Overview:
A total of nine items were recommended, including the addition of an extra homeless outreach team to the streets of Santa Monica
Council approved a series of multi-million dollar contracts this week to aid in the ongoing fight against homelessness. The actions came as the city officially received its annual report on the state of homelessness in Santa Monica.
During Tuesday evening’s City Council meeting, staff presented findings from the 2023 Annual Interdepartmental Homelessness Report along with nine recommendations it is hoped might help alleviate the crisis currently affecting Santa Monica, all of which were passed unanimously.
This comes as newly released numbers from the recent annual Homeless Count show that homelessness has increased by 15 percent since the same time last year. Volunteers found an additional 73 individuals on local streets and 46 inside (in shelters, motels or jail) during the January count bringing the total to 926 this year. The results are a reversal from the 2022 count that reported an 11 percent decline from the year prior.
While the item was informational in nature and served as an opportunity to hear updates on a variety of existing programs, council did approve several recommendations targeting homelessness including: extension of the local state of emergency, continuation of existing out reach teams from the county (for a four year total contract worth $5,040,000), continuation of an outreach team operated by The People Concern (for a four year total contract worth $2,400,000), authorize $400,000 for mental health and addiction services from Exodus Recovery, authorize $2,300,000 for a five-year agreement with the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles for the Eviction Prevention and Right to Counsel programs and approve $200,000 for a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, to connect at-risk voucher program tenants with local support services to maintain housing stability.
Mayor Pro Tempore Lana Negrete spied Fire Chief Danny Alvarez in the audience and invited him to the podium to comment and he explained that last year, about 20 percent of the SMFD’s calls were homeless related.
Negrete, who has been on a number of ridealongs, said that often, when the Fire Department is called because of a “lifeless” body on the sidewalk, or if someone is showing signs of distress, there’s just very little that SMFD can do. “My question is what do you need to make an impact on homelessness? What would your ideal program look like?” she asked.
“A couple of things that we’re looking at, hopefully, with this upcoming budget is reallocating some of the funds that are currently being used with CRUs [Community Response Units] is to put an EMS [Emergency Medical Service] battalion chief/homeless liaison in place as well as a dedicated case manager.”
Alvarez explained that the CRU pilot scheme gave SMFD an opportunity to properly evaluate how they were providing service to the city’s most vulnerable populations. He said that it had three primary objectives: firstly to enable transportation of patients to alternative destinations such as a psychiatric urgent care center rather than an ER, which is often not where they need to be; secondly was being able to provide case management and referrals, connecting people with the right services and thirdly was being able to properly manage the lower acuity calls, enabling paramedic units to focus on higher acuity calls.
“Our firefighters did a great job with their tools and their ability as far as doing case management, but it’s not their area of expertise. And they’re also trying to go on calls and do case management,” Alvarez said.
“You can’t do one while you’re doing the other, so we believe that having a dedicated case manager and even on a part time basis, but someone who just does case management, would be able to provide a much better service as far as connecting people to resources.”
According to Averaz, a 24/7 CRU would cost the city approximately $2 million per year.
Finally, City Manager David White explained the plan to expand the homeless liaison program team to seven days a week. “Data reinforces our strategy to reinvest, or to invest, your CS [community service] dollars in front end interventions [and] create more real based responses to address behaviors and provide critical care,” he said, adding that by deploying a new C3 outreach team will enable the entire city to be covered.
Councilmember Phil Brock wasn’t entirely convinced that one extra C3 team was going to make a discernible difference. “You’re proposing one extra team will cover six square miles of Santa Monica,” he said. “Tell me how four people will make any real dent and how many people do you anticipate them contacting each day?”
Achée Stevenson, Senior Administrative Analyst, Housing and Human Services, City of Santa Monica said, “The current C3 teams work Monday through Friday, from eight to five and yes, it’s a larger geographic area. We also know from the homeless count results that many of the people experiencing homelessness are concentrated in the areas that the C3 teams already cover.
“So while it’s a larger geographic area, there aren’t as many homeless people in that area. Because it’s new, I think we’ll have to work out how that’s going to work and see if that’s enough.”
A total of nine staff recommendations were moved all at once since it was the last significant item on the agenda in a meeting that sailed past 2 o’clock in the morning. Negrete moved the motion and Mayor Gleam Davis wasted no time in seconding it after which it passed unanimously five-to zero. Councilmembers Christine Parra and Caroline Torosis were absent.