Marin County has budgeted fewer emergency shelter beds for the homeless this winter, but officials say the funds set aside will be sufficient to meet the need.
The amount of money budgeted, about $106,000 from the county’s general fund, is the same amount that was budgeted last year. This year, however, the money won’t go as far because homeless people can’t be housed in a congregate setting because of the coronavirus risk.
The previous two winters, the county’s plan called for housing the homeless at the Marin County Health and Wellness Campus at 3240 Kerner Blvd. in San Rafael. This year the county will pay for hotel rooms if weather conditions are deemed severe enough to warrant it.
“When we used a congregate setting, we had capacity for up to 80 people per night, and with the current criteria we have capacity for roughly 50 people,” said Ashley Hart-McIntyre, the county’s homelessness policy coordinator.
Hart-McIntyre said that over the last two winters the county has never sheltered more than 51 people in a single night.
“With the money budgeted,” she said, “we should be able to shelter more people than we have ever needed to shelter during a severe weather event.”
Last winter, Hart-McIntyre said, weather conditions never merited activating the emergency shelter program. The program has not been used so far this fall.
According to the county’s protocol, the shelter’s opening can be triggered by temperatures forecast below 45 degrees for two consecutive days with hazardous conditions such as more than an inch of rain each day, flash flood watches, wind chills or extreme temperature fluctuations, or by a single temperature forecast below 40 degrees with hazardous conditions.
The triggering protocol was adjusted slightly last year. During fiscal year 2018-19, activation of the emergency shelter required temperatures below an average nighttime low of 38 degrees forecast for a minimum of three days plus other threatening conditions such as heavy rain or gusting winds.
That year the county provided emergency shelter on six occasions. Hart-McIntyre said the fact that no emergency shelter was offered the following year was due to milder weather conditions, not the change in protocol.
As in past years, the county is contracting with Homeward Bound, which operates Marin’s only permanent homeless shelters, to run the emergency shelter program.
Homeward Bound provides the people being sheltered with an evening meal and breakfast. The nonprofit’s staff also provides overnight supervision in case there are any problems.
The homeless will all be housed at one hotel to allow for the supervision. Homeward Bound will wait until it is notified by the county that it is activating the program before booking the 50 rooms. It will receive 24 hours’ notice.
“It’s going to be a last-minute scramble,” said Paul Fordham, Homeward Bound’s deputy director.
Mary Kay Sweeney, Homeward Bound’s executive director, said she is confident there will be enough rooms available, given the decline in hotel business during the pandemic.
Nonprofits serving the homeless such as Ritter Center, St. Vincent de Paul Society of Marin and Community Action Marin will refer homeless people to the hotel being used. They will distribute bus vouchers to those who require transportation to get there.
The most recent biennial point-in-time count of Marin County’s homeless population, which was conducted in January 2019, reported 1,034 people experiencing homelessness in Marin, compared with 1,117 in January 2017, a decrease of more than 7%.
Hart-McIntyre said it is hard to gauge whether the number of homeless in the county has increased since the beginning of the pandemic.
“Homelessness is a lot more visible than it has been in the past,” Hart-McIntyre said.
But she said that might be because the homeless are congregating at more visible locations because they’re finding it more difficult to access services and resources.
“We anecdotally are seeing a big increase in calls for service,” she said.
Many of the calls are from families seeking shelter.
Hart-McIntyre said, “I’m concerned we’re going to see an uptick in homelessness when eviction protections expire.”
Marin County has sheltered 234 homeless residents during the pandemic through the state-funded Project Roomkey. With funding for the program ending, the county has found permanent housing for 45 Roomkey participants, and some type of emergency or other housing was found for 95 of the participants. At least 59, however, returned to life on the streets.
Homebound Bound normally has 135 beds, 80 at its New Beginnings Center in Novato and 55 at its Mill Street Center in San Rafael. But it is operating with 32 fewer beds currently because Mill Street is closed for renovations and because program participants have to be given more space to prevent coronavirus infection.
“We’ve had no COVID cases in any of our shelters,” Sweeney said.
She said Homeward Bound was able to find room for the 48 Project Roomkey participants because the county’s “housing first” initiative has been successful in finding permanent housing for so many Marin residents who have been chronically homeless.
Hart-McIntyre said the county has found permanent supportive housing for 298 people since the initiative began in October 2019, including 98 since March.
