Clearlake City Council considers helping fund Hope Center
- Elizabeth Larson
- Posted On
CLEARLAKE, Calif. – The Clearlake City Council has indicated it is open to considering a city contribution to the opening of a facility to help address the homeless problem in the county, but that it wants more financial information on the project.
The council reached a consensus to consider supporting the Hope Center project at its Jan. 23 meeting.
The Hope Center is a proposed transitional housing facility with 20 beds to be located in a remodeled building that Adventist Health purchased at 3400 Emerson Drive.
It will use a “housing first” approach and be open to people experiencing homelessness who are referred by agencies, individuals or who ask to gain entry by admitting themselves.
At the council’s Jan. 9 meeting, Councilman Russell Perdock had asked that the Hope Center be put on the next agenda, along with consideration of a $500,000 contribution from city bond proceeds.
The discussion on the proposal begins at the 9:15 mark in the video above.
The Hope Center is a project of Hope Rising, a nonprofit for which Adventist Health Clear Lake served as the “backbone agency,” according to a Jan. 17 press release issued by Adventist Health.
During the discussion, Allison Panella, Hope Rising’s executive director, said Adventist Health has guaranteed funding to run the facility for 15 years.
While Perdock himself also works for Adventist Health Clear Lake, city officials said that after consideration of a potential conflict of interest, they determined that Perdock did not need to recuse himself from the discussion.
Panella was joined by Shannon Kimbell-Auth, Adventist Health’s manager for community integration, in offering the presentation on the Hope Center to the council.
A root cause analysis on Lake County’s challenges linked all of them back to poverty, Panella said.
A little over two years ago, Partnership HealthPlan of California gave Hope Rising and Adventist Health $1.3 million to open up a transitional housing facility. Following that, Adventist Health purchased the Emerson Drive property for $500,000, she said.
In the time since, with Lake County continuing to experience disasters, the project has had setbacks such as finding available contractors and rising remodeling costs. Panella said their initial estimate was for remodeling to cost $500,000.
The remaining $300,000 is to be used for the first year of operational costs, she explained during the discussion.
“As we are looking at the homeless interventions, we want to keep in mind that there is no one right solution,” said Kimbell-Auth.
She said they are looking at a wide variety of options and long-term solutions to fit individuals, from emergency shelters to homeownership.
A study they did of homeownership in Lake County’s various zip codes showed it was lowest in percentage in Clearlake with Lucerne coming in second-lowest. It’s highest in Upper Lake, followed by Kelseyville.
At Project Restoration, which has a seven-bed transitional housing and respite facility called Restoration House in Lower Lake, one woman who came into the facility is now a homeowner, although Kimbell-Auth said homeownership won’t be the total solution for everyone.
The Hope Center’s clients will receive intensive one-on-one counseling as part of determining the best interventions for them, Kimbell-Auth said.
Two years ago, a point-in-time count for Lake County identified 612 people experiencing homelessness. Kimbell-Auth said some people said that number is high, but she said data they have access to in the health industry showed that from January to November they had 3,370 unique patients identify as homeless in Lake County, with one out of five of them children under age 18.
Kimbell-Auth said Hope Center won’t house children but as part of its wraparound service will work on family reunification.
“Our vision is really to impact poverty in Lake County,” she said, adding that it’s not a pie in the sky idea because, with the right intervention, people can find housing.
Panella said they have purchased the building, hired an architect, completed a feasibility study along with a design process and plans which were submitted to the city for approval, and are now accepting bids for the remodeling work.
Kimbell-Auth said once Hope Center is open, it will be joined by partners including Lake County Behavioral Health, the Lake County Health Department, the Department of Social Services, North Coast Opportunities, Adventist Health and Redwood Community Services.
“Our partners know what they're doing. They just haven't had the right tools,” she said.
She explained that the city of Clearlake is one of the most important partners at this exact moment “because this is the place where the poverty is the deepest.”
When the homeless problem is solved in Clearlake, Kimbell-Auth said it will translate into communities across the state and nation.
“We can do it. But it has to be done now,” she said.
Panella said they need $1 million to get the center open. They are planning to pursue a $1.5 million grant in June but need to show that the doors are open and they’re doing the work. “We’re almost there.”
