Petaluma homeless services at risk

Petaluma’s Committee on the Shelterless is considering the possibility of future service cuts or even the chance of closure for its celebrated homeless shelter program after losing hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal funding.|

Petaluma’s Committee on the Shelterless is considering the possibility of future service cuts or even the chance of closure for its celebrated homeless shelter program after losing hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal funding.

A change to the way that money is distributed across California has amounted to a $260,672 reduction in annual funding for the nonprofit’s Mary Isaak Center. The federal funds, which are declining by 72 percent year-over-year for a disbursement that occurs each October, typically make up around half of the budget for the emergency shelter program, said CEO Mike Johnson.

While a significant one-time contribution from the county will bridge the gap in the fiscal year that starts on July 1, Johnson said his organization, commonly known by the acronym COTS, could still face a major ongoing challenge to maintain services in the long term.

“What it did was basically force us to beg our Board of Supervisors to make the difference up. It looks like they will do that for at least one year, but after that, we don’t have a solution, unless we can find a different strategy at the state level,” he said.

The loss of funding comes as California shifts away from a purely competitive model for distributing a special pot of federal money to emergency shelters and toward an approach that spreads that support more evenly across the state. High-performing homeless service organizations in Sonoma County have traditionally drawn an outsize per-capita share of those funds, amounting to $1.2 million last year for COTS, Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Santa Rosa and Interfaith Shelter Network, Johnson said.

Dwindling funds

Sonoma County-based organizations drew around 10 percent of the statewide program’s funds available for emergency shelters as a whole last year, he said. Yet the area will now be the biggest loser in California on a percentage basis, with the state allocation to Sonoma County from the federal Emergency Solutions Grant program plunging by 80 percent, to $239,000, Johnson said.

COTS alone received close to that entire amount from the program – $200,000 – last year, along with $119,392 from a county-based program that receives and distributes a share of the federal funds. Both are on the decline, he said, the latest blow in a recession-induced downswing that has prompted the organization to shrink its staff and operating costs in recent years.

Around 55 percent of the funding for COTS as a whole is from private contributions, with the remaining from government sources, Johnson said.

The Sonoma County Board of Supervisors proposed earlier this month to budget $800,000 in one-time general fund dollars to help COTS and other organizations to bridge the gap, while the Petaluma City Council took a first vote on a budget that increases the city’s annual funding for COTS by 50 percent, to $150,000.

Supervisor David Rabbitt, whose district encompasses Petaluma, said he pitched the county contribution along with Supervisor Shirlee Zane in recognition of the role those organizations have played in addressing homelessness in the region. The homeless population across the county decreased by 27.4 percent between 2013 and 2015, and by 60 percent in Petaluma, according to the most recent Sonoma County Homeless Census.

Still, he acknowledged that the future of funding at that level was uncertain.

“We can get them another year, but in the year thereafter, there’s no money, unless we can look at another pot, or under another rock,” he said. “COTS is a beloved institution, but I also think it provides a very important role. If we didn’t have it, we’d have a lot more people on the street.”

While organizations like COTS have obtained more money under the old formula, many other shelter programs have been less successful in obtaining those federal funds over the years. That’s despite the fact that homelessness in California remains an issue across county lines, said State Senator Mike McGuire, a former Sonoma County supervisor whose North Coast district includes parts of the Petaluma area.

“Sonoma County and Marin County have always done an amazing job in that competitive process,” McGuire said. “The problem with the ESG grant is, not one dime was ever invested north of Sonoma County.”

Push for state funding

McGuire said that he was pushing for a hybrid approach that would allocate state money toward restoring or even growing the amount of funding available on a competitive basis, which would still maintain the across-the-board distribution that goes into effect this year. He is also advocating for a $2 billion bond to fund the “No Place Like Home” program, which he described as a bipartisan proposal that would be used to build 14,000 units of permanent supportive housing for the chronically homeless.

The fate of both proposals should be known as part of the state’s budget process, which will wrap up before the end of June, he said.

“What we want to do, at a minimum, is add back $10 million to the competitive grant fund, so counties like Sonoma and organizations like COTS continue to see those dollars flow because their programs are so successful,” McGuire said, noting that he is pushing for as much as $40 million to be made available through the competitive grant.

Without that money, Johnson said COTS may need to scale back to a more bare-bones model for its emergency shelter, eschewing case managers in favor of basic supervisors in an approach anticipated to move fewer people into permanent housing. In the extreme, the 104-bed shelter may be forced to cut its hours or even completely shut the doors.

“We would have supported a formula modification if it took place over several years, but to cut 80 percent of the money in a single fiscal year was ill advised at best,” Johnson said. “If the county didn’t have the money to do this, the homeless situation would get much worse. We would have to close our doors.”

High success rate

Reform of the state’s approach to distributing funding for shelters fundamentally stems from a sweeping change to federal policy around funding homeless housing and support programs. Known as the Homeless Emergency Assistance and Rapid Transition to Housing or “HEARTH” Act, the 2009 measure included a requirement that a greater share of federal dollars go toward programs that rapidly move individuals to permanent housing.

The changes have actually added $460,000 in new annual revenue for COTS, which has allowed the organization to launch multiple “rapid rehousing” programs for veterans, families and single adults, Johnson said. But the money is explicitly barred from use toward the emergency shelter program, a policy the CEO questioned due to the limited reach of rapid rehousing in a region with a severe shortage of housing stock.

The shelter in Petaluma roughly doubles the state average for moving new participants into permanent housing, at a success rate of 43 percent, he said. It serves as a launching point for several programs under the COTS umbrella, including health care, mental health, substance abuse counseling and food assistance.

“That’s the first point of contact for these folks – they come into the shelter, and we sort them out,” Johnson said. “If you close the front door of the program, it’s not just the shelter itself that’s going to be affected. It would upset the entire service model that we have.”

Vital to Petaluma

Petaluma Police Department Chief Patrick Williams described COTS as an integral component to efforts around the city’s homeless population. The department received a $500,000 state grant last year to support a two-person team focusing on that population, an approach that balances empathy with enforcement.

“COTS, their employees and their programs, beyond simply the emergency housing, provides a pathway for long-term sustainability of getting people back to a normal life and off the street, and clearly that ability, and the significant impact of those programs, improves the public safety and quality of life and livability of Petaluma,” he said. “I hope that in the future their programs continue to grow, and that they do not contract.”

Petaluma City Councilman Mike Healy said he felt the city might be able to boost its funding for COTS using money that builders pay in lieu of including affordable housing as part of their projects and also as a condition of large commercial development. In voting against the related component of the city’s upcoming budget, he argued that the allocation to support the Boys & Girls Club in Petaluma would be more appropriate for a housing-related use.

“I think those are very worthy programs, but I don’t think this is an appropriate funding source for that,” he said. “With both of these funds, we should be focused on putting roofs over people’s heads, which COTS does.”

Johnson, the COTS CEO, said his organization will be looking closely at the issue in the year to come.

“One of the big problems in this redesign is that there are a lot more winners than losers,” he said. “But the losers are losing really, really big.”

(Contact Eric Gneckow at eric.gneckow@arguscourier.com. On Twitter @Eric_Reports.)

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