Quick Take
The Housing First model combats homelessness by getting people into housing first and providing basic necessities, setting them up for greater success in working on their own issues. Santa Cruz County housing professionals and homeless service providers say that while there is a will and interest to implement the model locally, there are big obstacles including funding and, most notably, housing.
Santa Cruz County housing advocates say that attacking the homelessness crisis by first providing housing and basic needs is a good solution, but that the area has big obstacles that will be challenging to overcome.
Earlier this month, many working directly to combat homelessness attended a screening of a documentary titled “Beyond the Bridge: A Solution to Homelessness” by filmmakers Don Sawyer and Tim Hashko at the Rio Theatre. The film explores the Housing First model, which aims to first provide permanent, supportive housing to people experiencing homelessness. The idea is that giving people basic necessities first is likely to make them more successful in improving their quality of life from that point forward.
The film points out that in two major U.S. cities — Milwaukee and Houston — the model has worked. Milwaukee has the lowest homeless population per capita in the United States, and Houston has a homeless population below 1,500 despite being the country’s fourth-largest city. Don Lane, a former Santa Cruz mayor and board member of nonprofit Housing Matters told Lookout that major players in local homelessness response would like to make this happen in this area — and believe that they can.
“This is not some pipe dream,” Lane said. “I think there’s a will to do it, but it’s a big commitment from a lot of different people.”
The film showed that bringing the model to life requires strong coordination and collaboration among local governments, homeless service providers and nongovernmental organizations. Lane said Santa Cruz County has a solid framework to foster that collaboration with the creation of its Housing for Health division, but actually engaging with each other is more of a challenge.
“You’re dealing with hundreds of people in crisis and trying to deal with that, so it’s always challenging to be doing that and looking at the long term,” he said. “It’s more of a political and governmental challenge to get everyone together in a completely coordinated way.”
Robert Ratner, director of the Housing for Health division, said there is “definitely the political will for it” and that the agency is working with Sam Tsemberis, one of the founders of the Housing First model, to support and guide the agency’s path to implementing more components of the model. Housing for Health, in partnership with county behavioral health, has the goal of housing 100 people with serious mental health issues over the next 18 months.
Some providers already use some of the components of the Housing First model, such as not requiring a person to be sober or have a job, said Evan Morrison, executive director of People First of Santa Cruz County. His homeless services organization runs the city’s largest homeless shelter, at the National Guard armory at DeLaveaga Park. But he said the county and its service providers are lacking the most important piece of the model: actual housing.
“The issue with this region and Housing First is that there’s no service provider who just has these units they can put people in,” Morrison said. “It’s really difficult to do without the units.”
Lane and Ratner agree.
“I don’t want us to use that as an excuse not to move in this coordinated, collaborative direction, but even if we get there, and we are going to get there, we will not be as successful until we’ve done the longer-term work to get more rental housing that’s affordable for people,” said Lane.
“We need options that are going to operate and be high quality, and then layer support on top of them,” said Ratner. “I think there’s a lot of commitment to the idea, but with the current federal priorities and challenges, coupled with the states not having an ongoing commitment of funding, it’s kind of hard to build these programs.”
Ratner said the county and its partners are required to piece together different funding sources to adequately cover the costs of services and housing, which is a “really complicated puzzle.” Some of that needs to come from the state and federal government because, simply put, local governments can’t do it on their own.
“They just don’t have enough money to cover that gap between the market rate housing costs and what seniors, people with disabilities, and minimum wage workers are actually earning,” said Ratner.
Earlier this week, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced nearly $800 million in new homelessness funding for a number of endeavors including outreach services and supporting permanent housing solutions. And the money comes with a caveat: California counties need to show success.
Ratner said Santa Cruz County needs to both find ways to create more housing opportunities with its existing stock as well as expand the stock of affordable housing. To work on addressing the latter point, he said Housing for Health is working with the Bill Wilson Center, a Santa Clara-based youth and family homelessness prevention organization, to match local host families and other private property owners with homeless youth as a sort of transitional housing option.
Another local organization, Senior Network Services, provides a similar service directed toward older adults. It aims to work with older homeowners with rooms available and partner them with seniors who need housing. Ratner said that, given the difficulty with securing funding for brand-new housing developments, programs like these are vital.
“It feels like, over the past few years, there’s been a growing trend to push and support more affordable housing,” he said. “The city of Santa Cruz is a pro-housing community, but developers can’t make the projects work for seniors and people with disabilities if they don’t get additional resources to fund the project.”
Morrison said a change in zoning and building codes should be considered to open the door for more housing developments in more areas, and he also said he’d like to see consideration of turning unused commercial buildings, such as offices, into housing for a possibly more efficient expansion of the housing stock.
“A lot of the time you spend trying to build anything in this region is navigating how you can build what you want to build,” he said.
Despite the drawn-out, onerous process of planning and building housing, some incoming developments could signify the county’s movement toward a broader Housing First approach. Lane pointed to Harvey West Studios, a five-story, 120-unit permanent supportive housing development that broke ground in September 2024. It is the largest permanent supportive housing project in the county, and is expected to open in summer 2026. Morrison said providing the supportive services after that is equally important.
“I think we need to be cognizant of the fact that the great majority of folks who have been homeless for a long time are going to need just as much support once they get housed,” he said. “And we need to be funded and prepared to provide that support.”
Morrison added that, overall, homeless services are beginning to focus more on their programs’ results rather than just the services they provide.
“Over my career, I’ve certainly seen organizations that are just providing services and not really concerning themselves with outcomes or aren’t really trying to help people improve their lives,” he said. “As I got into this, that felt really baffling to me. But it is, nonetheless, a culture shift that’s happening within homeless services.”
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