An Orange County Grand Jury report released Thursday, May 31, cites the absence of leadership from elected officials, poor county-city collaboration, and the NIMBYism of local residents among the roadblocks to providing housing for the county’s growing population of chronically homeless people.
Many of the concerns and recommendations explored in the report titled “Where’s There’s Will, There’s a Way” echo those raised over the years by service organizations, homeless advocates and others who have studied the issue, including the grand jury itself in previous reports.
“The degree of finger-pointing and lack of trust that exists between the County and the cities, and even among the cities themselves, makes it extremely difficult to address any of the impediments identified in this report,” the report states in the introduction.
The chief recommendation: take a regional approach by establishing a collaborative body to come up with sites and funding to increase the county’s lagging permanent supportive housing units.
“Political will”
Permanent supportive housing (PSH) is the federal government’s preferred approach to provide shelter and case management to the chronically homeless, people who have been on the streets for a year or more and have a mental or physical disability.
Orange County has 1,724 existing PSH units according to the county’s most recent housing inventory count, the report says, but is in need of at least 1,000 more to house people already on a waiting list.
But the grand jury questioned the commitment needed to move forward:
“If political will is defined as a sufficient number of key decision-makers who are intensely committed to supporting Permanent Supportive Housing as a solution for the chronically homeless, then the answer is ‘not yet.’”
The “roadblocks and challenges” cited by the report to increasing permanent supportive housing include:
- Cities going it alone — in a “silo” — rather than working together to address homelessness
- Not enough buy-in on permanent supportive housing, misperception, and lack of knowledge of its cost savings
- Opposition from residents “to placing any type of housing for the homeless within their neighborhoods”
“The cities are mistrustful of each other since each may think they already are providing more homeless services than other cities in their area,” the report states.
But county leadership, the grand jury found, has been more crisis-driven than strategic, even as it acknowledged a “flurry” of county activity the past few years — hiring Susan Price in 2016 as its director of care coordination, opening the year-round Courtyard emergency shelter in Santa Ana and Bridges at Kraemer Place transitional shelter in Anaheim, and plans for a crisis stabilization unit in Orange to triage the mentally ill.
“While all these activities were certainly necessary, they appeared driven more by the County operating in crisis mode rather than from any strategic plan developed to address the homeless housing shortage,” the report says.
The grand jury calls for establishing a joint powers authority made up of city and county decision-makers to streamline and expedite the development of shelters and permanent supportive housing, and to pool funding.
County struggles
The last snapshot census of Orange County’s homeless population, the 2017 Point In Time count, identified 4,792 homeless people, more than half without shelter. And 893 individuals were deemed chronically homeless, with more than two-thirds of them unsheltered.
Both the overall homeless population and the number of chronically homeless people had increased since the last count in 2015.
The grand jury report comes in the midst of two ongoing civil rights lawsuits related to the clearing of hundreds of people from tent encampments at the Santa Ana River Trail and the efforts of the presiding federal judge to compel city and county officials toward cooperative solutions.
U.S. District Court Judge David O. Carter has called for immediate action on adding emergency shelters in three service planning areas — north, central and south — outlined by Price and for longer-term housing.
Without an adequate response, the county and local cities face the possibility of Carter suspending anti-camping ordinances.
The grand jury acknowledges the court case in its report, along with an initiative by the Association of California Cities – Orange County to develop an additional 2,700 permanent supportive housing units over the next three to five years that would be proportionately located around the county. A majority of the cities have been engaged in the effort.
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The grand jury leaned on a 2017 study undertaken by United Way Orange County and UC Irvine researchers in considering the public cost of inaction on addressing the chronically homeless.
Interviews of more than 40 people engaged in housing homeless people — including county and city employees, elected officials, and service providers also informed grand jury members.
Praise for some
Beyond its critical analysis, the report praises the work of nonprofit organizations and non-governmental housing developers that are responsible for most of the existing permanent supportive housing in Orange County.
“Despite seemingly intractable resistance to incorporating these types of housing in neighborhoods, these organizations have persevered in their efforts to find the needed funds and political support to realize their mission,” the report says.
“The fact that the County currently has 1,724 units of adult-only PSH within its borders can be attributed to their vision and commitment.”
May 31, 2018
The Orange County Register
By Theresa Walker
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