Today residents can see the building coming into shape from when it broke ground in December.

“(It’s been) pretty fast,” PATH Board Member Allene Dering said. “I haven’t been out there to see it for a couple of weeks, but they were putting up the inside walls last time I saw.”

The building is located at 400 and 402 Reeds Avenue in Red Bluff. The construction is expected to be done middle of December, and the shelter may be operational by the time the city fills its new homeless liaison position within the Red Bluff Police Department.

But it will also fill a void that Dering said has existed since Covid-19. The pandemic forced churches not to allow the homeless to stay overnight.

Now with the navigation and shelter center nearly built, it will fill that need within the community.

The building will be a one-stop hub that utilizes a low-barrier housing-first approach that includes meals, showers, laundry, and mail services.

PATH Board Member Allene Dering notes that while they are building a permanent housing structure, they have a day center on Antelope that the homeless can access, particularly during the day and in the heat.

That center is open from 8 a.m. to  5 p.m.

And she said transitional housing programs for men and women who aren’t ready yet to be in traditional housing. The transitional housing programs allow people to access them for up to two years while they go to school and continue to work towards permanent housing.

The shelter will have 64 single beds, but PATH hopes more bunk beds will bring that number closer to 80. The navigation center will provide 24-hour service 365 days per year and additional provisions for supplementary services provided by partner agencies.

“We are hoping that everybody can make use of it and just come together and then find hopefully more permanent housing for everybody,” Ledford said at the December groundbreaking.

At that same groundbreaking, PATH President E.C. Ross said a ribbon cutting for the new building would happen sometime this year.

Originally a playground was a part of the navigation center program. PATH Board Member Allene Dering said because construction took so long and prices increased, the playground had to be cut. PATH has found a way around that thought, for $100 a piece that will go toward building the playground.

“Buy as many parts as you want to, then we will have a playground,” Dering said.

During the groundbreaking ceremony, Ross acknowledged Louisiana Pacific and Serria Paffic for helping to secure the navigation center property. He thanked Tehama County, Red Bluff, Corning, the Board of Supervisors, and City Councils who have been instrumental in making this happen.

Dering revealed that the navigation center had been decades in the making.

“We almost have it in other places, but God said no, this is not where I wanted it, So we didn’t have it there,” Dering said. “And finally, this place came about because it with all of the with all of the donations and everything.”

She thanked the whole community, stakeholders group, volunteers, paid staff, and everybody who worked hard to make this possible.

In the last year, the city has designated Samuel Ayer Park, on a trial basis, as a site where the police can ask the homeless can go to camp.

That decision played a part in moving the Civil War Days from Samuel Ayer Park and Dog Island to Cone Grove Park.

It’s expected that people can be moved to the Navigation Center or elsewhere once the center is finished.

Criminal approaches to homelessness continue with anti-camping enforcements, and on the services approach, government agencies and service providers countywide have geared up operations in the past year to address larger and more diverse populations of homeless people.

“We are having a positive impact on homeless populations locally in that there’s housing opportunity now where there wasn’t any a year ago,” said Ed Mayer, chair of the Butte Homeless Continuum of Care and director of Butte County Housing Authority. “Homelessness has grown; we’re seeing more elderly than ever; we’ve seen our capacity for emergency and transitional and permanent housing increase.”

According to Butte County’s Point-in-Time Count in January, 1,237 people were reported experiencing homelessness in the county with 925 from Chico, 24 from Gridley and Biggs, 277 from Oroville and 11 from ridge communities.

Access to affordable housing — the underlying bottleneck preventing people from truly exiting homelessness — remains the biggest problem to solve as a tool to address homelessness, and is noted as a top policy priority in the California Statewide Study of People Experiencing Homelessness published June 20.

While options and capacity for temporary shelter and housing increased dramatically in the past year, a shortage of housing remains a limiting factor in getting people out of shelters and into permanent housing, according to Mayer and other shelter providers in the Continuum of Care.

“We don’t have next step housing for every person that comes into our programs,” said Jesus Center Director Amber Abney-Bass whose team also manages the city’s Pallet shelter. “We rely on organizations like Chico Housing Action Team who are created and who develop housing-outcomes for people coming through shelter — because this continuum only works when the existence of next steps is flourishing.”

While homeless service providers struggle with putting people into permanent housing because of a housing shortage, relatively exceptional progress is being made toward housing creation with a reported 2,997 units of affordable housing in progress associated with the housing authority, Mayer said.

On the front of services improvements, Mayer said the continuum has learned a lot about homelessness.

Most major homeless providers now have their own street outreach teams, housing navigators and other programs to help encourage people into shelter and start case management.

Anticipated shelter options — with the Chico’s Everhart Village planned to house behavioral health clients in homelessness; and the Jesus Center’s Renewal Center as the first emergency non-congregate shelter — also aim to chip away at targeted homeless subpopulations of people with mental illness and whole families who experience homelessness.

Mayer said the county’s Homeless Coordinated Entry System is now being effectively utilized to house people of the most need.

“Various agencies are chipping away, using that database of homeless households now to actually do housing work; it’s really cool,” Mayer said. “We’re starting to see service agencies with navigator capacity, realizing that it’s not enough to just case manage these people you got staying in your homeless shelter or in your transitional housing facility; you need to help and hold their hand as they go represent themselves to landlords and go look for units.”

Mayer said a question remains — “is it enough?”

No one seems to have the answer yet. As surveys project that homelessness will increase nationwide, especially for older adults, local leaders are mixed in attitudes towards ways to address homelessness, but a vast majority agree public spaces should be maintained and people living on the streets should be treated with dignity and respect.

Camp sweeps

Almost exactly one year ago, at the beginning of August, Chico cleared its largest encampment of homeless people at Comanche Creek Greenway, and the outcome of that has been repeated in other areas of the city, over and over again. Some people take shelter that is offered, but many continue to scatter about to another place in the city in search of respite.

