The Boulder Model & Update on Berkeley

Greetings!

Berkeley Update
Here's info about what happened in Berkeley.
Adrienne


The two legal papers , a Complaint and also a Memorandum of Points and Authorities were filed on Oct 26 in U.S. District Court for Northern California.  On Oct. 31, a judge denied the temporary injunction but said the case could go forward.

Then, a few of the campers moved to city hall, others moved to Aquatic Park and the camp was emptied.  Below are the newspaper articles.

JUDGE SAYS BART CAN EVICT BERKELEY'S "HERE - THERE" ENCAMPMENT THIS WEEK

The homeless encampment at the “Here There” sculpture in South Berkeley could be disbanded later this week, per a Tuesday federal court order. Judge William Alsup in San Francisco denied the encampment’s request for immediate protection from eviction, but ruled that BART, which owns the land, must give the group a 72-hour warning before kicking the campers out.

The order came a couple hours after the Tuesday morning hearing, but Alsup indicated in court that he would deny the motion for preliminary injunction.

“Judges are sworn to uphold the law,” he said, apologetically, to the homeless residents and supporters in the room. “I wish sometimes the law was more generous to the poor than it already is.”

Although initial relief was not granted, the “Here There” group’s lawsuit, which alleges that BART and the city of Berkeley are violating the campers’ civil rights by forcing them onto the streets, will go forward. Alsup asked both parties to provide him with more information about the campers’ backgrounds and the other options available to them in Berkeley.

Read the entire article here: http://www.berkeleyside.com/2017/10/31/judge-says-bart-can-evict-berkeleys-homeless-camp-week/

BERKELEY HOMELESS CAMP MOVES FROM "HERE THERE" SITE TO OLD CITY HALL
Some other campers who left the Here There site on Adeline Street this weekend moved to Aquatic Park. The group, which considers itself a protest camp and has gone by the names First They Came for the Homeless and the Poor Tour, is splitting in half based on who is able to continue protesting, members said. For the past 11 months, the 20-30 members camped together at the Here There site which is on the Berkeley-Oakland border.
http://www.berkeleyside.com/2017/11/04/berkeley-homeless-camp-moves-site-old-city-hall/








Boulder, Colorado
Sonoma County's ahead of Boulder in many of the changes they are proposing to remodel their homeless system, ahead of them and facing the same problems in implementation.  The Boulder City Council approved their new “Strategic Framework: Emergency Homeless Services & Systems Analysis in June.

It follows the same general concepts we are trying here (coordinated entry, VI--SPDAT, Housing First). It has the same flaws -- not enough money and high expectations of getting people into permanent housing without investment in building new units or having many vacancies in the community.   They have not ended homelessness and don't claim to have even decreased it yet.

They have about 1/2 the number of homeless people as we do in Santa Rosa.

NOTES

-- Coordinated entry with use of VI-SPDAT  (Mention of Housing First).

-- Add 5 new units of permanent supportive housing yearly, 10 in the county at large plus 20 new units of "rapid rehousing" and 50 such units in the county.

--Coordinate County/City with a central oversight group "Homeless Systems Management Executive Board."

-- Using statistics of people in shelter/transitional housing and the January Homeless Census, they try to get better numbers than the Census alone.

-- They talk about Data-Heavy system but are weak in knowing what that is or what it will entail to get one going.

--Get housing for the people who use the shelters most often and make room for people who use shelter beds infrequently.*

--They hope to add more housing units and decrease need for shelter.  But right now, they only have 100 shelter beds and 165 transitional beds for a homeless population of over 2,000.  In 6 years they want to decrease their shelter demand from 177 to 89.  The numbers don't make a lot of sense.

--They want to divert 1200 people from becoming homeless and are looking at a Seattle model.  No figures about how successful that was.  They don’t talk about how they will fund this.

--They are looking for a data management system and considering HMIS or OneHome.  (Someone should tell them how poor HMIS is.)

--They say Napa is a good example they are following, but Napa has no figures of success.

Exhibit B is a criticism of the rest of the paper and it's pretty spot on.  The overall plan makes unsubstantiated claims, doesn't have the money to make the changes and will take more time and effort to put in place than is shown.

------------------

*"...only about 20% of the emergency shelter population is using over 80% of the capacity and resources.  The completed local data mapping efforts confirmed that about 80% of individuals utilizing emergency shelter were averaging 8 nights per year or less in shelter, while about 20% of individuals accounted for the heaviest shelter utilization, with the highest users averaging more than 190 nights in shelter per year."

(This is not what I would expect to find in Sonoma County, but it's a question I've never asked.) Perhaps some of this is "tourist" homeless, people who leave Boulder like many other tourists do, after a short stay.  Or perhaps their data is off.

Adrienne

 Here's the link to the Report from Boulder https://www-static.bouldercolorado.gov/docs/CSH_Boulder_report_FINAL-1-201705191621.pdf?_ga=2.93461725.1955339703.1508938161-946718128.1472696759