Common Ground Santa Barbara is revving up its engines again. Leaders of the community-wide effort to house the most fragile homeless people here told about 40 volunteers on Tuesday what’s been happening behind the scenes of the campaign and what the strategy is for moving forward. Nine people from the vulnerability list have been housed so far, according to Rob Fredericks, deputy director of the city’s Housing Authority. Three more people are going to be housed “imminently.”

In mid-May, Fredericks and Alice Villarreal Redit, client services coordinator with the Housing Authority, met with affordable housing providers in the county to ask for a commitment of units for people on the list. All of the housing officials were anxious to help, said Villarreal Redit, but only the Mental Health Association (MHA) and Santa Barbara Community Housing Corporation (CHC) have committed actual units thus far. Also, these housing organizations, as well as shelter managers and officials from the County Public Health Department and Alcohol, Drug and Mental Health Services (ADMHS) are all participating in Common Ground SB’s new Housing Placement Working Group. homelessinsb.org.

Special funds designated to support programs for homeless people with disabilities

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development announced that the Housing Authority of the City of Santa Barbara and its newest affordable housing development, Artisan Court, is among nationwide recipients of a competitive grant award designated for new housing programs for homeless people with disabilities.

The award is through HUD’s Shelter Plus Care Program, originally created under the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act. Shelter Plus Care funds housing and supportive services on a long-term basis for homeless people with disabilities, primarily those with serious mental illness, chronic problems with alcohol and/or drugs, and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) or related diseases.

“I am very pleased that the Santa Barbara Housing Authority has received these important federal resources to help the most vulnerable among us get off the streets and into affordable housing,” Rep. Lois Capps, D-Santa Barbara, said. “This funding will have a long-term positive impact on reducing homelessness in our own neighborhoods. The Housing Authority has a dedicated staff that is committed to making our community a better place and I thank them for all of their hard work.”

Public housing agencies in Capps’ 23rd Congressional District spanning Santa Barbara, Ventura, Oxnard and San Luis Obispo received HUD New Project grants totaling $1,046,273.

The Housing Authority opened Artisan Court on April 13 to serve special-needs populations, including youths aging out of foster care, homeless individuals and downtown workers. To qualify for the $234,720 five-year grant, available for new programs only, the Housing Authority will be required to provide an equal amount or more of funding for supportive services to its clients who will receive the rental subsidies.

In 2010, HUD renewed the Housing Authority’s existing Sponsor Based Shelter Plus Care program grant at $556,460, which allows the agency to continue to house approximately 100 individuals suffering from disabling conditions who would otherwise be homeless. The new grant differs from the renewal in that it is project based rather than sponsor based; in this case meaning the new funds will be used only for Artisan Court. The grant will serve four to eight individuals over its five-year term.

“We would like to acknowledge the county’s Housing and Community Developmentprogram for their assistance with the HUD Continuum of Care application process,” said Rob Pearson, executive director and CEO of the Housing Authority of the City of Santa Barbara. “The ranking of our application as high need for providing permanent supportive housing helped to move our application through a competitive process.”

The New Project grant awards announced are part of a $216 million HUD program to nearly 700 new homeless throughout the country. Combined with renewal funding announced earlier this year, this represents the most homelessness assistance ever awarded by HUD, including a record $16.4 million to 87 never-before-funded programs in less-populated areas of the country.

— Katrina Sill is a publicist.

17

May 2011

News

Annalise Domenighini
Staff Writer
Photo By: Rosana Liang

Common Ground, an organization dedicated to helping the homeless, released the results of Registry Week, a week dedicated to surveying those without a home and placing them into a vulnerability index. From the results, several statistics were released Monday, May 9.

The Vulnerability Index rates the vulnerability of those who are homeless on a number of factors: being a veteran, being over age 50, being HIV/AIDS positive, or having three or more hospitalizations or ER visits in either the past three months or past year, on top of being homeless for six months or more. This index helps determine how at risk of death each person is who is surveyed.

Living on the street and in shelters is dangerous and often lethal because those without a home are three to four times more likely to die prematurely. In 2010 alone, 30 homeless people were found dead in Santa Barbara.
Over 1,143 surveys were completed during Registry Week and the data showed that of those surveyed, 932 were at a high mortality risk. Jeff Shaffer, a committee member of SBCG who worked on Registry Week, said that this number is one of the highest among cities and counties in California. The majority of those surveyed were white, had some college education or at least had graduated high school, and were about 41 years old—the oldest surveyed being age 78 and the youngest being 12.