Enforcements at Comanche Creek Greenway, Lindo Channel, Humboldt Park and Teichert Ponds all saw homeless people both accepting shelter and rejecting shelter. Many who reject shelter do so because of rules and restrictions or do not feel comfortable in shelter for various reasons, according to street outreach specialists.

Chico city councilors Tom van Overbeek, Dale Bennett, Addison Winslow, Sean Morgan and Mayor Andrew Coolidge, interviewed by this newspaper, are aware of this cycle.

In regards to maintaining public spaces for the enjoyment of public use, most councilors interviewed were very pleased with the progress in freeing up those spaces, though Morgan said the process was limited by the Warren v. Chico Settlement agreement.

“I think we’ve made a tremendous amount of success in the last year. I think the Jesus Center has been doing an amazing job at moving people out of shelter and into a more positive environment for them,” said Coolidge. “Our community of course is still, as a whole, pushing for us to move through all these areas and get them clean.”

“The citizens of Chico who are not faced with the homeless crisis in close proximity to their residence and business; I think most of them are pretty happy with the promise we made. For citizens that have an issue with an unhoused population close to their residence or the business, they of course are concerned rightfully so,” said Bennett.

Some councilors said the city’s process should continue the way it is — offering shelter and clearing public spaces of homeless people — as they view the process to be the most effective way to address homelessness in Chico.

“Our power, the power of this city council and city administration, is to continue the path that we have been going down with the unhoused population an continue to find them a better life,” said Bennett. “All of the activities by the homeless task force, all of the folks involved in services and county services — are focused on helping people find a better life. So our power I think just comes down to, I think we need to continue doing what we’re doing; we need to continue lending assistance to folks and hopefully … the outcome is going to be a better outcome for the unhoused individuals.”

Morgan said he did not agree with the opinion of Martin v. Boise in that a city must provide shelter for homeless people they wish to evict from public spaces.

While Chico has been pursuing camp removals, it has not made available official safe parking spaces and other non-shelter alternatives other than a congregate shelter and Pallet shelter offerings.

The city of Oroville has far fewer homeless people living in public spaces than Chico, yet the city is working towards providing safe parking with its anticipated Mission Esperanza Project.

Some councilors said they would be more open to discussion on alternatives to the current process on the basis that people who don’t wish to enter shelter will continue to occupy public spaces through Chico regardless of continued anti-camping ordinance enforcements.

Councilors Tom van Overbeek, Addison Winslow and Bennett said they would be willing to discuss the option of a sanctioned campground that would be managed for safety and provided with access to trash and toilets.

“I see a managed, organized, safe and secure managed campground as a possible solution to some of the folks that are resistant to other avenues of assistance,” said Bennett. “It hasn’t been tried yet; I think it’s always necessary to try something to see if its a successful attempt to be proactive in addressing the unhoused.”

Read along and nod if any of this sounds familiar:

“Downtown businesses had long complained about people sleeping in their doorways at night. Encampments within city limits sprouted and became sanitation hazards, and some homeowners reported finding people sleeping on their front porches who were unwilling to move on.”

“A shocking 56% of (homeless) respondents reported using meth three or more times weekly.”

“(The city) cleared its largest encampment of homeless people … and the outcome of the clearing has been seen repeated in other areas of the city, over and over again — some people take shelter that is offered, but many continue to scatter about to another place in the city.”

““Right now is 10 times worse than 20 years ago. Twenty years ago, (it was) much easier to handle the homeless; now it’s much much harder.” ”

“Beyond tent encampments, nearly half of those living without shelter in February’s count were sleeping in their vehicles.”

Nodding your head “yes” yet? Congratulations. You must live in any one of 200 or more towns in California.

For the third consecutive year, this newspaper has joined with nine sister publications around the north state for our “State of Homelessness” edition.

The idea is this: By publishing stories offering a bird’s-eye view of what’s happening on the homeless front elsewhere, maybe we’ll learn a little more about what’s happening locally — and even notice we’re probably ahead of the curve in some areas and behind it in a few others.

If there’s one thing that should be obvious by now, it’s this: No one city or town or county is ever going to “solve” homelessness. It’s a multi-layered, incredibly complex crisis that didn’t start because of any one town, and no one town is ever going to end it. Until there is a concentrated, and substantial, effort that covers factors as varied as mental health and housing and addiction and, yes, crime (just to name four) on a statewide and even national level, you are never going to see this problem “go away,” regardless of how badly you want to cling to some repeatedly disproven narratives:

“They’re all from somewhere else, and they come here for the great benefits. If we kicked them out and made them go back to wherever they came from, this wouldn’t be a problem. We need to stop enabling, and the city needs to get serious about cracking down on the homeless.”

For every homeless person you see, your community probably has an equal number of people shouting this nonsense, blissfully ignorant of things like the law and restrictions on what cities are legally allowed to do. It’s stunning — especially considering the level of news coverage these issues have received.

One example: A statewide UCSF study showed 90 percent of unhomed Californians are from — wait for it — California. And 75 percent of them live in the same county where they became homeless.

In other words, while some homeless people go from town to town looking for a better deal, an overwhelming majority of them stay within five or 10 miles of where they originally became homeless. We’re guessing you haven’t seen that figure quoted in your favorite local homeless-bashing Facebook group lately.

Every year, we get a lot of feedback to this series. We always expect (and receive) some “there you go, being part of the problem again”-type comments — but we also get a growing number of “thank you for this; I learned it’s not just happening locally and that it’s more of a complex issue than I believed” responses.

We can never adequately address problems until we first acknowledge what the problem actually is, and learn to tell the difference between a fact and a narrative. For as much as our state spends on homelessness every year — nearly $10 billion in the past three years alone — it should be obvious that we’re not getting enough bang for our buck, and what we’re doing isn’t working.

Let’s be smarter. That starts with recognizing the facts.

