SERVICE PROVIDER SURVEY
"THE SERVICE SYSTEM"
The story of this young family illustrates some of the problems that exist in providing services for homeless people. There are some 60 or more public and private agencies that serve homeless people in one way or another throughout San Mateo County. Many of these agencies provide emergency assistance to homeless people in the form of food, clothing, cash or motel vouchers. Many of these agencies have been in existence for a number of years to help low-income and needy people in the county. Very few of them were specifically developed to assist homeless people. Frequently, these organizations report seeing an overwhelming increase in the number of homeless people seeking assistance from them over the past decade. They have struggled to respond and adapt to meeting this need, sometimes at the expense of their original purpose or mission. Essentially, this has resulted in homeless services being provided or developed in an ad hoc, reactive manner as the need has increased. There has not been any comprehensive county-wide planning of these services. Hence, the very nature of the "service system", if it can be called this, is difficult to define and understand. There are only three shelters for homeless people in the county. These are the Winter Shelter at the National Armory Guard only open in the coldest months of the year for people without children with them, the Spring Street Shelter for single, mentally ill adults and the Battered Women's Shelter for survivors of domestic violence and their children. These shelter programs provide immediate shelter if a bed is available. There are 10 transitional housing programs in the county. Three are for homeless families and their children. The others are for battered women, homeless youth, single people, people with mental health problems, veterans and drug dependent women and their children. These programs provide 30-90 days of housing for homeless people with support services that provide a transition to more permanent housing. Transitional housing programs should not be confused with emergency shelters for any one without a place to live. Frequently, these programs have waiting lists and places are only available as vacancies occur. There are seven core service agencies in the county, also known as the network, which are non-profit or city run and provide a variety of services to homeless people. These services range from information and referral, counseling, case management, emergency food and clothing, transportation vouchers, immigration assistance, cash aid and rental assistance through the Season of Sharing fund. There are twenty to thirty community-based non-profit organizations in the county that provide a variety of services to homeless people. The major organizations are Catholic Charities, Human Investment Program, Salvation Army, St. Vincent de Paul Society, Child Care Coordinating Council, St. Anthony's Padua Dining Room, Legal Aid, C.A.L.L. Primrose and many more. With the exception of Catholic Charities and HIP, none of these agencies provide permanent or transitional housing programs but largely focus on meeting the emergency and short-term needs of their clients. There are ten county programs that are impacted by homelessness within the Community Services, Social Services and Health Services departments. Most of those programs do not provide specific services to homeless people but serve homeless people alongside other clients who are seeking help. Specific county run homeless programs are the General Assistance and Aid to Families with Dependent Children Homeless Programs in Social Services. The Mental Health Public Health and Long Term Care Divisions in Health Services Department also provide specific homeless services through the work of certain designated staff. In addition, all previous coordination and needs identification strategies concerning the county's homeless problem have been initiated by the Community Services Department who has also provided steady leadership of the Winter Shelter Task Force. Of these sixty or more programs, forty-three participated in the survey of service providers. Their responses provide comprehensive information about the numbers, characteristics and needs of homeless people they served from March 1st 1989 - February 28th 1990. In addition, from their extensive experience and knowledge of working with homeless people these agencies provided their informed views on the causes of homelessness and service developments they agreed were needed. However, it is important to note that the findings of this survey will all be limited because they can only reflect the needs of clients addressed by existing- services. If a service is limited, like service to homeless youth, then the needs of those clients will be under represented here. THE 'NUMBER'S' GAME
The purpose of this needs assessment was not to arrive at an accurate unduplicated head count of homeless people in the county. The experience of the National Census Bureau and other counties in attempting this exercise has either been unsuccessful or controversial at best. The reasons are obvious. People move in and out of homelessness in the course of a year. Homeless people frequently seek help from more than one agency and duplication is difficult to eliminate with no centralized database. Finally, many people who are homeless, or at risk of homelessness do not necessarily seek assistance from agencies but remain outside of any system that collects data about homelessness. Hence, any count is likely to be an under count. However, it is possible to provide an estimate of the unduplicated number of homeless people in the county who did seek help from the programs surveyed from March 1989 - February 1990. These programs were divided into four main groups: Shelters and transitional housing programs, core service agencies, other community-based organizations and county programs. Every program was asked the names of the top three agencies where homeless clients were referred to. This information was analyzed within each of the four main program groupings and between each group. The total number of duplicated individual homeless clients served by all 43 programs surveyed was 21,569.
