News

500 Homeless People Line Up for Support

Project Homeless Connect Outreach Volunteer

10-Year Plan to End Chronic Homelessness

San Jose volunteers spread out to take homeless census

COUNT TO BE USED TO HELP DETERMINE HOUSING, SERVICE NEEDS

By Janice Rombeck

Mercury News

The long crumpled roll of black tarp wedged under an overpass looked to passers-by like nothing more than a remanent from a construction project. But not to Jim Kolendra.

He quietly scaled up the steep bank to the concrete platform and saw that the roll ``was breathing.'' He returned to tell his volunteer companion to add another checkmark to the tally sheet.

About 400 volunteers and ``homeless guides'' like Kolendra fanned out over Santa Clara County early this morning to find homeless people in shelters, curled up in sleeping bags under tarps, hiding in abandoned buildings or huddled into vans. Their mission was not to roust them or report them to authorities, but merely to count their existence.

Using census tracts as boundaries, the 2007 Homeless Street Count organizers paired volunteers with homeless people from 4:30 to 10 a.m. today to try to get an accurate picture of the need for services as well as funding. The count, which will continue Tuesday, will be used in the county's 10-year plan to end homelessness. Other Bay Area counties will also conduct counts.

A similar count in 2004 showed that 7,400 people were homeless and of those, 4,800 were living on the streets. Margaret Greg, the county's homeless coordinator, was optimistic today.

``We've done a good job of housing folks in the last year,'' she said. ``I'm hoping to see a result of that.''

But last week at a training session at CityTeam Ministries, nearly all the 60 or so participants raised their hands when asked, ``Do you think the number of homeless is growing?''

The results of this count will be compiled with information gathered from a survey of 1,000 homeless people to be conducted in February. A report is expected in April.

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Posted on Thu, Dec. 07, 2006

500 homeless people line up for support

By Janice Rombeck

Mercury News

Two of the most coveted items in downtown San Jose early Wednesday were bus tokens and warm, dry socks. PHCIIIParticipant1

“They're important,” said Janice Hamilton, 52, who has been homeless for 18 months. “You're on your feet all the time.”

Hamilton was one of about 500 homeless people who lined up as early as 7 a.m. for San Jose's third Project Homeless Connect at Parkside Hall near the Tech Museum. The event brought participants in touch with 30 agencies with information and applications for housing, jobs, medical care and financial aid.

But just as important to many of the visitors were items that would serve their immediate needs -- coffee and bagels, jackets, shirts and coats, toiletries, sack lunches, clean towels and haircuts.

Each had stories of how they ended up without a place to live -- lost jobs, abusive spouses, lack of supportive families and eviction from rental housing.

“It's a roll downhill you can't stop,” said Annette Jones, 55, who works two part-time jobs but can't afford housing.

Some, like Hamilton, came to San Jose for a better life on the advice of family members. She spent Tuesday night on the floor of the National Guard Armory in Sunnyvale.

“They tell you it's all great, and then you get out here and you can't find a job and you end up on the streets,” she said.

After registering with volunteers, participants were directed to stations that focused on social-services benefits, shelter and long-term housing, employment and legal aid. Gardner Clinic gave medical exams and the Valley Homeless Health Program offered dental exams. Cosmetology students from Gavilan Community College in Gilroy offered haircuts, and the Family Shelter Holiday Boutique gave out gifts.

Volunteers were entertained by Life Builders Mass Choir, a singing group formed at a local shelter, and then received a pep talk from city and county officials, including Mayor-elect Chuck Reed. He told the group he had been on a task force dealing with homelessness in the 1980s. “We're still talking about homelessness,” he said, but added that “we have successfully gotten people off the streets.”

Santa Clara County Supervisor Don Gage said: “Thanks for speaking up for people who don't have a voice”

The city and county are working with private agencies to end homelessness through a 10-year plan developed last year. In 2004, volunteers and officials interviewed nearly 8,000 homeless people in the county. The census revealed that more than a third were chronically homeless, meaning that they had been homeless for more than a year or had at least four episodes of homelessness in three years.

