Edhat Staff
By edhat staff
Santa Barbara County Supervisors unanimously agreed to move forward with a community action plan to address homelessness.
The special meeting took place on Tuesday where the Board of Supervisors reviewed the 100-page Phase II Community Action Plan that included goals and strategies to reduce the homeless population in the county while also ensuring compliance with state requirements.
The plan identifies five strategies that include increasing access to safe and affordable housing, delivering tailored supportive services, building a collective action plan, strengthening support systems, and building provider capacity to address the needs of specific populations. Some of these specific populations include veterans, youth, and families.
The county is estimating there are nearly 2,200 homeless people within the county. Last year they counted 1,897 due to the “Point in Time” count of unsheltered people, but the count did not take place this year due to COVID-19.
A transient resting near the Highway 101 offramp at Storke Road in Goleta (Photo: Josh Blair)
The projection includes 1,662 unsheltered people, 126 in temporary shelter, and 407 sheltered. Due to the pandemic, county shelters were required to decrease their capacity to create distancing between their residents.
In 2020, there were 4,226 people who were provided shelter or services due to being homeless, 768 of those were children. This is compared to 3,633 in 2019.
The report states 79% of people became homeless in Santa Barbara County with 61% living the majority of their life in the area.
Santa Barbara County Fire Chief Mark Hartwig reported 448 total transient-related incident responses in 2020. The majority, 401, were emergency medical service responses while 47 were fire-related. The department inspected 21 encampments and performs weekly fire inspections at the Pallet House project and People’s Park in Isla Vista.
With increased outreach in homeless encampments, the county has seen an increase from 9% successful placement in temporary or permanent housing in 2017 to 57% success in 2020.
Outreach is being conducted in Isla Vista, Butterfly Beach, East Beach, Goleta Beach, the Milpas Street corridor, City of Lompoc and Lompoc riverbed, and in Santa Maria.
Officials stating the demand for affordable housing within the county far exceeds what is available making it more difficult to find temporary or permanent housing. The supervisors agreed to review areas in their district where additional housing could be developed.
The key actions that are currently underway are securing permanent housing for veterans and youth, utilizing all of the one-time funding from the state, opening the South County Navigation Center to direct services to those in need, addressing COVID-19 impacts and temporary emergency shelters, full lease of new developments with adequate housing retention services, provider capacity-building, and expanded use of the Homeless Management Information System (HMIS) to collect data.
Within the next six months, officials will identify sites for additional shelters and programs, increase prevention programs for at-risk homelessness, and adopt the plan region-wide to ensure commitment.
The full plan is available below:
Why is it Santa Barbara’s responsibility to help and house every homeless person that comes here? Help only the local have nots and can nots and send the rest packin’.
It is obvious you spend a lot of time volunteering in the community.
We love living here because of the ideal climate and ocean proximity. This desirability brings others here who are not as skilled as to afford the elevated cost of living here. Some of these people choose to come here and live outdoors, just to be here. There is always work, but few of these people want to work as hard as the Mexicans on Yanonali will, so they become a burden on the system. Providing cheap housing will only encourage more to come. Loss of the Nuclear Family means no one to care for the inevitable dysfunctional family member, and no adequate mental health care means that these folks are having to get by as best as they can. Providing cheap housing for all homeless people is not the solution.
SB has a FINITE area for human living, building and infrastructure. The Mountains on one side and the ocean on the other pose limits, thus the expensive cost of living. You don’t have a “right” to housing anywhere you can’t afford and it is not the responsibility of taxpayers to subsidize your “wants”. If you can’t afford to live on the South Coast, there are other areas that are affordable. I HAD to live in Santa Maria for 10 years until I could afford to live in SB… Not everyone can afford living in Beverly Hills- Are they creating low-income subsidized housing to the tune of over 20% of all housing units being subsidized by taxpayers like in Santa Barbara…? The answer in NO.
That was cheap. It’s a valid question
Our housing shortage is a separate issue than homelessness here in Santa Barbara.
VOR based on what? If apts cost $10/mo, everyone would be housed, right? So the homeless problem is at least partially based on affordability except for the few people that can’t live under a roof.
What legal means do you have to send them away? ACLU lawyers say you don’t.
The photo of the man laid out by the wrong way sign perfectly illustrates the folly of this plan. His problem is obviously not that he is too poor to afford rent. Unless we address addiction and mental health, we will continue to see our “homeless” population grow. Unfortunately, this plan offers nothing but a load of fancy buzzwords and a focus on housing. We can keep pretending they are “homeless” but the reality is we will continue seeing more and more drug addicts on our streets until we come up with a plan to help them that actually addresses their problems.
Affordable housing and a livable wage will help.
Many homeless have mental health and/or addiction issues. Address the root causes.
Everywhere I’ve lived there homeless plan comes down to a version of this so how much $$$ did they spend to reinvent the obvious and why don’t they collapse the 150 different ‘helping’ agencies and non profits into one stop shopping. None of this is rocket science.
If someone keeps refusing services why do we owe them the right to be a public health and safety hazard?
Seems there’s a choice between keeping Santa Barbara a small low-rise city where it’s a privilege and often a joy to live, the coastal plain bordered by mountains and ocean, OR, as the majority of highly-paid city staff and their allies on the planning commission want, build, build, build, destroying why many chose to live here.
Everyone who wants to live here can not do so; life is not fair in this capitalist society of ours and housing costs.
Vagrants are on the street because they made life decisions to do Meth and Alcohol… Throwing money at housing programs, feeding and supplying bunks do nothing but provide opportunities for other vagrants from around the lower 48 to come to Santa Barbara. For at least the last 20 years, The City of Santa Barbara has been throwing a minimum of $1 Million a year to “Homeless Inc.” and the situation hasn’t changed other than more high paying government funded positions to support Homeless Inc. who NEED the “homeless” to stay here- There jobs DEPEND on it…
I haven’t read the report yet, but I wonder if it sets a specific goal for how much subsidized and free housing we are to provide (a specific percentage). Are we expected to take on more than the average percentage of needy people? (And how would that be determined, when locations vary so much in their desirability.) There’s an incompatibility here with supply and demand. We have demand, but the people demanding the homes aren’t able to pay what capitalism says the product is worth.
I guess “Homeless Inc” exists everywhere, even in R states, because homelessness exists everywhere. Another conspiracy for the Qanon folk. Do they know that you have uncovered another cabal?
You can’t stop change and nothing lasts forever. I’m sure lots of farmers from decades past would be shocked and horrified to see all the developments built on their land. Similarly, many people will be shocked to see the growth that will come in the decades ahead. Santa Barbara will continue to become more dense and much taller in the years ahead.
Chip, how do you know he can afford to rent housing?