On February 19, 2019, Mayor Brett Lee made a proposal to examine the feasibility of establishing a one-year respite center pilot project that would serve individuals experiencing unsheltered homelessness in Davis.
As proposed by the mayor, the respite center would be located on city-owned property. Among the important features, it would contain a “day shelter consisting of modular units where individuals could spend the day and have access to bathrooms, showers, and laundry facilities.”
It would also have “an overnight shelter consisting of sleeping cabins where individuals could spend the night.”
The staff report notes that since council directed staff “to research the concept and return with options for implementation,” several things have “transpired that underscore the importance of addressing homelessness in Davis.”
First, the point-in-time count numbers show that homelessness is a growing problem in Davis.
“According to recently released 2019 point-in-time count data, 190 persons experience homelessness on any given night in Davis,” staff reports. “Of the 190 persons, 114 experienced unsheltered homelessness and the remaining 76 experience sheltered homelessness. This number reflects a 30% increase from the last point-in-time count when the number of persons experiencing homelessness was 146.”
Second, the 2019 resident survey identified the lack of affordable housing (31%); growth/development and land use/sustainability (10%); and homelessness (7%) “as the City’s most important problems.”
Staff, in particular, notes that “the 2019 survey marked the first time residents identified homelessness as a problem, as the City asked the same question back in 2007 and 2014.”
Finally, the Davis Opportunity Village has “invited stakeholders representing all sectors to participate in a series of planning workshops with the goal of creating a three-year community action plan to address homelessness.”
Staff writes: “While the City’s efforts are not necessarily a component of the plan, Council agreed to consider the plan as context when making homeless service related decisions.”
There are three possible options for how the city could establish a one-year pilot program for the respite center.
- Option I: Modular Units, Sleeping Cabins, and Minimal Staffing. Option I most closely aligns with the mayor’s initial proposal of citing a day shelter and an overnight shelter, using sleeping cabins, on one campus. Alternatives I A and I B bifurcate the day and night components and cost them out separately. Council could choose to move forward with either the day shelter or the overnight shelter individually or site the shelters on two different locations.
- Option II: Privately-Owned Building and Robust Staffing. Option II, the most expensive, involves siting the day and overnight shelters in a privately-owned building. While this option would be the easiest to implement since much of the needed infrastructure would already exist, it would involve finding a suitable building in the private sector to rent. Alternative II A provides the cost for just the overnight shelter component.
- Option III: Increased Support for Existing Nonprofit. Option III, the least expensive, increases support for Davis Community Meals and Housing (DCMH) to expand the hours of operation for their current resource center located at 1111 H Street.
In analyzing the options, staff argued that the recommendation “depends on what goal the city council hopes to achieve.”
They note, “If the goal is to operate a short-term pilot to test an innovative concept and assess whether the concept is replicable, then staff recommends developing a detailed implementation plan for Option I (modular units, sleeping cabins, and minimal staffing) at the City owned site near the Dave Pelz overcrossing including a timeline, budget with identified funding sources, and a staffing strategy.”
This would represent “a short-term trial” that would expand the city’s current continuum of emergency shelter options.
Staff notes that the Dave Pelz location is recommended preliminarily because “the site is close to public transportation, the site is adequate in size, and an emergency shelter is already a permitted use.”
Another option is the Community Gardens, but staff notes that, while the area is a suitable location near key transit, it would “require a conditional use permit and it will necessitate displacing plot holders.”
They also express concerns about proximity near adjacent residential neighborhoods, which would require some outreach.
A second possibility is developing a long-term shelter plan. This would “address the rising number of persons experiencing unsheltered homelessness in Davis.”
In that scenario, “staff recommends foregoing all options in lieu of examining the feasibility of siting a permanent, year-round overnight shelter at the Dave Pelz location or at an alternate location.”
Staff writes that, while they see the need to act now, “staff views establishing a permanent, year-round overnight shelter as one of the greatest unmet gaps in the City’s homeless services continuum.”
