The Santa Monica City Council has approved a $189,000 agreement with Community Partners to expand the City’s Chronic Homeless Program (CHP).
According to the City’s Acting Human Services Manager Mona Miyasato, this expansion will “create a three-person, interdisciplinary team dedicated 100 percent to the CHP.” The team will work with the current members of the inter-agency collaborative, including CLARE Foundation, Ocean Park Community Corporation, St Joseph Center, New Directions, Step Up on Second, LA County Department of Mental Health, Police, Fire, Housing Authority and the City’s Human Services Department.
During a CHP pilot project in 2004-2005, 25 people participated and 13 people were removed from the streets into housing. The next year, 60 additional people were enrolled and out of that group 20 additional people left the streets for housing.
The team will “have a caseload of 30 individuals. For the first year this would be $6,300 per person for services [not including housing.]
During Fiscal Year 2005-2006, the City used $2.2 million to fund nine agencies and 21 programs to deal with the homeless. During Fiscal Year 2004-2005, homeless programs served 2,248 adults of which 20 percent are estimated to be chronically homeless. 874 people (39 percent) were placed into emergency or transitional housing, 309 people (14 percent) were placed into permanent housing and jobs were found for 547 people (25 percent).
The Council also approved a $126,000 agreement with the Urban Institute for a system and program evaluation of the homeless continuum of care as a whole.
The evaluation will include community input in the form of discussions and public forums in July and December.
