Private Funds Take on Homeless Housing Challenge

DAVIS, CA—The Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard said late last year that funding for affordable housing is now shifting to local and state government sources. According to the Joint Center, one of the the local/state measures of the last few years is Proposition 1, which allocated $4 billion in bonds for housing programs for low-income residents when it was approved by voters.

Moreover, several cities and counties turned to ballot measures to approve bonds for funding affordable housing efforts including several counties in the Portland, OR metropolitan region ($652 million), Austin ($250 million), Berkeley, CA ($135 million), Charlotte ($35 million) and Chapel Hill, NC ($10 million). Smaller cities turned to taxes or fees to fund affordable housing including in East Palo Alto, CA (commercial office tax, estimated $1.7 million revenue), West Marin, CA (hotel tax of an estimated $1.3 million), Telluride, CO (property tax of an estimated $554,000) and Bellingham, WA (property tax of an estimated $4 million).

As with many California areas, Davis, home to University of California-Davis, also faces a homeless crisis. According to a 2019 point-in-time count, the city had a 20% increase in the number of individuals experiencing homelessness on a given night compared to 2017.

One of Davis’ solutions is Paul’s Place, a homeless housing and services development that was unanimously passed by the city council on June 2. Paul’s Place is designed to serve the most vulnerable individuals living homeless in Davis by providing housing and wraparound services. It is a multiple-feature project and the first vertical tiny-home concept.

This project is one of the exceptions to the government funding trend, with its main contributors having been the Sutter Davis Hospital Foundation at $2.5 million, the Sutter Foundation, Partnership Health Plan, and many other individuals, businesses and foundations. It is sponsored by Davis Community Meals and Housing. The designer is local architect Maria Ogrydziak.

“Prior to the city council approval on June 2, we had spent the past two years fundraising for the project and working with various organizations, businesses, community leaders, faith groups and individuals to get their input and support,” Bill Pride, executive director for Davis Community Meals and Housing, tells GlobeSt.com. “The project is funded totally by donations and we have not accepted any governmental funding for the project. We have hit our major construction funding milestone for the project and are now moving ahead to gain our building permit.”

Certainly, the pandemic slowed the pace of fundraising and generally the overall approval of the project. The initial timeline had a tentative construction start this year but that was not set in stone, said Pride.

“As a nonprofit organization using all private funding, we did not have any set schedule. We are, however, now hiring our construction architect and various consultants and engineers to submit our plans to the city for approval. We are hopeful of beginning construction in the next eight to 12 months,” Pride tells GlobeSt.com. “We have had, however, great success in our fundraising efforts prior to the pandemic and in fostering community support. In some ways, the pandemic focused the need for projects such as Paul’s Place to house the homeless members of our community.”

The center replaces and improves the dilapidated Davis Community Meals and Housing facility that has operated at 1111 H St. for decades. A first floor resource center with enhanced program space connects participants with public benefits, housing and employment opportunities, and health and human services as well as basic needs for food, clothing, showers, restrooms and laundry facilities. It also will feature four new emergency shelter beds for law enforcement and other service providers.

The second floor features transitional housing that will provide 10 single residence bedrooms, a communal kitchen, family room, bathrooms and laundry. The third and fourth floors will have a total of 18 300-square-foot private micro-unit apartments of permanent supportive housing, two of which will be accessible for those with physical disabilities.

“I first got involved a few years ago, after having the same kind of personal interactions with homeless over the years that many of us experience and wanting to help in a substantive way,” Ogrydziak tells GlobeSt.com. “Paul’s Place is an innovative solution that could be a great option for other communities too. The design is sensitive to the site and the neighborhood, and the architecture also signals to the residents and to the community that this is a home, a warm and welcoming place. I designed Paul’s Place with the concept of a village with tiny houses in mind. Rather than a group of dwellings across a flat lot, imagine an Italian hilltop town with stairs and also an elevator, with living spaces and community spaces laid out vertically.”