Santa Cruz city council approves plan to combat homelessness
On Tuesday the Santa Cruz City Council unanimously approved a program to reduce housing insecurity and homelessness in the city.
Through various initiatives, the Homelessness Response Strategic Plan aims to reduce the total number of unhoused people in Santa Cruz and increase the number of affordable housing units available. The plan will span the period of July 2024 to June 2027.
The plan aims to decrease homelessness by expanding the city's permanent supportive housing portfolio, serving more city residents through the eviction prevention program and providing unhoused people with job training and opportunities.
"The solution to homelessness is really housing and having appropriate housing that's accessible to everybody," Larry Imwalle, the city's homelessness response manager, said at Tuesday's city council meeting.
This strategic response plan is an updated version of Santa Cruz's Homelessness Response Action Plan created in March of 2022. According to city officials, the newly approved response strategic plan will address the same objectives and build off the same goal as the initial plan, while implementing new ideals.
"In Santa Cruz, our homeless response will strive to balance individual needs with broad community impacts spanning from prevention strategies to successful pathways to stable housing," Imwalle said. "Our updated values include health-safety collaboration... equity is now explicitly in our values, environmental stewardship, transparency, economic vitality and fiscal responsibility."
According to Lisa Murphy, the deputy city manager of Santa Cruz, the construction of this updated plan was curated through interviews with numerous local stakeholders, including city staff, community members, those with lived experience with homelessness and local business owners.
However, Councilmember Sonja Brunner expressed concerns that the current strategic response plan fails to identify the disparities where the city may not be able to provide services or help unhoused individuals.
"Where are the gaps? And how do we get reports on the gaps and how do we advocate for the gaps?" said Brunner. "Because we have a lot of great programs, a lot of great organizations doing a lot of great work... but I also see every day that there are gaps."
Although the previously implemented homelessness response plan secured many improvements, including a 29% decrease in unhoused citizens in the city of Santa Cruz from 2022 to 2023, many issues have yet to be addressed. According to Murphy, Santa Cruz remains one of the least affordable cities in California and 57% of unhoused individuals in the county live in Santa Cruz city.
However, according to the strategic plan overview, released by the city. The latest strategic plan does not promise to end homelessness in Santa Cruz. It aims to provide the community and staff with a pathway to focus on actions that fall within the City's responsibilities.