Ending
Chronic Homelessness Through Permanent Supportive Housing
The availability of housing to be
secured for our chronically homeless population will drive the
success of this entire effort, and dictate the number of people
who can be assisted to end their homelessness. Our solutions must
be creative and focus on leveraging what assets are available
to us. Together, the community will develop 500 beds in permanent
housing in the first 5 years and 750-1200 beds in permanent housing
over the next 10 years. It is not necessary, indeed very unlikely,
that each bed represents an individual housing unit, such as a
studio. What is important is that there is a variety of housing
types with a sufficient number of beds to stably house the target
population.
We acknowledge that the creation of
a sufficient number of beds to house this population is no easy
task. A first step of Bringing Our Community Home will be to further
develop a detailed assessment by housing type and homeless subpopulation
of the number of housing units and the matrix of services that
are needed, with projections for the costs to develop and implement
these housing and service models. The Supportive Housing Subcommittee
of this Plan (representatives of housing authorities, nonprofit
housing providers, housing developers, and government housing)
has committed to continue meeting in order to further refine how
these units will be secured. As first steps, this group will convene
to determine the availability of existing subsidized housing units
for immediate tenancy by homeless individuals and families and
create a plan to move people who are currently homeless into permanent
housing over time.
Existing successful models of supportive
housing will be replicated and expanded in order to increase our
capacity to move homeless families and individuals off the streets
and out of shelters. Many methods of securing the required beds
will be pursued, including master leasing, rental subsidy, building
rehabilitation, and new construction. In an effort to maintain
community ties, beds will be developed to house the local population
of chronically homeless in the South County, Santa Maria, and
Lompoc as appropriate. Housing will be provided based on a Housing
First approach; chronically homeless people will not be required
to utilize services or treatment before housing is provided.
At the end of ten years, through having
in place effective policies and procedures, incentives, and sufficient
dedicated resources to keep subsidized units available to extremely
low income, homeless, and formerly homeless households we will
ensure no net loss of units of subsidized housing due to market
conversion or owner opt-out. Also, through outcome measures, we
will assure the reuse of shelter and transitional housing resources,
as they have become available, are maximized to help move people
rapidly into permanent housing.
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