With this information, Common Ground Santa Barbara will work to house the 100 most vulnerable people. But they don’t plan to stop there.

“It’s going to be a changing list, we’ll figure ways to do this continuously” said Shaffer.

He also said CGSB plans to work with several other agencies to provide more assistance for those who did not make the top 100, as well as work with businesses in order to help decrease their frustration with panhandling in front of stores.

According to Shaffer and information found at the Common Ground Santa Barbara website, taking care of those living on the streets and in shelters is actually cheaper than leaving them alone.

“Most cities are finding that if you house people you save money overall, because they are not going to jail and they are not going to the emergency,” said Shaffer. “So, you may spend $12,000 to house…but that is less money than the jail and emergency room visits, or the police being called out for issues.”

Kylie Langlois, a second-year Biology major at UC Santa Barbara, said “I think if you made that public knowledge, more people would be for governments housing homeless people.”

Langlois also said this tactic would probably be more effective in a smaller community such as Santa Barbara but that it probably would not work in a larger community, like Los Angeles.

“We’re at a point where we could look at the fact that housing the homeless would cost us less than ignoring them, but we don’t do it because for some reason we are, and we have been, wary of freeloaders, ” said David Bodek, a UCSB fourth-year English major.

In front of a large gathering of concerned citizens and a handful of politicians and media, Rob Fredericks, co-chair of Common Ground Santa Barbara, on May 9 revealed the long-awaited statistics concerning the county’s homeless population at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Los Olivos.

Common Ground SB, working in conjunction with the National Common Ground Non-Profit (whose goal is to permanently house 100,000 homeless people across the United States by July 2013), has a great deal of work ahead of them if they plan to reach their goal of finding homes for 100 of the county’s most long-term and vulnerable homeless in the coming year.

“It really is a tool project for identifying and prioritizing, based on risk factors for premature death,” said Dr. Takashi Michael Wada, director of SB County Public Health, explaining the Vulnerability Index Survey used to identify those with the most needs. The model for the county differs somewhat from the one being used nationwide. Taking into account warm-weather risks and including individuals age 50 and older, as opposed to the national scale of those 60 and older, were a couple of variables that that were included locally but not considered in the cold-weather, East Coast national study.

In order to be identified as a part of the Vulnerability Index, members of this population had to be homeless for at least 6 months, and one or more of a number of other factors that ranged from being hospitalized (or have visited the emergency room) three or more times in the past year to having HIV+/AIDS, liver disease or the end stages of Renal disease.

Wada rattled off a list of conditions that were found as a result of the survey, pointing out the predominant ones that grouped together all mental illnesses and alcohol abuse.

The group of 500 volunteers, who at the end of February to early March of this year conducted the search, encountered 1,536 people and was able to obtain 1,173 surveys completed from the displaced individuals. According to the criteria of the county’s Vulnerability Index, 79 percent of those were classified as being high-mortality risks. The data collected covered a wide variety of categories with statistics indicating the age, occupation and race, just to name a few markers.

Fredericks singled out one interesting number discovered from the survey. 30 percent, the highest level of those surveyed, listed their education level as having attended some college. “Homelessness is affecting everyone, regardless of their education level,” said Fredericks, whose primary occupation is that of Deputy Executive Director of the Housing Authority of the City of Santa Barbara. His city had the highest amount of homeless contacts by far, with 1,040 individuals. Santa Maria was second with 243, and there were six contacted in the Santa Ynez Valley.

What steps need to be taken in order to reach Common Ground SB’s goal of housing 100 people come next year? Whatever progress is involved, the main emphasis was placed on a need for a collaboration of the philanthropic community, elected leaders, landlords, the faith community, service leaders and other organizations to find homes and keep this demographic housed. An important cause that certainly hits home.

Paul Wellman (file)

A homeless man sleeps on a bus stop bench on a cold night February 2006.

No one could miss the hum of anticipation in the room that Sunday in late February. Hundreds of people from across generations gathered at tables that filled the giant Earl Warren Hall. Never mind that it was beautiful outside; the buzz was all about getting up at 3 a.m. the next day to begin a momentous three-day survey of the homeless. Among the all-volunteer crowd were retirees, teenagers, church members, and the formerly homeless. A similar scene was playing out in the North County.

