Shelter First — more than just housing
What could have been included in the SJ metrics for success instead of the continuation of one size fits all Permanent Supportive Housing?
With compassion and perseverance we can provide Shelter First with safety and services for our unhoused. First comes shelter.
On Quick-build emergency shelters:
· Establish the cost per unsheltered resident needed to provide shelter to all currently unhoused residents.
· Establish square footage space per unsheltered resident needed in emergency shelter-stabilization.
· Establish a timeline for staged realization of 100% shelter availability for the unhoused.
· Track monthly how many beds are available to comply with Martin v Boise.
· Establish site requirements such as: sites which are already equipped with electrical, water, sewer, and ground covering like asphalt.
· Identify all potential and appropriate publicly owned properties as destinations.
· Create target for ongoing services (mental health, rehab, job training, security)
· Clearly define success of services such as rehab and mental health.
· Measure 911 calls in surrounding communities, emergency shelters and PSH. Establish timeline to eliminate all calls & the burden on the community while creating a security cost per emergency shelter resident.
· Create time line for unhoused to shelter and/or housed. Compare time it took to get a shelter bed as compared to time to get Permanent Supportive Housing PSH. (verify that this time was time spent on the street waiting for shelter or housing).
On cleaning up parks and open space:
· Establish how many acres and number of parks/open spaces are currently impacted by encampments.
· Establish a timeline for reclaiming those sites/spaces, and report back on % completion.
· Track how many encampments fires/year reported and unreported.
On counting the unhoused
· Do more than just headcount: establish a time-spent unhoused metric, to allow the city to track not just people, but duration of homelessness.
· Establish how many unhoused are from out of state, out of county, out of city.
On preventing homelessness and displacement
· Identify how many rental households could benefit from either short-term or long-term voucher rental assistance.
· Measure the length of time the average San Jose person waits for section 8 approval.
· Measure eviction filing reduction and eviction reduction due to voucher assistance.
Irene Smith, JD, PhD
Reference — Homeless Committee Report 2023 (roster list of participants below)
Homelessness Mayoral Transition Committee Report
Our committee was charged with the task of collectively analyzing the challenge of homelessness, formulating an approach based on a broad set of perspectives, and creating metrics that would help to determine the effectiveness of the solutions implemented by the City of San Jose. The committee concluded that two outcomes would serve as the foundation for the work ahead. The first is to reduce unsheltered homelessness by providing a multitude of options for those already unsheltered, creating solutions that would prevent homelessness, and alleviating the suffering of the unhoused by providing services, resources, and care for those in desperate need. The second is to ensure the impacts of unsheltered homelessness are reduced within our communities, enhancing public safety for all, and mitigating environmental damage.
Outcome and Success Metrics
Outcome #1: San Jose significantly reduces unsheltered homelessness.
Success Metric A: Increase the number of people housed in permanent housing solutions and the number of people housed in interim housing solutions.
Success Metric B: The- number of people unsheltered — in San Jose on a year-by-year basis
Success Metric C: Increase in the number of people who are prevented from becoming unhoused in San Jose.
Success Metric D: Decrease the number of people who receive interim housing and return to unsheltered homelessness and the number of people who receive permanent housing and return to homelessness.
Outcome #2: San Jose mitigates the impacts of encampments on local communities.
Success Metric A: The rate of decrease in trash and environmental contamination around encampments and in our environmentally sensitive areas.
Success Metric B: The rate of reduction in public safety responses to encampments, while continuing to protect all San Jose residents, both housed and unhoused-.
FY 23–24 Recommendations
Recommendation #1: Build more Permanent and Emergency Interim Housing by:
● Focusing on delivering the emergency interim units that are under development to meet the goal of 1,000 units completed
● Providing funding and resources for permanent supportive housing projects in the pipeline
● Building support in the community for emergency interim housing solutions.
● Accelerating the environmental and procurement process through city efforts for interim housing.
● Identifying larger sites for Emergency Interim Homes that can accommodate projects at scale.
● Building a campus-like living environment similar to Haven for Hope in San Antonio at scale and with wrap around services.
● Building additional emergency interim housing communities across the city.
● Being more innovative by acquiring additional hotels, acquiring or leasing privately-owned land, redesignating vacant commercial buildings or land for homeless facilities, building more modular housing, adding congregate but private housing, etc.
● Addressing the fiscal cliff for emergency interim housing onsite operations
Recommendation #2: Increase the budget for emergency rental relief and legal assistance programs to prevent homelessness.
● Including tenant protections and programs like right to counsel or a collaborative court system,
Recommendation #3: Encourage the County to implement SB 1338 / The Community Assistance,Recovery, and Empowerment Act by December 31, 2023.
Recommendation #4: Budget funding for trash removal and preventing environmental damage:
● Increase the number of enhanced service sites (SOAR) that have garbage collection and porta potties
● Expand existing city-wide garbage contracts to collect from street corners where unhoused live
● Expand programs like Cash for Trash and San Jose Bridge
● Create safe-storage sites so unhoused can store belongings in a safe way
● Partner with nonprofit organizations and leverage other outside partnerships with community-based organizations to preserve our environment.
● Educate housed residents, contractors, and others about properly disposing of items that frequently end up in encampments
Recommendation #5: Maintain a daily and public inventory of vacant emergency beds to transition homeless from the streets to safe, secure and sanitary shelter.