And for the record? Those five paragraphs at the beginning of this editorial described (in order) scenes in Fort Bragg, Ukiah, Chico, Eureka and Santa Cruz, respectively, and were taken directly from the overview stories you can read today.

Bet you thought it was all from your town.

LOS ANGELES — Five major U.S. cities and the state of California will receive federal help to get unsheltered residents into permanent housing under a new plan launched Thursday as part of the Biden administration’s larger goal to reduce homelessness 25% by 2025.

The All Inside initiative will partner the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness and its 19 federal member agencies with state officials in California and local governments in Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Seattle and the Phoenix metro area.

The goal is for the federal government to provide “knowledge, resources and elbow grease” to population centers where nearly half the nation’s unhoused residents live, said Susan Rice, President Joe Biden’s domestic policy advisor.

The administration will offer “tailored support” for two years to improve efforts toward housing unsheltered people in the participating communities, including embedding a federal official in each area, officials said.

In addition, teams will be deployed to help the communities obtain federal funding, establish a network of resources and identify areas where regulations can be loosened and the process for securing housing can be sped up.

Philanthropic groups and private businesses will be invited to help identify opportunities for support and collaboration, according to the administration.

More than 580,000 Americans were homeless in 2022, with 4 out of 10 of them unsheltered and sleeping on sidewalks and in tents and cars, Rice said.

“We know we cannot meaningfully address our nation’s homelessness problem without a distinct focus on unsheltered homelessness,” she said during a livestreamed announcement with the cities’ mayors and other officials.

Agencies, including the Department of Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Social Security Agency, Department of Labor, Federal Emergency Management Agency, will be involved under Thursday’s announcement to help coordinate housing opportunities.

Funding specifics were not offered, but the White House said the program will build on the $2.5 billion already allocated to prevent homelessness under the administration’s American Rescue Plan and $486 million in the Department of Housing and Urban Development funding released to local municipalities earlier this year.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said she hoped the initiative would unstick the current bottleneck plaguing her program Inside Safe, which offers homeless people motel rooms and a path to permanent housing with services. The City Council on Thursday passed the mayor’s budget, which provides $250 million for the LA initiative. It has over 1,200 enrollees so far but is moving slowly because of bureaucratic red tape.

“If anything, we know that our current system on the federal, state and county level isn’t designed for the emergency that we are facing today,” Bass, a Democrat, said.

Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell said the White House plan will “unite our systems,” bringing solutions that are effective in some cities to other areas.

“What’s working in one city will work here because we’re dealing with the same American issues,” Harrell, a Democrat, said.

The Seattle area had the nation’s third highest population of homeless residents in 2022, after Los Angeles and New York, at more than 13,300, according to a one-night count required by the federal government.

Seattle, King County and nearby cities joined together to launch a regional homelessness authority two years ago. But many officials say the new agency has underperformed, been beset by political fights and had trouble fulfilling administrative duties such as executing contracts with service providers.

Meanwhile, the city of Phoenix is under increasing pressure to do something about a massive downtown encampment known as The Zone, where as many as 1,000 unhoused people have congregated near social services.

Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs, a former social worker, successfully pushed for $150 million to be included in Arizona’s Housing Trust Fund in the state’s budget to shore up rent and utility assistance programs, eviction prevention, and build new shelters and affordable housing.

Biden’s All In strategy roadmap made public last December follows a 2010 effort called Opening Doors, which was the nation’s first comprehensive effort seeking to prevent and end homelessness.

Associated Press writers Anita Snow in Phoenix and Gene Johnson in Seattle contributed.

More than a dozen mayors from California’s largest cities came to Sacramento Wednesday with their answer. They told Gov. Gavin Newsom it will take $2 billion in annual, ongoing funding to ease homelessness on their streets.

The ask is $1 billion less than the lobbying group League of California Cities called for last week. It is double the $1 billion in one-time funding currently proposed by the governor.

All of the numbers come as the state faces a budget deficit projected to top $31.5 billion in the fiscal year that begins July 1.

The mayors acknowledged the difficult fiscal position but argued that California’s “biggest humanitarian crisis” deserves an immediate influx of consistent funding.

“Homelessness is solvable but we need the resources to scale the projects and programs,” said San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria.

“… We acknowledge that it’s hard for many Californians to see the results and that’s because we’re simply not keeping pace with the number of people who are becoming newly homeless,” he continued.

Gavin Newsom opposes ongoing homeless funding

Daniel Lopez, a spokesperson for the governor, said Newsom met with California’s Big City Mayors coalition on Wednesday to discuss local initiatives to address the crisis and the governor’s plan to dramatically expand the number of mental health treatment beds for those living on the streets.

Lopez would not say whether the governor planned to agree to their request for more funding. Newsom in the past has been outspoken about his opposition to ongoing homeless funding.

The governor, who has taken much heat for the growing homeless population, has publicly questioned whether the state has seen an adequate return on its investment. He has demanded ambitious plans from local officials to tackle the problem.

Since 2019, California’s Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention Program (HHAP) has awarded local governments with nearly $3 billion to run shelters, build affordable housing and provide services to unhoused residents. Newsom, whose proposed 2023-24 budget allotted another $1 billion, said that he was “not backing away” from the issue.

In an effort to hold local officials accountable for results, Newsom in 2022 required them to submit action plans as a condition of receiving funding through the program. Those who meet their targets will be rewarded with additional money.

California mayors push for more money despite budget deficit

During Wednesday’s press conference, the mayors commended the governor for launching the program and shared stories about people in their communities who have benefited. They also agreed that the state should continue measuring their success and hold them accountable for reducing their homeless populations.

But in order to get more people off the streets than the number entering homelessness each day, the mayors argued, more resources were required.

“We need to all take it to the next level and we cannot do it alone,” said Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg.

As part of their request, the mayors are also asking the state to guarantee approval and funding for 2,300 units proposed under the Homekey program, which provides funding for agencies to convert hotels, motels and other residential and commercial properties into permanent or interim housing for unhoused residents.

