Alameda County officials say it will take $2.5 billion over the next five years to help everyone living on the streets find stable housing — a tall order that underscores just how difficult it will be to end the region’s dire homelessness crisis.
The Alameda County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday approved the “Home Together 2026 Community Plan,” which lays out what it will take to solve what has become one of the region’s most challenging problems. If the county follows the plan, which calls for an additional 24,000 units of housing, by 2026 it will have the resources to house everyone who needs a home, according to the Home Together authors.
But the plan asks the county to more than double the amount of money it’s spending annually on the issue. The supervisors didn’t commit to any new funding Tuesday, and it remains to be seen whether the plan can be bankrolled.
“Approving the plan is easy,” Keith Carson, president of the Alameda County Board of Supervisors, said after a unanimous vote. “The implementation of the plan is the challenge.”
Alameda County, where an estimated 8,000 people are homeless on any given night, isn’t the first in the Bay Area to adopt ambitious goals to cut down on homelessness. San Mateo County has pledged to end homelessness by the end of this year, while Santa Clara County plans to house every homeless family with children by 2025. As part of a new effort to hold them accountable, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration requires counties seeking state funding to submit detailed plans showing how they will reduce homelessness.
The Alameda County plan was developed over two years by county staff with input from a long list of local organizations that work with unhoused people, including Abode Services and Bay Area Community Services.
As of last year, the county lacked the resources to house 64% of its homeless households, according to their findings. To fill that gap, the plan calls for $340 million to fund new shelter beds, $1.68 billion for affordable housing and permanent supportive housing, and $388 million to prevent homelessness by helping struggling households cover expenses. That money is just what it will take to operate those programs and fund participants’ rent — building the units will take even more funding.
If nothing is done to increase resources, county staff estimate the homeless population will more than double, reaching 18,000 people by 2026.
The plan also prioritizes reducing racial disparities in the county’s homeless population — people of color make up more than two out of every three people without homes in Alameda County. It calls for additional resources to prevent people leaving jail and prison from ending up on the street, as well as affordable housing dedicated to the region’s rapidly growing population of elderly unhoused people. And it calls for more funding for people who just need a little financial help to get out of homelessness, but don’t need a case manager, behavioral health care or other services.
Not counting one-time COVID funds, city, county, state and federal funding for homelessness in Alameda County totals about $183 million per year — less than half of what would be needed annually to meet the $2.5 billion Home Together goal.
That gap is big, admitted Vivian Wan, chief operating officer for Abode Services, who helped formulate the Home Together plan. And there’s no guarantee the extra funding will materialize.
“Sometimes I think we’re really scared to say big numbers because it’s an immediate turn-off,” she said in an interview. “(In) this plan, we’ve been really clear that the numbers are big and we need to say it because it’s true.”
The new plan builds off another plan to end homelessness the Board of Supervisors approved in 2020. That model called for a spending increase of $820 million over five years. Wan, who helped write the new plan, said the numbers are much higher now because the need increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, but also because the county has taken a much harder look at the problem this time around and produced more realistic numbers.
Wan acknowledged they might not get the money. But she said she’s optimistic. Basking in a budget surplus, Newsom has committed to a one-time investment in homelessness of more than $12 billion, plus another $10 billion for affordable housing.
“I think that we’ve never been so poised to get it, with where the state is and their investment into homelessness,” Wan said. “We have a moment in time at the federal level where maybe we can move things. My hope is that our local leaders will also support the plan holistically.”
Source: www.mercurynews.com