Home > 2022 Election Platform > Unhoused Community Needs
2022 Unhoused Community Needs Policy Recommendations
1. Stopping Displacement and Preventing Homelessness
The Law Foundation’s overarching goal is to prevent homelessness by ensuring that everyone in our community has housing that meets their needs. For our proposals to stop displacement and create affordable housing, see: Housing Policy Recommendations. We recognize that building permanent housing takes time. Until homelessness is eradicated, we offer the following policy recommendations to address the needs of our unhoused neighbors.
a. RECOMMENDATION: Stop Encampment Sweeps.
Encampment sweeps violate people’s rights and endanger people’s lives. Sweeps inflict trauma and disrupt people’s ties to their communities. As camps are cleaned, people’s possessions, including survival gear, medical equipment, and important documents are often lost or destroyed. Sweeps destabilize their lives putting them at greater risk of illness and premature death. As the Center for Disease Control advises, “[I]f individual housing options are not available, allow people who are living unsheltered or in encampments to remain where they are. Clearing encampments can cause people to disperse throughout the community and break connections with service providers. This increases the potential for infectious disease spread.”(1) Even absent the risks of COVID-19 transmission, sweeps endanger public health.
We must stop sweeps to promote equity. Sweeps target members of our community who have already been systemically disadvantaged and excluded. Factors such as employment and housing discrimination, over-policing, and lack of culturally sensitive and accessible mental health treatment all contribute to overrepresentations of certain populations among people experiencing homelessness. According to the 2019 Santa Clara County Point-in-Time Count, 9,706 people in our county experienced homelessness, and 7,922 of these people were unsheltered.(2) Of people experiencing homelessness in 2019, 12% lived in Santa Clara County for five to nine years and 57% had lived here for ten or more years(3) demonstrating that most of them have deep ties to our community. Among those surveyed, Blacks and American Indian or Alaskan Natives were dramatically overrepresented; 19% were Black and 8% were American Indian or Alaskan Native, despite only making up 2.8% and 1.2% respectively of the total county population.(4) Additionally, 19% of people without housing were former foster youth, 13% identified as LGBT, and 45% identified as having at least one disability. Sweeps displace the most vulnerable members of our community in contravention to our values of inclusion.
b. RECOMMENDATION: Use Mental Health Workers Instead of Police to Address Emergencies in Encampments.
When there are emergency calls or complaints related to people living outdoors, mental health workers should respond instead of law enforcement. (See Health’s Platform re: Mobile Crisis)
On the rare occasion that sweeps are unavoidable, the process must protect the rights of the people being moved and minimize trauma. Unhoused people should be provided ample advance notice of the sweeps. Outreach workers should visit repeatedly before and during the sweep and be able to provide meaningful non-congregate shelter options that are not time limited. Mental health workers with expertise in trauma informed care, substance use counseling, and hoarding therapy should be embedded in outreach teams as well as the teams that help encampment residents move. Law enforcement should not participate in encampment sweeps or clean ups. Anyone participating in the sweep or cleanup should participate in mental health and disability sensitivity training and should provide reasonable accommodations, as needed, for people’s disabilities.
c. RECOMMENDATION: When performing clean-ups, provide assistance moving belongings; when this is not possible, provide meaningful property storage and retrieval.
Property storage policies for encampment sweeps and clean ups should recognize that one person’s trash may be another’s treasure. Sometimes what appears to be old and worn is a cherished family keepsake. People performing clean ups or sweeps should offer assistance packing and moving belongings. When this is not possible, any property that cannot be moved should be properly identified and logged with unique identifiers. When it is unclear whether property is owned or abandoned, err on the side of storing it for 90 days. Owners should be provided identifiable tags to claim their belongings and information about how to retrieve them. The phone number for retrieving belongings should receive live calls at least during business hours. People should be provided a meaningful and streamlined way to retrieve their belongings, including assisting those who lack transportation, cannot lift or carry things on their own, or have other disability-related needs for assistance.
d. RECOMMENDATION: Allow safe alternatives to housing while developing more low-income housing stock.
Until our community creates sufficient low-income housing, we call for an expansion of safe alternatives such as sanctioned encampments and safe parking.(5) Such alternatives should only be used temporarily while providers actively work to find permanent housing for residents.
Decisions about sites for any sanctioned encampment or safe parking should be made using input from people experiencing homelessness. These decisions should also consider accessibility for people with disabilities and proximity to public transportation. All sites should be self-governed. In addition to providing active case management to assist with housing searches, sites should be provided onsite medical and mental health services and linkage to other social services.
e. RECOMMENDATION: Provide Wrap-Around Services to all Unsheltered Individuals to Ensure their Well-Being.