Senate Minority Leader Brian W. Jones, R-San Diego, criticized the ask, saying that “throwing more money at the problem” would not fix it.

“Under the leadership of the current San Diego and Sacramento mayors, homelessness has skyrocketed while spending to tackle the crisis has also shot up simultaneously,” Jones said in a statement. “Homelessness has spiraled out of control under their watch and they simply don’t have credibility to be the spokesmen of ‘solving’ homelessness.”

That’s according to a new report released Monday by the Economic Roundtable, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit research organization. The report highlights how the fast-food industry’s low-wage jobs contribute to the state’s homeless crisis and proposes improvements to keep workers and their families housed.

The research found fast food workers make up 5.9% of California’s homeless population and 11% of all homeless workers in the state. The poverty rate for the households of frontline fast food workers is also roughly three times higher than the rest of the state’s workers.

“We need to raise the playing field…If we raise the expectations, the wage levels, the hours of employment for everyone in the industry, then it doesn’t hurt any company individually,” said Daniel Flaming, president of Economic Roundtable and lead author of the report. “But it makes the service they provide socially sustainable rather than a bottom feeder activity.”

Flaming argues if the industry provided sustaining pay and stable employment, there would be roughly 10,000 fewer homeless workers in California.

“That alone is not the sole solution to homelessness, but it’s a big piece of a solution,” he said.

Per the report, a fast food worker collects $59 per hour for corporations. The top five publicly traded fast-food corporations operating in California generated $12 billion in 2022.

“In a state with the fourth largest economy in the world, corporations are able to get away with paying poverty wages simply because we let them,” said Devon Gray, president of End Poverty in California. “And the reason they’re allowed to do this is because we’ve internalized classist and, often, racist notions of deservedness that say fast food workers and other low-wage workers don’t need to get paid enough to meet their basic needs.”

The report comes in the middle of an ongoing battle between labor advocates and the fast-food industry over a first-in-the-nation council that would set pay and working standards for fast-food employees in California.

The council would apply to any chain restaurant with at least 100 locations in the United States and could lead to a $22 per hour minimum wage for workers.

Gov. Gavin Newsom approved the council by signing the FAST Recovery Act last year on Labor Day. But the following day, opponents filed a referendum to halt its formation.

Paid signature gatherers would collect more than 1 million signatures over the next few months while facing accusations of lying and misrepresentation. Following a statewide count, 77% of the signatures were deemed valid and the referendum qualified.

The approval sets the stage for voters to decide the council’s fate on the November 2024 ballot. It also likely means a costly battle, with spending reaching hundreds of millions of dollars.

The labor organization Service Employees International Union, which has worked for more than a decade to organize in fast food restaurants, provided $50,000 to the Economic Roundtable to produce the independent report.

SEIU led a campaign in 2016 to push California to raise its minimum wage to $15. And most recently, the organization has advocated for a measure that would make fast food corporations liable for any health and safety violations of their California franchisees.

Currently, fast food companies are not legally responsible for any labor violations if individual stores are owned by franchisees.

More than 69,000 homeless residents live in Los Angeles County, for instance, but that county has just over 21,000 beds in shelters and temporary housing programs.

It’s a similar story in Sacramento County, which counted nearly 9,300 unhoused residents in its last census, but has just over 3,000 shelter and temporary housing beds.

Those massive gaps – which ensure thousands of people remain homeless – are visible in cities throughout California. But despite constant reassurances from Gov. Gavin Newsom and lawmakers that getting people off the street is a top priority, there’s no state requirement for cities and counties to make sure they have enough shelters or housing for homeless residents.

A bill working its way through the Legislature could change that, and potentially lead to sanctions against local governments that fail to plan for the needs of homeless Californians.

Senate Bill 7 would — for the first time — require cities and counties to plan enough beds for everyone living without a place to call home. It would go beyond just temporary shelter, also including permanent housing placements.

Its author, Sen. Catherine Blakespear, a Democrat from Encinitas, called it a “transformational idea” that could help move the needle on homelessness where other attempts have failed.

“Everything we’re doing currently, it will result in homelessness growing,” Blakespear said in an interview. “It will not result in homelessness going down.”

California cities’ housing goals

Currently, the state makes sure every city and county plans for new housing through a process known as the regional housing needs allocation. In all, the state requires cities and counties to plan for 2.5 million new homes over the next eight years — about 25% of which must be affordable for very low-income occupants.

But this method doesn’t require cities and counties to plan any housing that is specifically for homeless residents.

If the bill passes, local officials would have to include homeless housing in their plans. How much is yet to be determined, but it would be based on each city’s point-in-time census count of its homeless population. Ideally, Blakespear said, the plans would require a unit for every single person counted.

The idea comes at a time when the state is forcing local governments to take more responsibility for providing housing.

Newsom’s administration sued the Orange County coastal enclave of Huntington Beach earlier this year for failing to adopt a housing plan. And cities that flout state housing law also are subject to the “builder’s remedy,” which allows developers to bypass local zoning laws for certain projects.

Blakespear’s bill has gained some early support from housing activists, and recently passed out of the Senate Governance and Finance Committee by a 6-2 vote. While some local leaders are sure to chafe under yet another state-imposed housing requirement, several big-city mayors are tentatively supportive.

“The final details in the bill matter,” Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg said in an emailed statement, “but any bill that moves the state and cities closer to making housing and services for the homeless a mandatory obligation for government is a step in the right direction.”

Data collected by Sacramento County’s homeless services agencies shows the county has 3,080 beds in its year-round shelters and transitional housing programs — 6,198 fewer than its estimated total number of unhoused residents.

Los Angeles County has 21,100 placements in its temporary housing, safe parking and motel programs, according to a county dashboard — not enough to accommodate even a third of its unhoused population.