San Jose's housing department Director Leslye Krutko said Wednesday that another census was planned for January to give officials a better sense of the situation. Officials estimated that more than 20,000 people were homeless in the county at some time during 2004.

Nicole Jackson, 29, hopes she and her 7-year-old daughter, Eva Gutierrez, and her partner, Marcia Mills, 30, won't be homeless much longer. Jackson will start school Tuesday to learn to be a medical assistant. The three have been homeless off and on for three years.

The waiting list for federally subsidized housing is enormous, noted Sandy Perry, who represented Community Homeless Alliance Ministry at the event. The list is 50,000 names long, with about 1,200 housing units opening up each year, he said.

“If the government funded housing adequately, we wouldn't be here,” he said.

Project Homeless Connect also attracted volunteers, like Jenny Walicek, 44, who said she “lives in a bubble” in Almaden Valley, but became aware of homelessness as a student at San Jose State University, on the edge of downtown's core. She hopes to dispel stereotypes people have about the homeless and was moved by a silver-haired man who came seeking help.

``He looks like someone's dad who works in an office,'' she said. “What happened there? He shouldn't be here.”

Lisa Wilson, 46, volunteered to get experience in the social-work field. She noted that she, like many of the participants, is unemployed.

``I'm one step away from homelessness myself,'' she said.

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Housing When?

Santa Clara County has been sold on Housing First, President's Bush new homelessness mantra, but is it the right solution for Silicon Valley?

By Najeeb Hasan

Metro Silicon Valley - July 5 - 11, 2006

BOCCARDO Reception Center is one of San Jose's first lines of defense against homelessness. The emergency shelter on Little Orchard Street in San Jose is the largest of six run by EHC Lifebuilders, and at a time when the homeless population in Santa Clara County is more than double the number of shelter beds, every available spot is critical.

housing-first-0627 But last week, officials for EHC announced that 75 of the beds at Boccardo are being eliminated, which will take a bite out of the 3,000 total beds that currently exist to serve a homeless population that numbered 7,600 at last count, in 2004. The agency says a $500,000 deficit has forced it to choose between funding the emergency beds or its transitional housing program. Its decision to sacrifice beds mirrors the newest trend in the complicated arena of homelessness prevention, which is a dizzying mix of federal, state, local and private sector interests that often operate with little or no cohesion.

This new mantra is commonly known as "Housing First," and its thesis is simple: Provide the chronically homeless with homes, and worry about the rest later. The new strategy is being aggressively pushed by the Bush administration, which is calling it the ultimate solution for ending homelessness--and a justification for cutting funding from other homeless prevention and affordable housing programs.

"I think donors in general and also government funders at federal, state and local levels are looking at longer-term solutions," says Hilary Barroga, an EHC representative. "They're saying let's put our resources there, so a lot of funders are leaning in that direction. They want to see how our services are going to make an impact, how they are going to create systematic changes. They don't want to just put a Band-Aid on the problem. For us, I wouldn't say there is a worry [that funding for shelters will be eliminated]. I think that our concern is that on a day-to-day basis, we see the need to operate shelters to give people that nightly stay."

Housing First has been getting rave reviews in several cities around the country. In five years, Philadelphia reduced its homeless population from 824 to 250; San Francisco, only a couple of years into its program, has reported a 28 percent decrease; Dallas, a 26 percent decrease.

The core argument for the strategy is financial, rather than ethical--recent studies suggest housing the chronically homeless saves the government money. The San Francisco Plan to Abolish Chronic Homelessness, one version of the 10-year plan the federal government has been encouraging cities to adopt, reports that even though only 20 percent, or 3,000, of San Francisco's 15,000-strong homeless population can be identified as chronically homeless, they suck up 63 percent of the city's annual homeless budget. According to the San Francisco plan, the social and health services tab for one chronically homeless person amounts to $61,000, while a permanent supportive housing--or Housing First--strategy costs the city only $16,000 for that same person. It's no wonder cities are flocking to the Bush administration plan.

Doubt in the Valley

But is Housing First the best solution for Santa Clara County, where only 35 percent of the homeless population fall into the chronically homeless category?

