Santa Paula Project HOPE
By Sheryl Hamlin
While all eyes are focused on the visit of Pope Francis to the United States, whose message of “hope” to the poor and downtrodden has been the hallmark of his tenure, the city of Santa Paula’s own Project HOPE is moving forward.
After the invocation by Reverend Michelle McGhee, Mayor Procter called on Deacon Al Guilin of San Sebastian Church and Audrey Vincent from the Universalist Unitarian Church of Santa Paula to explain Project Hope: Helping Our Community Progress Efficiently. Vice Mayor Hernandez, who is the council liaison to Project HOPE, prefaced the talk with a description of the tireless work of the committee.
Audrey Vincent and Deacon Al Guilin
Deacon Guilin started by saying that society in general has not found a solution for homelessness and he thanked the city for taking the lead in this “vexing controversy” with some unity. He explained a three-pronged plan based on a model of 80% compassion and 20% enforcement used by Sheriff Joe Preciado, a native of Santa Paula, now in Camarillo, whose work became a template for Project HOPE.
Deacon Guilin then introduced Audrey Vincent who said the scope of the problem is huge and has been a learning experience.
From the Mission Statement:
- Provide life sustainable options for homeless
- Bring the community together collaboratively to help the homeless
- Help homeless move toward a more stable and hopeful future
The model of Project HOPE includes three purposes:
- Offering homeless life sustainable options
- Find proper placement for homeless people
- Establish policies and procedures for law enforcement and City of Santa Paula code enforcement to use as a guide to handle various calls for service when dealing with homeless in the field
To these goals, they first try to separate homeless not engaged in criminal activity from others and “learn the faces” of the homeless as this story from the American Counseling Association describes. Each person is unique and the help he or she may need is unique.
Santa Paula Project Hope’s immediate goals are bold:
- Identify and create a list of homeless people in the City of Santa Paula and determine, if possible, the areas they most frequent.
- Identify and link together community stakeholders and various participants who are willing to contribute to the collaborative effort.
- Research evidence-based models and/or plans currently being used throughout the country that address homeless.
- Identify and link together any available immediate services for Medical and Mental Health Issues
- Identify and link together proper Penal and Municipal Codes needed to aid in the enforcement of vagrant behavior. Also, identify and link together protocol designed to support collaboration with agencies working with homeless people.
- Identify and link together a list of options (a guide or manual) for patrol officers when dealing with homeless people/situations in the City of Santa Paula.
- Create a pamphlet or guide for homeless services available in the Santa Paula area (and also Ventura County).
- Look for ways to help speed up the process of setting up “Under one Roof” , part of the Continuum of Care (CofC).
Ms. Vincent commended Officer Daniel Gosselin of the Santa Paula Police Department who was “volunteered” to help with the homeless and has embraced the assignment compassionately, Kay Wilson-Bolton who has worked with homeless for eight years, and Pam Marshall, herself once homeless, who chairs the committee.
Ms. Vincent said that the customized approach to the solution makes the task even more difficult and more time consuming. Each person essentially requires a case worker. She said “we have just begun” and invited the community to attend their meetings on the third Thursday at the Community Center.
Questions from council:
Council Member Gherardi asked what percentage of the homeless population is not ready to receive help. Chief McLean was called to answer this, who said “the majority” were not ready. Most don’t want help, he said, they don’t like rules. Council Member Gherardi said it is essential to differentiate between those who commit crimes from those who do not commit crimes.
Council Member Tovias asked about prioritizing homeless people with children. Deacon Guilin said this is most problematic in the summer, when people move from one place to another sleeping in halls, porches, essentially homeless although sleeping under a roof.
Council Member Crosswhite asked to differentiate between “traditionally” homeless versus homeless students as classified by the school district. Deacon Guilin said they are focused on the “30 some people identified as living in the open”, but they need to take a look at these people too because they are one day away from being homeless. This is not unique to Santa Paula and the county has not come up for a winter shelter, he said.
Vice Mayor Hernandez explained that the information pamphlet is ready to the printer summarizing services for the homeless. Officers can hand this out when they come in contact with homeless. This will also be shared with the school district. He mentioned the Ventura Continuum of Care (CofC), a HUD, program, with over $2 million for shelters, long term preferable will be deploying these funds. The Board of Supervisors is planning to work with Ventura and Oxnard to participate in the CofC, but Santa Paula could also ask to be part of this program. The county is creating an assessment tool for each person’s needs to be managed and shared but only about 30 people in the system to date. He mentioned a list of 26 people in Santa Paula’s Project HOPE.
New York has been the epicenter of homelessness. Who could forget those pictures of Joyce Brown, a homeless woman, mentally ill, who refused help and was forcibly committed to an institution and later released because she was not a danger to society. Also in New York was the case of Robert Callahan, a homeless alcoholic, who died on the streets; his death cased the Supreme Court of New York to rule that homeless have a right to shelter.
According to this article, California and Florida have the highest concentrations of homelessness in the United States. Some conclude that the weather allows people to live on the streets, while others say homeless has been exacerbated by housing policy, such as the zoning out of existence of Single Room Occupancy Hotels (SRO) through gentrification.
San Francisco’s 6th street was once lined from Market Street to the train tracks with substandard housing like the Hugo Hotel and as that supply diminished, the homeless scattered. In Los Angeles, with an area vastly larger than anywhere else in California, the homeless situation has been recently declared a “crisis” and the city council has approved $100 million toward homelessness. How did the LA homeless situation grow? One person at a time without work, without a roof and without hope as real estate values escalated and the job market stagnated.
The State of Utah has documented its seminal homeless program in this article. The idea is simple: “no questions asked” and “no strings attached” are the center of this program. Build low cost units and find homeless who want them. They claim success. This approach is similar to the themes of the food distribution efforts in Santa Paula: no strings, just a meal or a bag of food.
The United States has declared that it will accept 10,000 Syrian refugees over the next fiscal year. Where will they live? How will they work without language or cultural skills? If the U.S. can mobilize the social services to house and feed 10,000 Syrian refugees, then there must be tangential services that can be applied to the existing homeless population.
Project Hope has taken on a noble, but sisyphean task. Like the gangs, we cannot arrest our way out of this problem. Finding brave individuals like Sheriff Joe Preciado and the members of Project HOPE who look for solutions one person at a time is a blessing. Creating an army of hope is essential.
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For more information about the author, visit sheryhamlin.com
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