Advocates want more money for homeless housing

At a recent hearing, some bill critics wondered where the money would come from to build all this extra housing.

“The funding’s going to be incredibly critical,” said Jason Rhine, assistant director of legislative affairs for the League of California Cities. “If we do not have the money, we will not be able to house individuals.”

The league hasn’t officially opposed the bill, but says it has concerns.

Blakespear wants to pair her bill with a new state fund, which would help cities, counties and nonprofits build housing for people who are homeless or at risk of losing their homes. But it remains to be seen how much — if any — money the Legislature allocates, as the state faces a budget deficit of at least $22.5 billion this year.

Some aspects of the legislation are still up for negotiation. It’s unclear what type of homeless housing cities and counties could use to fulfill the new requirements. Blakespear envisions it would include both permanent and temporary — meaning apartments, but also shelters, RV sites, single-room-occupancy hotels, and more.

It’s also unclear exactly what each city and county would be on the hook for under the new bill, and what the penalties would be for noncompliance. The state’s current process requires cities to plan for housing, including zoning for it and removing roadblocks from its construction, but doesn’t require them to get it built.

Much of the housing cities plan for during that state-mandated process never gets constructed. And low-income housing fares the worst. In the last eight-year planning cycle, just 20% of the very-low-income units needed statewide were permitted.

The California Building Industry Association opposes Blakespear’s bill, worrying money to fund it would come from raising taxes and fees paid by homebuilders. Furthermore, existing law already requires cities and counties to assess their need for emergency shelter, said Cornelious Burke, the association’s vice president of legislative affairs.

Blakespear said she has no intention of using construction fees to cover the cost of her bill. And she disagreed the state’s existing shelter-assessment requirement renders her bill unnecessary.

“Those are just words,” she said. “That is not an actual obligation to provide anything for people who are unhoused.”

Ray Bramson of Destination: Home, a nonprofit that helps spearhead the homelessness response in Santa Clara County, said the bill could help get more homeless housing built. But it depends on how the details of the bill shake out, he said. For one thing, the bill should focus on permanent housing that comes with supportive services like mental health care – not on temporary shelter, Bramson said.

And, the bill must come with funding.

“If not,” he said, “then it’s just another goal that we’re going to struggle to meet collectively.”

Unveiled Thursday morning, Antioch’s first-ever non-congregate shelter will be located at the former Executive Inn motel at 515 E. 18th St. and provide wraparound services geared toward the chronically homeless, many of whom have survived for years living in encampments along the riverfront or railroad tracks or under freeways.

“It’s different when you know people and have built relationships with the people on the streets,” Gardner said, noting her excitement over the new center. “They’ve been there for a dozen years and I’ve seen them in the cold and the rain and in the extreme heat without water or food and seen them struggle.”

Antioch Mayor Lamar Thorpe, who advocated for transitional housing, was on hand Thursday, along with Gardner and others, to help cut the ribbon for the 33-room center, which will begin accepting clients on Monday. Dubbed “Opportunity Village,” the center can house up to 45 residents at a time – up to 135 a year – who will stay there anywhere from 120 to 180 days.

The program is geared for adults without children who have been staying outdoors or in vehicles. Referrals will primarily come from the city, which will oversee the program.

“Antioch of today is a place for everybody, including our neighbors without houses,” Thorpe told the large crowd gathered. “This spirit of prosperity and growth has transformed our city from a tiny town right off the Delta to a major player in the San Francisco Bay Area.”

Thorpe said Antioch having its own transitional housing center and soon providing a mental health crisis response team are ways to place resources into the community “instead of defaulting to the old way of doing things,” which was sending out police to handle situations that are best left to others.

“Police departments aren’t nonprofit service providers, they’re not homeless outreach workers,” Thorpe said in an interview before the ceremony. “They’re not mental health experts.”

No other city in Contra Costa County has its own transitional housing center, Thorpe told those at the ribbon-cutting, noting others rely on the county to help their unhoused.

“We actually decided to go into our pockets to fund these types of services.”

Under the terms of the lease, the motel owner, Rudram LLC, will be paid $1.17 million a year, with the money coming from American Rescue Plan Act funds. The agreement allows two two-year lease extensions. The agreement includes furnishings for the motel – minus phones and TVs. The owners also will provide maintenance, repairs and landscaping upkeep.

Bay Area Community Services will run the 24-hour supervised program, enrolling clients and helping them connect with substance abuse programs and mental health services, providing conflict resolution, de-escalation and other safety protocols and ensuring everyone is following the motel’s rules. The city will pay some $2 million over two years for those supportive services, money that also will come from American Rescue Plan  Act funds it has received.

“Housing is a right that we should all have, just like food and water,” Gary Tia of Bay Area Community Services told the crowd. “I’m grateful for this opportunity to work with you. I think the need is great, but the laborers are few. What we lack in numbers we will make up with effort and strength and true collaboration.”

Antioch began actively looking at ways to address its homeless encampments in 2019, led by then-Councilwoman Joy Motts, with the mayor later joining her in her efforts. Both agreed there had to be a better way to help the city’s unhoused than simply having code enforcement move them from one place to another — at a cost of about $1 million a year.

But Thorpe also admitted he had a lot to learn about homelessness, and he credited several residents for educating him and pushing for housing. To honor them for their efforts, he presented keys to the city to Gardner, Motts, homeless advocate Vicki Proctor and former Assistant City Manager Rosanna Bayon Moore, who oversaw the motel project from its inception.

“These women have impacted and shaped my understanding of public service,” Thorpe said, “and they have reaffirmed using my faith as a guiding principle in the process of making decisions.”

Thorpe recalled meeting Proctor of Extending Hands Ministries several years ago when she was feeding the homeless from the trunk of her car and he told her it was illegal. Her response: “ We need to pray for you because you need to see what we see. We need you to get these people off the streets.”

