Hundreds of Sonoma County residents kept from homelessness due to year-old local program funded by COVID-relief dollars

As fall of 2022 arrived, Laura Romero was living in Windsor in her car with her then-3-month old son. The 23-year-old Oregon native had moved to Santa Rosa to be near her father’s family and her son’s father, but living arrangements had fallen through and, jobless, she was out of luck.

At night, she said, her son would be picked up by his father, to be returned the next day.

“It would get really cold at night,” she said.

Every day, she called housing programs seeking help finding a place to live. That brought her to the attention of TLC Child & Family Services, whose staff reached out to her. Her car was broken, so they fetched her, brought her to their office and gave her an intake survey. We’ll have you inside in a week, she was told.

Today Romero and her son live in a 1-bedroom apartment in Roseland. Currently employed as an instructor at an elementary school summer program, she is preparing to enter Santa Rosa Junior College with plans to study early childhood development.

Nearly 300 Sonoma County residents like Romero were kept from homelessness — or pulled out of it — in the past year through a county-funded collaboration called the Housing and Wellness Program, a joint effort of TLC and Community Support Network, both Santa Rosa-based nonprofits.

The program, which is funded through 2024, focuses on people at risk of homelessness or who are already homeless. It provides services that can include housing and rental assistance and treatment for physical health, mental health and substance abuse issues.

Since its July 2022 inception, the program has helped 282 youth and adults either get into housing, or hang onto it, said Tom Bieri, executive director of Community Support Network, or CSN, who conceived of the program.

“Doing this work in an atmosphere of abundance is a whole lot easier than doing this work in an atmosphere of scarcity,“ Bieri said. ”So we're housing a lot of people and they're grateful and everybody involved is feeling good about the project.“

The program was paid for with $1.9 million in federal COVID relief funds from the American Rescue Plan Act that Sonoma County received and channeled to 27 local projects in sectors ranging from homelessness services to small business to education.

Bieri said the Housing and Wellness Program was inspired by a 2021 project during which CSN, the county and a group of other service providers used state funds to connect 91 people aged 18 to 26 ― considered transition age youth ―with housing in 100 days.

"When we had high collaboration and flexible funding, we were able to successfully house a lot of folks in a short amount of time,“ said Bieri. ”And it turns out that we have been able to replicate that.“

A key factor in the program’s success to date is that there are fewer rigid constraints on how funds can be spent, which means it can be better tailored to meet each client’s needs, said Bieri and others involved in running the Health and Wellness program.

“It’s critical,” said Shelby Means, director of the TLC Child & Family Services’ transition age youth housing program, where many of the roughly 140 youth assisted so far found help. “Most homeless dollars are federally funded, and although I'm incredibly thankful for whatever dollars come our way, they're very restrictive. When we can get our hands on any sort of flexible funding that truly meets the whole person, it's amazing. And that's what this funding does.”

In the argot of contemporary social services practice, whole person care focuses on the many factors that shape a person’s circumstances, from mental and physical health to legal barriers to housing to employment history to trauma.

“There's a lot of things that happen in people's lives that create homelessness; it's not just money, right?” Means said. “And so we are able to really approach, look at and assess everything that's going on in their life that might be barriers to stable, affordable housing.”

The $1.9 million, to be spread over 2½ years, covers costs including: case management; a portion of a youth housing coordinator’s salary at CSN; a social worker stationed at TLC’s downtown Santa Rosa youth drop-in center; operating expenses; and direct services including case management, rent and security deposits, furnishing expenses, counseling, and employment, financial literacy and other educational workshops (which Romero said she attends regularly).

(The two organizations pay for the services they provide and are then reimbursed; Exchange Bank extended CSN’s line of credit to help it cover up-front costs, Bieri said).

Potential clients are referred to the program from hospitals, other services providers and through the county’s Coordinated Entry System, which prioritizes people who are homeless for permanent housing based on medical and other factors, such as the length of time they’ve been homeless and whether they have a disability; those with the most acute needs go to the top of the list.

Participants in the program can receive $800 to $1,858 a month in rental assistance through 2024, as well as accompanying social services. Bieri said the goal is for people to become self sufficient.

“A lot of these folks have histories of being pretty unstable. And this gives them an opportunity to have contact with case managers that help them stabilize their physical health and their mental health,” Bieri said. “And obviously the hope and expectation is that they’re going to continue on a positive trajectory of stability and growth and eventually they’ll be able to take over the lease themselves.”

For Romero, among its many profound benefits, being housed allows her to focus on the future.

“Living in my car, it was very nerve-racking,” she said. “I couldn't even shower and, you know, it was hard to keep up with hygiene and just going out in public. I didn't like being looked at. My only goal was housing. Just to get housing.”

Means said efforts are already underway to secure funding to continue the program after its grant-funded period ends.

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