Board of Supervisors — 2019-06-18

Yeah. Okay. Music you Is this on? Okay. Good morning, I'd like to call this meeting of the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors to order. Madam Clerk can we get a roll call please?

Mr. Adam? Mr Williams? Here. Mr Hart? Here Ms Hartman? Here. Mr Lavenino?

Ready? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United

States of America All

right,

can I get a motion to approve the minutes for the June 4th meeting? So moved. All those in favor? Aye. Anybody opposed? Okay how about a motion to move the minutes of June 11th?

So moved.

Moved and seconded, all those in favor? Aye. Anybody opposed? Passes unanimously. Do we have any changes to the agenda this morning?

Yes, Chair Lavinino and members of the board I do have a couple announcements to make this morning. We posted an addendum to the agenda on Friday to amend closed session to include conference with legal counsel anticipated litigation paragraph 4 of subdivision D of government code section 54956.9 deciding whether to initiate civil litigation one case And I do have an announcement to make on item A-28, and this is from Human Resources. Is to consider recommendations regarding a performance based salary adjustment for county council pursuant to government code section 54953C3 which became effective in 2017. I'm summarizing that the administrative agenda item A 28 recommends a 2.5% performance based salary increase for county council. If approved, that would be an annual salary of $234,849.

And finally my last announcement for this morning is a correction on our agenda on page 32 we are adjourning to Tuesday July 2nd not in Santa Maria but in Santa Barbara and that's all my announcements this morning

I think Supervisor Adams said you already printed it. We got to be in San Marino, right? Sorry. Okay, all right very good. With no CEO's report we're going to move on to resolutions. Can I get a motion to approve? Well let's take item four. I think there's one of our board members. So why don't you read item A4 in please.

Chair Lavinino, members of the board. Administrative item number four sponsored by Supervisor Lavinino is to adopt a resolution in support of HR 2199, the Central Coast Heritage Protection Act.

I just need roll call. So why don't we do a roll call on A4 and then we'll go back and do our honorary resolutions? Motion to approve Item A4.

So moved.

Moved and seconded. Roll call, please?

Mr. Adam?

No.

Mr. Williams? Aye. Mr. Hart? Aye. Ms. Hartman? Aye Chair Lavenino? Aye Motion passes 4 to 1.

Okay thank you can I get a motion to approve resolutions A1 through A3 please

Second

All those in favor aye anybody opposed great these does pass unanimously let's go to A1 place

Chair Lavinino and members of the board, administrative item number one is sponsored by Supervisor Lavinino. It is to adopt a resolution of accommodation honoring Vanessa Escobar of the Probation Department as the June 2019 Employee of the Month in Santa Barbara County. And if Vanessa can come to the podium? Whereas Vanessa Escobar began her career with Santa Barbara County in 2012 as a financial office professional, FOP1. With the probation department and the fiscal unit she was flexed to an FOP2 in 2013 and promoted to a senior FOP in 2018. And whereas Vanessa has served the department commendably from the day she was hired is always approachable undertakes assignments with enthusiasm And provides exceptional customer service as a team member on important projects, such as the development of the annual realignment plan.

Where she assists with the formatting, develops charts and oversees contract budgets. And whereas Vanessa is not shy in asking questions, pointing out inconsistencies, requesting verifications. Has kept the management team aware of contract timelines, developed a contracts training for internal stakeholders. And is currently training fiscal unit staff to manage contracts with the highest level of diligence and detail that is the hallmark of her work. And whereas Vanessa serves as Renew 22 ambassador, a role in which she excels and in which she has the opportunity to share her passion with other members of the department and county family. And whereas Vanessa delivers this exceptional level of service, all while attending the University of La Verne earning a bachelor's degree in business administration earlier this month.

As well as being the proud mother to daughter Mila who takes after her ambitious mother by excelling at sports such as karate, volleyball, basketball, softball and track. As well as her involvement in her school student government. Now therefore be it hereby ordered and resolved that this Board of Supervisors recognizes Vanessa Escobar as the employee of the month for June 2019. Passed and adopted today.

