YOLO COUNTY, CA (MPG) - Now that the threat of COVID-19 appears to be diminishing, so are the funds for Project Roomkey.

Project Roomkey was designed to be a temporary fix to help quarantine homeless people over 65-years-old or with a medical condition. The program included items like food and medical care. The project originated in West Sacramento, but during the pandemic the project received funding from FEMA and cities across the state of California began adopting the project.

As of August 2021, over 42,000 people had been housed through Project Roomkey in the state of California, according to Impact to Date, an ongoing data collection service. Yolo County plans to continue the program without federal funding. Many people have gone from Project Roomkey to Project Homekey, a longer-term housing plan with services to aid individuals in becoming a productive member of society once again.

According to Ian Evans, Adult and Aging Branch Director at Yolo County Health and Human Services Agency, there have been approximately 1,000 unduplicated clients served in Yolo County’s Project Roomkey and West Sacramento’s Project Homekey combined. To date, 125 have secured permanent housing with 68 of those coming from West Sacramento.

West Sacramento has groups like the Yolo County Children’s Alliance, Shores of Hope, Mercy Coalition, West Sac Kids Give Back and many more. These groups offer a wide variety of daily services for our homeless community.

Our city and county officials have created larger entities like the Homeless and Poverty Action Coalition (HPAC), the Commission to Address Homelessness, Yolo County Housing Authority, Community Services Action Board, Davis Homelessness Alliance and typically a city homeless action plan.

These groups focus on poverty reduction, management of funding for homeless related projects, meeting the HUD requirements for a homeless Continuum of Care (CoC). They also work in collaboration with county and city governments, philanthropy, business sectors, community and faith-based organizations and other interested stakeholders on regional policy and implementation strategies. They have people that walk the streets to gather data on the needs of the homeless and what their challenges are.

Currently, their guiding document for strategy, policy and funding decisions is the 2019 plan to address homelessness, but the county is working to update this plan with new goals and objectives that will serve as the plan for the next 3-4 years.

“It is an extremely complex issue compounded by decades of policy decisions at the state and federal level around housing, lack of growth in funding for mental health and substance use services, a huge rise in housing costs and a lack of living wage growth,” Evans said. “At a human level, each story is different and complex. Our teams encounter individuals who graduated from college, don’t have family, weren’t able to secure employment and are living outdoors.

“Individuals who lost employment, had increased rent, who had to choose to pay rent or put food on their table or repair their car to maintain employment, pay costly medical bills, or other emergency expenses, all resulting in homelessness.” 

According to a 2019 financial survey by Charles Schwab, 59% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck which means any emergency could render them homeless. According to Evans, studies show that most Americans wrongly assume that the leading causes of homelessness are drug addiction and mental health issues.

“This is untrue. The three leading causes of homelessness are lack of affordable housing, unemployment and poverty,” Evans said. “Our teams encounter individuals every day that struggle with substance use or mental health issues. But in learning their stories, these individuals often didn’t have these issues prior to being homeless, so those are often causes from homelessness not causes of homelessness.”

Criminal history is also a huge barrier to many housing programs. Yolo County has several programs to help remedy this, but it remains a challenge. Required personal documents often get lost.

“There is often significant trauma with our neighbors living outdoors, physical, emotional, sexual and the trauma of feeling invisible or even outcast from society,” Evans said. “On top of that, our teams engage with people that are leery of any promises from the government because they have been seemingly let down repeatedly by different organizations. Our teams work hard to build rapport and trust and prove that we can help them. The uncertainty can make it appear that these individuals don’t want help, want to live outside, or any number of statements we often hear.”

“The last piece I will add is that these are often our neighbors, our friends, our family, people we went to school with or grew up with,” Evans continued. “In the 2019 point in time count, 16% of individuals had lived in Yolo County for 30+ years, 50% lived here four or more years, 9% of total respondents indicated they lived here their entire life and 30% did not answer so these percentages are likely higher. The number of individuals that are boots on the ground that work on this every day throughout our county, city, partner and provider networks is amazingly impressive and we can’t do it without the general public knowing and understanding that we need their help in solving this issue too.”