State homeless officials converge on Modesto to hear city, Stanislaus County story
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s task force on homelessness came to Modesto on Friday to hear about local efforts to deal with the statewide crisis.
The task force heard about successes but also that this area is grappling with the same problems facing other communities. That includes opposition from residents who don’t want services and housing placed near them, the difficulties in measuring results and that existing systems and programs are not designed to deal with the epidemic.
Newsom created the Homeless and Supportive Housing Advisory Task Force in May. Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg and Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas are co-chairmen of the panel, which includes elected officials from across the state as well as advocates and service providers.
“This task force must be and will be impactive,” Steinberg said Friday before about 75 people gathered at the Stanislaus Veterans Center. The task force’s “recommendations will be the springboard for real change,” adding that the task force’s work “may not cure the problem, but I know we can make it dramatically better.”
The task force held its first meeting in Modesto and will meet in other communities as it gathers information on best practices and solutions for a crisis that has left about 90,000 people homeless in California.
Local officials had good news to share. That includes Modesto and Stanislaus County working with nonprofits, industry and others to address homelessness, the opening of an outdoor emergency shelter that houses about 420 people, and major projects close to completion.
County Chief Operations Officer Patty Hill Thomas said that between now and the end of the year, there will be about 600 additional beds opening throughout the county, including ones in emergency shelters, supportive housing and transitional housing. Most will be in Modesto, but there will be additional beds in other Stanislaus County cities.
For some context, the last annual homeless count, which was conducted in January, tallied more than 1,900 homeless people countywide, with about half of them in some type of shelter. But these annual counts are snapshots of homelessness and should not be considered definitive.
Hill Thomas said the additional beds include a proposal for the county to enter into a long-term lease of a motel on South Ninth Street that will provide housing for families, as well as the expected Nov. 15 opening of a 182-bed no-barrier shelter with services inside The Salvation Army’s Berberian Center near downtown Modesto. Unlike a traditional shelter, it will take couples and their pets and possessions.
She said The Salvation Army also is expanding its emergency shelter at the Berberian Center from 150 to 200 beds.
Steinberg at one point noted “all the impressive, impressive work we have heard here today.”
He also pointed out the impact of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in September 2018 that prosecuting people for sleeping outdoors in city parks and other public property when there are not enough shelter beds is cruel and unusual punishment. The court’s jurisdiction includes California and other Western states.
Steinberg said the ruling created a legal right and legal obligation and the imperative for communities to do more.
Modesto within a couple of weeks of the ruling opened Beard Brook Park to homeless campers to stem the flow of people camping in other city parks. Beard Brook was home to as many as 500 to 600 homeless people before the city closed it and opened the Modesto Outdoor Emergency Shelter in February in a nearby section of the Tuolumne River Regional Park.
The city is working with the county and others on the tent city, which is home to about 420 people, who receive services. It will close by the end of the year as more beds in other facilities open.
Task force members asked detailed questions of local officials, including the annual cost per bed of operating the outdoor shelter (the answer was not available), whether they would let homeless people manage themselves again as was done in Beard Brook (the answer was no), as well as how many outdoor shelter residents have moved on to housing (64 people as of the last update, which does not include the families who were moved out of the camp).
Task force members also heard about the opposition officials have faced to providing more shelter and services.
“In Stanislaus County, for those of you who are baseball fans, we did a lot of swings and misses,” Hill Thomas said about previous efforts in recent years. “We tried a lot of options, and most of the time, we got run out of town.”
Stanislaus Community Foundation President-CEO Marian Kaanon talked about the tension in the community as it vacillates between “incredible anger and frustration” over homelessness and that solutions “are not happening fast enough” and the “fear that if we offer more services more homeless people will come.”
Ridley-Thomas, the Los Angeles supervisor and task force co-chairman, said he appreciated those comments because they illustrate a common misconception. He said the majority of homeless people in a given community are natives of that community.
He also said that while mental health and substance abuse problems must be addressed, the data are showing that the recent increase in homelessness across California “is largely attributable to economic factors,” including the lack of affordable housing, evictions and residents under financial stress.
This story was originally published September 6, 2019 at 5:43 PM.