Good morning Chair, Supervisors. I'm Tanya Heitman, Chief Probation Officer. I want to thank you for the opportunity to recognize Senior Financial Office Professional Vanessa Escobar. As the resolution indicated, Vanessa is an exceptional member of the probation team. Colin Powell once said If you're going to achieve excellence in big things, you develop the habit in little matters. Excellence is not an exception, it's a prevailing attitude.

Vanessa has a prevailing attitude of excellence. She has consistently demonstrated her skill set and quality work as well as her positive attitude. No matter the size of the assignment, level of responsibility or seeming importance, Vanessa commits herself fully to it. She takes on every task no matter how big or small with the same commitment to excellence.

The more opportunities she has to demonstrate her skills and abilities, the more sought after as a project team member she is becoming. I've been able to quietly watch her development over the last couple of years and have consistently been impressed with how well she manages the many demands on her time and the quality of her work, but also how she adapts to circumstances and chooses to make the best of situations that might have caused others to falter.

Vanessa is most deserving to be recognized as Santa Barbara County's Employee of the Month. Congratulations, Vanessa!

Thank you, Chief. I'll be very brief. Good morning supervisors. I am honored and grateful to be here today. I would like to thank the probation department their executive team and the Board of Supervisors for this recognition. I would like to thank my mother and my daughter for their patience understanding continued support and encouragement Lastly, I would like to acknowledge my coworker friend and mentor accountant supervisor Ben Meza who has led and guided me through this complex interesting and fun thing called governmental accounting.

Thank you

All right, so that takes us to our honorary resolutions.

got better, how many people no longer need the services? How many people got jobs? How many people are no longer on disability? Those are the performance measures we're looking for. And I can't tell you, I've been doing this for 28 years. I can't tell you the last time I saw the Board of Supervisors actually go through the meaningful performance measures. Not how many we serve, because that seems to be the meaningful measure for staff.

We have 20 something thousand people that use the county health clinic as their primary care physician. That's not a good measurement. Good measurement is people got jobs and they have health insurance and are using the private sector for their healthcare. And so I would ask you once again to start pulling these things out of the admin calendar, put them on a departmental and flush out the details. I sent you a column, I'm interviewing Ed Ring today from the California Public Policy Center.

He wrote a thing called the Homeless Industrial Complex. And I actually saw this, I testified in Santa Maria which I rarely do a week or so ago and there was this super inflated cost for affordable housing. It was just off the charts is how much they were charging per unit. And again, this stuff bears scrutiny and it's one of the main reasons that tax payers want you sitting where you're sitting. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other requests to speak from the public?

Chair Lavinino, members of the board we have no further requests to speak.

Okay, we'll close out public comment portion of our meeting. We'll move to our departmental agenda. Can you read departmental agenda item number one please?

Chair Lavinino, members of the board. Departmental item number one is from Community Services. It is a hearing to consider recommendations regarding the 2019 phase 1 community action plan to address homelessness in Santa Barbara County

Morning, Mr. Chapchin. Good morning Chair Lavignino and members of the board. I'm going to introduce Dinah Lockhart who is our Deputy Director for Housing and Community Development. She'll make a presentation on the Phase 1 Homeless Plan. This is part of one of two. Phase 2 will be much more in-depth. This was a plan that was needed for the No Place Like Home grant so staff rushed it and pulled some of this together but again this is Phase 1 of 2 so Phase 2 will be coming to you soon as well.

Good morning Chair Lavanino and members of the Board of Supervisors. The Housing and Community Development Division of the Community Services Department partnered with the Department of Behavioral Wellness to complete the first phase of a regional community planning effort to address homelessness in Santa Barbara County. The State of California's No Place Like Home timeline prompted us to split the planning process into two phases.

As we begin today, I would like to express our sincere gratitude to all those who participated in the planning process and for all the stakeholders, service providers and community members who are part of addressing homelessness on a daily basis in our region. This morning we're asking the board to receive and file the staff report and adopt phase one of the plan, including the five key strategies.

While the plan will not be complete until Phase 2 is drafted and finalized, adopting Phase 1 allows the county to continue to pursue additional funding resources for which adoption may be required and provides a solid framework for the county to address the housing and homelessness crisis while the planning effort continues. The county contracted with Homebase, the Center for Common Concerns to facilitate and draft phase one of the planning effort.

