Eureka city officials and county leaders work together to address homelessness

City of Eureka and Humboldt County leaders met with representatives of the
Humboldt Housing and Homeless Coalition (HHHC) on July 17 to hear about
Eureka’s draft “Homelessness Policy Paper,” prepared as part of the city’s
General Plan Update process.

The Policy Paper takes an in-depth look at where Eureka currently stands in
terms of homelessness and offers concrete steps the city can take to more
strategically reduce the number of homeless people in the community. The
policy paper is being prepared by the Sacramento consulting firm Focus
Strategies. A final draft of the Policy Paper will be presented to the Eureka
City Council for review and incorporation into the city’s General Plan Update
as a support document.

“Eureka’s leadership and community stakeholders are overwhelmingly
committed to solving the problem of visible homelessness,” said Megan
Kurteff Schatz, principal with Focus Strategies. “The homelessness policy
paper commissioned by the city provides specific, immediate
recommendations to move homeless people to housing and behavioral health
services. The recommendations also provide strategies to identify and tailor
resources to more quickly house people who become homeless. Community
leadership is actively engaged and already moving forward with solutions.”

The draft Policy Paper contains several short-term recommendations for
reducing homelessness, including that a Leadership Group, comprised of city
and county representatives and one of three General Plan Update
homelessness focus groups formed to provide input on the Homelessness
Policy Paper, continue to work on issues related to homelessness. Leadership
Group members currently include Humboldt County Supervisor Virginia Bass,
Eureka City Councilmembers Mike Newman and Melinda Ciarabellini,
Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) Director Phillip Crandall,
DHHS Assistant Director of Programs Barbara LaHaie, Eureka City Manager
Greg Sparks, Assistant City Manager Mike Knight, Eureka Police Chief Andrew Mills, Humboldt Area Foundation Program Manager Amy Jester, Betty Chinn
of the Betty Kwan Chinn Outreach program, Eureka Main Street Executive
Director Charlotte McDonald and Eureka Chamber of Commerce Executive
Director Don Smullin.

The draft policy paper further recommends that in the short-term, the city
and county should work together to identify 10 to 15 people who are
generating the largest number of police and other emergency calls and are
the most frequent users of city and county resources. Once identified, these
people should be prioritized for available permanent supportive housing.
Medium-term recommendations include the city, county and HHHC working
together to formalize a Homeless Outreach Team with a “Housing First”
focus, providing homeless people with housing quickly and then providing
services as needed. It is also recommends that the city and county explore
strategies to expand the use of Mental Health Services Act and other funds to
provide housing for homeless people with mental illness who are high users
of emergency services and not being adequately served by existing systems
of care.

Recommendations for the long-term include the city, county and HHHC
forming a working group to analyze the Homeless Management Information
Systems — a database used to gather local information about homelessness
— as well as program budget data, with a goal of understanding how funds
are being invested, what outcomes are being accomplished and how
outcomes could be improved by changing existing programs and
investments. It further recommends that the city continue to build and
strengthen its ongoing partnership with the HHHC and DHHS to ensure
countywide resources are effectively targeted to serve homeless people with
the greatest needs, many of whom live in Eureka.

“DHHS appreciates the collaborative efforts that went into this Policy Paper,”
Crandall said. “The department supports its conclusions and looks forward to
further discussions and, more importantly, implementation of its
recommendations. The actual products will be complex and sustained funding
will be an issue to transcend, but with the mutual support and investments of
the city, the county and our partners in the HHHC, we are hopeful we will
begin to implement well-thought-out strategic and long-lasting integrated
approaches that will address many of the needs of severely mentally ill
homeless people in the city of Eureka.”
Focus Strategies helps communities make data-driven decisions to develop
system solutions that will work for them in their efforts to end homelessness.
To develop its recommendations for Eureka, Focus Strategies staff reviewed
local data related to homelessness, talked to community stakeholders,
service providers and homeless individuals and researched best practices for
comparably sized communities.