Unlike San Francisco, which is both a city and a county, it is far more difficult to argue that cities in Silicon Valley will be saving money, since they will bear the cost of the housing units needed for a successful Housing First program.

"Unlike San Francisco, the county doesn't have old hotels that can easily be renovated to house the homeless," says Marjorie Matthews, director of the county's Office of Affordable Housing. "We have to go to every city to ask. In San Francisco, it's a win-win kind of thing."

The county-city distinction may be why San Francisco is seeing earlier results for its program than Santa Clara County (San Francisco also has about a year's head start on its 10-year plan). San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom's Care Not Cash program, which he proposed as a supervisor and which debuted in 2004, was able to pass because supervisors agreed that savings on medical and social services would translate into savings for the city. A parallel in San Jose and Santa Clara County would be impossible.

A year after Newsom's program was initiated, the numbers have been stunning--almost 800 chronically homeless people have been shifted into supportive housing and general assistance costs to the homeless have been lowered by an astonishing 73 percent, causing the Chronicle to describe the venture as San Francisco's "most significant transformation in years in the landscape of homelessness."

At the same time, Care Not Cash has plenty of critics--the program has horrified many homeless advocates by slashing the general assistance benefits of the homeless from a $410 maximum to $59 dollars a month.

In Santa Clara County, meanwhile, things are moving piecemeal, as the political capital needed to produce a more comprehensive initiative has been tough to come by. Matthews and Margaret Gregg, the county's homeless coordinator, point to small successes the county has had: a million dollar HUD grant that will create 25 Housing First units; 25 Section 8 vouchers that have been set aside, for the first time, specifically for the chronically homeless; a portion of state mental health money from Proposition 63 that will be used on the Housing First model. Altogether, the county has about 200 operating Housing First units, a far cry from the need.

Despite the difficulties and the cuts in emergency-shelter beds, Matthews has hope for Housing First.

"We're ahead of our expectations outlined in our action steps," says Matthews.

But Sandy Perry, a local homeless advocate, has a hard time believing the city and the county to get along well enough to meet their expectations.

"First of all, look at the fact that San Jose and Santa Clara County are almost always at loggerheads," he says. "They don't get along to start with; you add this in, and it's going to make it extremely difficult. Even in San Francisco, the progress has been really limited."

Perry points to the elimination of the shelters beds at the Boccardo Center to illustrate his biggest worry.

"I'll tell you the concern I have right now," he says. "The good thing about [Housing First], it gets people into housing, and after that shelters will be phased out. But what seems to be happening now is that shelters are being phased out without getting the housing, and that's not the proper solution. And my fear all along has been that the Bush administration has been pushing this to destroy the shelter system and not really finding housing alternatives."

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Posted on Fri., Dec. 09, 2005

Face to face with help

DAY LONG PROGRAM SEEKS TO LINK VALLEY'S HOMELESS WITH VITAL SERVICES

By Janice Rombeck

Mercury News

Nathaniel Dixon stood in the spacious center of a convention center ballroom Thursday, watching a stream of people navigate through tables set up for San Jose's first Project Homeless Connect.

He was among 700 people who showed up for the event -- some arriving as early as 5:30 am -- hoping to find homes, jobs, medical care or just a hot meal. Dixon, 48, clutched a new pair of warm socks.

“Sometimes the feet get colder than the hands,” said Dixon, who has been homeless for a year. He reflected on the city's first attempt to connect homeless people with services at the day long event at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center.

“I found that people here care,” he said. “I can see concern on some people's faces.”

San Jose joined more than 20 cities across the country to link chronically homeless people with the services from such agencies as EHC LifeBuilders, Santa Clara County Social Services Agency, the state Economic Development Department, the Social Security Administration and Gardner Health Network.

Project Homeless Connect, which started in San Francisco, also drew about 230 volunteers, some who saw the faces of homelessness for the first time. San Jose plans to have another event in May, said Ray Tovar, the city's homeless coordinator.

The turnout of volunteers and participants was double what the city expected, Tovar said.

More than two dozen agencies offered information on housing; drug, alcohol and mental health treatment; education; and employment. Participants could also get medical exams and flu shots in Gardner's medical vans parked inside the convention center.

