A nonprofit says despite everything being done to address the homeless crisis in the Bay Area, they haven’t solved the problem.
All Home is offering up a data-backed model and claims, if governments follow it, would reduce homelessness by 75% over the next five years. But it’ll cost $9.5 billion.
“It may seem like we’ve spent a lot of money on it already, but we’ve been digging this whole for a long time and if we want to dig our way out of it we need to put some real muscle behind it,” said Edie Irons, director of communications at All Home.
All Home, which focuses on regional solutions to homelessness, said that cities and counties should spend that money on the following three areas at once:
- Interim housing (which provides an immediate place for people to get off the street like the facilities San Jose has been building over the past few years.)
- Increasing permanent housing units.
- Targeted homelessness prevention….which identifies households at risk and gives them short-term financial help so they can stay in their place.
It’s something the city of Berkeley is already doing.
“We hear about homelessness in the Bay Area, homelessness in California, but you don’t hear this state that often. Berkeley saw a drop in unsheltered homelessness by almost half in the past two years,” said Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, who represents the Berkeley area.
The $9.5 billion would fund tens of thousands of affordable and interim housing units.
Ashley Banta said that she works with all home now after experiencing homelessness herself.
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“This plan shows lessons learned from actually doing the work. It’s client focused and echoes what i’ve seen in our communities,” she said.
To help visualize how the plan would work, All Home released a dashboard on its site.
Showing the difference between fully funding – and not funding the programs – and how many more people you can expect on the street.
On Wednesday, the MTC board will decide whether or not to put a $20 billion affordable housing bond on the November ballot in all nine Bay Area counties.
