Editorial: State’s $18M for Marin encampments must produce significant results
The $18 million in state funds Marin jurisdictions are getting to get homeless out of encampments rightly puts pressure on officials to deliver.
The sum is a huge infusion of cash into implementing effective, humane and compassionate short- and long-term solutions. The sum also means that local jurisdictions have to be accountable for spending it wisely.
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration has already received blistering criticism from an independent state audit that millions are being spent on the state’s homelessness crisis without accounting for the effectiveness of that taxpayer investment.
Marin officials should not follow Sacramento’s lead.
This third round of state funding is flowing to Marin for the farmworker and service worker RV camp established in Bolinas, to solve San Rafael’s homeless encampment along Mahon Creek Path and to come up solutions for the RV encampment that lines Novato’s Binford Road.
They add up to an average of around $90,000 per person for the roughly 200 men and women living in a tent, trailer or RV in those areas.
This money should go to getting people into permanent, clean and safe housing.
Marin’s “Housing First” strategy is going to take a significant investment with its goal of getting people “off the street” as a first step in a ladder out of homelessness.
There are some cases that are chronic, where people – due to mental health and substance abuse issues – resist help and behavioral commitments necessary to be ready for permanent housing arrangements. But there are many who need help with that “first step.”
Officials should be mindful that the money is not consumed by contracted service providers, growing bureaucracies or lawyers. Staffing and expertise is needed for case management, even for ongoing supportive services. That staffing, however, should include demonstrating that it is making a difference in helping campers and eliminating encampments.
State Senate President Mike McGuire, who was instrumental in bringing the money to Marin, should also seek detailed progress reports.
That’s where Newsom’s administration has drawn criticism.
Progress has already been made in Bolinas, where the community came up with a site and new RVs to replace unsafe and unsanitary housing in which 60 local agricultural and service workers were living. The goal is to replace the RVs with permanent housing, install a new septic system and provide staff for managing and maintaining the properties.
In Novato, the county is in its first of a three-year plan to move people living in the RVs lining Binford into permanent housing. The county is working with campers – even buying their RVs – to help them move into permanent housing arrangements.
Already, eight RVs and one trailer have been purchased by the county, costing taxpayers $40,900, less than half of the sum the county has budgeted for the buy-back initiative.
The overall goal is the same for San Rafael, where according to a city-commissioned survey, most of the Mahon Creek Path campers have said they would prefer to move from their tents to permanent housing. The city’s plan for the new state funds is to place at least 46 of the campers into permanent housing over the next three years.
That’s a long time and time costs money.
Newsom, facing the challenge of California having the largest homeless population in the nation, says, “I want to see results. Everybody wants to see results.”
Those results have been hard to come by; made more difficult in Marin by the lack of affordable housing and a federal court order that essentially overturned local anti-camping laws on public lands if other housing is unavailable.
Homelessness in Marin is not a new problem; it’s just become a lot more visible in recent years. And the public wants something done about it. According to San Rafael’s survey, so do the campers.
$18 million is a significant investment of taxpayer cash. It should deliver significant results.