“Sometimes it takes a while,” Thorpe said. “But that moment will never leave my life, ever. Because I know that that prayer is why we’re here today. We’re here because of Vicki. She kept coming back to push us forward and advocate.”

Thorpe also called Gardner “relentless,” urging the council to act to help the city’s more than 300 homeless residents.

“She kept coming back, she kept pressing this city, asking, ‘What are you going to do about the homeless situation?’ ” Thorpe said. “She transformed my understanding of people on the streets.”

In accepting her award, Gardner said she was reminded of how one homeless man kept asking for help, encouraged by others who had made changes after participating in the county’s Delta Landing interim housing in Pittsburg.

“He kept saying, ‘I really want to change my life,’ ” she said, noting she learned this week that he has been given a spot in the city’s new program. “I’ve never seen such a look, like he could see a light at the end of the tunnel walls.”

“It’s just all about compassion and love and trying to instill that within the community to break some of these stereotypes,” Gardner added. “I think today is a good day for Antioch….Today is a good day for me, and I’m just so thankful.”

On the council, Motts was also a formidable advocate for the homeless and was relentless in her efforts to help them even when it hurt her politically, Thorpe said.

“She’s the reason why we were able to politically move on the city council, to get to where we’re at today,” he said.

In accepting the award, Motts agreed nobody wanted to take on the issue of homelessness.

“It’s incredibly complicated,” she said. “You have people with mental illness challenges, families and children. There’s just no easy answers.”

What she did discover through her research was the importance of having shelter, a first step in getting off the streets, she said.

“There’s only one answer — it’s to put a roof over somebody’s head, because as long as they are living in chaos and crisis, you will never be able to help them,” she said. “So, I am proud to have been part of starting all of this. It was the right thing to do.”

At a ribbon-cutting ceremony Tuesday, local officials and project backers touted the 240-unit “navigation center” east of Highway 101 as a cost-effective and “dignified” model for solving the Bay Area’s worsening homelessness crisis.

“Let’s all celebrate today this opening, with the hope that other communities in the Bay Area will follow the lead of San Mateo County and the city of Redwood City to end homelessness throughout our region,” said billionaire Silicon Valley developer John Sobrato, who helped plan the project.

The center, at 275 Blomquist St. in a commercial and industrial area near Redwood Creek, will provide residents with private rooms and bathrooms, as well as onsite medical, mental health and addiction services. At the same time, caseworkers will help them find permanent housing. Residents are expected to move in within the next few weeks.

The facility, consisting of 200-square-foot prefabricated apartments resembling shipping containers stacked three stories high, cost about $57 million to build. That comes to around $240,000 per unit in a region where building affordable housing can cost more than three times that amount.

The bulk of the construction was paid for by California’s Project Homekey program, which launched during the pandemic to help local governments, tribes and nonprofits fund new homeless housing. Complete with a basketball court, dog run and garden area, the Redwood City project was finished in just under a year.

In addition to the relatively low cost and speedy construction, officials on Tuesday highlighted the facility’s individual rooms — where couples can stay together and residents can bring their pets — as more welcoming alternatives to dormitory-style emergency shelters with strict rules and little privacy.

“It’s always been such a challenge to recognize the difficulties in convincing people to accept housing,” said County Board of Supervisors President Dave Pine. “The barriers can be very overwhelming.”

Despite a flood of recent homelessness spending, San Mateo County didn’t come close to reaching its goal of achieving “functional zero” homelessness by the end of last year. That would have meant every unhoused person who wanted it had access to either a shelter bed, temporary housing or a permanent home.

The new navigation center should help by boosting the county’s shelter capacity to more than 780 units. But as of last year, there were roughly 1,100 homeless people living on the street and about 700 in shelters, according to the latest “point-in-time count.” That was a 20% increase in the county’s total homeless population from 2019.

Santa Clara County, meanwhile, counted more than 10,000 homeless residents last year, a 3% increase from 2019. Alameda County counted about 9,700 people, up 22%. Contra Costa County saw the biggest jump in the Bay Area, up 35% to nearly 3,100. All three counties also have a shortage of shelter beds.

With the navigation center now finished after months of construction delays, San Mateo County officials and shelter providers said they’re confident they can make significant progress toward moving everyone off the street.

“We’re opening doors to realizing that where there is a will, and believe me, it takes a lot of will, there is a way to achieve functional zero homelessness,” said Aubrey Merriman, chief executive of Menlo Park-based LifeMoves, which developed and will operate the shelter.

Still, officials and experts have acknowledged ending street homelessness within the next few years is an “aspirational” goal, conceding that more affordable housing, shelter beds and other resources are necessary. But several factors are working in San Mateo County’s favor. It has a smaller homeless population than other Bay Area counties, and it’s won outsized state homeless housing grants.

While experts agree that such interim housing sites are needed to alleviate homelessness, the shelters can only be so effective when there’s a severe shortage of affordable housing in the Bay Area. Residents are often allowed to stay just three to six months, and less than half typically find permanent homes, according to regional data.

Also this week, U.S. Representatives Zoe Lofgren, Anna Eshoo, Ro Khanna, and Jimmy Panetta — Democrats who represent Silicon Valley —  announced Santa Clara County had won more than $11 million in federal housing grants to support various homelessness efforts. The money will go toward street outreach, rental assistance, housing placements and a working farm and affordable housing project in Santa Clara.

“Homelessness in Santa Clara County is a serious problem, caused and/or exacerbated by the astronomical home prices in the area and the COVID-19 pandemic,” the representatives said in a statement. “Addressing homelessness requires action from all levels of government.”

The tents, tarps and associated debris — clothing, a discarded crib, boxes of rotting food — are blocking the sidewalk in violation of a new city ordinance. Located on a major thoroughfare and across the street from a neighborhood of houses, the camp is one of the most complained about in the city, said Hezekiah Allen with Sacramento’s Department of Community Response.