To eliminate most duplication within and between these program groupings, a cumulative analysis was completed for all programs surveyed on where their clients were referred to and from. Only eight of the forty three programs were identified that were reported by other service providers two times or more as a referral source or referral point. A total of 12,904 clients served by these eight programs were then deducted from the unduplicated total. It is important to note that there was no statistically significant duplication in client services between the different transitional housing programs or between the core service agencies. The unduplicated total of 8,665 homeless clients is a conservative estimate. If there is any remaining duplication it can be assumed that this would be outweighed by those homeless people who did not seek assistance from programs in the county. The safest and most cautious way to describe the extent of homelessness in San Mateo County is to say that there are anywhere from 7,000 9,000 individuals who experience an episode of homelessness in San Mateo County during a 12 month period. CHARACTERISTICS OF HOMELESS PEOPLE SERVED
Family Status
A picture of what "home" means to one homeless child in San Mateo County
Age
The majority of homeless adults (54%), are between the ages of 20 and 54 years. The low representation of homeless senior citizens should not be interpreted as if homelessness is not a problem for senior citizens. It is believed that seniors may be spending much of their limited income on housing and have little, or nothing left for food and other basic necessities. An indicator of this can be seen in the recent increase in the use of the Second Harvest Food Bank Senior Brown Bag Program from 473 seniors served in May, 1989 to 1,230 seniors served in July, 1990 and the fact that St. Anthony's Padua Dining Room estimates that about 100 seniors receive free hot meals each day. The high number of homeless children is an extremely disturbing finding, particularly, the 1,646 who are four years of age or younger. With the exception of the homeless child care program provided by the Child Care Coordinating Council, there is no specific program in the county to serve homeless children. In addition, most shelters and transitional housing programs have very few facilities within their buildings for children. A high degree of concern was expressed by service providers about the needs of homeless children in the course of this needs assessment. This stemmed from a recognition that they had developed services for families and concentrated heavily on the needs of parents assuming that the children's' needs would be met also. It is now becoming clear that homeless children have their own needs for security, clothing, food, friends, education and play. Health care, developmental screening checks and dental care are not provided to these children regularly. Frequently, they are uprooted from the schools and friends they know and their toys and clothes are stored while they live in shelters, transitional housing programs or motels. When asked their views in the children's survey, their answers are tragically revealing:
Homeless parents obviously need a great deal of assistance. 54% of them say they need child care and explain that this would give them the time to seek permanent housing and start getting a steady income. Child care providers agreed that there is a need for more accessible and affordable child care for homeless families, particularly, as this could provide the only steady routine and security in the child's life during the time the family are homeless. Even more disturbing is the fact that many homeless parents have arranged for their children to stay with relatives and friends for unspecified periods of time whilst they try to find a home they can afford. This distribution and separation of family units is a disturbing trend amongst the families served.