In a time of high economic anxiety, such altruism was surprising. But there everybody was, receiving instruction on how to interview street homeless people and getting to know their teams.

Paul Wellman

Kent at Chase Palm Park.

It’s been nine weeks since that day, and though the excitement has dissipated, the results of all that good will are tangible. At a public briefing Monday, May 9, the results of the 1,143 surveys taken during Registry Week were announced. The briefing also launched the second phase of the campaign, when organizers will begin to find homes for the most vulnerable people surveyed — the ultimate purpose of this effort.

But the data gleaned from the surveys did not, in the end, reveal startling new facts about our homeless population. It did confirm trends that our Public Health officials had found in earlier studies: that the majority of the homeless in this county are male, middle-aged, and burdened with multiple chronic illnesses; that a majority (57 percent) have a mental illness, and 77 percent have spent time in jail in the past year. Of those surveyed, 932 were found to be at risk of premature death based on a scoring system created by Boston-based physician Jim O’Connell, MD, and tweaked by the medical director of Santa Barbara’s Health Care for the Homeless program, David Lennon. The person at the top of the list — a woman who’s been on the streets 16 years and has cirrhosis of the liver, hepatitis, schizophrenia, HIV, chronic obstructive pulmonary artery disease (COPD), and is an alcoholic — has the highest vulnerability score of all.

Paul Wellman

Barry K., 62, showing where doctors at Cottage Hospital installed a pacemaker after he had a heart attack last winter. A recovering alcoholic who has worked for years as a cook, he does not consider himself homeless.

The piece of data that is new, and that will be a source of controversy, comes from the question of where people came from and if they were homeless in that place, too. Of those being queried, 44 percent reported being from out of town, and 55.7 percent were residents here before becoming homeless. Of those who came from other places, 5 percent said it was the promise of services that drew them.

As Doctors Without Walls-Santa Barbara Street Medicine founder Mimi Doohan said recently, no matter what evolves from this campaign, no matter how many or how few receive housing in this effort, our community is forever changed. We know how to come together. We’ve done it before.

How did it coalesce, after all? What spell did organizers cast to inspire so many?

Spark to the Flame

Last July, at the annual Health Care for the Homeless (HCH) conference, Doohan and Ralph Barbosa, who runs the HCH program here, heard Becky Kanis, a former Army Special Operations communications specialist who had just launched a campaign to house 100,000 of America’s chronically homeless in three years. Kanis’s campaign was targeting 55 American cities because of their known high numbers of the chronically homeless. Santa Barbara was one of them. Doohan approached Kanis later to introduce herself and invited her to bring her campaign to Santa Barbara.

Über charismatic, smart, with the unassuming confidence of a true public servant, Kanis, a West Point grad with short, bleached blond hair, is just the person to pull off something as audacious as this 100,000 Homes effort.

Paul Wellman

Michael Silvas, who works with art, said he “was the first person to take the Common Ground survey.”

In 2005, Common Ground, a New York City-based nonprofit dedicated to ending homelessness, hired Kanis to lead a new project that was trying to move the homeless in New York’s Times Square into housing. Kanis began rethinking the tired assumptions about the chronically homeless and the easy acceptance of their refusals of services — including housing. She employed motivational interviewing and eliminated middle steps in order to prevent sending people to shelters where they were often required to become sober. She offered the homeless keys. In five years, 85 percent of Times Square’s homeless were housed. Many were accessing treatment. New York City officials asked Kanis to take her approach to other neighborhoods. Soon she was getting invitations from officials in Washington, D.C., and Baltimore.

In every community, her approach is the same: Exclude no one. Every nonprofit, faith community, government agency, and lowly volunteer that wants to join the effort is welcome. Her results are as tantalizing to city administrators guarding general funds as they are to church-goers looking to live out scripture.

Last fall, a three-part series in the Los Angeles Times on the 100,000 Homes campaign that had launched in L.A. caught the attention of Rob Pearson, executive director of the Housing Authority of the City of Santa Barbara. Intrigued, he sent the story around to his staff and a few elected officials, including Mayor Helene Schneider, indicating he hoped to incorporate these ideas in his homeless projects. Soon he discovered that Doohan and two of the smaller homeless outreach organizations — the Organic Soup Kitchen and the Uffizi Mission Project — were already mapping a strategy for bringing the campaign here.