She asked the city to join the effort. “This will be something that Clearlake can be proud of.”
Shelly Trumbo, Adventist Health’s vice president of community integration who had served as Hope Rising’s interim executive director at its inception, suggested that the county needed to prioritize its challenges and pool its resources to take on one problem at a time rather than being spread thin across many efforts.
Kimbell-Auth said people come to homelessness through many paths – from fire to flood, to alcohol and drugs. But what causes homelessness by itself isn’t drinking or drug use but not having other support, such as the lack of a living wage.
Some people experiencing homelessness have mental health issues but many of them get those diagnoses after living on the street. Kimbell-Auth questioned how someone could stay sane while being without a home or hope.
Council members raise questions, concerns
Councilwoman Joyce Overton said she doesn’t believe the homeless issue can be solved until there is a detox center in Lake County, because she said they need to be clean and sober before going into facilities like Hope Center.
Kimbell-Auth didn’t disagree that a majority of the homeless have drug and alcohol addictions, but she said there is no purpose in sending somebody to do the difficult work of detoxing and recovery when in three months they are going to be back on the street.
Lake County Behavioral Health will have offices at Hope Center so it can assist with getting people into recovery programs, she said.
“There is no one right solution. It is a continuum of solutions. And one piece of the puzzle is without question having a detox facility,” said Kimbell-Auth.
Overton said she wanted to see a lot more in writing about the center’s plans and financials before she was willing to commit city money to it.
Councilman Phil Harris asked how much time each occupant would spend at the center. Kimbell-Auth said the legal definition of transitional housing is six months to two years. At Project Restoration, the average is six months, but they’ve seen everything from two days to a year and a half.
City Manager Alan Flora asked if Clearlake residents would be given preference. Kimbell-Auth said it would be easier for them, as people who are experiencing homelessness tend to stick to their communities.
She said they found housing in Clearlake for a man at the Lakeport warming center, but he refused it. “He would rather be homeless in Lakeport than housed in Clearlake,” she said.
Toward the end of the discussion, Panella asked if the city could actually contribute $1 million rather than the originally proposed $500,000.
Flora asked what the impact would be if the city didn’t contribute. Panella said they will open the facility in stages if necessary.
Flora said there are funding options, including more than $2 million bonds issued by the former redevelopment agency which he also has in mind for other projects that he expects to bring forward in the coming year.
There also are Community Development Block Grant disaster funds for the 2017 disasters for which the Clearlake zip code has been allocated $1.1 million. He said he’s not sure if Hope Center would qualify for the funds, which may not be available for a year.
He suggested that at the midyear budget update on Feb. 20 he could bring forward a budget amendment that could include any direction the council wanted to pursue.
Harris asked about guarantees that the facility would continue to operate and what kind of security the city would have if it didn’t. Flora said the council can ask for any restrictions for the funds; the only parameters of the bond funding is that it be spent on lower- and moderate-income housing.
Panella said Adventist Health has signed a memorandum of understanding with Partnership HealthPlan to operate the facility as transitional housing for 15 years, regardless of funding.
Supervisor Bruno Sabatier said the Hope Center is the kind of project needed in the county, and asked them to come to the county government to see what assistance it can offer.
“I think this needs to be a partnership,” he said, suggesting that if the money isn’t there now, it will be in the future.
Flora said he had talked earlier in the day to Mayor Russell Cremer – who was absent for the meeting – and Cremer’s preference is for the council to consider funding up to $500,000 if another agency will provide matching funds.
Vice Mayor Dirk Slooten said his preference is the same as Cremer’s.
“This is sorely needed. We need to do something,” he said.
Slooten suggested getting it on the agenda and moving forward, adding that it’s a social issue that needs to be addressed now.
Perdock said he wanted to move forward. “Time has been wasted,” he said, with people living under bushes and squatting in homes. “We need to remedy that as soon as possible.”
Flora got consensus from the council to work on a $500,000 addition to the midyear budget review, and he said he would help get the information Overton wanted about the project.
Harris said he wanted an agreement to include verbiage that if the facility is used for anything other than transitional housing in the first 15 years that the city would receive a prorated return of investment.
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