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Weeks after El Dorado County officials announced their intention to draft a long-term homeless plan, local police and county officials came together for a public forum on homelessness.

Thursday’s meeting featured presentations from El Dorado County District Attorney Vern Pierson, members of the Sheriff’s Office’s Homeless Outreach Team and El Dorado County Health and Human Services Agency Director Don Semon. The presentations were followed by a panel discussion with questions from the public.

The Republican Party of El Dorado County hosted the forum at Park Community Church in Shingle Springs with approximately 50 members of the public in attendance.

While the meeting centered on how to solve homelessness in El Dorado County going forward, Pierson kicked off the meeting by stating what he thinks to be the problem and the cause.

“The real problem we’re dealing with over the past three, four or five years has to do with what I call the swinging pendulum of dysfunctionality. In other words, there are people who are dysfunctional and they cannot function in a way that most of us would consider to be normal.”

The specific cause? The fall of the California correctional system and mental health institutions, according to Pierson.

“President Reagan closed the mental hospitals and more recently Gov. Jerry Brown closed the jails,” Pierson said. “Both of these things were well-intentioned but they were extremely poorly executed.”

Specifically, Pierson cited Ronald Reagan’s efforts in passing the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act as governor and the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act as president, which largely ended the state and federal government’s role in fighting mental illness, as a major cause of California’s explosion in homelessness.

Pierson also blamed Brown’s efforts to reduce California’s prison population through Proposition 47 in 2014, which reduced some drug and theft penalties from felonies to misdemeanors; Proposition 57 in 2016, which allowed inmates convicted of nonviolent crimes consideration for early parole; and his 2011 realignment campaign (Assembly Bill 109) that shifted responsibility for some parolees from state prison officials to county jails.

Most of Brown’s efforts were in response to a 2011 U.S. Supreme Court decision ordering California to reduce its prison population to 137.5 percent of design capacity within two years. In late 2006 California’s prison system was at 200.2 percent of capacity and housed 162,804 inmates. By early 2015 the state reported 113,463 inmates — a number below the 137.5 percent mandate — and the figure has hovered around that number and percentage since.

At the meeting, El Dorado County Health and Human Services Agency director Don Semon laid out what types of funding the El Dorado Opportunity Knocks Continuum of Care anticipates going forward. El Dorado Opportunity Knocks is a collaboration of local agencies, resources and residents working to eliminate homelessness that came together after the Placerville homeless camp Hangtown Haven was closed in 2014. Opportunity Knocks was folded into the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Continuum of Care program that supplies grants to organizations and communities to establish permanent and transitional housing for the homeless as well as ancillary services.

Next fiscal year the CoC projects at least $1.2 million in state funding to fight homelessness. That number is expected to grow as Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention Program funding becomes available to CoCs and counties. At Thursday’s meeting Semon said he expects the CoC to bring “somewhere in the neighborhood of $3 million” this year. As recently as 2015 El Dorado County received $110,556 from the state to fight homelessness.

“The dirty secret is, you have to compete for those (state) funds,” Semon said. “Up until the past few years, we have not really been competing for those funds.”

A Housing-First approach to homelessness is required to bring in most federal and state homelessness funds, according to Semon. Housing First is a homeless assistance approach that prioritizes providing permanent housing to people experiencing homelessness.

Semon said, “All studies of (continuums of care) over the past 25 years have shown them to be successful.”

Homeless people in a Housing First model access housing faster and are more likely to remain stably housed, according to studies from the academic journals Community and Applied Social Psychology and Psychiatric Services.

Costs tend to be lower as well. A study in Denver found average cost savings on emergency services of $31,545 per person housed in a Housing First program over two years. A Columbia University study showed that a Housing First program could cost up to $23,000 less per person per year than a shelter program.

Sonoma County and the city of Santa Rosa have had successes with the Housing First approach. Homelessness in Santa Rosa declined by 16 percent and countywide chronic homelessness declined by 20 percent after one year of operation, according to data from a Sonoma County homeless census.

Still, some are hesitant to adopt the model.

Proposals from El Dorado County Sheriff John D’Agostini come in contrast to the Housing First approach put forth by Semon and encouraged by HUD. Housing for the homeless “is not the answer,” according to the sheriff.

“All you’re going to do is attract more homeless and exacerbate the problem if you start building homeless shelters or housing for those kinds of things,” D’Agostini said at the meeting.

“I use the term bird feeder. If you build a bird feeder in your yard, what happens? All the birds show up,” he said. “They crap all over your property, all over your bird-feeder, everywhere. As long as you have that bird feeder there, that’s what they’re going to do. The only way to stop all that is to get rid of the bird feeder. It’s the same with human nature.”

D’Agostini spoke in favor of the model put forth by the city of San Antonio, which has a 22-acre, 1,700-person shelter called Haven for Hope. It cost $100 million to build and $20 million annually to operate. Haven for Hope is a public-private partnership that provides personalized help to get folks into housing.

San Antonio’s program diverts from the Housing First model by screening homeless folks for drugs, alcohol and mental health issues. The Housing First model gets homeless people into housing and then places focus on finding support services.

San Antonio’s homeless population has varied since Haven for Hope began its operation in 2010, rising as high as 3,670 homeless individuals in 2012 to as low as 2,743 in 2017.

A recent count found that El Dorado County experienced a slight uptick in homelessness, rising 1.8 percent from 602 to 613 between 2017 and 2019. Homelessness rose by 123 percent from 2015 to 2017 in the county, jumping from 269 to 602 homeless persons.

The meeting comes as county officials get started on a more comprehensive, full-fledged homeless plan than they have had in the past. On Sept. 6 elected officials from the county, city of Placerville and city of South Lake Tahoe came together for a first-ever, joint discussion of homelessness in the county.

Over the coming months the three entities will begin drafting a five-year homeless plan. The plan will lay out how the county, cities and CoC will attack homelessness and spend its federal and state funding. Semon said community input will be a key aspect in developing the plan.

“There will be a ton of community engagement,” Semon said. “We will also be talking to homeless people. We don’t want to create services that they won’t be interested in. So they too will have a voice in how to address homelessness in this county.”

Recent state laws encourage counties to adopt a Housing First approach. In 2016 Gov. Brown signed Senate Bill 1380 into law, officially making California a Housing First state and establishing a Homeless Coordinating and Financing Council.

To receive most federal homeless funding, HUD requires jurisdictions to adopt a Housing First approach.

The homelessness topic appears to be on the minds of just about everyone in El Dorado County. El Dorado Progressives and the El Dorado County Democratic Party are planning a public meeting on homelessness and affordable housing Oct. 13 from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m.