Paul Wellman

Seann Sinclaire, a nature photographer, has lived in his van in Santa Barbara for four years.

Ultimately, Kanis was invited to Santa Barbara for a series of five visits. She talked about lessons and successes of communities like D.C., San Diego, Omaha, and dozens of others. Soon, not only Pearson but also Casa Esperanza executive director and Ten Year Plan cochair Mike Foley were brought on board. Foley’s participation was key. The pull that he and Pearson have with elected officials broke the campaign open by linking it to the county’s biennial Point-in-Time count of the homeless. This countywide count, required by the federal Housing and Urban Development department in order for a county to receive essential Continuum of Care funding, was to take place in late January anyway. Linking the two surveys meant the county would also be backing 100,000 Homes, and the scope of its data would be broader and deeper.

When Kanis addressed the important gathering of South County homeless advocates, who have been gathering at Chuck Blitz’s beach house for years, she showed a short movie describing the campaign’s three basic stages: registry week, housing, and support. They asked questions, but by the time it was over, the only query left was when it would begin.

By the first week in December 2010, the 100,000 Homes project in Santa Barbara was endorsed by every homeless agency, public and private, in the county, and that’s how Common Ground Santa Babara was born.

By Paul Wellman

Gator, a longtime Santa Barbara figure, who has joined a sobriety program.

Rallying the Troops

“If all 55 of our targeted cities wanted us to come visit five times before inviting us in and then coming together like Santa Barbara did, I would be thrilled to death to do it,” said Kanis.

The South County’s leadership team consisted of Jeff Shaffer of the Uffizi Mission Project and Rob Fredericks and Alice Villarreal Redit of the Housing Authority. In the North County, it was led primarily by Sylvia Barnard, executive director of Santa Maria’s Good Samaritan Shelter. Since the meetings with Kanis, the Santa Barbara City Housing Authority had begun lending its credibility to the campaign and signaling to other agencies and elected officials that this was a good thing. Shaffer, who has run a weekly potluck dinner in Pershing Park for four years, has a deep Christian ethic and as much credibility with the homeless as anybody. His ties to Westmont gave the campaign a pool of energetic, sincere volunteers. It was a quietly powerful team.

Paul Wellman

Sarah Workneh, 18, has been traveling around the country.

January and February were consumed with planning. Volunteers had to be recruited, logistics centers had to be found. But the most difficult job was mapping where the homeless would be found. That was given to Shaffer. The people who knew where the camps were weren’t always willing to share the information. It took negotiation, and patience. Finally, the survey itself needed to be fine-tuned to the nuances of Santa Barbara’s homeless population, a job only Dr. Lennon could do. He examined the causes of death of the 45 homeless people who died between January 2009 and March 2010, and concluded that certain health conditions needed to be included, or given more weight: for example, cardiac disease and hypertension, heat-related injuries, and untreated HIV. In the deaths of homeless people in 2010, seizure disorders were the ninth most prevalent condition. Lennon adjusted the scoring as well, giving a higher vulnerability score to veterans, as many here have a mental illness. In the end, he wrote the database that sorted and calculated the survey results, inputting 248,000 data points. (See sidebar “Survey Results.”)

This population is notoriously hard to quantify, of course. And there are more than likely many more who were not contacted.

What, then, is gained from the effort, in addition to the opportunity to get people off the streets? A clear-eyed portrait of the liabilities of this population. An understanding of why they seem to die so frequently. For a time this winter, it was almost one person each week.

Paul Wellman

Tim has been traveling around the country.

In the end, 932 of those surveyed were found to have an elevated mortality risk. Of them, 20 percent reported having a physical disability, 23 percent a traumatic brain injury; 51 percent are alcoholics, and 42 percent have some other addiction.

In 2008, the ACLU sued the City of Santa Barbara. In a settlement, the city agreed to create a list of the 50 most disabled homeless people and to offer them housing. If the person refused, the city was free to cite the individual for illegal camping in public. The city’s Housing Authority only recently received this list, which will be combined with the list Common Ground created through the surveys.

Councilmember Dale Francisco, who publicly worries that Santa Barbara’s services attract a great number of homeless, said recently that it remains to be seen how all of it will be utilized. “[It’s a] one-shot deal to give us some information about the current status,” he said. “In the long run, what we need is a way of tracking all of the contacts with homeless people.”

