Sonoma County nonprofits to share in $7.9 million to address homelessness

A tribal housing project in Cloverdale, a Petaluma street outreach team, and a rent subsidy program in Santa Rosa for people at risk of or experiencing homelessness would be awarded hundreds of thousands of dollars each under recommendations adopted by the Sonoma County Homeless Coalition.

They are among organizations delivering services from Petaluma to Cloverdale, and from Guerneville to Sonoma Valley, that are to share $7.9 million in funding approved Wednesday by the coalition, a quasi-governmental body charged with guiding policy and allocating funds to address homelessness.

The recommendations made by a coalition committee and then approved by its board go to the county Board of Supervisors June 4 for final adoption.

“We're never going to be able to cover all the need with $7.9 million,” Supervisor Chris Coursey, a member of the coalition board, said in an interview. But, he said, referring to the committee that made the recommendations, ”they spread it thoughtfully throughout all those needs.“

Ultimately, 13 nonprofit providers — and a total of 36 projects — won a share of the local and state monies the coalition will disburse. Of the projects that won awards, 23 were ones that the coalition had supported last year. Thirteen of the projects that were funded were new, including some already operating but that had not previously been submitted to the coalition.

One of those was Dry Creek Rancheria’s Makamo project in Cloverdale. The permanent supportive housing initiative (where a variety of social services are provided to residents to support their transition to stable living situations) was awarded $296,000 toward the cost of leasing properties for tribal members who have been homeless.

“It was a really well put together program design,” said Teddie Pierce, chair of the coalition’s funding and evaluation committee, which made the initial recommendations. Also, she said, funding the project aligned with the coalition’s goals of advancing equitable solutions to homelessness. Native Americans are 2% of the county’s residents but 12% of its homeless population.

Pierce said that the county’s strategic plan on homelessness — which was adopted in 2022 and emphasizes creating permanent supportive housing, supportive services, and better coordinating efforts to address homelessness — was a “north star” for the committee.

“We actually strengthened the system of care,” she said, adding that going forward, tracking the results of the funded projects is a priority.

“This is where the pedal meets the metal, with this year’s funding,” she said.

In the main categories of the awarded funds:

• $2.7 million, or 35%, went to existing emergency shelters
• $2.1 million, or 27%, went to permanent supportive housing
• $1.4 million, or 19%, went to rapid rehousing projects
• $1.1 million, or 15%, went to street outreach

Three homeless prevention project proposals were rejected because a $2.6 million pilot countywide homeless prevention project is slated to begin later this year.

New versus old

Throughout the recommendation process, a number of service providers had voiced concerns about supporting new projects over old ones for fear of disrupting services already being delivered. Following the Wednesday vote, officials at some nonprofits said their services would suffer because they received less than they’d requested.

For example, Catholic Charities, the region’s largest provider of homelessness services, will cut back hours at its Santa Rosa drop-in center because it received $42,000 less than the $190,000 it had applied for, said Jennielynn Holmes, the organization’s CEO.

Holmes, who chairs the Coalition board and as a result had to recuse herself from voting on the final recommendations, said “while we are grateful for new projects in the system of care, we believe the first goal should be to enhance and sustain what we already have as a core part of our system of care.”

Holmes said that’s especially true following the bankruptcy of Social Advocates for Youth, a 53-year-old nonprofit that provided services to youth experiencing homelessness and other crises. Catholic Charities expanded its drop-in hours to accommodate the subsequent increased demand for youth-focused services; Holmes said it’s not clear whether those new hours would have to be curtailed.

At Reach for Home, a Healdsburg nonprofit that received $432,585 in funding for housing and street outreach programs, $157,000 less than it had applied for, CEO Margaret Sluyk said that, in the end, she thought the allocations had been fair.

“There's some push and pull about new projects because we are struggling with how to get the resources we need for our current projects,” she said. “But I think that there probably will always be sort of a push and pull. So overall, I think they did the best with the money that we have.”

The Homeless Coalition, formerly known as the Continuum of Care, is a consortium of local governments, nonprofits and others that coordinates local homelessness policy and programs. It allocates two rounds of funding a year through a competitive process; the second, later this year, will distribute a smaller allocation of federal dollars.

One adjustment the coalition board made concerned homelessness street outreach in the Sonoma Valley.

A nonprofit called HomeFirst that was awarded half the amount it had requested for street outreach in Sonoma Valley suggested it would likely return the $125,734 award because it wouldn’t fund the program model it proposed. After a lengthy discussion, it was decided, on a motion by Coursey, that if HomeFirst did return the award, the recommendations committee would reallocate it, with the proviso that it still go toward Sonoma Valley street outreach services.

“Sonoma Valley needs some form of outreach,” Thai Hilton, a county Department of Health Services analyst on the staff that supports the coalition, said at its Wednesday meeting. “It's the only subregion without any outreach. It is, by far, the most underserved area of the system of care in all aspects, not just outreach.”

You can reach Staff Writer Jeremy Hay at 707-387-2960 or jeremy.hay@pressdemocrat.com. On X (Twitter) @jeremyhay