Millbrae council gets homeless update

LifeMoves Associate Program Director De Anna Garcia presented survey data that showed, when asked, about 68% of adults said they usually sleep outside rather than in a vehicle, with family or other sheltered environments. 

“I do want to make the correlation that a lot of these numbers for the outside unsheltered increased as the 90-day residency has increased from the 30 days of residency requirement. So less people are inclined to stay in a one-night cot when they're not going to be able to access shelter the next day,” said Garcia, referring to the requirement for unsheltered individuals to prove they have been a county resident for at least 90 days before receiving certain services.

“I think that is something that we need to continue looking at and talking about and especially bringing that to the county-level to re-evaluate,” said Councilmember Angelina Cahalan. 

About 41% of surveyed participants said their city of residency was outside of San Mateo County. 

“Ultimately, most of the individuals are saying they’re coming from Alameda County, Contra Costa County and San Francisco,” said Garcia, referencing the segment of survey participants who came from outside the county. “Pretty much anywhere there is a BART line, you’re going to see individuals coming in.”

The report to the City Council also showed that half of the participants last quarter said they had been experiencing homelessness for three years or less. Garcia mentioned that in many counties, including San Mateo County, coordinated entry systems’ vulnerability assessments are at least partially dependent on the length of time someone has experienced homelessness, which in turn may impact the types of services to which they have access. 

 “Most of the individuals that we engage with who have been there under a year are more receptive to services,” said Garcia. “But these people who have been ‘less homeless’ essentially than people who have been out on the streets for 10 years may not be offered something like a permanent voucher for permanent housing. They might be offered some other type of intervention that’s more like rapid rehousing … but they’re not going to be prioritized for the more long-term housing intervention.”

According to the presentation, which evaluated data from January to September of this year, outreach workers engaged with 79 unsheltered individuals and had 124 instances of placing individuals in temporary housing. There were three instances of placing someone in permanent housing over the nine-month period. 

The program began as an 18-month pilot and has since been renewed for another 18 months, until June 2024. The council approved the LifeMoves report during the meeting. 

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