We strongly recommend appointing a county-wide executive-level position devoted to understanding and coordinating services for people experiencing homelessness including medical services, mental health services, substance use recovery services, social services, restroom services, sanitation services, and drug testing services. We recommend providing the following services:
Access to Medical Services: Increase investment in high-quality medical services, including mental health and substance use recovery services across homeless encampments, safe parking, and sanctioned encampment sites, such as the Valley Homeless Healthcare Program. We urge the County to provide regular access to quality health care directly on-site at all encampment, parking, shelter, and transitional housing locations. When specialty care is not possible to provide onsite, service providers should assist unhoused people with appointment scheduling, reminders, and transportation and/or accompaniment to appointments, as needed.
Increased Access to Social Services and Income Supports: Many unhoused people have difficulty accessing Social Services and Social Security to apply for benefits or remain in contact with these programs due to lack of transportation, a working phone, or internet connection. We recommend that Social Services Agency staff, or subcontractors provide directed outreach to encampments, safe parking sites, and sanctioned encampments to connect them with benefits that will help them to stabilize their lives and better care for their health.
Additionally, we recommend that our County expand its SSI Advocacy Program and its Guaranteed Basic Income Program.
Essential Services: To ensure that the health and dignity of our unhoused neighbors, all encampments, not only sanctioned sites, should be provided essential services including:
Regular garbage collection/sanitation services;
Potable water;
Handwashing stations;
Restrooms/Porta-potties; and
Fentanyl test kits and naloxone as harm reduction measures that save lives.
Meaningful Outreach/Housing Case Management: Homeless outreach should be coordinated across the County and conducted in a systematic manner. Outreach workers should be trauma-informed and culturally sensitive. Outreach teams should include mental health workers as well as people with lived experience with homelessness.
h. RECOMMENDATION: Increase staff dedicated to identifying and providing outreach to unhoused youth to better meet their needs.
Too many schools vest their responsibilities to provide McKinney-Vento Act services to children experiencing homelessness in a staff-member who juggles multiple duties. As a result, homeless students fall through the cracks. Cities should collaborate with school districts to leverage funding opportunities to provide more outreach and services to support this population. Specifically, we ask our cities to provide the following:
Funding to support school districts increasing staff who provide McKinney-Vento services;
Collaboration with school-based outreach efforts to identify unhoused youth who are not enrolled in school;
Partnerships with school districts to leverage public and private funding to increase mental health services available to youth experiencing homelessness at their school sites.
i. RECOMMENDATION: Approaches to housing placements and provision of services to people experiencing homelessness should factor in scientific findings and demographic data, as well as individualized assessments.
Currently our County relies heavily on use of the Vulnerability Index – Service Prioritization Decision Assistance Tool (VI-SPDAT) to prioritize providing housing placements for individuals experiencing homelessness. This tool weighs factors like older age, more time living outdoors, and medical conditions toward providing housing. From our observation as service providers working with this community, there are many people who have lived without shelter resourcefully for many years. In contrast, some who are younger and newly unhoused cannot find ways to meet their basic needs and may be at greater risk. Researchers in our community found that, “[u]nhoused people are dying significantly younger than the general population in the county. The average age at death for people who are homeless is 52 years” and many of those deaths are preventable.(6) We recommend that any approach to housing placements and provision of services take into consideration each individual’s unique circumstances and self-identified survival needs, rather than solely their VI-SPDAT score. We encourage decision-makers to partner with researchers in developing approaches based on findings from studies in our community.
Any data collected on unhoused people should include demographic breakdowns of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and gender to help identify disparities. Approaches to homelessness prevention, services, and rehousing should be tailored to overcome inequities using this data.
j. RECOMMENDATION: Shelter options should be non-congregate and no-barrier.
Individuals seeking shelter must be able to come as they are and bring their partners, pets, and possessions with them. They should be provided safe and secure places to store their belongings and for parking including for non-operational vehicles. Programs should not require abstinence from drugs or alcohol to be admitted. Programs should not have curfews. Staff members should have expertise in mental health, trauma informed care, and social work.
When developing new shelter options, decision-makers should prioritize intended residents' self-identified survival needs. Shelter options should not have time limits and should include active assistance finding permanent housing. Programs should be accessible to people living with disabilities and welcoming to people of all genders and sexual orientations. The unhoused community should be a part of any decision to expand shelter options in the city.
k. RECOMMENDATION: Do not penalize people who are unhoused with unaffordable fines, fees, and vehicle impoundments.