An environmental scan of housing and homelessness was conducted with review of current HUD consolidated plans including all the incorporated cities ordinances that may seek to criminalize homelessness various data sources and progress on housing unit development The community-based process included input from over 140 persons from agencies, faith based organizations, law enforcement, elected officials, health care providers, consumers and housing developers that represented over 60 groups and stakeholders. Three larger meetings, numerous interviews and surveys were conducted in phase one.

The goals of the Community Action Plan are as follows. To identify needs, establish strategies to address those needs, build and enhance partnerships, to guide parties in a common direction, to discuss the metrics performance measures, to track progress, to ensure compliance with multiple funding streams and to provide a building block for phase two planning.

While Phase 1 does provide a look at the characteristics of homelessness in Santa Barbara County, we are looking forward to a more complete and accurate view in Phase 2 from recently compiled data including the 2019 point-in time count, the first year of consumer assessments through the Coordinated Entry System and significant improvements in data quality and completeness from the Homeless Management Information System.

This slide represents an annual look at the official point in time count data submitted to the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The county conducts an unsheltered point-in-time count every other year, the odd numbered years. So the variations on the even years are only representative of fluctuations in the sheltered population. The overall number of homeless persons has remained quite consistent since 2013 In 2011 and 2012, the county was benefiting from a surge in federal funding to prevent homelessness and rapidly rehoused individuals that were falling out of the housing market post-recession and early recovery years.

The blue and orange columns together represent all homeless populations, the orange showing the count of persons experiencing chronic homelessness Chronic homelessness, per HUD's definition means that an individual or family has a permanent disabling condition that impacts their ability to live independently and has been literally homeless for at least 12 months.

The 2019 PIT data shows the chronic homeless population in Santa Barbara County at approximately 423 persons. 423 is consistent with current HMIS and Coordinated Entry data as contrasted to the lower numbers reported in 2017 and 2018. The lower numbers are primarily the result of data collection issues in those years. This chart shows trends from the 2013-2017 point in time counts for several subpopulations Year over year variations are not statistically significant.

The lower numbers of persons with chronic substance abuse issues, severe mental illness and chronic homelessness are primarily due to data collection issues in 2017 and are not reflected of the actual incidence of cases in the community. This is another view of 2017 point-in-time count data for subpopulations, including unaccompanied youth and domestic violence.

Phase two will include a more holistic view of the homeless data with less reliance on point in time count. And again I just wanted to point out that this is self reported data at a snapshot in time so it's likely that this data is an undercount of the actual presence of these subpopulations in the community. The smaller chart on the left reflects 2015 data required for state funding sources, where the best source of data available to capture the history of incarceration and victimization by violence or trauma was from the 2015 point in time count.

As these questions were posed to participants by survey that year. The larger chart represents disabling conditions as reported at intake into the Homeless Management Information System for 2018. The Phase 1 plan introduces five strategies. Each strategy is described with some background and detail in the plan narrative. The executive summary includes activities in progress and activities to be initiated, some of which have been initiated since the plan was drafted.

The first strategy is to increase safe and affordable housing. The Homeless Emergency Aid Program projects are beginning implementation now. The first HEAP capital project to provide housing to four transitional aged youth closed escrow on Friday. The cumulative HEAP impact is to serve 965 households and permanently house 326. The County is still waiting for agreements from the State of California for the California Emergency Solutions and Housing Program, called CESH.

Both public housing authorities are actively leasing up households for mainstream housing choice vouchers with a preference for persons experiencing homelessness. Between the City of Santa Barbara and County Housing Authorities, well over 230 households experiencing homelessness have moved into affordable housing with vouchers in the past nine months. The biggest barrier to more vouchers being utilized is finding a suitable apartment or housing unit.

Even with these successes, the need for adequate funding for supportive services and development or acquisition of permanent housing units is tremendous. Over 1,495 households have been assessed and are on the Coordinated Entries By Name list in needing permanent housing intervention now. The second key strategy is the best practices to deliver tailored supportive services to meet individual needs.

