By: Richard Mendoza
(PHOTO CREDIT TO: CITYNET)
City Net, a nonprofit organization that works to address homelessness, is helping counties and cities across Southern California to address the matter with many of their available services. “Our services are everything from street outreach and engagement to police diversion programs which we do in Anaheim and Santa Ana, to shelter operations, where we operate a number of shelters and emergency homeless shelters” said Matt Bates, Executive Vice President of City Net Homeless Services.
The services provided by City Net also include case management, housing navigation, bridge-housing, reunification, and census coordination, and even works to mobilize community resources, including meals, volunteers, donations and advocacy. To address homelessness in the state, Southern California cities are beginning to form partnerships with organizations and nonprofits like City Net to help provide for those in need.
With the combined efforts of multiple cities and non-profit organizations such as City Net, Mercy Housing, and Grandma’s house of hope, homelessness is trending downwards in Orange County, with much of the impact coming to the City of Anaheim. Since January 2014, 5000 people transitioned from homelessness in Anaheim with a 90 percent retention rate according to the City of Anaheim. The city has worked to provide affordable housing and shelters to its residents, via partnerships with nonprofits and programs designed to help the homeless, and the results are showing.
From 2019 to 2022, the number of homeless people counted in Santa Ana, Anaheim/Orange County decreased by 17%, according to compiled data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Continuum of Care offices in California. According to the Bureau of Justice Assistance, “Anaheim has the highest homeless population in Orange County, California with 1,054 homeless living predominately in high poverty areas”. In 2021, the city of Anaheim was awarded $550,000 in federal funds, which were to be allocated for “salary, benefits, and training for two homeless outreach team officers and a contracted project evaluator,” according to the BJA.
State-wide, California’s homelessness issue has seen an increase. According to the 2021 Annual homeless assessment report published by the by US Department of Housing and Urban Development, “California experienced the largest absolute increase in the number of individuals staying in shelters, with 4,664 more sheltered individuals in California in 2021 than 2020 – a 17 percent rise.”
City Net, formed in Long Beach in 2003, states its mission is to unite those already trying to provide for the homeless in select cities with a collective partnership in the hopes of creating collaboration rather than competition. Due to the success found in Long Beach, City Net was contacted by the city of Anaheim in the fall of 2013 to begin work on replicating that similar success in Orange County. “We had a meeting once a week where we would have all the agencies come together and have a common conversation about homelessness in Anaheim, and who’s doing what, and that’s where we started,” said Bates, 51.
The Anaheim Community Care Response Team works to provide pathways out of homelessness and address neighborhood complaints. Anaheim city’s partnership with City Net works to actively address homelessness through the coordination of community efforts, uniting city departments, nonprofits, businesses, advocates, and residents. From January 1, 2020, to December 31, 2020, City Net and its partners worked to help 3,125 individuals safely transition into a qualified housing option.
Despite positive influence and success, non-profits such as City Net and Grandma’s house of hope still face challenges that impede positive movement. “There are some (cities) where you just get the sense that they’re just trying to check the box. They’re trying to run a program because their voters, their constituents, their business owners, their residents are demanding something... and the city doesn’t really want to,” said Bates.
In Anaheim, the Anaheim city council denied a building permit for Grandma’s house of hope, which would have provided a housing program for homeless women with mental health disorders. Grandma’s house of hope, like City Net, provides services to those in need of shelter and resources, mainly in the cities of Anaheim and Garden Grove. Cynthia Macias, the program Manager at Grandmas House of Hope for the Women's Emergency Shelter, also helps to provide shelter with the use of two of her own properties, which are houses that contain a front and back house.
“We are a housing first model, and what that means is we focus on their housing, but within the program we provide services like case management, housing navigation and we basically like to get them stabilized,” said Macias, 28, who has been with the organization for 3 years. “Specifically, a lot of the individuals that come from the health care agency do struggle with mental health, and my priority for this program and this house is to get them stabilized, get that support group for them, and get them document ready which helps us in our goals of housing navigation,” said Macias.
For those who are homeless, or on the verge of homelessness in orange county, the situation is looking to be a lot harder to traverse through. “We need a massive policy shift that will result in housing costs drastically lowering, because in my experience, that's the main barrier. Even if somebody becomes unhoused in Orange County, it's darn near impossible to find it a place that's even remotely affordable, so they're forced to live in their car,” says Nicole Huff. Huff, 35, works for Mercy Housing, a nonprofit organization that's partnered with the city of Placentia, CA. The organization helps to provide permanent housing for homeless veterans within the city of Placentia through the creation of the Placentia Veterans Village, described as "a permanent supportive housing development that serves military veterans who are homeless."
And while the city of Placentia has been helpful to her and her organization, Huff understands the need for more aggressive ways of tackling the homelessness issue throughout California. “As more people retire, the situation is going to get worse because if they (social security recipients) don't own a home that they can retire and will continue to live in, they are not going to be able to continue to afford to rent after retirement,” said Huff.
(Written December, 2022)
(UPDATED: JUNE 25, 2023)
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