But on a recent Tuesday morning, his team wasn’t out there threatening to arrest people, or even telling them to move. Instead, city outreach worker Jawid Sharifi was greeting encampment residents, whom he knew by name, with fist bumps. Gently, he inquired whether they’d given any more thought to moving into a city-run trailer park for unhoused residents.

“Whenever you’re ready,” Sharifi told a man in a black hoodie who emerged from a tent. “We’ll come back here in the afternoon also to talk to you guys.”

As in many California cities, Sacramento’s shortage of affordable housing and shelter options makes it difficult to enforce anti-camping laws. But despite obvious challenges, local ordinances designed to crack down on encampments are becoming increasingly common.

Liberal leaders in cities and counties throughout California, pushed to their wits’ end by massive encampments and irate voters, are taking steps to ban camps. Cities including Los Angeles, Sacramento, Elk Grove, Oakland, Santa Cruz and Milpitas — all run by Democrats — passed ordinances in the past three years to target behavior such as setting up tents near schools and other buildings, blocking sidewalks or even camping at all when shelter is available. Officials in San Jose and San Diego are considering similar measures.

“It’s a reflection of where we’ve gotten to as a society on this issue,” said Democratic political strategist Daniel Conway, who led support for a 2022 Sacramento ballot measure that will make large encampments illegal if shelter is available. “Because I think there’s a recognition that the kind of status quo of having over 100,000 people in California living and dying on the streets, it’s terrible for those people…And at the same time there’s this increased sense that people don’t feel safe in their own neighborhoods and their own communities anymore.”

So far, state lawmakers have been reluctant to follow with new anti-camping laws. Two bills backed by Republican legislators would take the unprecedented step of making it illegal for unhoused people to camp in certain areas — including near schools — throughout the entire state. To date, the state’s involvement in encampment management mostly has been restricted to agencies such as Caltrans and the California Highway Patrol clearing camps from state land.

Broader anti-camping measures can be politically and morally fraught, as well as logistically complicated. Activists argue displacing unhoused people from their camps is traumatizing and dangerous to their health.

And such laws run the risk, particularly for liberal lawmakers, of appearing to criminalize homelessness — so far, Democratic legislators by and large have been unwilling to sign on in support.

The new local ordinances, which come with penalties that can include fines or even arrest, have become a flashpoint in a heated debate. Advocates for the rights of unhoused people argue they’re cruel and unconstitutional, while some housed neighbors – sick of seeing human waste, trash and discarded needles in the street – say they don’t go far enough. Enforcement of the new ordinances, which largely is driven by complaints, has been uneven, and most cities don’t have the resources to respond to every encampment.

And then there’s the state’s legendary affordable housing shortage. Sky-high rental prices have forced multitudes of Californians onto the street, where they’re confronted with a dearth of shelter beds, addiction treatment and mental health help. Though anti-camping laws may score political points for officials under immense pressure to clean up their city’s streets, without places for unhoused people to go, they continue to move block by block around our cities.

For example, Sacramento County, which counted more than 9,000 unhoused residents in its 2022 homeless census, has about 2,400 shelter beds.

“The overarching issue is if you don’t have actually acceptable places for people to go, then people can be forced to leave but then they’ll just go somewhere else,” said Jennifer Wolch, a professor emerita at UC Berkeley who specializes in issues surrounding homelessness. “And it will become a problem for another neighborhood.”

Should the state decide where encampments can be?

Despite what’s going on at the local level — and Gov. Gavin Newsom’s repeated insistence that clearing California homeless camps is a top priority — Democrats in the Legislature have been reluctant to jump on board.

Senate Bill 31, which would make it illegal to sit, lie or sleep within 1,000 feet of a school, daycare, park or library, failed to make it out of the Senate Public Safety Committee and is awaiting reconsideration. The bill, introduced by Senate GOP leader Brian Jones of San Diego County and backed by seven other Republicans, has just one Democratic co-author – Sen. Bill Dodd of Napa. Representatives from 15 different organizations across the state spoke out against the bill during its committee hearing last month, calling it “misguided” and accusing supporters of prioritizing criminalization instead of health and safety.

Assembly Bill 257, another GOP bill that would make it illegal to camp within 500 feet of a school or daycare center, also was voted down in committee. Author Josh Hoover, a Folsom Republican, tried to assuage critics by narrowing its focus — it no longer applies to parks or libraries and now prohibits “camping” instead of “sitting” or “lying” — but to no avail. Even so, it’s not dead yet. The bill was granted reconsideration and Hoover remains hopeful.

“I personally have found needles in the park where my kids play, and I think this is something that most of the public finds unacceptable,” he said in an interview. “It needs to be addressed immediately statewide.”

At least two newly elected Democratic lawmakers voted for local anti-camping ordinances while serving on city councils last year, Sen. Angelique Ashby of Sacramento and Assemblymember Stephanie Nguyen of Elk Grove. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re sold on a statewide ban.

“I believe that addressing these concerns at a local level rather than a statewide level is the best approach,” Nguyen said in an emailed statement.

Ashby refused an interview request and her office wouldn’t say whether the senator supported the statewide efforts.

City leaders also don’t necessarily want the state to step in.

“When it comes to where do you enforce a no-encampment zone, I feel like that should be a city decision,” said San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan.

San Jose City Council voted in 2021 to target homeless encampments near schools for removal, and since then has cleared 42 school-zone camps. Mahan said the experiment has been successful, as people have agreed to move from the school zones without creating “a huge tax on city resources or a big controversy.”

But Shaunn Cartwright, a local advocate for the rights of unhoused people, said many of those displaced from school zones just move their camps to other locations in the city.

“All it does is stigmatize unhoused people as these are people we can’t trust around children,” she said of the city’s policy. “And it’s ridiculous because many unhoused people obviously are parents.”

Mahan is considering eventually implementing broader no-camping zones in places like key business districts, but only after his city increases its temporary housing capacity.

