Jarrod Zinn
SANTA MARIA, Calif. (KEYT) – The Santa Barbara County Board Of Supervisors received an update on homelessness during yesterday’s monthly meeting in Santa Maria.
Recent statistics show what’s working and what’s not.
The prevalence of people experiencing homelessness over the last 2 years appears to be sustaining at levels improved from 3 to 5 years previous.
“It’s not growing and it’s, you know, it’s not dropping as quickly as we’d like,” says Joe Dzvonik, Santa Barbara County’s Housing And Community Development director. “It’s kind of stable, not only overall but even regionally.”
Homelessness saw peak levels during the 2023 studies.
“During the pandemic, emergency funding and eviction moratoriums acted as a dam, keeping vulnerable households stabilized,” said Jett Black-Maertz, with Santa Barbara County Homeless Assistance, from the podium on Tuesday. “When those supports ended, there was an influx of people falling out of housing and entering the system for the first time.”
Then in 2024, governor Newsom ordered encampments to be cleaned out statewide.
“We got homelessness stabilized to a certain extent, perhaps we’ve hit a plateau, so to speak,” says Dzvonik.
The data presented at Tuesday’s meeting reflects mentionable improvements in the homelessness response system, and notes areas where improvements are still needed.
“It’s an annual update,” says Dzvonik. “We try to basically update the board on like multiple issues dealing to kind of deal with homelessness from a variety of viewpoints.”
The subject of vehicular homelessness received significant discussion at Tuesday’s meeting acknowledging that, while strictly prohibited in Santa Barbara County, many are choosing to live in their cars due to unaffordable housing.
“The folks that answered the question, ‘Do you want to get into housing again?’ Some of them said, ‘No, I am fully committed to just remaining in my vehicle because I’ve adjusted to it.’” says Dzvonik. “We’re not equipped to handle that answer.”
Future efforts are being centralized under the county’s new Homelessness Alliance: Response And Prevention (HARP) initiative.
“We just wanted to kind of get a sense of, do they think we were heading in the right direction with something like HARP, and I think the answer was resoundingly yes,” says Dzvonik. “We’re just determined to make sure that we don’t meet a status quo, you know, that we’re satisfied with. We know there’s a lower level of homelessness in our community that we can reach. It just hasn’t occurred to us how to do that yet. But it’s starting to.”
HARP is developing a centralized data hub so separate agencies and departments can better coordinate homelessness response.
The Latest Breaking News, Weather Alerts, Sports and More Anytime On Our Mobile Apps. Keep Up With The Latest Articles by Signing Up for the News Channel 3-12 Newsletter.
Click here to follow the original article.
