When I picture my ideal community, I envision that everyone has
his basic needs met, no matter how poor, how addicted, how
physically or mentally ill.
When I picture my ideal community, I envision that everyone has his basic needs met, no matter how poor, how addicted, how physically or mentally ill.
Shelter is one of those basic needs, but our human nature requires that it is more than a temporary roof over our heads; it needs to be something permanent. A sense of place, a sense of belonging to others is part of our healthy development as individuals, family members and community members.
Santa Clara County has recently established a plan to end chronic homelessness in 10 years.
While we may not be able to keep people from becoming homeless – inability to pay rent due to a job loss or catastrophic illness and evictions happen – the plan is to prevent them from staying homeless by re-housing them as soon as possible.
There are several groups of good people that are putting their best brains together to figure out the processes that would make instant “re-housing” or “Housing First” a reality. In the meantime, there is another group that has been working on ending the homelessness of the folks who have been homeless in our community for a very long time.
Yesterday, a subcommittee of the “ending chronic homelessness plan,” focused on outreach and engagement of those who remain on the streets and in shelters, went to the armory shelter in Gilroy and brought an abundance of services designed to help folks make some movement from homelessness.
Mental health care, substance abuse treatment, benefits enrollment, including the VA, benefits advocacy (for those denials that are so frequent among homeless applicants because of lack of paperwork), employment, primary health care, HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis C testing. And, (thank you Gavilan School of Cosmetology!) haircuts. All of these are available in our county, but not always locally, and even if they are local, street-based homeless people find it hard to get there without some guidance and reassurance through the often confusing processes.
The one thing missing? We need housing. Unfortunately, we do not have any housing vouchers available for permanent housing.
We are looking forward to the implementation of a few grants that yielded housing vouchers, but they won’t be available for a few months. That has not stopped City of Gilroy Housing and Community Development Coordinator Marilyn Roaf from looking high and low, turning over every rock for whatever resource she can find. Her tenacity in such a daunting task has been amazing!
There are many process barriers surrounding these services and especially between these services. (Obtaining subsidized housing units is an example of a barrier-filled process). One of the goals in trying this now with the resources we have is for us to find out where the specific barriers and gaps are, so when we plan on making our ideal community, we will abolish those barriers and fill those gaps.
There are many who are putting in a lot of unheralded (and unfunded) time and effort. Jeff Fishback and St. Joseph Family Center are providing backpacks and sleeping bags. What’s been great about this, too, is that we’re being assisted in Gilroy by many from San Jose. Bill Wilson Center’s Steve Nordseth, who conducts outreach to runaway and homeless youth in San Jose, has come down here and joined EDD’s Jess Murguia and the Navigator Project’s Jimmy Prado, conducting outreach and getting the word out on the street.
The City of San Jose’s Homeless Coordinator has been sharing resources, as has InnVision. EHC’s armory staff, Julie Roybal and David Alvarez have been instrumental in our planning as well.
In addition to our fabulous Gilroy Homeless Task Force folks who have volunteered at the armory for years, we had planned for folks to come from as far as Mountain View to help with this very first attempt at this new approach, making this a truly countywide project.
This was not a one-time thing. Our first attempt was at the armory, but after the armory closes, we will be taking these services to the streets regularly. The goal of this committee is to work on taking the kinks out of the systems while we work intensely with an initial five homeless people, adding five more per month until we have moved 60 chronically homeless from the streets and into their own housing.
In my ideal community, no one is without support or a home. If you’re interested in helping in the future, please contact me.
Columnist Dina Campeau is a wife, mother of two teens and a resident of Morgan Hill. Her work for the last seven years has focused on affordable housing and homeless issues in Santa Clara County. Her column will be published each Friday. Reach her at dc******@*****er.net.