Employment Finding: Service
providers report that 60% of homeless clients are unemployed but that
It is also significant to note that a higher proportion of shelter and transitional housing clients are employed. 40% of emergency shelter residents and 28% of transitional housing residents are employed in full or part-time jobs. Frequently, staff of those programs report that clients are working 2 or 3 jobs simultaneously in order to make ends meet and still save money. Ethnicity
It is significant to note that Latino/as comprise only 7% of homeless clients served by county programs compared to 15% of shelter/transitional housing clients, 25% of homeless clients served by the core service agencies and 18% of homeless clients served by other community based organizations. First time homeless Finding: Service
providers reported that 43% of homeless clients are homeless for the It is significant to note that transitional housing program seem more likely to serve clients who are homeless for the first time. They report that 66% of their clients are first time homeless. Length of homelessness Finding: Service
providers reported that 96% of all their homeless clients have been
These findings are consistent across all types of programs. Unfortunately, this information is not collected by county programs. Residency Finding: Service providers report
that 84% of homeless clients are residents of San
Service providers were frequently perturbed by the popular belief that homeless people come from elsewhere and are not really San Mateo County residents. Frequently, they explained that homeless clients from the county were long-time residents who had grown up and been to school in the area. Equally, they spent time refuting the idea that homeless people should move elsewhere to areas that had cheaper housing. They explained that they had seen some of their clients try this suggestion only to find that they had returned because unemployment rates were high in these other areas. The majority of the 4.7% of homeless clients who are from out of the Bay Area are Vietnam Veterans. It is assumed that either their lifestyle is to move from county to county or that they are waiting in this area for a place in the homeless programs run by the Veterans Administration in San Francisco and/or Menlo Park. Finding: Of the
homeless clients who are San Mateo County residents the greatest
The greatest number of homeless clients are from the cities of San Mateo, 24%, Daly City, 20%, Redwood City, 17% and East Palo Alto, 11%. The low number of homeless clients reported on the coastside may be caused by the fact that there are no Shelters or transitional housing programs in this area and that many homeless people on the coast are believed to be undocumented and therefore less willing to seek services. Source of income Finding: Service
providers report that only 21% of homeless clients receive Aid to
The low percentage of homeless clients who were also recipients of welfare benefits such as GA, AFDC, Supplemental Security Income and Food Stamps indicates a breakdown in the traditional safety net provided by these income maintenance programs. Of equal significance is the low rate, only 1%, of homeless clients who were receiving Veterans Benefits when 8% of clients were reported as being veterans. Veterans and homelessness Finding: Service providers report that 8% of homeless clients are veterans. These clients seemed to fall into two categories - those who are waiting for a place in the Homeless Veterans Rehabilitation program at VA Medical Center in Menlo Park or are already being served by this program and those who have lost all trust or belief that services could help them and just seek the most basic emergency assistance. The Veterans Service Office reported that they received 325 referrals for homeless veterans from Social Services Department in the survey year. They are unable to help the majority of these people. Three major reasons are cited for this. Referral forms are mailed by Social Services offices to the Veterans Services office on the day a homeless veteran applies for General Assistance. If the client does not travel to the Veterans Service office then the staff there have no idea of where they are in order to provide help once the referral form is received a day or two later. This limited coordination between two service providers is coupled with the fact that even if a homeless veteran does seem to qualify for Veteran benefits, s/he usually has to wait two to three months for this decision to be reached by the Veteran's Administration. Frequently, homeless Veterans are unlikely to wait around that long and move on with a reinforcement of their belief that no government entity is really going to help them. Those Veterans served by the VA Medical Center Homeless Veterans program in Menlo Park, however, are being substantially assisted by a service that seems to be effective for those who receive it. The program serves veterans from all over the bay area and it was not possible to gather statistics on San Mateo County residents only. 85% of the veterans served are described as drug or alcohol abusers and 75% as having a personality disorder. From preliminary data, this intensive program reports a high degree of effectiveness with only 1% return rate to the in-patient program and approximately a 65% abstinence rate after six months past discharge. This data was obtained from a cohort study of patients admitted from October 1988 - June 1989. The structure and design of this program is worth examining in terms of any future service development for homeless veterans or for single homeless people with substance abuse and mental health problems. Substance Abuse and Homelessness Finding: Service