A series of trainings are underway now and will continue over the next several months. Dr. Sam Sambaras will be training on Housing First tomorrow at the Santa Ynez Marriott, and this will be the first of five trainings funded by the Homeless Emergency Aid Program through a grant to the Northern Santa Barbara County United Way. Homelessness is a tangled narrative of a lack of housing affordability, trauma, abuse, loss, physical and mental illness, loneliness, addiction and paralyzing poverty Trauma-informed care and other effective, evidence-based interventions are critical for all who are coming in contact and assisting persons living on the streets, in vehicles, and in shelters.

Training and staff clinical development is essential to effective intervention. The third strategy is to build a collective action plan and to improve data sharing. The County Executive Office is convening the Homeless Interagency Policy Council, composed of department directors who are addressing homelessness. The policy council has an aggressive work plan for 2019-20 that aligns closely with these Phase 1 strategies.

Limited data sharing or open HMIS has been implemented in the system. There is a critical need for all agencies providing any form of shelter or housing dedicated to homeless persons, to participate in HMIS. That is how we're going to improve bed coverage. High bed coverage rates, or the beds covered by the HMIS system allow the database to provide a full view of the system for your board, the continuum of care and stakeholders.

The complexity of each case requires coordination across multiple departments, agencies and staff. The fourth key strategy is to strengthen the support system available to help residents obtain and maintain housing. Santa Barbara County needs activities that when homelessness is imminent, we can prevent a household from losing their home. There is a need for flexible funding sources that can be used quickly for those who may have less complex challenges, that may just need a security deposit or light-touch case management to successfully reenter housing.

The Coordinated Entry System has been operating for 18 months and it is providing valuable information about the gaps and challenges to obtaining housing and the lack of adequate comprehensive services to maintain housing. The fifth and final strategy is to build provider capacity to address the needs of specific populations. There are many subpopulations among individuals and families experiencing homelessness This is not a complete list, but demonstrates the diversity and challenges of developing a system that can immediately address a housing crisis by providing safety to a victim of domestic violence and find an affordable apartment for a fixed income senior who lost her home because of a large rent increase.

A wide variety of approaches must be functional and effective in the crisis response system of care to address all types of homelessness and subpopulations. So what happens next? Phase two will be an extension of phase one strategies. County HCD is in the process with contracting with a consultant to facilitate and complete the regional planning effort, or phase two of the plan.

A more holistic look at all of the data sources tracking homelessness is already underway. New funding sources are being implemented and identified A strategic planning lead group will form this summer. Phase two regional planning process will include additional community meetings, cost analysis and many summits for city and county elected officials to be involved in priority setting.

The collective action component is central to maximizing impact and resources. In summary, the board is being asked to receive and file the staff report and adopt phase one of the plan including the five key strategies discussed. And while the plan will not be complete until phase two is drafted and finalized adopting phase one allows for the county to pursue additional funding resources for which adoption of the plan may be required And provides a solid framework for the county to address housing and homeless crisis while the regional planning effort continues.

Thank you, staff is available to answer any questions you might have.

Okay, thank you very much. Questions from the board or staff? Supervisor Williams.

Well I love how comprehensive this is but boil it down You know, is it true that the main thing that we are lacking in order to make progress is available housing? So I think it's good when we have a presentation that is this comprehensive to bring it back What's the hard part, right? Like what can we do that our partners and our county staff aren't already doing.

And while our partners and our staff are trying to build housing there's not enough. So hopefully your presentation today I think helps galvanize us and We need more projects and we need them in every district in the

county. Chair and Supervisor Williams, I agree that the key to The majority of this problem is the creation of housing, and I think to the extent that the board can help to facilitate the development of that housing is greatly appreciated even by our affordable housing providers. It's really a partnership Where the county comes forward with its resources, housing providers leverage those resources very effectively.