In addition, “the Interfaith Rotating Winter Shelter (IRWS) has approached the City for help to transition to a permanent year-round site and their efforts to develop an infrastructure that includes paid professional staff. While volunteers have successfully managed and operated the IRWS for 12 years, leadership has publicly expressed concerns about its capacity to continue operating a rotating shelter using its current model of rotating every week and relying solely on volunteers.”
In addition, “staff does not recommend including a day shelter component as part of a long-term shelter plan. This is because Davis Community Meals and Housing (DCMH) submitted a development application to demolish its existing facility at 1111 H Street and rebuild a new multi-functional facility that will include an expanded day shelter. Should the project receive entitlements, the expanded day shelter is likely to meet the community’s day shelter need.”
There is also a third possibility – the need to devise both short and long-term shelter plans which would “address the rising number of persons experiencing unsheltered homelessness in Davis.”
Here staff again “recommends a short term site such as the Dave Pelz location while concurrently embarking on a broader analysis of long term shelter opportunities (including the identification of a publicly or privately owned site or building, a timeline, budget with identified funding sources, and a staffing strategy).”
The next step would be for the council to outline its goal and provide staff with direction to return with a more detailed plan.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
With or without the requirement of sobriety? [“Why ask why? Try Bud Dry”]
Or Davis is a growing problem in homelessness.
So if they’re not sober, do you want them to go to a different facility somewhere, go to jail, or just sleep out in the bushes?
That isn’t the question to be asked; the entire paradigm must be re-aligned.
Enabling occurs when the friends and family of a substance user support the addiction through their thoughts or behaviors. People who enable act as a cushion for addicts, preventing them from facing the consequences of their substance abuse.
When family members enable their loved one’s addiction, they lose respect for themselves, and the substance user loses respect for them. Ignoring the problem or engaging in enabling behaviors makes us lose self-respect because we know we’re not doing the right thing.
Enabling not only creates a permissive attitude toward drug use, but also gives the addict no desire to seek treatment. Enabled addicts lose faith in themselves and do not respect loved ones who make it easier for them to continue using drugs. — Drugrehab.com
Note: Enabling has the same consequences on a governmental/community level as well. Replace “loved ones” with “government” or “non-profit” above and you have the same dynamic. This will come to be understood all-too-well someday, but “we”, as society, are currently in the “let Heroin Jimmy sleep in the basement, hey do you know where that $200 cash I had in my purse went?” phase of understanding.
Actually, it is exactly the question I want to ask you. If they’re not sober, and they’re homeless, where do you want them to sleep? Because your ongoing emphasis on the need for sobriety in order to avail of resources leads to that rather obvious question. In other words, what are your practical solutions to the problem while we wait for “the entire paradigm” to “be re-aligned.”
I answered your question, you don’t like it.
Hint: What do families do after they take the very-hard-to-swallow pill of truly understanding the concept of enabling?
No you didn’t. Where should they sleep?
I don’t like the fact that you don’t answer the question and keep posting oblique non-answers. The council has to make actual policy decisions. What would yours be?
Person arrives at respite center. Person appears inebriated. Is it your policy that they should be told to leave? That the police should be called? Where do you think they will sleep if they are turned away? What is the Alan Miller policy for dealing with the people who are not sober/clean who need places to sleep?
They give up and those people become homeless. Those are some of the people we are talking about. In other words, they hand off the problem to society at large because the problem is bigger than they can deal with. Where do you wish society-at-large to hand those people off to?
I am giving you answers, but you don’t want to hear them. The active addict is by nature a taker. When you give to a taker, they take. This allows them to continue their active addiction. You ask the common question of where they should sleep. It seems so kind hearted to offer them a bed, but you are probably hastening their demise and the burden they are placing on society. It’s a difficult thing to accept, even more so for families then society as a whole, because when you finally release your loved one and say “no”, they are very likely to die. Because they are very likely to die anyway. But they will take and take and never be allowed to hit bottom, a bottom that may save them — but will probably kill them. The family, at least, is no longer being destroyed giving to a black hole of selfish destruction.
In my opinion, the doctrine (for want of a better word) that you are espousing is fine for any family or friends to adopt in dealing with an addict. But it has no place in public policy.