FY 23–24+ Recommendations
Recommendation #1: Support Emergency Interim Housing in these forms:
● Advocate with our congressional delegation to make land available in San Jose for emergency interim housing, for additional construction and operations funding, and for CEQA waivers to streamline construction
● Continue the accelerated acquisition and construction of emergency interim housing that meets the needs of the diverse homeless population. In the spirit of collaboration, identify surplus land that Valley Water, the Valley Transportation Authority, the County of Santa Clara, Caltrans, and other government agencies can make available for the humanitarian cause of ending homelessness in San Jose. City and other government agency leaders should work together to develop and reserve more sites for emergency interim housing.
● Ensure emergency interim housing is designed as safe, private, quality living, with showers, storage, and facilities for animals.
● Provide safe/clean locations for RV parking and storage.
Recommendation #2: Increase production of permanent supportive housing to ensure long-term housing needs are met, assisting individuals on their path to permanent housing.
Recommendation #3: Once the city has an adequate stock of potential options, discourage access to unsafe areas to protect those experiencing homelessness. Unsafe areas for human habitation exist in San Jose like areas within cloverleafs, and along busy roadways, protecting our businesses, safe routes to schools, and environmentally sensitive areas.
Recommendation #4: Analyze and return with a recommendation for FY 24–25 to repair damage to parks and public property and prepare action plans for park, creek and trail and public space restoration. To accelerate and reduce the cost of park restoration, establish park funding and grant authority to park nonprofits, such as the Guadalupe River Park Conservancy and Keep Coyote Creek Beautiful, to contract for park restoration, clean-up and improvements to prevent re- encampments. Partner with nonprofits to ensure success.
Recommendation #5: Once sufficient housing options are available, explore how San Jose might strongly encourage unhoused residents who are offered tailored housing solutions to accept them (assuming that they come with the appropriate services they need, including safe storage, pet accommodations, etc)
Mayoral Transition Committees “Glossary”
Goals: Each committee has a mandate that includes the goals of the committee. For example, the goals of the community safety committee are to (1) increase pedestrian and traffic safety, and (2) reduce street level crime and improve the felt experience of safety for residents and small businesses. In meetings, we’ve also used the words “pillar”, “north star”, and “mandate”.
Outcomes: The transition committees are going to start by discussing what success looks like from a holistic community impact or state of well being perspective. We can think of these as outcomes. To give an example, the Community Safety Committee may decide that one of their outcomes is “San José residents feel safe anytime, anywhere in San José” or “San José residents feel safe walking in their neighborhood.”
Recommendations: The Committees will spend the second and third committee meetings generating recommendations. Each Committee will produce 3–5 recommendations for the upcoming budget cycle, and 3–5 recommendations for the longer term (within the next two years).
The recommendations will also have a success metric attached but Committee members are not expected to define actual specific targets for these success metrics. Recommendations may or may not be specific to a particular City program or service. For example, stricter enforcement of speeding in heavily trafficked intersections or increasing the number of traffic calming solutions may be specific recommendations from the Community Safety Committee. Each transition committee will rank their recommendations in order of which they think will have the biggest impact on their goal and outcome.
Success Metrics
Outcomes and recommendations should be measurable via a success metric such as a community indicator, which is a performance measure that quantifies trends affecting outcomes (the well-being of communities). Success metrics are typically expressed as a rate or percentage and can be disaggregated by race and location to identify disparities and take action to close the disparities. To give an example, an outcome may have the success metric “the percentage of San Jose residents who feel safe anytime anywhere in San Jose.” The goal is to identify both the outcome and the recommendation success metrics so the City does not become overly focused on measuring a particular program or service that is not ultimately improving the higher level outcome. When an outcome is not clear or cannot be readily measured, other program or service level performance measures may be used as proxies. For example, a proxy success metric for pedestrian and traffic safety might be a reduction in the crash injury rate. Committee members are not expected to define actual specific targets for these outcome metrics.
Product:
The product of the transition committees will be 15–25 recommendations for the upcoming budget cycle, and 15–25 recommendations for the longer term.
The budget cycle recommendations will feed directly into budget prioritization over the course of two council meetings. In the first council meeting, Councilmembers will provide a public readout of the committee recommendations. In the second council meeting, Councilmembers will rank outcomes across all the transition committees. The Administration will use the ranked strategies from Council and the product from the transition committees as inputs in the normal budget process.
Homelessness Transition Committee Roster / Acknowledgements
1. Pam Foley, Council Co-Chair
2. David Cohen, Council Co-Chair
3. David Pandori, Community Co-Chair
4. Omar Passons, City of San Jose
5. Amory Brandt, City of San Jose
6. Jen Loving, Destination: Home
7. Peter Pau, Sand Hill Foundation
8. John Sobrato, Sobrato Foundation
9. Rick Callendar, Valley Water
10. Claudine Sipili, Destination: Home
11. Laura Sandoval, PATH
12. Aubrey Merriman, LiveMoves
13. Trish Dorsey, Goodwill of Silicon Valley
14. René Ramirez, HomeFirst
15. Huascar Castro, Working Partnerships USA
16. Dontae Lartigue, Razing the Bar
17. Pastor Paul Baines, WeHope
18. Carl Salas, Salas O’Brien
19. Todd Langton, NY LIFE Securities
20. Morris Chubb, CB Administrative Services
21. Ray Solnik, Great Clips
22. James Wolak, Apple
23. Mark Lewis, AXIS
