FREMONT — In its first year, Fremont’s navigation center has had a 66% success rate at taking in people who are homeless and placing them into permanent housing, according to a new report issued by the city this month.
The navigation center, which brought on a massive wave of controversy when city officials were deciding where to place it in 2019, opened in fall 2020 in central Fremont, just behind City Hall in the middle of the city’s budding downtown area.
It serves as a temporary shelter where homeless people can live while having a case manager help them find stable permanent housing, as well as connect them to other services as needed, such as employment assistance, medical treatment and counseling.
The center — a series of portable buildings surrounded by wooden fencing with colorful artwork — took in 66 people who were homeless in total from October 2020 through October 2021, all of whom were living in Fremont, Newark or Union City before moving into the center.
According to the city’s one-year progress report, 47 of the center’s first 66 residents transitioned out of the program, with 31 of them being placed into stable housing situations, while four were transferred to other programs such as a medical or treatment facility with higher levels of care for their needs, and one person was reported to have been taken to a jail or detention center.
Of the 47 people who transitioned out of the program, 11 either returned to homelessness, left the program without providing a specific destination or moved to a temporary living situation, such as an emergency shelter, hotel or motel, or host home, the report said.
At the end of October 2021, 19 residents were still living at the center, the report and an official said. Residents stayed an average of six months at the center.
“It’s a voluntary program, so folks have their own decision-making as to whether they want to receive the services,” said Jonathan Russell, the head strategy officer for Bay Area Community Services, the nonprofit that runs the center.
“Our goal is to do everything we can to actively outreach to people, but also to respect their autonomy,” Russell said.
For the 31 people who were placed into stable housing, the city report says 12 of them reconnected with family or friends, while the other 19 “entered permanent housing in shared housing arrangements or, for those that qualified, affordable housing opportunities.”
For many of those placed into housing, the nonprofit gives them a short-term rental subsidy to help support them during the transition. They also are provided another six months of services based on their needs, aimed at preventing them from returning to homelessness after being housed.
“We had committed to letting people see the transparency of the service, which I think is important,” Mayor Lily Mei said in an interview Friday about the annual report.
Mei said though the pandemic may have added unexpected challenges to the center and its staff, she was pleased with the first year’s results.
“Any person that we are able to rehouse is critical for us,” Mei said.
The center was first estimated to cost $2.31 million to operate in its first year, and serve about 90 people annually. But because of pandemic health orders, the center was required to reduce the number of people allowed to stay at the center at a time. As a result, the cost of the first year of operation dropped to $1.12 million, the report said.
Bay Area Community Services, an Oakland nonprofit that focuses on ending homelessness, also runs navigation centers in Hayward and Berkeley.
When the Fremont City Council was deciding in 2019 whether to have a navigation center and where to place it, the nonprofit said it had an 82% success rate at getting people housed from their Berkeley center, after which Fremont’s would be modeled.
Russell said despite the Fremont center’s 66% success rate being lower than hoped, he views the first year in operation as a success, because of the “monumental challenges” the program and organization faced.
“We started the program in the midst of a pandemic, and the ability to do rehousing was that much more difficult,” he said.
“There was a good part of the year plus where a lot of the ability to move in and do viewings, and for folks to get the necessary employment to make those transitions, was a lot harder. So it has not been a normal year,” he said.
He also said that each year since the center was proposed, housing has become more expensive in the region, and that it is harder to find “deeply affordable” housing placements in the Fremont area or southern Alameda County, as opposed to north county areas such as Berkeley and Oakland.
The program almost didn’t get off the ground. Hundreds of residents from different parts of Fremont showed up to contentious council meetings in 2019 to oppose having the center near their neighborhoods. Some residents protested on the streets, threatening Mayor Mei with a recall.
Many said they believed the center would decrease home values, make residents unsafe, and attract more homeless encampments.
“We’ve seen very clearly in this year that has not been the case. People that might otherwise would have been hanging out without any resources, or unintentionally causing difficulties for some businesses, they’re now connected to support and resources and funding and food and care,” Russell said.
“It’s actually pretty commonsensical. If you provide resources, there’s less negative impacts on the community,” he said.
Mei said despite the opposition it faced, the navigation center was a “critically needed” resource in the city to address homelessness.
“Not doing anything, sticking our head in the sand, wouldn’t have been the right answer,” she said.
“I still strongly feel that it’s the right thing to do.”
Source: www.mercurynews.com