CityofSantaBarbara
By the City of Santa Barbara
For the first time ever, the City will have the presence of a homeless outreach team during the evening and weekend hours in the Downtown Corridor and along the Waterfront. The City will also be continuing its commitment to provide homeless outreach, case management, and housing navigation services throughout the entire City during weekday hours. On Tuesday, the City Council approved a new contract with City Net to provide these expanded services given their proven track record and responsiveness to both the needs of our unsheltered population as well as the concerns of residents, business owners and visitors.
City Councilman Mike Jordan said he was happy to see the expanded hours because it will fill a gap in service after hours. “I’m glad we are going where we are going today because the impacts don’t follow a normal workday, so I’m appreciative,” Councilman Jordan said. He also suggested that City staff review the program’s achievements at the six-month mark to decide on whether to expand the night and weekend hours to other areas of the City.
Councilman Eric Friedman also supported an early review of the program prior to expanding outreach locations.
“There are challenges throughout the City, and this action today is by no means minimizing those, it’s actually expanding a program to see how it works and then if we need to, we can evaluate on expanding it to other parts of town,” Councilman Friedman said.
Robin Elander, Executive Director of Downtown Organization, said she was pleased to see the expanded service levels. “This is an absolute critical service to enhance, not only services for individuals experiencing homelessness to get through the systems but to enhance the economic vitality of our beloved downtown district,” Elander said.
City Net has established relationships with local government agencies and nonprofit service providers supporting a collaborative approach that has yielded positive, measurable outcomes both throughout the county and with its efforts in Santa Barbara.
In Santa Barbara over the last year, City Net has assisted in permanently housing 22 individuals, enrolled 100 clients in case management, achieved 57 street exits, and made unduplicated outreach to 712 individuals.
The scope of services of the contract approved on Tuesday includes locating, identifying, and building relationships with unsheltered people to provide immediate support, intervention, de-escalation, and connections with homeless assistance programs, mainstream medical and mental/behavioral health and social services, and housing programs. In addition, the new contract includes evening and weekend street outreach from 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. along the Downtown and Waterfront areas from Thursday to Sunday.
The City has contracted with City Net since 2019 and issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) in late 2022 when that agreement was set to expire. Evenings and weekend hours were identified as an area of need and included in the RFP. City Net submitted a proposal meeting all criteria. The $450,000 agreement is for one year with an option to renew for a second year, using Permanent Local Housing Allocation funds.
Nothing I said is untrue. The City of Santa Barbara, a municipality thats main fuction and responsibility is for public service (PD/FD), Water/Sewer, Roads and infrastructure under the roads (rotting water and sewer lines), and Parks… NOT SOCIAL WELFARE. That is filled by the State and now, the County. The City of Santa Barbara has spent at least 1.5 MILLION on Homeless INC for the last 35 years, and NOTHING has changed. Drug use is way up which creates people losing jobs, homes and families- The broken result is for all to see. The State has NO ANSWERS other than throw money at this epidemic. Unless there is FORCED Rehab, and after that, work programs / THEN housing, nothing will change.
Other Cities should send their vagrants to SB for the social services, food, foot massage’s and if you wait long enough, an apartment in Santa Barbara, The American Riviera….
ZERO – don’t bother. Just typical selfish conservative thinking. Screw everyone else. All they need is some bootstraps and gumption and they can be rich too, right?
Coast – I really wish we knew who you are. I’m guessing some old rich white dude on the upper east – or broke dude with a 20 year old pick up with some trump/pence bumper sticker.
May we trade you for them?
More like he retired early on a bloated city/county pension funded by our tax dollars and then likes to complain about tax dollars.