Visitors picked up “goody bags” filled with sweatshirts, gloves, hats, mittens and such toiletries as soap, shampoo, and toothbrushes and toothpaste. The San Jose Family Shelter let parents choose a toy or a hat and mittens for a child. Scarves went quickly, volunteer Cheryl Halloran said.

“There is a huge need,” she said.

According to a count in 2004, about 7,600 people are homeless in Santa Clara County on any given night.

At the last stop in the old Martin Luther King Jr. Library next to the convention center, participants lined up for hot meals of chicken, potatoes, salad and vegetables. They also picked up sandwiches, chips and pastries.

But the table that attracted the most visitors was devoted to housing.

“We've been swamped,” said Martin Estrada with EHC LifeBuilders, the largest provider of shelters and transitional housing in the county.

Joanne and Faavae Letuligasenoa left their three young children at a supervised play area and made a beeline for the housing table. They filled out the paperwork, but understood that there were only 25 government-supported spots designated for San Jose, and about 3,000 applications expected to be turned in by Saturday. About 1,000 were received Thursday, Tovar said.

“We don't want to get our hopes up,” said Joanne Letuligasenoa, 23.

The homeless arrived in buses or vans from shelters, walked in from nearby streets, or were picked up by volunteers at their makeshift homes by creeks or under freeways. Many seemed to have the same goal as Lewis Knights, 37, who said, “I want to change my life.”

Nina and Chris Hernandez, who met in a shelter, took turns holding their 5-month-old daughter, Destiny, and waited for her to be examined in the medical van. In and out of shelters for several years, they said they hope for stability.

Anna Davis, 39, said she lost her trailer when she could no longer pay rent on her parking site. For four months, she has stayed in shelters and motels when she can afford it. She gets meals at local charities. Thursday morning she wasn't sure where she would sleep that night. She hoped to get a sleeping bag at the convention center event.

“It's hard to find a place to sleep,” she said, “especially when it's cold.”

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Posted on Sat, Dec. 10, 2005

Connecting with people in fringe world

By L.A. Chung
Mercury News

On the third floor of the Martin Luther King Jr. library, Lu Munoz, 70, was intent on meeting people -- certain people.

Among the 200-plus volunteers for Homeless Connect, a national program in San Jose on Thursday, a small cadre was charged with persuading “chronically homeless” folks to seek social and medical services.

It was something Munoz did with uncommon cheer -- and purpose.

“It's easy to work with the middle class,” said the San Jose psychologist who taught college and had his own private practice. “These people are different.”

By 10:45 that very morning, Munoz had brought a bearded, spindly man named “Spider,” who carried his belongings in a huge plastic sack, to the McEnery Convention Center, where he could have a free hot lunch and maybe a doctor to check out his sores, aches and pains. Indeed, an assortment of public and private agencies, including a mobile medical truck, were waiting to help.

“They're afraid of getting scammed,” Munoz said. He’d knelt down where Spider was hunkered in front of a 7-Eleven to talk to him eye-to-eye. Plagued by cataracts, depth perception problems and alcoholism, Spider also recently lost his dog. The 57-year-old homeless man said he was sure he was older than the septuagenarian Munoz. Certainly, there was more wear and tear.

Foray at the main library

I went with Munoz on his next foray, to the new main library. He struck up a conversation with Russell Scott, who had his nose buried in a novel, a 1993 David Baldacci thriller, “Split Second.” Maybe it was the grime on the baby-blue bandanna Scott wore, or the cut on his forehead that caught Munoz's attention. He might have cracked his rib in a nasty fall that morning, Scott allowed, in a stoic manner that belied the pain. Maybe he'd like to have it looked at today, Munoz suggested.

Scott says he has driven trucks, unloaded freight, run trains and fulfilled a wanderlust from Key West to San Jose. He can talk about that special looping motion a fly fisherman's wrist needs to make in order for the fly to dance on the water. Once there was a wife with whom he raised St. Bernard puppies in Oregon's Willamette Valley. Now he's disabled, 55, and has liver problems.

