Sonoma County housing program helps disabled homeless people get off the streets

Little Fawn Covey on Wednesday spent the first day living in her two-bedroom apartment south of Cloverdale, unpacking boxes and bags of donated dishes and furniture, after months of sleeping in tents, homeless shelters and RV campgrounds.

Covey, 34, who for three years has endured debilitating osteoarthritis, lupus and fibromyalgia, said she found the apartment on her own but without help from a new state-funded county housing program she’d most likely still be living on the streets.

“I don’t want to be living on the street,” said Covey, sitting on a large black couch in her living room. “I have to look out for myself and my health.”

Covey, a former foster care youth who grew up in Cloverdale, is one of the first local residents to benefit from the county’s Housing and Disability Advocacy Program. County welfare officials said the program fills a critical gap for an extremely vulnerable population - those who are homeless and disabled but not receiving federal disability assistance.

“This is trying to catch people that fall through the cracks,” said Paul Dunaway, director of Adult and Aging Services, an agency of the county social services department.

The new county program was established by state legislation passed in 2016 aimed at helping disabled, homeless people apply for U.S. disability benefit programs while also providing housing assistance. The Legislature directed $43.4 million from the 2017-18 state budget to fund the program through June 30, 2020.

Sonoma County’s share of the money is $742,000, Dunaway said. That’s expected to help as many as 83 homeless disabled people in need of permanent housing, he said.

That funding pales in comparison to the cost of providing emergency services, including medical and or psychiatric services, to homeless people whose conditions are exacerbated by living in the streets, he said.

For example, the cost is “astronomical” whenever homeless people wind up in a hospital, Dunaway said. Poor health care and extreme poverty are “inextricably linked,” he said.

The criteria for the county’s new housing program are intentionally specific, said Kelly Sydow, a social worker for the initiative. Candidates, she said, either have to be low income or veterans, homeless or on the verge of homelessness and in the process of enrolling in disability assistance or a veterans benefits.

Dunaway said a range of services are available to homeless people, or those in danger of becoming homeless, if they have Social Security disability insurance or Supplemental Security Income. But those without federal disability assistance often lack the resources to deal withtheir housing and health care issues, he said.

Officials said many of the county’s homeless experience a health-related condition. Of the estimated 3,000 homeless people in the county, about 27 percent suffer some form of disability or chronic health problems, according to the 2018 census and supplemental survey. And roughly a third of the homeless population here have psychiatric or emotional conditions or have a drug or alcohol problem.

The county’s homeless population spiked last year and is among the largest in the nation among suburban communities.

Meanwhile, Sydow said the state money for the county’s housing program for disabled homeless allows her to devote a significant amount of time to helping Covey, who was referred to the program last summer when she was living in a trailer at a local RV homeless camp.

Before that, Covey had been living in a tent on a property in Willits, even as she dealt with her worsening medical conditions. She said she left the Mendocino County property because she no longer felt safe there.

The county program pays for Covey’s $2,000 apartment rental deposit, transportation, among other things.

In addition, the program helped stabilize Covey’s life by enrolling her in federal disability insurance and putting her on a fast track for a federal Mainstream Voucher, newly allocated housing assistance from the ?U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for adults with disabilities.

The HUD voucher will pay her $1,400 monthly rent until Covey starts receiving disability income. Thereafter, she’ll start paying a small portion of her rent.

For now, she’s grateful to finally have an apartment of her own.

“It’s really cute,” she said, of the apartment, which has a concrete backyard she hopes to fill with potted plants and a box garden.

She said the help she’s gotten from Sydow through the county’s disabled homeless housing program has been a blessing.

“She’s a godsend,” Covey said of Sydow.