Regional initiative launched to end 75% of homelessness in the Bay Area by 2024

Reddy serves as a member of the Regional Impact Council organized by the nonprofit All Home which is leading the Regional Action Plan. The effort, currently being piloted in San Francisco, Oakland and Fremont focused on ending homelessness through a 1-2-4 model.

In that model, part 1 is to fund interim housing, bringing unsheltered residents indoors immediately while also ensuring those who have been temporarily housed during the pandemic find permanent shelter. For every one interim housing unit brought online, jurisdictions should aim to fund two new housing solutions and four preventative interventions.

The plan calls for leading with racial equity given the disproportionate effect of homelessness on people of color, Tomiquia Moss said, the founder and CEO of All Home, during a RAP webinar Tuesday.

State leadership is being asked to set standards for measuring racial equity and showing progress while tying state funding to progress as an incentive. Private and philanthropic entities are also being asked to prioritize funding initiatives toward people of color experiencing or at risk of homelessness.

Counties are recommended to also prioritize equity-based initiatives using metrics such as high rates of poverty, lack of home ownership, high rates of eviction, rental burden, ZIP codes or a combination of factors.

“Every city, county and organization is doing great work but we can’t do it in silos, we can’t do it ourselves,” Moss said. “Everyone in this region has a responsibility of doing what they can to address this crisis of our time.”

San Mateo County has focused on homelessness using functional zero as its goal, meaning homelessness would be rare, brief and never recurring. All Home estimates the Bay Area is home to 35,000 unsheltered residents and a most recent data shows more than 1,500 live in San Mateo County.

Aiming to address homelessness in the county, only exacerbated by the pandemic, officials have housed unsheltered residents in hotels, recently purchasing a few through funding from the state’s Project Homekey program.

The county and cities have directed large sums of money to various housing-focused programs during the pandemic including Redwood City which launched a Safe RV Parking Program last October. The county has also been pursuing land for a modern navigation center in the city.

“Functional zero is incredible and the county plan can run on parallel tracks,” David Canepa said, president of the Board of Supervisors, and a Regional Impact Steering Committee member. “This is about committing to a region approach and working collaboratively to see what we can do to solve these problems together.”

To fund the RAP goals, the region would need roughly $6.5 billion. Reddy, a longtime housing advocate, said that the pandemic has “amplified the desperation of the people in our community,” making now a prime time to push for financial support.

Reddy said she’s actively lobbying fellow Redwood City leadership on joining the RAP and Canepa said county staff are also in talks of joining the multijurisdictional approach.

“The stars are aligned and we need to jump on it now,” Reddy said. “This is the moment we are going to get federal and state support for what we need and we need to move now and to be ready.”

But Reddy also said leadership in Redwood City, home to the greatest number of homeless residents in the county, would have to simultaneously push private developers to align with the plan goals, specifically building more extremely below-market rate units.

Similarly, Moss highlighted the importance of bringing all sectors to the table to address homelessness, noting the abundance of resources in what Oakland Mayor Libby Schaff called “the wealthiest region in the wealthiest state in the wealthiest nation in the world.”

“For so long in public policy we’ve made these choices in doing one or the other and frankly not doing any of them very well,” Moss said. “So this plan is sort of challenging that notion and saying, you know what, we can and we will combine these interventions and figure out how to resource them and implement them at scale.”

sierra@smdailyjournal.com

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