“It's something that has festered in me for a long time,” Munoz explained, when asked why he responded to the ad in the newspaper looking for volunteers on this day. “It's a very cruel society we live in. You're supposed to have money, you're supposed to be healthy, when neither is possible for everyone in this country.”

In some ways, Munoz is not the type of person I imagine doing this kind of thing. He's college educated, raised almost single-handedly by his mother after his father died. Being a “Depression baby,” -- born in 1935 -- he's familiar with struggle. “All the accomplishments I have are by myself,” he said. “I've always worked.”

Seeing “another way to be”

Wouldn't he expect the same of the people he seeks to help?

“It's a different world now,” he said, particularly in Silicon Valley. “Here, if you don't have an education, you're out in the cold.”

Munoz quit his practice to “live among the trees” four years ago, buying a Christmas tree farm in Auburn. Now he's renewed his psychologist's license and wants to be part of the solution in dealing with seemingly overwhelming problems like homelessness and the needs of the elderly.

It's something of that spirit that we'll need in abundance in the coming months if Homeless Connect is to take off. As has been shown in San Francisco, it will take repeated interactions with many people to see success with a fraction of them.

“So many people have so much potential they don't know they have,” Munoz said. But they need a boost.

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San Jose Mercury News (CA)

May 4, 2005

Supervisors Adopt Fresh Strategy On Homelessness

JOHN WOOLFOLK, Mercury News

Santa Clara County officials vowed Tuesday to end chronic homelessness in the community in a decade through a strategy that shifts focus from overnight shelters toward transitional and long-term housing.

''What you really need to develop is transitional housing,” said Supervisor Don Gage, citing a 140-unit project being built in Gilroy. ''Homeless shelter -- that's the armory, and that's ineffective. All it gives is shelter for one night.”

The board of supervisors voted 5-0 to accept the strategy in “Keys to Housing: A 10-Year Plan to End Chronic Homelessness.”

About 150 cities nationwide have adopted such “housing first” strategies, including Palo Alto, San Francisco and Philadelphia, said Marjorie Matthews, director of the county's Office of Affordable Housing.

“Studies now show that when people don't have to worry about finding a place to sleep every day, they can better address other serious issues they may be coping with, like mental illness, drugs or alcohol, domestic violence, or unemployment,” she said.

The strategy grew out of a one-night countywide tally of the homeless population in December that found 7,646 people on the streets or in emergency facilities. County officials estimated that more than 20,000 people were homeless at some time during 2004, based on a turnover rate established through personal interviews with nearly 1,800 individuals.

The 10-Year Plan to end homelessness was developed over a five-month period by a 45-member group of community, government and private sector representatives co-chaired by supervisors Gage and Jim Beall.

Another key recommendation of the plan is to prevent homelessness by changing practices at jails, hospitals and foster care programs so that individuals are not released from these systems into homelessness.

The strategy includes a goal of increasing the number of permanent housing units available to chronically homeless people by 2,500.

County officials believe that reducing the homeless population will ultimately reduce the cost of serving them in shelters, emergency rooms and jails. But in a year when the county faces a $134 million deficit, they noted parts of the plan may have to wait for more money to become available.

''This is a blueprint for programs we will build over time when resources become more available,'' said Gage.

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Santa Clara County takes first census of its street dwellers

By Putsata Reang
Mercury News

To find some of Santa Clara County's homeless men and women, follow Willie Kramer out to the creek side behind the Prune Yard Inn in Campbell. Wade through a thicket of bush and bramble, grab the rope rigged to a tree and climb up the steep, muddy slope.

Small coves hollowed out in the bushes, a fire ring, and a bent spot along the chain-link fence are evidence of what he's looking for: the street dwellers who climb up to hideaways like this to sleep in relative safety, protected from wind, rain and cops.

Kramer, a no-nonsense 33-year-old man with a dark beard and several missing teeth, has been homeless for the past couple of years. But for two days this week, he has been a sought-after man, as the county embarked on an ambitious effort: its first street count of the homeless.

A more accurate tally of the county's homeless can help officials better tailor their services and raise more funds to tackle the homeless problem, which county leaders want to eradicate in 10 years.