Local officials have an important duty to safeguard the wellbeing of their constituents who are unhoused while permanent housing opportunities are being developed. Citations, fines, and fees for so-called “quality of life” code violations further imperil people who are unhoused, making them unconscionable and counterproductive interventions to address homelessness. The cost of a single citation is unaffordable for most people who are unhoused. Additional fees can pile on when the person cannot pay the initial fine or cannot appear to contest the citation. Civil penalties can lead to collateral consequences such as poor credit, arrest warrants for failure to pay or appear, and driver’s license suspensions.(7) Such fines and fees foster increased stigma and discrimination against the status of homelessness.(8)
Towing vehicles and enforcing parking restrictions in ways that lead to impounding vehicles that people rely on for shelter is a particularly harmful approach to the issue of homelessness. The cost of retrieving a vehicle, (which typically includes all unpaid parking fees, towing fees, storage fees, and other administrative fees on top of the difficulty of getting to the tow yard without a car), can total thousands of dollars and is unaffordable for most people who are unhoused.(9) Tow yards dispose of unclaimed vehicles after a short period. People whose vehicular homes are towed can lose access to critical medications, identifying documents, clothes, and nearly everything they own in addition to their only shelter.
Punitive fines and fees are also fiscally irresponsible choices for local governments, which typically spend more money trying to enforce them than is ever recovered from the penalties themselves.(10) Towing programs drain public funds even faster because the cost of towing and impoundment typically totals thousands of dollars which frequently exceeds the proceeds the towing company gets from a lien sale of the vehicle.(11)
To prevent creating additional barriers to stable living for people who are unhoused and avoid wasting public funds, local officials should:
Restrict, by ordinance or binding administrative regulation or guidance, law enforcement’s discretion to issue citations for “quality of life” code violations to people who are unhoused or lack the ability to pay the fine.
Prohibit the towing or impoundment of vehicles being used for shelter.
Support or implement policies to suspend enforcement of parking restrictions, (including but not limited to the restriction on parking in one place longer than 72 hours), against vehicles being used for shelter that are not obstructing traffic.
Ensure there is an easily accessible mechanism to contest and clear citations for lack of ability to pay, particularly for people who are unhoused.
l. RECOMMENDATION: Make homelessness a protected status.
California must adopt legislation that protects people from discrimination on the basis of housing status and acknowledges their fundamental human rights. There are many ways the state can do this, but one straightforward way is to add housing status to the protected statuses recognized by California’s
existing anti-discrimination legislation.
m. RECOMMENDATION: End enforcement of laws that criminalize people for being unhoused and lacking access to services.
California lawmakers should:
1. repeal penal codes that do nothing but criminalize housing status and enable persecution of unhoused people; and
2. ensure that funding and grants for housing and services are contingent upon the decriminalization of housing status.
n. RECOMMENDATION: To eliminate homelessness, we must increase affordable housing supply. (See Housing Policy Recommendations)
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Endnotes
1. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/homeless-shelters/unsheltered-homelessness.html#facility-layout
2. https://osh.sccgov.org/sites/g/files/exjcpb671/files/2019%20SCC%20Homeless%20Census%20and%20Survey%20Exec%20Summary.pdf Although the Point-in-Time count was suspended throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of people experiencing unsheltered homelessness has only grown.
4. https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/santaclaracountycalifornia
5. [1] “Safe parking programs provide these households—many times families with children—a safe and secure nightly location to sleep in their vehicles free from harassment, criminalization, and fear of assault.” (https://www.bcsh.ca.gov/hcfc/documents/2021_heap_case_study1.pdf)
6. https://scuengineering.maps.arcgis.com/apps/dashboards/07dd614eee9a4a5caa7f09d5f7f7765c
7. Nat’l Law Ctr. on Homelessness and Poverty, Housing Not Handcuffs 50 (Dec. 2019), https://www.aclusocal.org/sites/default/files/outsidethelaw-aclufdnsca-report.pdf.
8. ACLU Founds. of Calif., Outside the Law 15–17 (Oct. 2021), https://www.aclusocal.org/sites/default/files/outsidethelaw-aclufdnsca-report.pdf.
9. W. Ctr. on Law and Poverty, Towed Into Debt 7–8 (Mar. 2019), https://wclp.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/TowedIntoDebt.Report.pdf.
10. Nat’l Law Ctr. on Homelessness and Poverty, Tent City, USA 33 (2017), https://homelesslaw.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Tent_City_USA_2017.pdf.
11. W. Ctr. on Law and Poverty, Towed Into Debt 14 (Mar. 2019), https://wclp.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/TowedIntoDebt.Report.pdf.