Brigitte Nicoletti with the East Bay Community Law Center said in addition to being a “really cruel and shortsighted way of addressing homelessness,” ordinances that ban camping when there’s not enough shelter may violate unhoused people’s constitutional rights. Another problem: When clearing encampments, many cities will offer shelter not everyone can accept – whether it’s because of mental or physical health conditions, or because it would force them to leave behind beloved pets or important possessions.

“It’s really just pandering to people who are freaked out by health and public safety issues,” she said of the uptick in no-camping ordinances, “but it does nothing to address people’s actual needs.”

Democratic leaders want more California homeless shelters

Several factors led to the growth of massive homeless encampments throughout the state and prompted the recent spate of anti-camping ordinances. In addition to an overall increase in the state’s homeless population – it’s estimated more than 170,000 unhoused people lived in the state last year, compared to just over 150,000 in 2019 – many cities stopped clearing homeless camps during the COVID-19 pandemic, allowing them to grow and become more entrenched.

A 2018 ruling from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals also changed the game. In Martin vs. Boise, the court ruled cities cannot penalize someone for sleeping on public property if no other options exist – which many cities have interpreted to mean they can’t clear an encampment unless they have enough shelter beds for the displaced residents.

Cities’ new anti-camping ordinances take advantage of a loophole in that ruling – even if they have no space in their shelters, they still can make it illegal to sleep outside in certain places or at certain times.

But no liberal California leader wants to be accused of “criminalizing” homelessness. So most are pairing anti-camping ordinances with a push for resources. Mahan of San Jose wants to build 1,000 new temporary housing units this year before he expands no-camping zones. Santa Cruz’s no camping ordinance has yet to take effect, and won’t do so until the city can create 150 new shelter beds and establish a place for unhoused people to store their belongings.

Sacramento’s Measure O, passed by voters in November, includes a requirement to set up more shelter beds before cracking down further on camps – something city leaders plan to achieve via a new partnership with the county.

“It’s first up to the society through its government to provide safe dignified alternatives to people,” said Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg, who has become one of the state’s most high-profile examples of a progressive politician caught between the pressures to clear camps and to respond to homelessness with compassion. “And if that test is met…to say people cannot choose to live out on the streets.”

Uneven enforcement

Enforcement of these ordinances presents a tricky question: How do cities get unhoused people to comply without punishing them for having no home? Approaches vary widely throughout the state – and even within cities.

• In Elk Grove, the city can confiscate homeless people’s belongings if they violate the city’s new anti-camping ordinance, but can’t fine or arrest them. The Sacramento suburb has not yet seized anyone’s belongings.
• San Diego, on the other hand, after issuing warnings and offering people shelter and other help, wrote 925 citations and made 513 arrests last year for violations of laws aimed at homeless camps, according to Voice of San Diego.

San Diego is trying to do even more. Last year, Mayor Todd Gloria directed police to target anyone who had a tent up during daytime hours. But follow-through was “somewhat uneven,” Gloria admitted in an interview, due to police understaffing and COVID-related issues. Now he’s backing a proposal that would prohibit all encampments on public property when shelter is available, and bar camps near schools and shelters even when it’s not.

“The city is providing more solutions than it ever has,” Gloria said. “And I think as a result the taxpayers helping to fund this should have a right to expect safe and hygienic public spaces.”

• Oakland passed a controversial encampment management policy in 2020 that prioritizes clearing camps near schools, homes and businesses, but doesn’t give authorities the ability to cite or arrest people for camping. The city cleared encampments in 226 locations over the past year.

• Sacramento in 2020 passed an ordinance making it illegal to camp within 25 feet of “critical infrastructure” such as government buildings, bridges and electrical wires. In August, the City Council passed a measure banning homeless encampments that block sidewalks, and in October they expanded the critical infrastructure ordinance to ban camping within 500 feet of schools.

The Sacramento ordinances are enforced selectively, generally based on complaints made by residents calling 311. The city has about 20 outreach workers, like Sharifi, who try to connect people to shelters and warn occupants of problem camps that they need to move. If they refuse, police or code enforcement may take over.

The intention isn’t to be punitive, said Assistant City Manager Mario Lara.

“We’ve responded to thousands of calls,” he said. “We’ve not issued any citations or any arrests.”

Camps on route to Sacramento school

Though encampments still dot the city, some Sacramento residents say they’ve seen a little improvement. Last year, the route Amy Gardner’s 8th-grade daughter walked to Sutter Middle School got so bad that she and other parent and community volunteers formed a group to escort kids past an environment she characterized as rife with snarling dogs, human waste, broken glass, needles and people in the throes of mental health crises.

It took months, but the city finally cleared the main camp on the route, under an Interstate 80 overpass, Gardner said. The kids now feel safe walking to school.

But the problem didn’t go away.

“The camps have shifted and moved,” she said. “It’s not that everyone got shelter.”

Some people from under the overpass relocated about eight blocks over, where more than a dozen tents recently lined 29th Street. Damian Newton, who has been homeless for a dozen years, was one of them. The city told him and his neighbors the bridge they slept under is off-limits because it’s “critical infrastructure,” Newton said.

“They just didn’t want us in sight,” 38-year-old Newton said. “What damage have we really done to schools? What damage have we really done to bridges?”

Soon, he’ll have to move again. As he talked to a reporter on a recent Thursday, while sitting on a bare mattress in the doorway of his tent, Newton said the California Highway Patrol had been by that morning to tell him and other camp residents they had to leave their new home within four days.

Newton said he’s been offered a shelter bed before, but after seeing friends accept and then end up back on the street, he doesn’t see the point. Activists and those who have lived in shelters throughout California say residents sometimes chafe under a shelter’s strict rules, feel uncomfortable or unsafe there or get frustrated by the lack of options to transition from there into permanent housing.

So where will Newton go next? He’s not sure. Maybe across the street, until someone complains and he has to pack up again.

“Not many places that’s left to go, really,” he said.