Title
Recommendation to Recommend Approval of The Road Home: A 5 Year Plan to Prevent and Respond to Homelessness in Alameda to City Council.
Body
To: Honorable President Sarah Lewis and Members of the Social Service Human Relations Board
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
City Council has identified addressing homelessness as one of its key priorities. As a result, in January of 2021, work began on The Road Home: A 5 Year Plan to Prevent and Respond to Homelessness in Alameda (Strategic Plan) (Exhibit 1). In August of 2021, the Social Services Human Relations Board (SSHRB) reviewed and provided feedback on an earlier draft of the Strategic Plan. The feedback provided at that meeting, as well as comments from the Steering Committee and others, have been incorporated into the revised Strategic Plan. Tonight, staff is requesting that SSHRB recommend approval of the Strategic Plan to City Council.
BACKGROUND
From 2017 to 2019, the number of people experiencing homelessness in Alameda rose by 13%, to 231 individuals. Of these, 132 individuals were unsheltered. While this number has likely increased over the last 2 years due to the COVID-19 pandemic and other factors, the scale of this number presents an opportunity to make a meaningful impact on preventing and reducing homelessness in Alameda. The City Council identified addressing homelessness as one of its priorities for 2020-2021 and beyond.
In January of 2021, work began on a five-year plan to address homelessness in Alameda. The planning process is being led by Homebase, a nationally recognized expert on homelessness with extensive technical assistance and facilitation experience.
As part of the strategic planning process, Homebase has completed an assessment of existing programs and systems in Alameda and conducted extensive stakeholder engagement, including regular Steering Committee meetings, two community meetings, an online survey, and multiple focus groups and individual interviews. In spring of 2021, staff brought a series of preliminary goals and strategies to SSHRB and City Council for review and feedback.
DISCUSSION
In August of 2021, the SSHRB reviewed and provided feedback on the Strategic Plan. As a result of this feedback, as well as additional comments received from the Steering Committee and other stakeholders, Staff has made the following substantial changes to the Strategic Plan:
• Report structure and organization: A series of hyperlinks have been embedded throughout the document to ensure that readers can easily and quickly navigate to the sections they are most interested in reading. In addition, the Achievements and Metrics sections have been moved into the body of the report, and the Implementation Plan has been moved to the front of the appendix, directly following the Goals and Strategies section.
• Highlighting additional achievements: St. Vincent DePaul’s Flexible Funds program and the City’s Rent Program were added to the Achievements sections.
• Alignment to County Strategic Plan Update: A crosswalk has been added to the appendix to show how the goals and strategies in the Strategic Plan align with the strategies and actions in the County Strategic Plan Update.
• Clarifying data needs: Action Step 3.2.b has been expanded to provide more specificity around the types of data needed to support plan implementation, including better information about the ages and places of origin of our unhoused residents.
• Two new actions steps:
o In a response to a request for more detail about how to accomplish the action steps, staff is recommending the creation of regular work plans to guide the implementation of the Strategic Plan (Action Step 3.2.i). This will allow staff to be flexible and responsive to changing conditions, opportunities, and funding sources during the implementation of the plan.
o New Action Step 2.1.c ensures that the City will collaborate with the College of Alameda to assist transition age youth experiencing homelessness.
In addition to these high level changes, a number of smaller edits were also made, including formatting, grammar, spelling and style, as well as more minor content changes. The Strategic Plan is scheduled to go before City Council on October 5, 2021, and staff will provide a verbal update on SSHRB’s recommendation at that meeting.
RECOMMENDATION
Recommend approval of The Road Home: A 5 Year Plan to Prevent and Respond to Homelessness in Alameda to City Council.
Respectfully submitted,
Amanda Gehrke, Development Manager
Exhibit:
1. The Road Home: A 5 Year Plan to Prevent and Respond to Homelessness in Alameda