CHICO — The landscape of homelessness in Butte County is changing quickly; quite literally for Chico as it has evicted most major encampments in the city over the course of a year with a goal of achieving maintained public spaces.
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.”
