed solutions to reduce and end homelessness.
Efforts were undertaken to ensure that access to CES will be available on a nondiscriminatory basis.
The plan must be developed in a collaborative process with community input that includes:
County representatives with expertise from behavioral health, public health, probation/criminal justice, social services, and housing departments
Local Continuum of Care
County health plans, community clinics
Public Housing Authority
Representatives of family and caregivers of persons living with serious mental illness. The community meetings used to gather information for this plan included all of the individuals and groups listed above.
The plan shall be no more than five years old.”
*Current service providers in Nevada County for Addressing Homelessness include: Hospitality House, Spirit Empowerment Center, Salvation Army, Booth Family Center, Bright Futures, Sierra Roots, Community Beyond Violence, Supported Independent Living (Behavioral Health Dept.), Catherine Lane House, Willow House, Home Anew, Regional Housing Authority, Turning Point, Odyssey House, Bost House, AMI Housing, Veterans Administration, FREED, etc.
Do any of these agencies have a reporting mechanism in place (metrics) to determine the success of their programs? Who do they report to?
“People experiencing unsheltered homelessness who were placed in interim housing had worse outcomes than those placed into permanent housing.”
Strategies Outlined in the 2018 Plan: (What has been implemented?)
1). Consistent Communication with General Public Related to Homelessness (?)
2). Develop or Support a Regional Entity Focused on Affordable Housing Development and Services (Yes)
3). Facilitate a Housing Development Summit (No)
4). Increase Temporary Beds and Develop Navigation Center (Yes)
5). Join the Built for Zero Campaign. Built for Zero is a rigorous national change effort working to help a core group of committed communities end veteran and chronic homelessness. (no data since inception)
6). Create a Supervised Legal Camping Area* (No)
In addition, to ensure the effectiveness of the Plan, Nevada County needs to:
Publicly report, such as a spending plan, all of the Federal and State funding it receives, including what is received by the CoC.
Publicly report all expenditures of the Federal and State funding allocated to the CoC and all the service providers.
Ensure that when the County renews, or enters into new agreements/contracts with service providers, it establishes clearly defined performance and reporting measures.
Require staff to, at least annually, document an overall performance review and assessment of the effectiveness of each service provider based on the performance measures in the agreement/contract.
Create a dashboard showing data/results to be on the County Health and Human Services page of the website.
Track the number of public health, or fire-related incidents, arising from the encampments. This data would go on the dashboard.
Track the number of individuals placed in permanent housing, and also track those that fall out of housing, (list the reasons). Place this information on the dashboard.
Nevada County should immediately identify property in acceptable zones and begin to implement plans for permanent housing, fulfilling its Housing Element goals.
I recommend starting with safe parking and camping; (remember HOME PATH?) also providing safe cooking areas, water and garbage collection. Health services would also be provided at the site. This solution would pay for itself in terms of reduced law enforcement calls, yearly camp cleanups, fire suppression calls, etc.
Since the new Navigation Center has been located in the Sutton commercial/business area it is imperative that this service is not a detriment to owners of those businesses or customers. It is the responsibility of the County, with sufficient staff, not just the Grass Valley police, to help mitigate problems:
For those individuals who use the services of the Navigation Center, only those who are not problematic will be allowed to park nearby, during the day only, not overnight.
Individuals who routinely cause problems would be barred from using the services, or parking on Sutton Way.
At night, everyone would park in the provided safe parking area.
Yearly, the County Board of Supervisors would hold a day of reporting to the public, the fulfillment of the 6 Strategies, and next steps.