We've had a couple proposals come before the board very recently. The West Cox development for example, the Depot Street Apartments, many of those projects are leveraging low income housing tax credits. This is a way of actually having private investors invest in these projects. They get a tax write-off when they invest in these projects, so we're leveraging local dollars quite effectively but it takes a lot of work and I think to the extent that the county can assist in whatever way is greatly appreciated

And I guess the reason why that is, because you and our partners have helped built up. A an outreach system and a mental health and support system that if there is housing, then it's not like they're on their own. Right? That it's the reason why housing first in this context would work is not because just because there's housing but because there's already this network built up ready for people to be

housed. I referenced the training tomorrow and it's going to be available, the morning session is available for policy makers through the funders collaborative that the Northern Santa Barbara County United Way puts on quarterly so that morning session is for stakeholders and then in the afternoon it's going to drill down to the actual homeless and service providers and provide some real hands-on training on Housing First. It's considered best practices, it's one of the strategies that has been proven in other areas of the country where you provide housing to homeless individuals and households first And then you're able to address a lot of the other issues that those families are experiencing, whether it's trauma, mental illness, physical disability, substance abuse.

But many of those very difficult problems can't be treated very effectively in the street or in shelters. They have to be provided a safe place. But the challenge in a very tight housing market is finding those units, finding landlords who are willing to rent to these households. We're getting housing vouchers so the rent is not so much of an issue but in a seller's market where landlords don't have to take Section 8 it's very difficult to find landlords who are willing to participate and I think to the extent that our service providers have housed as many families as they have I have two questions. One is about what's the timeline for the open HMIS system?

So HMIS is open now, and in my presentation I talk about limited openness because providers have to sign what is called an MOU or Memorandum of Understanding with the county because there are a number of protocols that must be in place in order for the data to be shared from the provider and then back to discuss individual clients in the system. So once that MOU is signed between the provider and the county, then we can begin to kind of open up the data so that there's that data sharing.

It's limited in the sense that it's not available to anyone serving the homeless community. There are a number of providers in the community that serve homeless clients. They're not participating in HMIS and doing outreach. And in fact, staff has recently signed a number of or we've applied for a number of grants to help expand our HMIS system because as we have additional agencies participating there has to be additional training outreach protocols every Individual who inputs data into HMIS has to have a separate license. The license is not to the agency, it's to the individual user and those cost money. Right now the county is absorbing the costs of those licenses.

What do those cost?

I think it's about $400 per license annually. Agencies do not pay for that, the county has paid for that but that's one of the things we're doing with this grant funding is helping to offset those costs obviously the less money agencies have to pay out-of-pocket for HMIS the better but we're certainly expanding it and we welcome agencies that are serving homeless individuals to talk to staff about participating in HMIS

Outstanding. Okay, thank you. The other question I just, and I don't know if you're the right person to ask about this but this is something that whenever we discuss these issues tends to come up and I know if you're in the South County people feel that the North County is quote unquote dumping homeless in the South County and people in Santa Maria feel that people are bringing people from the South County and dropping them on our doorstep. Just, you've reviewed a lot of the point in time count information. Can you talk about that?

I've heard those comments, but I think what the data also shows because we did have a question dealing with localism and where people first became homeless. And I would say that a majority of homeless individuals became homeless in Santa Barbara County was quite high and many of them prefer to stay in their communities of origin. Many of them have social networks, they have places where they hang out and feel more comfortable.

They have family and friends so if I'm not aware that there's any concerted effort for dumping, I know that people travel On the Clean Air Express bus, and they move around. But I don't think it's really dumping. I think people just travel where they can best be served but tend to stay where they feel comfortable.

Okay, all right do we have any public comment on this?

Chair Lavenino and members of the board, we have no requests to speak.

All right let's go to Supervisor Adam first then we'll go to public comment

I'm just wondering if you could tell me how many plans to address homelessness we've had.

So in my understanding, we had a 10 year plan which was done back around 2006. And that was the biggest countywide regional effort that I was aware of. Well, I think it worked out in the sense that it brought people together to talk about homelessness and began to, in a similar manner, identify what is needed which is the development of affordable housing And to that extent, we did develop affordable housing and we've been very successful again using our federal dollars to do that.

But the homeless

population- By what standard was that?

I'm sorry?

By what standard were we successful?

We were able to develop at least 1,000 affordable housing units probably in the last 10 to 15 years using federal home dollars.

Well, I'm just looking at the chart there where it doesn't show that we've reduced the homeless. So it seems to be a pretty persistent problem and I'm not sure we're addressing it. If the standard is to reduce the number of homeless Is that the standard that everybody agrees on, that we'd like to reduce the number of homeless?

