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How is Orange County Addressing Homelessness? <br /> <br />2021-2022 Orange County Grand Jury Page 2 <br /> <br />individuals and families, promote participation in programs for the homeless, and optimize self- <br />sufficiency among those experiencing homelessness.3 <br />HUD recommended the collaborative development of plans to end homelessness in all <br />communities receiving HUD funding. In response, Orange County created the Commission to <br />End Homelessness that published a Ten-Year Plan to End Homelessness in 2012.4 Over the <br />ensuing decade, implementation of this model Ten-Year Plan was beyond the power of the <br />Commission and major parts of the plan were not achieved. <br />Meanwhile, in 2009, HUD outlined the process of building a collaborative CoC comprised of <br />organizations and individuals dedicated to ending homelessness. The CoC was created in 2016 <br />along with the OCC. HUD, the major funder of homeless programs, gave the CoC responsibility <br />for prioritizing the distribution of competitive federal homeless assistance program monies. The <br />strategy of the CoC is to prioritize funding of programs that focus on four pillars: Prevention, <br />Outreach, Shelter, and Housing. <br />Mixed Success in Addressing Homelessness <br />In Orange County, various approaches to manage homelessness have been tried with varying <br />levels of success. <br />• Moving the Homeless: When businesses and residents complained about homeless <br />individuals, police were expected to relocate them. Pushing homeless individuals out of town <br />sometimes resulted in simply shifting the problem to neighboring communities. <br />• Ordinances by Cities: Ordinances that criminalized camping on public property or loitering <br />contributed to the incarceration of homeless individuals, including many suffering from <br />mental illness and substance abuse issues. Orange County Sheriff Don Barnes commented, <br />“By default, the Orange County Jail had become the de facto mental hospital of Orange <br />County…. [in] 2018, Orange County jails had about 2,200 inmates with severe mental <br />illnesses.”5 <br />• Housing and Treatment: Recent approaches that emphasized housing only or treatment <br />only fell short in substantially reducing homelessness. <br />• Local Opposition Prevented Shelter and Housing: In Orange County, early efforts to <br />provide low-threshold emergency shelters6 to get individuals off the streets were met with <br />local opposition in most communities, as were developments of housing affordable to <br />individuals exiting shelters. The development of a Coordinated Entry System (CES)7 helped <br />reduce the neighborhood impact of shelters. <br /> <br />3 HUD Office of Community Planning and Development, Continuum of Care 101, June 6, 2009. <br />4 Orange County Ten Year Plan to End Homelessness, 2012. <br />5 Nick Gerda, “OC Mental Health Jail Expansion Draws Pushback and Debate ”, Voice of OC, October 23, 2019. <br />6 A Low-Threshold Emergency Shelter offers an alternative to living on the streets. Individuals in these shelters <br />must comply with the shelter rules but are not required to be drug and alcohol free. <br />7 Coordinated Entry System (CES) is a shared database between service providers that shuttles homeless individuals <br />in and out of shelters eliminating walk-in and walk-out shelter access that caused community opposition. The CES is <br />also a point of referral into permanent housing.