“Many people have probably heard the saying that when a person hits rock bottom then they will seek help. After years of hearing this false information it is important to know that this is a myth. Frequently when people “hit rock bottom” it is far too late for any type of behavior change or treatment program. ”
I could pull up dozens of these. You are perpetuating something that is fundamentally flawed and moreover, dangerous not only to the people involved but society as a whole.
Pull up all you want. I believe you are wrong about this, dead wrong. The fact is there is nothing we can do for the active addict. That’s a hard pill to swallow isn’t it? So hard, no one wants to swallow it. So we keep trying, throwing money at the problem in all the wrong ways.
The enabling paradigm applies to society just as it does the individual, except many more die.
You’re entitled to your opinion, but I will go with the evidence based research.
I met an Israeli woman at gathering in Davis, and we were discussing our locally genocidal Imam. She said something that rings oh – so – true:
“Americans want everything solved. They cannot except that some things will never be solved, and simply must be accepted as they are.”
Yeah sorry, she’s right, I won’t ever accept that.
However, my objection was to your comment about needing to hit rock bottom. Researchers will tell you that by the time someone hits rock bottom it is too late.
You said: “They cannot except that some things will never be solved” – I agree. Americans can’t accept that.
I meant that she said “accept” not “except”; one of those perpetual brain farts for me.
On that, blogmeister, we agree.
I guess that makes me unAmerican.
Shall we go down the long list of things that people said don’t bother, you can never change, that people were able to change? Given the founding of this nation, it’s not clear how such a concept of change against the impossible odds could be closer to our national ethos? Should the founding fathers have been content with British rule? Should they have accepted a monarchy at the foundation (it was a close vote btw)? Should the abolitionists have accepted slavery? Should Rosa Parks should have accepted the seat on the back of the bus? Should MLK have accepted second class status? Should we have accepted that we are earthbound? You’re right, I don’t accept and I am damn proud I don’t. Whatever horrible things abound in this world, I believe in humanity’s agency to change it.
??? I think you got that backwards . . .
If they die, yes. Addiction is often fatal.
I’m not sure what your point is . . .
You will go with the evidence-based research that supports your opinion, as you always do. Science is fraught with error — human error, random error, systematic errors, Hawthorne effect, John Henry effect, placebo effect, rating effect, sampling bias, selection bias, response bias, performance bias, measurement bias, etc. That is with hard science . . . when you get to the human psyche, that’s a whole nuther lode of error heaped on top, and then with addiction — there are so many issues with establishing baselines and timelines and measures of success and added human bias.
Remember that issue the other day — was it 30% or 80%? – turns out those with the opinion that supported the political view that 30% supported espoused the 30% figure, and vicey vercie. What a f*cking shock!
Sometimes it just comes down to common sense — very lacking in our intellectually brilliant enclave with 74% college graduates. At least that’s the number I read on some blog.
What is the address of this? Is it on the north or south side of the freeway?
I’m sure a valued resource like our beloved community gardens will happily be sacrificed by the plot-holders for the higher value of housing the ‘home-less’. [Hint: SARCASM!!!!!!]
Oh, I don’t think so . . . I’m sure the neighbors will ‘reach out’ to the City, saving the City the trouble.
The mayor has told me that he is committed to no loss of garden plots. Obviously the issue has to be agendized and subject to public comment before he can take a formal position on it. But he does not agree with the staff report on that aspect.
I have a better idea for the location — how about right in the middle of the ARC, as a condition of permitting the new project? Seems a fair trade.
Where do ‘entitlements’ come from?
Council
Isn’t the day shelter proposal just Paul’s Place?
Alan and David:
Addicts/those who are chemically dependent, those who are not confronted with really bad consequences, and can still escape the consequences, seldom/rarely turn things around… (my read of Alan’s points).
Those who truly “hit rock bottom”, can seldom/rarely get out of the hole, no matter how much folk try (my read of David’s points).
Early intervention/course change opportunities can work… late intervention/course change opportunities seldom work… except as a palliative approach… comfort, not remission/cure.
Just what I’ve seen over the years, no scholarly cites… FWIW… if anything…