providers report that 25% of homeless clients have problems with drug The dual problems of homelessness and drug and alcohol abuse present a confusing and complex picture for service providers. Essentially, two types of programs have developed - those that are established to serve clients because of their homeless problem and those that are established to serve clients because of their substance abuse problem. The coordination and sharing of expertise between the two types of services is limited when either are confronted with a client who has both problems. Homeless service providers have limited knowledge and expertise in the identification and treatment of substance abuse and drug and alcohol treatment programs are not generally designed to address the problem of homelessness. The Director of the County's Drug and Alcohol program reports that about 50% of clients served by contracting agencies are homeless. Frequently, the homeless substance abuser may use the treatment program as shelter and not take treatment seriously or, if successful in treatment, will not have safe and affordable housing to move on to and may have to return to living in conditions that can result in the recurrence of substance abuse. The need for increased treatment programs and sober housing is seen as critical to meet these needs. However, it is reported that neighborhood opposition to the establishment of these programs has prevented their development. Homeless service providers determined that training about how to work with substance abusers was a top priority. They also expressed extreme frustration at being unable to access treatment programs for their homeless clients who wanted and needed them. Often, these clients must wait, with no place to live, for an opening in a residential treatment program which only results in their exposure once again to unsafe street life and drug dealers. Some steps have already been taken by the County Drug and Alcohol program and the Hunger and Homeless Action Coalition to address the stated training needs of homeless service providers and to increase the coordination and understanding between the two services. Increasing and building on these efforts is essential. Mental Health and Homelessness Finding: Service providers report that 15% of homeless clients have a mental disability. The Mental Health Division of the Health Services Department has prioritized the use of its resources to serve the severely mentally ill and has developed the elements of an effective service system to meet the needs of most homeless people with severe mental health problems. There has been a close and collaborative working relationship between the public and non profit programs from the early planning stages of this service development. This has contributed significantly to its effectiveness. This is coupled with staff attitudes and values that are accepting and non-judgmental towards their clients. Frequently, staff see their mental health clients move in and out of homelessness and they attempt to work with them over the long-term to achieve ultimate stability with their housing and mental health problems. The service consists of a mobile support team which provides crisis intervention and outreach services to the homeless population; the Spring Street shelter which provides emergency shelter and will soon provide a transitional housing program; residential treatment programs and group homes. The Mental Health - division reports serving 386 homeless clients in the survey year. Of these people, 72% are single. The Spring Street shelter reports serving 190 homeless single clients in the survey year and that 25% of their clients return for services. 80% of their clients have been homeless before. 62% are in receipt of SSI benefits, while 26% have no means of support. The biggest problem facing the mental health services for homeless people is the increasing number of clients who have both mental health and substance abuse problems. In the absence of model programs elsewhere, the services are working together to find out the best way to address this difficult problem. The major need stated by metal health service providers who work with the homeless population is for affordable apartments and single room occupancy hotel type housing to enable their clients on fixed low income to retain stable housing. Due to their limited resources, mental health services have not been developed in any major way to prevent mental illness amongst the homeless population despite the acknowledgement that homelessness is the cause of severe emotional trauma and stress. Survivors of Domestic Violence and Homelessness Finding: Service
providers report that 19% of homeless clients are survivors of domestic San Mateo County Battered Women's Services reported serving 309 homeless clients during the survey year and that they were unable to provide services to 60% of the clients who request and need it. 67% of the clients served are women with children and 43% of the clients served are 14 years of age or younger. 54% of homeless clients are homeless for the first time and 69% have only been homeless for three months or less. It is clear that this service, while helping a significant number of survivors of domestic violence who find themselves homeless, is a service that needs to be expanded to keep pace with the demand. The service also needs to develop an increased capability for longer- term (2 -3 years) transitional housing that can provide the specialized and essential support services needed to help those women overcome their battering experiences and move on to permanent housing. At the moment only 16% - 20% of the clients served are able to move to their own home or apartment. The others, either return to their partner (about 23%) or to other temporary living situations. In addition to more emergency shelter services, there is a need for long ten-n transitional housing to help those women with child care, job training and development, counseling and other support services to rebuild their lives. Homeless Youth Finding: Service providers report that 4% of homeless clients are teenagers alone. Although this percentage is low, it is clear that this reflects the fact that there are so few services for homeless youth in the county. The two main resources for homeless youth who are not in contact with their families is the drop-in center, Community Living Room, and Catholic Worker House, which can provide shelter to four teenagers at any one time. Existing shelters and transitional housing programs will not serve homeless youth. Community Living Room and Catholic Worker House reported that they provide information and referral services to 300 - 400 youth per year. 89% of homeless youth served by Community Living Room are between the ages 15 and 19. 43% of their clients are working while 23% have no means of support. 31% of these homeless youth are described as having drug and/or alcohol abuse problems. It is clear that these services are inadequate to meet the needs of homeless youth in the county. It is hoped that the newly established Daybreak Shelter will go some way to meeting these needs by providing shelter and counseling to homeless teenagers. FUNDING OF HOMELESS PROGRAMS Finding: Service