Supervisor Adam through the chair. I think it is and I think funding was also an issue back in 2006 and throughout the years. Now I think we're seeing more and more funding from the state and federal government to really throw money at housing the homeless so Incremental dents in this and with the new monies coming down from the state, I think we should do better at addressing the homeless issue. It is a daunting task, no doubt about it.

It's not an easy task but with the additional money coming in from cash and HEAP and the transaction fees now for real estate transactions, I think will help address homeless issues here.

Is case management going to be a major part of this thing?

Yeah,

absolutely. Not just housing? This isn't just a housing issue it's a case management

issue. Absolutely because there are individuals who are going to need at least ongoing check-ins To ensure that they're making appointments, that they're getting the services they need. They're getting signed up for benefits or that they're participating in work training and vocational programs. But once people get put into units we can't just forget about them and call it case closed.

Well clearly because they don't even stay in the units

Some don't, some because of their mental health issues are unable to. But the

idea is to help them stay. And it's not just mental health right? I mean we have a huge drug problem with this as well right? So I think that's part of the case management so we're going to have to do something about that.

I think it is, and I think the heap money that's going to be well. And I think they've got case managers and they are dealing specifically with the mental health clientele of that population.

All right, well I don't have a lot of hope here. I think that this problem is a vexatious one and there hasn't, I haven't heard about anything especially in California it seems to be a huge problem in many California cities, Portland, Seattle. There's a video that somebody told me about called Seattle Is Dying. And I think that just, it's about Seattle but it's not confined to Seattle.

It's everywhere and it's here. And I think there's a much bigger component of this problem that's attributable to drugs than we're talking about. And this isn't a bunch of people that are just down on their luck. This is a bunch of people that are just dysfunctional and probably never will be, so

good luck. Well you lit up the Christmas tree because all the lights are on now, good. Yep. Inspiration. We'll go Supervisor Hartman first.

I just had a question about phase two and exactly the kind of analysis. You described the various kinds of people experiencing homelessness, and they need different kinds of housing options. And so I think it would be helpful to link the numbers of people in different classes whether it's violence in the home, whether it's drug abuse, whether it's homeless veterans, whether its seniors So we can match up the kind of housing stock we need to the kinds of populations we need to serve. And then further, I know that supportive housing is an issue. I'd like to understand more about it where state law preempts and how we can find more places where neighborhoods are willing to accept it. So I'm just eager to know a little bit more about phase two and Sharper metrics for what we need to accomplish.

Supervisor Hartman through the chair. Absolutely, I think one of the reasons why we are also recommending that there be stakeholder meetings and an opportunity for elected officials to participate is that the need is great it's huge so what we're also looking for is some guidance in terms of priorities as well and populations that we want to focus in on whether its victims of domestic violence whether it's youth Children, veterans. There are a number of subpopulation groups many of them very very deserving but they all require their own particular approach and strategy and so with the dollars that we have, the limited dollars it's very helpful to have some direction on what the priorities for the community are and every community may have different priorities But one of the processes we went through in the HEAP discussion, identifying priorities.

Overwhelmingly the providers who spoke about the need for HEAP and how we should use that money talked about capital development so we really focused in this first round on Buying houses, buying property, buying buildings, buying whatever we could so that we could try to again further the number of units. We're hopeful that there may be a heap too. There's discussion about that I think it's going to come up for discussion on July 3rd in the Senate State Senate.

So but yeah we definitely want to focus on subpopulations.

Supervisor Williams?

Along the lines that both Supervisor Adam and Supervisor Hartman are talking about, I'm going to try to bring that together into one thread here which is that you know it. I think we're really talking about a lot of subpopulations but but two one big distinction is between chronic homeless usually they're chronic because Some form of mental health diagnosis or a dual diagnosis as you indicated, and people who are down on their luck. And anecdotally from the people who do the point in time count I think we're seeing more of the latter category surge in the latter category They're younger, there's less incidences of mental health or substance abuse issues with them. They live out of their cars more often and but it's also back to the we're seeing a surge because of the uncontrolled prices in the housing market and so I you know It's a tough thing with limited funds, what do you do?