Marin County, nonprofits rethink severe weather shelter

Marin County health care managers are set to meet with nonprofit leaders this month to discuss shoring up efforts to keep the homeless warm and dry in winter.

Despite a fast start to the rainy season, the county’s severe weather emergency shelter, or SWES, has opened only once so far, and use of the shelter has declined over the last two years.

“The county has agreed to host meetings with the nonprofits that serve the homeless to explore access to the shelter, the limiting current criteria for opening, and if there are combined county and community resources that may be able to open a shelter more often,” Ritter Center director Mark Shotwell said.

“The county and community partners decided jointly to convene an ad hoc discussion to develop creative solutions/in-kind assistance to support people in wet weather,” said Gary Naja-Riese, director of Marin County’s homelessness division. “The discussion came up at the most recent homeless policy steering committee meeting in December.”

San Rafael received has received more than 15 inches of rain since Oct. 1, and the temperature dipped to a low of 36 degrees on Dec. 31, according to federal forecasters.

Nevertheless, the shelter has been activated by the county just once this year, from 5 p.m. Dec. 23 to 6 a.m. Dec. 24. The decision was made to activate the shelter in response to a severe storm. The forecast included strong wind gusts exceeding 35 mph that threatened to blow over trees and cause power outages.

“There were a total of eight individuals served that night,” Naja-Riese said.

The shelter was activated twice during the entire 2023-24 fiscal year and served 28 people. The previous fiscal year, the shelter was open 23 nights and served 357 people.

The most recent count of Marin’s homeless population, conducted last January, found 1,090 people without a fixed, regular and adequate nighttime residence, and 788 of them were entirely unsheltered.

When Marin’s rotating emergency shelter team program was operating from 2008 until 2018, it wasn’t unusual to have as many as 40 men and 20 women make use of the program. A winter shelter program that operated from Nov. 1 to April 20, it was managed by St. Vincent de Paul Society of Marin with the assistance of some 40 churches, synagogues, and other civic organizations.

The county has a detailed protocol for deciding when to open the emergency shelter. The program is triggered if temperatures are forecast to drop below an average nighttime low of 36 degrees and conditions are projected to persist for at least three days, or temperatures are forecast to drop below an average nighttime low of 45 degrees over two days in combination with either 1 inch of rain each night or hazardous conditions such as high winds.

The protocol was revised last year, lowering the three-day temperature requirement from 38 degrees to 36 degrees.

An outside contractor, Episcopal Community Services, operates the shelter. The group was awarded the contract last year for the first time. This year the county is paying Episcopal Community Services $161,534 for a minimum of 15 openings.

Homeless residents are housed overnight at the county’s Health and Wellness Campus at 3240 Kerner Blvd. in San Rafael. They are admitted at 5 p.m. and required to leave at 6 a.m. the next day. Episcopal Community Services is required to provide residents participating in the program with a hot dinner meal and a “to-go” breakfast.

The contract also requires Episcopal Community Services to provide participants with transportation each morning to the St. Vincent de Paul dining room at 820 B St. in San Rafael.

Under the county’s agreement, however, it is the county’s Department of Health and Human Services that is responsible for letting the public know when the shelter is open using press releases, marketing materials, websites and social media.

“We do robust outreach through all of our homeless service providers, as well as through police, municipal staff, and dozens of other organizations that are part of our SWES distribution list,” Naja-Riese said. “We also keep an eye on folks that we’re most concerned about on the street, and check in with them to be sure that they are fully aware.”

Naja-Riese said the county surveyed clients about why they aren’t using the program. He said respondents cited three primary reasons.

“The first was that they didn’t want to leave where they were currently located for fear of potentially losing their space or belongings,” Naja-Riese said, “even though we allow folks to bring a reasonable amount of belongings to SWES.”

He said another reason cited was that they didn’t want to leave friends behind.

“When folks are encamped,” Naja-Riese said, “they’re usually in strong community with those they’re encamped with.”

“The third reason was that there continues to be some resistance to a congregate setting like the large room that we use,” he said.

Due to a shortage of local hotel beds, the county returned last year to housing the unsheltered in a communal setting at the Health and Wellness Campus. During the previous two years, emergency shelter for the homeless during the pandemic was provided by renting local hotel rooms.

“I think the short amount of time people can stay in the shelter is the primary cause for low turnout,” Shotwell said. “Protecting their regular sleeping place then becomes more important.”

Jason Sarris, who was unsheltered for more than a decade before getting housed through the county’s coordinated entry program in 2023, wrote in an email, “A better way for the county to gauge how often an emergency shelter is utilized is to actually have one open nightly.

“The county should look into its past and resurrect or re-imagine the REST program,” Sarris wrote, referring to the he Rotating Emergency Shelter Team. “I’ve talked to many unhoused people who were in the program who said it literally saved their lives.”

“I want to see the county use all of the funding each year as intended,” he said. “A hotel program much like the one during the COVID years would be a great way to accomplish that.”