providers report that 66% of their funding for homeless programs
As we can see, there is no single source of funding that carries the majority of the responsibility for homeless service provision. Although 66% of funding does come from the public sector, service providers reported that extensive red tape and conflicting requirements from different departments within and between levels of government result in an enormous amount of administrative work to access the funds available. This is particularly true with regards to federal funding through the McKinney Act. Service providers also report a high degree of competition between them for the scarce resources that are available. Currently, there is limited planning, prioritization or coordination by funding sources or service providers to address the homeless problem collectively. Hence, the effective use of resources according to planned service development county-wide is severely limited. Nowhere, is the competition felt more keenly than during the winter months when the San Mateo Times runs its appeal for funds to operate the Winter Shelter at the National Guard Armory. Any non-profit agency who manages the Winter Shelter is in the unenviable position of trying to fund-raise for its year-round homeless services and also participate in the special Winter Shelter fund-raiser. It seems logical to suggest that an increased coordination of fund-raising efforts and increased collaboration between funding sources may be a more appropriate and effective approach for getting and using what are obviously limited public and private resources. SERVICE COORDINATION AND DEVELOPMENT Finding: San Mateo
County has very few services to prevent homelessness and
little if The only homelessness prevention programs of any magnitude in the county are provided by the seven core service agencies through the San Francisco Chronicle's Season of Sharing funds and St. Vincent de Paul. These funds are used to provide rental assistance and to meet critical family needs to prevent homelessness or to get families into housing they can afford. In 1990, $128,322 was provided. In past years, these funds have been expended by October of each year due to the demand for this type of service. Core service agencies report that for every one family assisted, there are at least three more who are denied services because resources are not available. Through a $10,000 grant from Northern California Grantmakers, Catholic Charities provides a rental loan guarantee program to families who are in temporary difficulty with paying the rent. This program is relatively new and has yet to demonstrate its effectiveness. The program requires participants to have income over rent and bills to make guaranteed payments to landlords. This means few families are eligible. The Sheriffs department report that they handle 35-40 evictions per week. The only program to help people prior to eviction is offered by Legal Aid, if it is determined the eviction will lead to homelessness. However, there are few staff available at Legal Aid to provide this type of legal assistance and little, if any, advertising to tenants at risk of eviction that they can get assistance. The Landlord Tenant Hotline receives about 35 calls per day and a third of these are eviction related. However, staff resources to respond to these calls are extremely limited. Finally, there is a marked lack of available rental subsidy certificates or vouchers in the County's Housing Authority program to assist low income people in obtaining and retaining affordable housing. With the exception of the small transitional housing program managed by the Human Investment Project, there is no coordination of the provision of subsidized housing to families and individuals ready to leave transitional housing programs in the county. This means that the majority of these homeless clients are forced to rent apartments at market rates without the subsidy they need to prevent them becoming homeless again at a later date. Finding: Service providers report
that the lack of a unified case management system for
Only two programs in the county provide any kind of in-depth case management for homeless clients. Family Crossroads, a transitional housing program managed by shelter Network in Daly City continues to see the families it has served after they find their own housing and assists them with any future problems or difficulties that may cause homelessness to recur. Catholic Charities, through its Family Resource Center, has recently begun to assist families over a long period of time to ensure that the fundamental problems leading to homelessness, or near homelessness, are thoroughly addressed. Some agencies also check in with each other over the phone to share information about common clients and pool limited resources to help the family or individual concerned. On the whole, this does not occur. What is more usual is that homeless clients are referred from one agency to another depending on what emergency resources are available at the time. Service providers themselves express extreme frustration at having to operate in this way and state the reason for this is lack of space and resources to really help homeless people both immediately and over the long-term., Their willingness to try and meet to coordinate service provision has been demonstrated through their participation in educational forums and meetings of the Hunger and Homeless Action Coalition and in the regular meetings held by the core service agencies to work together as a team. Frequently, during this needs assessment, service providers expressed the need for the development of a unified database about their existing homeless clients that would help them document the extent of the homeless problem county-wide. 63% of service providers participating in this needs assessment had to spend hours manually tabulating the data that was requested from individual client files. Equally, the development of a central information-nation database and on-going case management system are seen as critical developments by service providers if they are ever going to really help people get out of homelessness and stay there. This viewpoint was frequently stated by county social services staff at all levels in the department.
Finally, a case management system was seen as essential because it would fix accountability for who is providing what services and when and go on to identify clearly where the service gaps or duplication currently exist.
