A New Plan to Combat Growing Homelessness
AB 448, which is expected to pass next month, will help Orange County set up a trust to develop 2,700 units of low-income housing.
GlobeSt.com: Tell me about the impetus to create the trust and find a solution to homeless housing in Orange County.
Heather Stratman: The Association represents the interests of the 34 cities in Orange County, and we were invited to participate in a cost study to determine how much money was spent on homelessness services and housing. Our role was to pull the data from our cities. The 13 of 34 cities that reported in were spending roughly $120 million to watch our problem in Orange County increase by 53% since 2014. We knew because of our advocacy and interest in supporting the cities, both to create financial efficiencies and creating tools for them to deal with the challenges that we are facing, that if cities could get their hands around these issues, it would benefit them financially in the long run. From the cost study and the analysis, we knew that if we could put 2,700 units of permanent supportive housing in place over the next two to seven years, we could create a significant amount of flow within our continuum of care system that would ultimately move hundreds of people out of emergency shelters and into permanent supportive housing. Our emergency beds are currently at capacity, and those beds have become transitional and supportive housing because we don’t have permanent supportive housing on the back end. We don’t have a system in place. That is problematic because our situation will be duplicative of L.A. and San Diego if we don’t create this system and create it quickly.
GlobeSt.com: How big is your current homeless population?
Stratman: We have a homeless population of 7,000 to 10,000 in Orange County, but when you don’t address these issues, you become of L.A. proportions where you have tens of thousands of people living on the street. Then, you can’t enforce anti-camping ordinances because there is no place for people to go and your emergency rooms become revolving doors for the mentally ill.
GlobeSt.com: How does AB448 play a role in creating the trust and allowing you to move forward on this project?
Stratman: Specific to the Orange County Housing Trust, we had to introduce special legislation to create a JPA that would allow us to do several things, including allowing the trust to go after low-income housing dollars. That allows us to build the 2,700 units of supportive housing. We also understand that this need for very low housing is so significant to ensuring that this very large sector of our population that are at risk of falling into homelessness don’t, or those that are couch surfing or living in hotels have housing options. The trust would allow for that.
GlobeSt.com: Have you seen strong support for this plan and do you expect AB448 to pass the California legislature next month?
Stratman: There is a lot of support and it continues to grow. We have a list of 30 endorsers to date. We have moved rather quickly. The bill wasn’t introduced until May 31, so we have only been working on it for 45 days. We have been met with open arms and great enthusiasm and encouragement for the concept of creating a plan and backing into that plan with data, numbers and business opportunities to reach our goals. We approached Sacramento very differently than we ever had as a County in the past. The last time we had a statewide housing bond was in 2006, and at that time Orange County cities competed against each other, and we didn’t do well in bringing back our fair share. The trust really becomes a place of regional collaboration to actually implement the 2,700-unit plan and implement low-income housing, but also to get those funds through a more regional and collaborative process. I think Sacramento has seen it as a much more sophisticated way to address the problem. It is a progressive idea.
GlobeSt.com: How will you fund these projects?
Stratman: One of the reasons that we have to go through the legislature to create the JPA was for the purpose to co-mingle public and private funds. Currently cities and counties don’t have that authority, and this legislative act will give them that authority. The creation of a public-private partnership was a really important piece of this. Without that, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Having the business community at the table and giving them an outlet to invest money into housing or services end up looking like is important, and there is a place now to funnel those monies with a plan attached. I think that makes the business community more comfortable. To build out 2,700 units of permanent supportive housing is about $900 million. It is a significant investment. There are already funding sources, like tax credit programs and vouchers, that are existing. The problem is that there are not enough. Most permanent supportive housing projects usually falls between 9% to 14% short to fund it out. The housing trust closes that final gap. In Santa Ana, for example, there was the Santa Ana Veterans Village, a proposed veterans housing project. The city of Santa Ana very aggressively went after tax credits and leveraged housing vouchers, and they brought all of these different funding sources together. Even with all of these funding sources, the $27 million project ultimately fell $1.5 million short of funds, and it sat there for three years until a private donation came through to close the funding gap. That is an example of where the trust can come in and fund those needs very quickly and close that gap to get these projects under construction.
GlobeSt.com: Once AB448 passes, do you expect to build all 2,700 units in within your two- to seven-year timeframe?
Stratman: We rolled out the 2,700-unit plan in February, and to date we have sited—not entitled—2,000 of those units. As we move those units into entitlement, they will all follow a different schedule. As much as we know the trust is the key to moving the dial and getting these projects funded, we still are up against tremendous community NIMBYism. We have a lot of education to do about permanent supportive housing and how it works. There are huge stigmas that we have to overcome as a community, and the alternative is really dangerous. You can’t leave your most vulnerable on the street. The community has to embrace this, or else our elected officials won’t feel comfortable taking these projects and moving them forward in the face of really harsh community opposition. I am not saying that we can’t overcome it. I think that we can with a strong outreach campaign, but it is going to take some time.