West LA Times

At last night’s meeting, the Santa Monica City Council voted unanimously to declare a Local Emergency on Homelessness, joining other local jurisdictions including the City of Los Angeles, County of Los Angeles, Culver City, and the City of Long Beach in declaring that more is needed to prevent and address homelessness.

“Clearly, we all know that here in Santa Monica and in our region, addressing homelessness is a top concern,” said Santa Monica Mayor Gleam Davis. “As your mayor in the coming year, I promise to remain focused on this issue. I am already advocating from the federal level on down for more resources for housing and supportive services, and I am committed to working with other mayors in our region to address this regional issue.”

Declaring a state of emergency will enable the City of Santa Monica to:

1. Advocate for additional funding and resources at the county, state, and federal level, positioning the City to receive and deploy new resources as they become available.

2. Remove barriers to building affordable housing, including use of anticipated Housing Trust Fund resources to incentivize affordable housing production.

3. Encourage partners in our region to urgently address the crisis of homelessness.

4. Streamline hiring for critical staff positions that are critical to preventing and ending homelessness.

“The reality is that we cannot address this crisis on our own, and we need our regional, state, and federal partners to support us,” said Santa Monica City Manager David White. “By declaring a homelessness state of emergency, Santa Monica is poised to receive more resources.”

New resources could be used to accelerate our local response to homelessness. Declaring a state of emergency helps prioritize Santa Monica in requests for resources and funding from these partners.

For decades, the City of Santa Monica and key community partners have treated homelessness in Santa Monica as an urgent priority and invested in programs and services that prevent and end homelessness. Santa Monica has deployed a comprehensive approach, balancing compassion and enforcement by dedicating City resources to homelessness prevention and affordable housing, intensive field-based services, support for local social service and housing providers, and strategies to address immediate public health and quality-of-life issues. More than 69,000 people experience homelessness in Los Angeles County, and about 807 people experience homelessness in Santa Monica.

The following outlines some of what the City has accomplished and current initiatives related to homelessness:

114 new affordable homes have opened at three City-funded properties.

City-funded outreach teams have made over 11,000 contacts with people experiencing homelessness and housed over 140 people experiencing homelessness over the course of a year—all above and beyond LA County-funded efforts.

Over 1,600 households received over $29 million in federal funding for local affordable housing, and an additional $40 million was secured for over 2,300 Santa Monica households through the State of California COVID-19 Rental Assistance Program.

$750,000 was made available to support severely rent-burdened households in rent relief through the Rent Control Adjustment Relief program. The first round served over 450 households, and a second round of 50 applications is currently being processed.

100 new federal Emergency Housing Vouchers were secured and assigned to individuals experiencing homelessness.

Legal assistance was provided to over 590 Santa Monica households at risk of eviction to ensure residents remain housed.

The Preserving Our Diversity program provides cash assistance to 200 low-income senior households.

Annually the City grants over $8 million to 19 local community organizations and 35 programs through the Human Services Grants Program providing a range of services to vulnerable populations to prevent and address homelessness.

Voter approval of Measures CS and GS, generating new funding to address homelessness and affordable housing.

A behavioral health strategy kicked off, and a therapeutic transport van program will hopefully roll out soon.

The proclamation is in effect for 180 days. For more information, view this Staff Report and Proclamation from the February 14, 2023, City Council Meeting, and the City of Santa Monica Homelessness Webpage. For more background on this important community priority, listen in to the 2023 State of the City delivered last week by Mayor Gleam Davis and City Manager David White where they both addressed recent efforts in Santa Monica and the urgency needed around this humanitarian crisis.

Original source can be found here.