Essentially, service providers are seeking to develop an accountable on-going service system out of a plethora of separate and distinct service responses to the homeless crisis. As one service manager succinctly put it when asked about the homeless services in the county: "I don't really know who is in charge." Finding: The
Social Services Department reports serving 2,594 homeless family The Homeless Assistance Program was implemented in San Mateo County in February, 1988 as mandated by the Hansen vs. Woods court order. It is a special need allowance within the AFDC program. The purpose of this program is to assist eligible AFDC applicants and recipients who are homeless with the cost of temporary shelter as well as with the reasonable costs of securing permanent housing. Temporary housing payments may be issued to Homeless AFDC applicants and recipients who are homeless with the cost of temporary shelter as well as with the reasonable costs of securing permanent housing. Those temporary housing payments are generally issued to Homeless AFDC applicants and recipients for a maximum of 28 consecutive days, and may only be granted once in a 12 month period. Families of 4 or fewer members receive $30 per day for a temporary shelter whether the actual expenses are less, with a maximum payment of $60 per day for families of 8 or more members. Permanent housing payments are issued to cover the cost of last month rent and deposits (for example, security and utilities. Clients must present evidence that the permanent housing found does not rent for more than 80% of the Maximum Aid payment for the family. The maximum Permanent Housing Special Need may be up to 2 times 80% of the family's maximum aid payment plus actual cost of utilities deposits. The expenditure in direct aid (excluding administrative costs) to these families since the program began is:
The temporary shelter expenditures are used by families to purchase shelter in motel rooms in the county while they try to find permanent housing they can afford during the 21-28 days allowed. Currently, this program cannot provide any case management to these families and so they receive little, if any, social work assistance to get out of their homeless situation. In fiscal year, 1989, about 51% of homeless families served did not go on to receive assistance under the permanent shelter program. Without any case management, it is not possible to determine what actually happened to these families. It is alleged by eligibility workers and other social services staff that many families return to live with relatives or friends although this cannot be substantiated accurately from the data available. The provision of funds for using motels is a highly controversial service amongst service providers. On the one hand, this is viewed as a "necessary evil" to at least provide shelter, on the other hand, it is seen as a useless and expensive stop gap measure that delays the inevitable homelessness occurring. Service providers consistently described conditions in motels used by homeless families as unhealthy, unsafe, ridden with prostitution and the hunting ground of drug dealers. Also, concern was expressed that even this controversial resource was shrinking. Three of four motels used by families have closed during the last year and even this option is becoming limited. The fact that large numbers of homeless families on AFDC were unable to locate permanent housing is explained by service providers themselves. It is clear to them that the benefit levels are grossly inadequate to pay for even moderately priced rental housing in San Mateo County unless the family can also receive housing subsidy. Again, the lack of coordination between housing and welfare subsidies targeted at these most vulnerable families was not occurring in the majority of cases. There does appear to be agreement amongst service providers that the system of funds for shelter in motels is a mistaken approach and it may be possible to examine the feasibility of leveraging some AFDC homeless funds towards providing a healthier more effective transitional housing program for AFDC homeless recipients run by a non-profit organization in the county. The fact that $1,807,787 has been spent by Social Services to serve homeless families for a period of two years and that 57% of those funds were spent largely on motels begs the question whether they could have been spent more effectively in the county in a program with pre-imposed standards of sanitation, supervision and support services. Finding: The
Social Services Department reports serving 2,470 homeless adults in the The Department of Social Services is mandated by Section 17000-17409 of the Welfare and Institutions Code to provide financial aid through the General Assistance Program to needy persons when they are not supported by their own means, by relatives or friends; or by a federal or state assistance program; or by a county hospital or correctional facility; or by other public or private sources. The components included under the General Assistance program are primarily 100% County funded. Major components include the employable, unemployable and Homeless programs. Persons who have made applications for federal SSI and are awaiting decisions on their application receive financial assistance through Interim Aid. The homeless component of the General Assistance programs started in December 1986 and allows people with no fixed address to receive a General Assistance grant. The expenditure in direct aid (excluding administrative costs) to those homeless adults since the program began is:
