The San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors earmarked more than $3 million in state funding to alleviate homelessness and make a plan to plug existing funding gaps in the future.
The money comes from Round 5 of the Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention (HHAP) program administered by the California Department of Housing and Community Development.
At their Aug. 4 meeting, while supervisors agreed on allocating that money, they noted that the Homeless Services Oversight Council (HSOC) didn’t recommend funding for one set of services.
“I was advised that the prevention part of homelessness, the distribution of HHAP funds for prevention [and shelter diversion], was pulled because of questions about how it was being distributed geographically to address the need,” 2nd District Supervisor Bruce Gibson said.
The board’s deliberation was based on HSOC’s approval of how the Round 5 funding should be distributed among service providers across the county.
Ten percent of the total was for prevention and shelter diversion.
According to the county staff report, HSOC didn’t approve funding those services because council members were concerned that the allocations didn’t “sufficiently reflect the needs” of SLO County’s central region, meaning the city of SLO and its surroundings.
HSOC set funding recommendations using a scoring model based on criteria like the number of clients served, percentage of people exiting to positive housing destinations, and housing retention rate. Service providers in SLO and central SLO County underperformed by those standards.
“Some applications scored lower than others based on criteria that were established at the direction of the board and developed by HSOC and its committees,” 4th District Supervisor Jimmy Paulding told New Times. “I think it is appropriate to step back and evaluate any new criteria to make sure they are actually advancing the goals we established. That is not a failure of the process; it is part of the process of implementing, evaluating, and strengthening our approach.”
‘I think it is appropriate to step back and evaluate any new criteria to make sure they are actually advancing the goals we established. That is not a failure of the process; it is part of the process of implementing, evaluating, and strengthening our approach.’
—Jimmy Paulding, SLO County 4th District supervisor
Paulding, who serves on HSOC, said that going forward, an HSOC ad hoc committee will discuss whether individual nonprofits should provide prevention and rapid rehousing services in their respective areas, or if there’s value in a countywide model where one provider coordinates services through referrals.
The ad hoc committee also plans to discuss the possibility of equally distributing funding among service providers, which was brought up by SLO Housing Coordinator David Amini with the city’s Housing and Homelessness Team.
During public comment, Amini told supervisors that the Community Action Partnership of SLO County (CAPSLO) is set to receive the lowest amount of funding for rapid rehousing, compared to others.
The staff report showed that Transitions-Mental Health Association also requested $75,000 for rapid rehousing, but HSOC didn’t recommend the award because performance data on that service wasn’t available.
“Despite serving the highest number of clients in the mid-county region, which is the most populous, CAPSLO is being recommended for the lowest HHAP [rounds] 5 and 6 award for rapid rehousing with an award of $73,166 compared to $162,000 for 5Cities [Homeless Coalition] and $87,000 for ECHO [El Camino Homeless Organization],” Amini said.
He added that the city advocated for balancing the recommendations by shifting at least around $14,000 from 5Cities to CAPSLO, leaving ECHO’s amount the same and 5Cities continuing to have the highest funding.
County Deputy Director of Homeless Services Division Linda Belch told supervisors that service providers had also expressed concern about funding not being equally distributed during Rounds 3 and 4 of HHAP funding. Despite less funding, she clarified, those groups reported they could continue providing services.
“We regularly and routinely asked, ‘Are you having a difficulty accessing services? Any difficulty in sharing those resources?” Belch said. “We were consistently told there were no barriers to that,” she said.
HSOC will deliberate how to award the prevention funding at its Aug. 19 meeting.
The county received more than $7 million in HHAP funding across the fifth and sixth rounds. Supervisors were scheduled to decide how to distribute Round 6 HHAP money, too, but paused. HSOC now has around 90 days to meet and refine the plan for that funding. ∆
This article appears in 40th anniversary edition.