By Jen Villa

Steve attended a Milpas Community Association meeting at the Santa Barbara Inn.

Paul Wellman

Dilbert was diagnosed last year with advanced basal-cell carcinoma by street medical workers. He created a covered buggy to sleep in that has kept him dry in the rain.

The findings of Common Ground Santa Barbara shed light on the age, gender, income and even mortality risk of those on the streets

The demographics of Santa Barbara County’s homeless population got much clearer Monday, after results were released of a survey done earlier this year.

More than 500 volunteers administered surveys of the county’s homeless in March, and 1,143 were completed. The effort, spearheaded by the group Common Ground Santa Barbara, is part of a larger national effort to house the nation’s most vulnerable.

A news conference was held Monday morning in Los Olivos to go over the results, led by Rob Fredericks, deputy executive director and chief administrative officer at the Housing Authority of the City of Santa Barbara and the leader of Common Ground Santa Barbara, as well as a handful of other officials.

Click here to view the results.

One of the most staggering results was that nearly 80 percent of those surveyed were classified as vulnerable with a high mortality risk. The survey classified people as vulnerable if they had been homeless for more than six months as well as the presence of one or more health related factors, such as having liver disease or HIV/AIDS.

A snapshot of the homeless on one night found that there were 1,782 unduplicated individuals throughout the county.

Of all the locations in the county, the highest number of surveys was completed in Santa Barbara, with 1,040 total, and some of the basics of the data paint a much more vivid picture of the homeless.

According to the survey, 73 percent of the respondents were men, with 27 percent women, on par with the national average. Veterans made up 15 percent of those surveyed.

The average age of those surveyed was 41 years old. Respondents ranged in age from as young as 12 years old to 78, and the majority were white. The average time of homelessness was seven years.

The survey also asked about income, and nearly 22 percent said they rely on food stamps for their main source of income. Fourteen percent said they relied on panhandling.

The living situation of the homeless also shed some light, and 31 percent of those surveyed countywide reported that they live in shelters. That number was followed closely by those who said they live on the streets, and 15 percent said they live in their vehicles.

One of the most controversial parts of the discussion surrounding homelessness in Santa Barbara is whether locals should be given first priority for services.

The survey showed an almost even split between where people were located before becoming homeless — 28 percent said they were located in South Santa Barbara County before being homeless, 23 percent said they were in North County, and another 44 percent were nearly evenly divided between being located in another part of California or out of state.

Of people who said they had relocated to Santa Barbara County, nearly 19 percent said they moved here because of family in the area. Services rated the lowest, with only 5 percent of respondents relocating because of that.

Another startling statistic revealed that 77 percent of those surveyed had spent some time in jail. A quarter of those surveyed had spent time in prison. The survey didn’t ask how long respondents had spent in jail or prison, but based on average stays, the cost of incarcerating those surveyed amounts to nearly $14 million.

Another cost breakdown was provided in the results. A total of 326 emergency room visits were reported, with another 405 hospitalizations annually, costing nearly $3 million.

In addition, 134 surveys were given to families, 97 percent of which are considered vulnerable. More than half of those respondents said they were victims of domestic violence. Also included in the surveys were 221 children, and 16 were deemed to have a serious medical condition.

High rates of mental illness and substance abuse were reported. Both chronic conditions and infectious diseases were also common. During this year’s homeless count, 520 people were identified as severely mentally ill and 735 had chronic substance abuse issues.

Fredericks said there’s a lot of work ahead for local agencies, and the group has set a goal to house 100 people from among the most vulnerable identified by the survey within the next year.

“It’s going to take a real group effort, but we think we’ve got a good chance of doing this,” he said.

Among the strategies to house more people is to get 100 faith congregations in the county to help. The group will be asking each congregation to raise funds that will provide a rental subsidy to house people on the list.

The group also will be updating its website with a quarterly progress update.

Fredericks also said the group has been able to house seven of the people surveyed, and are getting ready to house an eighth.

“It’s somewhat coincidental,” he said, “but it also goes to show that we have mechanisms in place already to house people who are in need.”

— Noozhawk staff writer Lara Cooper can be reached atlcooper@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk or@NoozhawkNews. Become a fan of Noozhawk on Facebook.