Oakland officers journey to Texas to tour homeless shelters 

Staff members from Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee’s workplace have been in Texas this week, becoming a member of a delegation of Bay Area officers visiting homeless shelters in San Antonio and Austin.

The journey was organized by the Bay Area Council, a enterprise advocacy group, and Beyond Homelessness, a undertaking of the Oakland-based Independent Institute, a nonprofit suppose tank. 

On Monday, the journey started at Haven for Hope, a San Antonio program serving about 1,600 unhoused residents on a 22-acre “campus” that has residing areas with beds and mats, and a wealth of authorized, medical, childcare, housing, and substance therapy companies on web site. About 80 nonprofits are concerned in operating the campus, in response to the journey organizers. 

Participants then met with officers from San Antonio and Bexar counties to study how they coordinate large-scale packages like Haven for Hope.

On Tuesday, the delegation traveled to Austin to Community First! Village, a homelessness program run by a Christian group. The program can also be structured as a “neighborhood” or campus the place tiny houses housing about 500 individuals are unfold throughout a 50-acre property. In the afternoon, the Bay Area group met with housing coverage professionals to debate Austin’s current constructing increase.

Lee was initially scheduled to go on the journey. Three different native representatives deliberate to go on the journey however dropped out. Councilmember Carroll Fife went as a substitute to a convention in Rome on housing, labor, and land points, her workplace informed us. Council President Kevin Jenkins was additionally initially on the roster. He mentioned he didn’t go as a result of he needed to run the City Council assembly on Tuesday. Alameda County Supervisor Nikki Fortunato Bas was additionally slated to attend. She informed us she didn’t find yourself going, however didn’t reply to a query about why.

Other attendees on the Texas journey included South Bay officers and state senators.

While the Bay Area Council and Beyond Homelessness set the itinerary, contributors paid for their very own journey, in response to the organizations. Lee’s staffers’ journeys have been coated by the mayor’s workplace funds, her spokesperson mentioned.

Organizers hope Bay Area leaders can replicate items of the campus mannequin and the concept of collaborating amongst cities, counties, and repair suppliers on bigger homelessness packages.

“I could imagine a future where the Bay Area has a number of these sites that are jointly funded,” mentioned Adrian Covert, who leads public coverage on the Bay Area Council and helped plan the Texas journey. “The vision is to have a one-stop shop for the metro region, where homeless individuals’ needs can be assessed, they can graduate through the facility as they recover, then ultimately, ideally return to the housing market and become independent.”

A big central web site is a “cost-effective way of scaling up services,” Covert mentioned.

The Bay Area isn’t Austin or San Antonio, although. Land is costlier and scarcer, and cities like Oakland and San Francisco have far greater charges of homelessness than their Texan counterparts. 

Michael Seiler, an government at Beyond Homelessness, mentioned native leaders can nonetheless apply classes from the journey right here, creating “hubs” that join current, disparate companies and housing. Some of the journey contributors are already exploring potential websites for campus-like packages, he mentioned.

Some Oakland officers have thought of large-scale shelters previously. Councilmember Carroll Fife has pushed for a tiny-home web site serving as much as 1,000 on the previous Oakland Army Base. The metropolis administrator on the time opposed the concept, citing authorized constraints and air pollution within the soil making the world unfit for habitation. 

The Wood Street Commons, a bunch of homeless and previously homeless individuals in West Oakland, has additionally been working with architect Michael Pyatok on plans for an elaborate affordable housing community they’d wish to see established. Another former Wood Street unhoused resident, Mavin Carter Griffin, has lengthy had a imaginative and prescient for a self-governed web site there she additionally calls a “campus.” 

One of the organizations behind the journey, Beyond Homelessness, has promoted an method to the disaster that typically doesn’t align with some practices embraced by native governments.  

The blurb for the group’s ebook, additionally referred to as “Beyond Homelessness,” proclaims that the “Housing First” mannequin “fails” and that everlasting supportive housing “isn’t just ineffective but dangerous.” The group additionally shares a number of opinion items and blogs on its web site, criticizing Housing First, harm reduction, rent control, and different progressive housing insurance policies.

Housing First, whereas outlined in another way at instances, is mostly the concept governments ought to prioritize shifting individuals into everlasting housing, as a substitute of ready to handle dependancy and different challenges or shifting individuals by means of a collection of short-term places first. Proponents level to a big physique of analysis displaying that merely having housing can lead to a spread of constructive well being and monetary outcomes, they usually say this path might be cheaper than biking individuals by means of shelters, jails, and hospitals. 

Oakland and Alameda County have emphasised funding everlasting supportive housing, together with by means of the state’s Homekey program, which is credited with housing tens of 1000’s of individuals because it launched in 2020. Oakland has been awarded funding to create 11 housing websites by means of Homekey.

Asked about this, Lee spokesperson Justin Phillips mentioned, “The mayor is committed to the housing first principles.”

At the identical time, cities and counties, together with Oakland and Alameda, fund loads of short-term and transitional housing websites too. As the homelessness disaster has exploded over the previous decade, there’s been a push to quickly open extra of those interim housing websites, rapidly getting individuals away from the hazards of the streets as a substitute of ready months or years to construct costly everlasting housing.

Despite the strongly worded supplies from the group, Beyond Homelessness’ Seiler mentioned the Texas journey revealed a necessity to finish the “pendulum swing” between everlasting and interim housing, as a substitute embracing extra of “all of the above.” After all, he identified, individuals want some place to go as soon as they exit interim websites. 

Covert from the Bay Area Council mentioned his group’s stance is that some individuals want everlasting help after they go away a shelter, whereas others simply need assistance getting again on their toes after which can enter the non-public housing market.

After the journey, organizers mentioned they plan to reconvene contributors to debate regional approaches, collectively making use of for grant funding, and searching for out philanthropy and rich donors to help their efforts.