Every week between now and the November Election, the Vanguard will ask the District 2 Candidates (the only contested council election this year) one question. They are asked to limit their response to 350 words.
Question 5: How would you address homelessness concerns in the city of Davis? You can discuss issues like permanent supportive housing, law enforcement roles, and homeless encampments.
Victor Lagunes
When I decided to run for city council, I made housing a central part of my campaign because I have seen families and teachers struggle with housing for years, and as a volunteer with the Interfaith Rotating Winter Shelter I learned of the personal experiences of our unhoused neighbors. Ultimately, we know the best solution to the unhoused is to house them, so providing more housing and resources to stay housed is part of a holistic strategy of ending homelessness.
Unfortunately, housing insecurity has become more widespread in the 21st century. It is not some tragedy that strikes only the poorest among us: those with no family safety net, those with severe and untreated mental illness or addiction. It impacts the healthy and employed as well. In Yolo County, 40 percent of residents are just one paycheck from becoming housing insecure. This includes residents and families from our farm and food service workers to UC Davis graduate students.
Our first strategy in dealing with homelessness must be prevention. For renters, this can mean providing temporary rental assistance during financial setbacks via our Housing Trust Fund, implementing our renters resources programs with greater efficacy, and expanding our support for programs such as STEAC and Empower Yolo. When the city offers appointments for housing support, these fill up immediately. I would also like to increase this service to meet demand, especially for our Spanish-speaking neighbors.
For those who are already unhoused, our city has worked hard in recent years to have many tools at our disposal. The Department of Social Services and Housing was established to take some of the responsibilities for responding to issues with the unhoused; however, the demands on staff time and availability of resources must be augmented in order to make progress towards effectively providing services to our unhoused neighbors, and mitigating tensions with residents and business owners. Paul’s Place is an example of many interested parties joining forces to produce real results. I see a need to better coordinate all the pieces we have—government and nonprofits— to force-multiply existing efforts and improve the coverage of services.
Dillan Horton
Seeing many unhoused individuals struggling with housing, food, and other basic needs concerns every Davis resident. Folks are concerned that people are living in conditions that wouldn’t be safe for any individual, and folks are concerned about the public safety challenges this situation brings.
In 2020 and 2021, I led the effort to create the Davis Department of Social Services and Housing, which manages city services to our unhoused residents. Of course, more work needs to be done to have this new department be fully responsive to all the needs in town. Unhoused individuals on the streets are vulnerable health-wise as we saw during the pandemic, but are also vulnerable to crime and other physical threats. The stabbings in May of 2023, where unhoused people were a target, and the new Department of Social Services and Housing and the Police Department worked together to get vulnerable people off the streets and into emergency housing.
Many residents have shared concerns about public safety challenges sometimes present alongside unhoused populations. Some have said that the area around the Respite Center has become unsafe. We need to dramatically rethink the operations of the Respite Center, so that unhoused individuals don’t feel the need to camp around the center, and so that neighbors feel safe.
When I ran for this seat 4 years ago, a woman whose daughter had temporarily been unhoused said she could take me to the encampment along F Street to talk to some of the folks her daughter came to know. There was a running theme with the people I talked to, each said that homelessness services were often primarily focused on what some state mandate wanted rather than what their needs were.
I’ve led advocacy efforts to expand our city’s homeless services and as Chair of the Police Accountability Commission I have worked to make our public safety systems more capable of responding to mental health crises and substance abuse issues. There is still so much to do and in this election I hope voters choose someone with a track record of making progress on these important issues.
Linda Deos
Addressing the unhoused community is one of the most complex and pressing issues Davis faces. We have to think about it in a variety of contexts and timelines: What can we do in the short term; what can we plan for the medium term; and, what should we plan for in the long term?
Short Term – Our respite center is open Monday-Friday, 8:00 am-4:00 pm. Paul’s Place, which also offers daytime services, is open the same days and roughly the same time. You can see the problem. People can’t find supportive shelter on the weekend or after 4pm. With nowhere to safely go, they come into the downtown, libraries and parks. We need to work with these centers to have hours that make the most sense for the people they serve, and for the rest of our community, by providing coverage 7-days a week. And, during the summer, when the hottest time of the day is 4pm, hours should be adjusted to reflect that reality.
Medium Term – One of the key programs for our newly established Department of Social Services and Housing is to help take pressure off of our police force to handle situations that do not require an armed officer. I want to give the Department the tools it needs to help folks get connected to needed services. We also need to ensure our Outreach staff are available to assist, not only our unhoused residents, but also our local business owners and residents when they encounter folks in crisis.
Long Term – We need more permanent supportive housing like Paul’s Place because safe and supervised housing is proven as the best means to transition folks off of the streets.
Davis is not alone in struggling with how to address homelessness issues. That’s why we need to work with the County and other regional agencies because this is not a problem we can solve on our own. I will use my experience of working with multiple agencies in my professional life, and my experience directly working with our unhoused community, to advocate for local, regional, and statewide solutions.
