Homeless get Sonoma County lift from Catholic Charities

For more than a year, Blanca Zapata and Amber Hernandez, a pair of Sonoma County sisters, have tried to find permanent housing after struggling with work cuts for Zapata and, for Hernandez, an accident that left her partially paralyzed.|

For more than a year, Blanca Zapata and Amber Hernandez, a pair of Sonoma County sisters, have tried to find permanent housing after struggling with work cuts for Zapata and, for Hernandez, an accident that left her partially paralyzed.

On Tuesday, the sisters were among hundreds of homeless families to be interviewed under a new initiative that seeks to transform the way Sonoma County’s network of nonprofit service providers places homeless people into housing, shifting priority access to the sickest, most needy homeless people. The overhaul is a break from the longstanding approach that placed people based on a first-come, first-served basis.

Tuesday marked day one of the countywide effort, and for Zapata, her 5-year-old daughter and Hernandez, it offered hope they could get back into stable housing. Until now, the trio has stayed off the streets by taking refuge at homeless shelters and other temporary quarters.

“We really need this assistance for permanent housing right now,” said Hernandez, 34, who is also blind.

Homeless advocates and county health care providers say the new approach to housing people could save taxpayers millions of dollars a year in emergency room visits and jail costs by getting them help before problems grow dire. The most current homeless census data, from 2013, showed 4,280 homeless people on the streets, with 45 percent estimated to have at least three disabling health conditions.

Under the shift, temporary shelter and permanent supportive housing slots will be made available for homeless families and the chronically homeless first, placing people based on the severity of their conditions - from physical disabilities, to mental illnesses and substance abuse problems.

Zapata and Hernandez were homeless for more than a year before securing a slot in Sonoma County’s only shelter that caters specifically to homeless families. Now, the sisters could qualify for expanded homeless services and, perhaps, more permanent housing, homeless service providers said.

“We got lucky because we found places to sleep temporarily, but we’re hoping we can get back into permanent housing,” Zapata said.

The federally mandated initiative alters the county’s previous approach that required people to call in or show up at shelters in person to reserve a space.

“Our first-come, first-served approach was skewed in favor of people who were more able to navigate the system, who were able to call in on a daily basis and let us know they were still looking for a spot,” said Jenny Helbraun-Abramson, the county’s homeless coordinator. “But there are people in worse shape, who are at risk of dying on the streets.”

The overhaul, spearheaded by the nonprofit Catholic Charities, will rank homeless people with disabling and chronic health conditions as the most needy, and place them at the top of a new countywide, centralized waiting list.

Catholic Charities is carrying out the work under a $311,000 county contract, largely tied to funding from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development. The goal is to identify the housing, social welfare and health care needs of the county’s homeless population and streamline access to all shelters, housing and other assistance in one place. Santa Rosa’s Homeless Resource Center, at 600 Morgan Street, will serve as the county’s intake hub.

The effort faces a number of looming challenges, among them a shortage of permanent sites to house the formerly homeless.

“We have funding for other sites. We just need landlords to partner with us,” said Jennielynn Holmes, director of shelter and housing for Catholic Charities.

Another key concern is what happens to those who previously would have been first in line for shelter placement but now may be relegated to the bottom of the waiting list. Generally those people include adults without children and the newly homeless with less serious health or substance abuse problems.

Homeless service providers and county officials said they hope the new model limits any backlog by placing the neediest in permanent care, freeing up shelter space and other temporary housing.

“Now we need to test these tools to find out what kind of housing is appropriate for each person and household,” Abramson said.

Holmes, the Catholic Charities homeless director, said Hernandez’s disabilities likely would help her qualify her for housing and other public assistance.

On Tuesday, Catholic Charities case managers interviewed Hernandez and Zapata to determine what the family qualifies for. The survey takes into account length of homelessness, severity of health conditions, risk factors for becoming homeless and mental health complications, then ranks them on a vulnerability scale between 1 and 10.

Zapata said her family became homeless in December 2013, after state-mandated reductions cut the in-home caregiver’s work hours, reducing her monthly income from $3,000 to $2,000. The reduction meant she no longer earned enough to afford her two-bedroom apartment in Petaluma, where she paid $1,650 per month in rent.

“We weren’t able to make it,” said Zapata, 25. “We ran out of money, and we became homeless.”

The service model launched Tuesday is being touted nationally a way to end chronic homelessness. The shift has been accompanied by other county measures to combat homelessness, including $1 million effort to connect the most chronically homeless people with services.

“This is one, single point of entry into our entire system of care,” Holmes said. “It’s a huge shift, and it’s going to change the way our whole system operates and, we think, prevent the most at-risk people from dying on the streets because of homelessness.”

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