No data is collected to determine if these funds assist the recipients in getting out of homelessness and so it is not possible to determine if these funds were used effectively. Service providers report that General Assistance is unlikely to help most people out of homelessness. The monthly grant is $341 in the first month and drops to $200 in subsequent months unless the recipients can verify they spent at least $99 on housing in the previous month. Essentially, GA recipients are, in effect, penalized for not finding housing within 4 weeks of receiving assistance. In addition, recipients are not allowed to save more than $50 and still receive General Assistance. In effect, the rules of the program prohibit the capability for saving enough to afford the move in costs of first and last month's rent and security deposit even if such low income housing was available. Some staff in Social Services report that GA homeless recipients are continually obtaining benefits under the program or are continually applying for aid every few months in any one year. An analysis of the payment schedule to GA homeless and non-homeless recipients during the survey year revealed a different story. 70% of the GA homeless recipients only received assistance for one or two months and did not return to seek assistance during the survey year. Only 2% of the recipients received assistance 7 months or longer and only 12% of homeless recipients returned to get benefits in the non-homeless GA program. Homeless GA clients are also required to meet the same requirements as apply to the regular GA program clients. If deemed employable, they must attend the County's Vocational Rehabilitation Services to receive assistance in job search and job training. The VRS program does not collect data to determine how many GA homeless applicants successfully obtain employment. They only rely on self reporting by their clients and the employment rate reported was very low. GA homeless clients do not receive any benefit until they have registered at VRS and staff have verified that they have applied for two or more jobs. This recent new regulation has coincided with a reduction in the GA homeless caseload - the first time this has happened since the program began. Significantly, an analysis of the 29 reasons people were discontinued from the GA homeless program revealed that 46% of recipients were discontinued from the program. 71% of these people were discontinued for 30, 60 or 90 days (during which time they could not receive benefits) because they were not complying with the requirements of the Vocational Rehabilitation Program. Such a high level of discontinuance has no explanation in terms of verifiable facts. Subjective opinions of service providers ranged from the view that GA homeless recipients do not wish to work, all the way to the view that they are unable to seek or gain work because they have nowhere to shower, or sleep and that many have other disabling conditions such as mental illness or substance abuse. Unfortunately, this needs assessment could not verify these views one way or another. The fact that nearly $2 million has been spent in direct aid in this program since its inception would seem to warrant a thorough evaluation, not only of the motivations and needs of recipients, but also the effectiveness and appropriateness of the services being offered. EMERGENCY SHELTER AND TRANSITIONAL HOUSING PROGRAMS Finding: Service
providers report that they are unable to provide shelter to 77% of
All service providers without exception, reported the inadequate capacity of shelter and transitional housing programs in the county compared to the need, During the survey year, these programs were only able to serve 2,318 homeless people compared to the conservative estimate of 8,665 people who were homeless. This was illustrated during the operation of the Winter shelter where 20 - 50 people had to be turned away each night for lack of space. Waiting lists for spaces in transitional housing programs are standard practice. Service providers report that the service they would like to see expanded is the provision of transitional housing programs for all types of clients. Specialized programs were described as being essential for jail-released persons, substance abusers, youth, single parent families, disabled people and people with AIDS. Equally, service providers wanted to see transitional housing programs be able to provide services for longer than 60-90 days so that clients can receive substantial assistance and support to ensure that they will not become homeless again. Service providers also report that one of the most important new services that need to be provided is a year-round 24-hour emergency shelter service that could also provide support services and day time programs for shelter residents. Such services would include storage for belongings, shower, laundry facilities, phone and mail service as well as job training and job search, substance abuse and mental health counseling, self-help and self-advocacy groups and assistance in obtaining welfare benefits. Many service providers feel that until this service is provided with coordinated program support the homeless problem can never be adequately addressed in San Mateo County. LOW INCOME HOUSING Finding: Service providers report
the lack of low income housing was the single It is difficult to adequately describe the intensity and unanimity of service providers in their views about the need for low-income and subsidized housing in San Mateo County service providers consistently report that the homeless problem could be largely solved if there was an adequate supply of low-income housing. Frequently, they express the frustration of helping families and individuals either avoid or get out of homelessness only to know that they will be returning for help when their limited reserves of savings are depleted with the next rent or utility bill increase or family emergency.
Service providers report that often they cannot provide rental assistance or rental loan program services to their clients because these clients already have budget problems resulting in a monthly deficit, indicating that even if they are given temporary relief they will revert to the same budget difficulties when this relief is exhausted. The greatest reason given for these budget deficits was the extremely high percentage (60-80%) of family income spent to meet housing costs. One service provider summarizes the views and feelings of many staff working with the homeless.
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