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Who is Ending Homelessness in Sonoma County? Part 2

It’s easy to think that no one is doing anything about ending homelessness when we see so many more people living on the streets than ever before but when you take a closer look you’ll find there’s a lot being done by our local communities’ system of care but they’re doing it with a lot less federal funding from years of cutbacks. So, they must work harder with less money while fighting a growing tide of homelessness caused by a lack of educational funding to train our lower economic labor force for twenty-first century technology jobs, and cutbacks to social and health care program leaving people without care on the streets, and an extremely high rate of incarceration that limits future job opportunities for many people, and a military war complex that doesn’t think about former damaged vets once they get home, and add to all this a growing population of elderly baby boomers without support to keep them housed and it all adds up to more people living on the streets than ever before. Now with more of our federal dollars going to wars overseas instead of infrastructure jobs here at home, we’ll never end homelessness but we can do more at the local level to slow it down and limit the time someone must live without safe and healthy shelter. It starts by combining local resources and getting creative.

It Takes a Collaborative Community to End a Homeless Crisis

The Sonoma County Continuum of Care is a department in the Sonoma County Community Development Commission. They are the local funding stream for federal money to end homelessness and they work with the County and Cities’ Housing Authorities to meet the needs of people in our communities to find and maintain housing and the social services needed to keep them housed. And the Sonoma County Mental Health Services Department is working very hard to end the cycle of homelessness and its connection to mental health and substance abuse. The Mental Health Department’s 2017 annual plan includes a “Sonoma’s county-wide effort to create a local behavioral health wellness campus where the system of care will be located in one location shared with our Division’s new Urgent Care Center.” Also, the North Bay Veterans Resources Center has a well-managed successful program to help homeless vets. Each region of the county also has their own support systems in place to help people like the City of SR’s Catholic Charities of the Diocese of SR, , and COTS of Petaluma, and there are at least a dozen other effective large and small organizations in the county working to end homelessness. What the Continuum of Care is currently working on is a one-stop-shop for resource access called a Coordinated Intake System that brings all these community groups together and makes it easier for people to get the help they need. This kind of high-tech efficiency will also save valuable time and money in getting help to people at risk before becoming homeless whether it’s health care or job insecurities that are impacting their lives. Even though it seems like nothing is being done because of all the homeless people on the streets there is a lot happening in our community. It’s just happening with less money and more ingenuity while the number of homeless is growing exponentially.

More than Funding to Solve the Homeless Problem

When it comes to slowing down homelessness it is statistically proven that best practices must include four important elements: 1) Enough housing for all so costs are kept down allowing for those who can’t afford to pay for housing to also have access to it, 2) An efficient collaborative system of care to find and maintain housing for low and no income people, 3) A long-term social supportive care system to help the chronically homeless get the health care they need to stay in their homes, and 4) It requires money to go to real homes and not just temporary solutions like emergency shelters, tiny shack gimmicks or temporary institutional housing that are not private, clean, and safe. Americans have learned a lot through experience, research, and data about what it takes to house people properly and it’s not complicated, it requires enough housing, an efficient system of supportive care, and a commitment to ending it with directed funding through a belief that every human being on earth deserves a healthy, clean and safe place to call home. Sonoma County’s Homeless Programs are on the right track they just need the community’s support to keep them moving in the right direction.

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