Sonoma County conducts homeless count to gauge pandemic’s impact on local homelessness

The pandemic had a life-altering effect on many already struggling to make ends meet in Sonoma County. But after nearly two years of economic upheaval, it remains unclear whether more people fell into homelessness as a result.

On Friday, the county took its first step toward answering that question with its annual “point-in-time” count of people living outdoors and in local shelters.

About 120 volunteers and 30 guides, including unsheltered individuals and outreach staff, spread out across the region before dawn to identify and count local homeless people on the street and in tents, cars, RVs and other vehicles.

While officials acknowledge the census is likely to produce an undercount, they say it should help inform decisions and strategies to combat homelessness in the county as it’s set to emerge from the pandemic. The estimate is also required for local jurisdictions to receive federal and state homelessness funding.

The count comes nearly two years after the last census in February 2020, the month before the pandemic took hold. Last year’s count was canceled due to COVID-19 concerns.

“We really want to understand the impacts of the pandemic on the local homeless population and on our community,” said Jennielynn Holmes, head of homelessness services for Catholic Charities in Santa Rosa. “It’s obviously had a large economic impact, and the ripples effects on homelessness are usually felt a little bit down the road from an economic disruption.”

The results from the count and of a survey of a few hundred local homeless people are expected this summer.

The 2020 county census found 2,745 homeless people, over half of whom were in Santa Rosa. That was a slight decrease from the previous year. Two-thirds of those counted lived outdoors or in a vehicle. The other third lived in shelters.

Michael Gause, head of homelessness programs for the Sonoma County Community Development Commission, said results of this year’s count will help gauge how effective pandemic programs such as expanded unemployment insurance, rental assistance and eviction moratoriums have been at keeping people from losing their homes.

“It will give us a sense of whether all the safety measures and all the funding that came in during the pandemic provided enough of a safety net so we don’t have a large increase,” Gause said.

Over the first year-and-a-half of the pandemic, local jurisdictions spent tens of millions of dollars in mostly state and federal money for both temporary and long-term supportive housing for homeless people. That included purchasing hotels in Santa Rosa and Sebastopol to house around 100 formerly homeless residents.

Early Friday morning, Santa Rosa Police Captain John Cregan, who is set take over as interim police chief in May, shined a flashlight into vehicles and down alleys in search of unsheltered people in his assigned census count area in the historic St. Rose neighborhood of Santa Rosa.

He came upon a man sleeping in blankets at the entrance of a Spanish Colonial Revival style building used as an office center for the St. Rose Church. Using a mobile app for count volunteers, Cregan entered the man’s location and basic demographic information before continuing down A Street.

Cregan said “one of the bigger trends” about the state of homelessness during the pandemic is that more people are now living out of RV’s.

“That’s where the strategy of the city’s safe parking program comes into play,” Cregan said of the 50-unit lot near the Finley Community Center that Santa Rosa plans to open in the coming weeks.

Holmes with Catholic Charities, which will operate the safe parking site, said the count will be key in deciding how to continue planning and funding similar homelessness programs going forward.

“That’s why we need this information, desperately,” she said.

You can reach Staff Writer Ethan Varian at ethan.varian@pressdemocrat.com or 707-521-5412. On Twitter @ethanvarian