Sonoma County’s homeless population increased 5% during pandemic

Sonoma County released new figures Monday showing its homeless population grew 5% during the pandemic, the first reported increase since after the 2017 North Bay fires, as a chronic housing shortage continues to drive one of the region’s most pressing humanitarian crises.

Preliminary results from the county’s “point-in-time” count of people living outdoors and in shelters earlier this year found 2,893 homeless residents. That’s up from 2,745 unhoused people identified during the last count in February 2020, the month before the pandemic took hold.

Officials touted the results as evidence the region had averted a “predicted catastrophic increase in homelessness” because of the economic upheaval of the pandemic. They pointed to local efforts such as rental assistance, pandemic shelter programs and an emergency housing voucher initiative as helping prevent a larger spike.

Some of those programs were part of a 550% surge in pandemic-era spending on homelessness by Sonoma County and Santa Rosa, the two largest local governments.

“It’s heartening that even despite the small increase, it wasn’t bigger — that was the worry all of COVID,” said Michael Gause, head of homelessness programs for the Sonoma County Community Development Commission.

Still, Gause said it was too early to draw many conclusions about the reasons for the smaller-than-expected rise in homelessness. Those questions can be better answered in July, he said, when the county plans to release its full census count results, which will include survey data based on interviews with hundreds of local homeless people.

Although officials acknowledge the census likely produced an undercount, they say it will help inform decisions and strategies to combat homelessness as the county is set to emerge from the pandemic. The count — taken Feb. 25 by around 120 volunteers and 30 guides — is also required for federal and state homelessness funding.

Sonoma County normally does its homeless count annually, but last year’s census was canceled because of COVID-19 concerns.

Despite the increase, this year’s count was slightly lower than the most recent peak of 2,996 homeless people in 2018, after the 2017 fires destroyed more than 5,300 Sonoma County homes. Over the past decade, the local homeless population has dropped from a high of 4,539 in 2011 to around 3,000, where it has hovered since 2015, according to county data.

Even if the early results from this year’s count could have been much worse, there remained potentially concerning signs in the data.

The number of unsheltered people — those living outdoors or in vehicles — increased by 23% to 2,088, according to Gause. The other 805 homeless people identified in the count were living in shelters or transitional housing facilities.

Gause attributed the increase largely to the fact that the count came during this winter’s omicron surge, causing homeless shelters to reduce capacity and some unhoused people to avoid the dormitory facilities as COVID-19 outbreaks struck most group shelters in the county. Even when shelters are fully open, there are only enough beds for under 1,000 people.

Another worrisome metric was a 29% rise in the number of chronically homeless people in the county. This year’s count identified 726 people with a disability who had been homeless for at least a year, compared to 508 in 2020, Gause said.

To respond to that increase, Gause said the county will continue to prioritize providing longtime homeless people services and “marshal resources to the folks who are most vulnerable.”

Experts say that while drug addiction and mental illness contribute to homelessness, the main driver of the local crisis is a severe lack of affordably priced housing. During the pandemic, housing costs across the county have only increased amid widespread inflation and an influx of wealthier residents arriving from urban centers.

According to a recent report by the California Housing Partnership, Sonoma County renters need to make at least $37 an hour — more than twice the minimum wage in local cities — to comfortably afford an average monthly rent of $1,934.

Sonoma was one of nine Bay Area counties that coordinated the release of preliminary homelessness data on Monday. Contra Costa and Alameda counties reported dramatic increases in homelessness since their last counts in 2019 — 35% and 21.5%, respectively. San Francisco, meanwhile, saw a surprising dip of 3.5%. In Marin, homelessness rose by 8%.

Sonoma County’s relatively modest 5% increase since 2020 comes as unprecedented sums of state and federal money have poured into the region to tackle the homelessness crisis. That includes tens of millions of dollars to help launch safe-parking sites, temporary pandemic shelter programs and long-term supportive housing.

The county has been unable to provide a comprehensive accounting of its recent homelessness spending, but Gause said officials working to develop an annual budget.

One of the county’s primary homelessness efforts has been to create new permanent and transitional homeless housing through California’s Project Homekey program. In late 2020, the county used state Homekey money to purchase the Hotel Azura in downtown Santa Rosa and Sebastopol Inn near The Barlow shopping center to house around 100 chronically homeless people.

Residents now living at those hotels were counted as homeless in this year’s census since additional renovations are needed before the sites can be considered permanent housing.

Over the next year or so, officials hope to launch at least five additional Homekey sites across the county, potentially adding around 300 units to the region’s system of care.

Blue markers are proposed sites in the process of applying for state funding. Green markers are sites that have already received funding and yet to open. Yellow markers are sites currently housing formerly homeless residents.

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