Sonoma Overnight Support hopes to get $60,000 from county for winter shelter program

Behind-the-scenes negotiations brings Sonoma Overnight Support half of their requested winter funding, but Kathy King hopes the supervisors bridge the gap.|

Sonoma Overnight Support director Kathy King’s efforts to obtain county funding for its winter homeless shelter seem to have succeeded.

And that funding may come in spite of the county’s Community Development Commission’s insistence that the shelter is at odds with county, state and federal directives on providing services for the homeless.

The Commission had initially denied the winter shelter funds after SOS officials refused to adhere to county guidelines requiring shelters to adopt the “housing first” model, which stipulates the housing of homeless persons without them having to pass a drug screening.

But 1st District Supervisor Susan Gorin said this week that $30,000 in funding has been identified in the county budget for SOS to operate the winter shelter next December through March, funding that “will be included in the CDC budget coming forward in June.” The identification of the funds came after several meetings between SOS, CDC and Gorin’s office.

But it’s not the end of the crisis for SOS.

“Let’s work on the gap funding for next year and then meet after budgets to discuss this larger direction,” said Gorin. “These conversations are difficult, and there are no easy answers. Few jurisdictions have solved the issue of homelessness, for many different reasons.”

For the past several years, SOS has offered its winter shelter at the Sonoma Alliance Church on Watmaugh Road; it largely served overflow during the winter months when space wasn’t available at its small shelter, the Haven, on First Street West. The winter shelter program costs about $60,000 to operate, according to SOS officials, but about half of that cost has been deferred by a county grant of $30,000.

This year, however, when the Community Development Commission allocated more than $2.1 million for homeless support to multiple county agencies, Sonoma Overnight Support received none of it.

That determination, made at a March 13 CDC meeting and re-enforced at a follow-up meeting, drew the ire of SOS Executive Director King, who described herself as “flabbergasted” at the refusal. “I understand that Santa Rosa has a problem, there’s huge numbers of homeless there,” said King. “But does that make our homeless any less important?’”

On March 14, the Sonoma City Council voted to write a letter of support for SOS to the county Board of Supervisors, encouraging funding for SOS in general and the winter shelter program in particular. And in a series of meetings over the following weeks, the local and county agencies hammered out an agreement that led to the promise of $30,000 in one-time funds for the winter program.

Geoffrey Ross of the CDC said the county got more funding from HUD than anticipated. “It was these additional funds that allowed the CDC to recommend the SOS Emergency Winter Shelter to be funded at the same level as last year,” he said.

But talks continue to be strained between SOS and the CDC, largely because the CDC is reliant on state and even federal funding, from Housing and Urban Development. That funding is tied to a “housing first” model and a coordinated intake process.

The Housing First model is defined by HUD as “an approach to quickly and successfully connect individuals and families experiencing homelessness to permanent housing without preconditions and barriers to entry, such as sobriety, treatment or service participation requirements.”

King said SOS is willing to accept the more-open Housing First approach for winter shelter candidates, as it has for the past several years, but still refuses to accept those standards for overnight residents at the Haven, where sobriety is required and local homeless are prioritized.

Another small Sonoma County shelter, Wallace House Community Services in Cloverdale, also refuses the Housing First requirements and, like SOS, has not applied for county funding dependent upon it.

So the SOS budget continues to be strained. So much so, that King has distributed a form letter to local nonprofits, civic groups, church congregations and others asking the Board of Supervisors to match the reluctant CDC grant with another $30,000 from county discretionary funds.

If approved, those county grants would bring county support up to the $60,000 level that SOS originally asked for its winter shelter program. But the philosophical differences between the Sonoma Valley shelter and the county Community Development Commission remain.

Gorin remains cautious about promising too much from county funds.

“CDC and I will talk about how to consider this request and perhaps outreach to SOS to understand their budgeting needs, including a review of the last few years of their budgets and operations,” Gorin told the Index-Tribune in an email.

Gorin also promised an upcoming “needs analysis” to study the Valley homeless population, identify gaps in service and work on “expanding effective services in the Valley that do conform to the requirements of CDC and HUD.” She said she would convene a meeting in July or August “to begin the analysis and community discussion.”

Contact Christian at christian.kallen@sonomanews.com.

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