Quick Take
Homelessness nonprofit Housing Matters announced Friday that it will reduce capacity at the Rebele Family Shelter on Coral Street and its off-site recuperative care center at the former Salt Air Lodge on Leibrandt Avenue, as both are “operating with significant budgetary deficits.” CEO Phil Kramer said the move is likely to take place over the next month or so, but none of the current occupants will be forced out early.
Homelessness nonprofit Housing Matters will decrease its capacity at the Rebele Family Shelter on Coral Street and its recuperative care center due to budgetary difficulties, the Santa Cruz organization announced Friday afternoon.
The plan is to relocate the recuperative care center to the second floor of the Rebele Family Shelter building and move all family shelter rooms to the third floor, according to a release from Housing Matters CEO Phil Kramer. It said that the number of shelter rooms will be reduced to 18 from 28, while the number of recuperative care center beds will fall to 20 from 30; the move is expected to reduce the annual recuperative care center lease expenses by more than $1 million and allow both programs to share some operating costs like safety, facilities and kitchen services.
“Housing Matters relies heavily on government funding for our programs, but most public funding sources only allow limited administrative and operational costs. To provide the robust services our participants need, we depend on private philanthropy and foundation support to bridge those gaps. As our organization and programs have grown, those financial gaps have grown as well,” wrote Kramer. “Rather than risk the closure of either program, we are reducing the capacity of both to preserve services into the future.”
The recuperative care center is a medical respite program run out of the site of the former Salt Air Lodge on Leibrandt Avenue that helps people recover from serious health issues after they leave local medical facilities.
The move comes on the heels of Housing Matters shutting down the county’s only drop-in day services at the end of March, halting access to showers, restrooms, mail service and basic amenities for an estimated 50 to 80 unhoused people who use them daily.
Kramer told Lookout on Friday afternoon that the organization simply doesn’t have enough money in its general operating funds to cover its growing programs, particularly with major service additions coming online, such as Harvey West Studios, a 120-unit permanent supportive housing project slated to open this summer on the Housing Matters campus.
“Our growth is outpaced in all those private donations and the foundation support,” he said. “I simply don’t have enough money to cover all the gaps in our programs.”
The transition will begin in June, but is expected to take place over a month or so, Kramer said. The Rebele Family Shelter currently serves 90 people on average, while the recuperative care center can serve up to 34. That will fall to 58 and 20 people, respectively, but Kramer said that none of the program occupants will be forced out early as a result of the changes.
“The idea is that people will naturally transition out following their housing plan or their medical recuperation,” said Kramer.
He added that the relocating of the recuperative care center to the Rebele Family Shelter building is envisioned to be just a temporary move, with the hope that the organization can construct an 18-bed recuperative care center on the bottom floor of Harvey West Studios. It will also allow for the same number of staff members to handle the center’s caseload both at the interim Rebele Family Shelter location and in the eventual Harvey West Studios location.
However, there is no timeline for how long the center will operate out of the Rebele Family Shelter, given that there are still many pre-construction steps and financing to secure in order to complete any new facility. But Kramer said that the Salt Air Lodge lease is just too expensive. He added that the organization moved the care center to the Salt Air Lodge in order to make room for the Harvey West Studios construction, and that has always intended to bring it back to the Housing Matters main campus.
“The owner has been great, but [the lease] is $90,000 a month and $1 million a year,” he said. “It’s operating at a deficit, and it can’t continue to operate at a deficit.”
Kramer said people were supportive of the move in an all-staff meeting on Friday, but that there is still undoubtedly some disappointment.
“I think we’re all disappointed at a reduced capacity for the programs, but we also see a lot of benefits of having the recuperative care center with all the support structures here on [the Housing Matters] campus,” he said.
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