Nearly 300 trained community volunteers and homeless "experts" teamed up to canvass South Bay streets Tuesday and Wednesday to tally how many men, women and children live in city parks, along the rivers and in cars.

'Moral thing to do'

"It's the moral thing to do, and it's the fiscally correct thing to do," said Supervisor Jim Beall, co-chair of the committee in charge of drafting the 10-year plan, which met for the first time Wednesday night.

The federal Community Development Block Grant that helps pay for homeless programs has decreased by roughly $100,000 each year out of about $3.1 million, and next year the county will lose its $40,000 annual Emergency Shelter Grant.

Although the county has no official homeless count, a 2000 survey revealed 20,000 "episodes" of homelessness -- people who reported being homeless at some point in the previous year. But those who work with this population say that that number is far from accurate. The county's homeless coordinator, Margaret Gregg, expects numbers from this new count to be much lower.

"Some people think there are no homeless people, and other people think there are more homeless people than you can shake a stick at. The number is somewhere in between," said Barry Del Buono, executive director of the Emergency Housing Consortium, which houses 1,500 homeless people on any given night in its shelters.

Some won't be counted

The count won't be completely accurate, according to Peter Connery, vice president of Applied Survey Research, which conducts the count. The homeless who sleep on friends' couches or who work swing shifts won't be counted, because the survey counts only homeless people on the street. But Connery promises at least a better count.

Other cities and counties across the nation are joining in as recent federal mandates have required more accurate data before agencies such as the US Department of Housing and Urban Services dispense grants. So far, 170 cities and counties also have or are developing 10-year strategies to end homelessness. Santa Cruz, Monterey, Contra Costa and San Francisco counties have conducted similar street counts.

"It's a national movement," said Philip Mangano, director of the federal Interagency Council on Homelessness.

Santa Clara County's census began at 4:30 a.m. Tuesday, to avoid counting people twice. People at homeless shelters, which open their doors a few hours later, were counted separately.

The idea to recruit members of the homeless community to help won wide praise from participants. About 75 percent of the volunteers were homeless, according to Connery. Not only did they know where to look, but they also earned $10 an hour in cash.

Carla Williams, 33, once made $90,000 a year as a marketing and communications specialist for a dot-com that died. She hit the streets on Dec. 17, 2002, when she could no longer afford her rent. She recently moved into a subsidized apartment in San Jose and works odd jobs to pay the rent.

"You do all sorts of little jobs like this," said Williams, who helped with the count. "Being homeless, it's a pride-swallowing experience."

Reporting for duty

On Tuesday morning, about 150 counters -- most of them homeless -- showed up for their assignments at St. Joseph's Cathedral in downtown San Jose. They rode buses, light rail, walked, and some drove cars to get to their precincts. Most had made their way back to the church by 9 a.m. and swapped stories as they stood in line to get paid.

James McDonald, 45, who has been homeless for the past seven years, rode the No. 22 bus all night to make sure he'd arrive at St. Joseph's in time to work. Within an hour on the job, he found himself fending off an attack by an angry Rottweiler.

His census partner, Nicholas Hatridge, 25, who is also homeless, showed up just in time to chase the dog away. Together, they counted 60 homeless men and women.

Across town, Kendoll Nalan, 30, and Christine Graham, 47, were battling a feisty old car as they cruised San Jose's Blossom Hill neighborhood in Graham's 1984 Chrysler LeBaron. It sputtered to a stop every 15 minutes, even though the car's automated audio system informed its driver on several occasions: "All systems are working."

"You're lying!" Graham yelled, in the semi-dark of the morning.

Both women are homeless, and in the tony Blossom Hill neighborhood, they returned with just two marks on their sheet: themselves. "We'll count ourselves, because no one is going to count us," Graham said.

Retiree gets involved

Homeless men and women were not the only ones out counting. Jack Sutcliffe, who retired five years ago as an engineer with the Santa Clara County Water District, got involved.

"Personally, I wanted to get a better handle of it," he said of the county's homeless.

Organizers say it will take a couple of months before the results are completed. In the meantime, the counters will take to the streets again next week to interview 2,000 of their fellow street-dwellers to learn the details of their plight.

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