Homeless in Santa Barbara Blog

Summit Wrestles Details of New Homeless Agency

Fri, 18 Nov 2011

    Third District County Supervisor Doreen Farr stood before two dozen philanthropists, county department heads and nonprofit leaders Wednesday and admitted she was frustrated; frustrated with the oblique and meandering way homeless issues are tackled in the county. She catalogued the half-dozen groups and agencies currently working on the problem -- none of which communicate with each other, or share by-laws, mission statements or staff. Each toiling away in near isolation.
     “There are many different groups doing good work on this issue,” Farr told the gathering, “but we’re doing it in spite of our organization, not because of it.”
     Mike Foley, executive director of Casa Esperanza, provided an example of this lack of organization. He said, when the Salvation Army’s 100-bed Adult Rehabilitation Center closed in 2008, leaving a dearth of desperately needed residential ]]>[...]

7th Healthy Neighbors Fair Draws a Crowd

Fri, 18 Nov 2011

This week, for the seventh year in a row, Santa Barbara’s homeless residents are getting three days of access to all kinds of preventive healthcare. It’s mid-November and that’s when the County Public Health Department and a bevy of private donors get together to stage the Project Healthy Neighbors health fair.
The three-day event began yesterday, Monday, November 14th,and will continue through Wednesday morning. From the appearance of things yesterday, the fair seems to be not just popular but productive. By 10:00 am, 250 people had already made it through the 12 different stations, each one dedicated to a specific health task: blood pressure screening, pneumonia vaccine, flu vaccine, mental health screening, HIV and TB screening. By the end of the morning Tuesday, between 420 and 435 people had gone through the series of tents and stations. The stations were manned by a combination of nurses, physician assistants, social ]]>[...]

Nursing Homes a No-Go for Sick Homeless People

Sun, 13 Nov 2011

       In a perfect world, when a homeless person is discharged from the hospital and still too fragile for a homeless shelter, he or she could go to a skilled nursing facility (SNF). There, they could get help with bandages and medication. They could recuperate fully before returning to the hardships of street life.
        Sound logical?
        Unfortunately, in South Santa Barbara County, SNFs are rarely an option for the homeless. And it has everything to do with money.
        All the SNFs in South Santa Barbara County require residents to have health insurance, or at the very least Medi-Cal. Sometimes even Medi-Cal isn’t enough for a skilled nursing facility to accept a departing hospital patient. If they’re particularly medically needy, for example, or young. On top of that, every SNF resident needs ]]>[...]

After ER Visit, Homeless Woman has Nightmare Weekend

Sun, 13 Nov 2011

Cindy McCallum said the two nights she spent on a grassy knoll opposite the Santa Barbara Rescue Mission were the scariest she’s lived through. The 53-year-old disabled homeless woman doesn’t say much about the night before she ended up across from the Mission -- the night she wandered the streets and stayed, at least part of the time, in the hospital’s parking garage. That was the night of October 28th, when the homeless shelter Casa Esperanza sent her to Cottage Hospital’s Emergency Room to be checked out for a possible stroke. It was the night she was discharged by ER staff to The Santa Barbara Rescue Mission with a bus token. Some details of what happened to McCallum between that Friday evening and the following Monday, October 31st, are still unknown. What is known is that McCallum -- who is cognitively impaired in addition to being partially paralyzed from the effects of a stroke -- spent an entire weekend outside, ]]>[...]

Disabled Homeless Woman

Sun, 13 Nov 2011

Cindy McCallum said the two nights she spent on a grassy knoll opposite the Santa Barbara Rescue Mission were the scariest she’s lived through. The 53-year-old disabled homeless woman doesn’t say much about the night before she ended up across from the Mission -- the night she wandered the streets and stayed, at least part of the time, in the hospital’s parking garage. That was the night of October 28th, when the homeless shelter Casa Esperanza sent her to Cottage Hospital’s Emergency Room to be checked out for a possible stroke. It was the night she was discharged by ER staff to an unknown location with a bus token. Some details of what happened to McCallum between that Friday evening and the following Monday, October 31st, are still unknown. What is known is that McCallum --who is cognitively impaired in addition to being partially paralyzed from the effects of a stroke -- spent an entire weekend outside, predominantly alone, ]]>[...]

Shea Finds, Then Loses, a Bed to Recuperate

Sun, 13 Nov 2011

     For two years, Bill Shea lived on the property of Christ the King Episcopal Church. As homeless camps go, it was average. He slept in a field, in a decent bag and with the blessing of the church’s rector.   He did not have the long arm of law enforcement to worry about at least. Plus, with a flow of Christians in and out, there was little risk of going hungry. He was surviving---if nothing else.
   But then his survival came into question too. In August, Shea noticed he was winded after even small amounts of exertion. Thinking it would pass, he dismissed it. By mid-September, taking just a few steps had become a challenge, so he got some church friends to drive him to Goleta Valley Cottage Hospital (GVCH).
     In the hospital, doctors discovered he had atrial fibrillation and congestive heart failure. He stayed there for six days; when discharge day came, he was released to WillBridge of ]]>[...]

JWCH Gives LA Hospitals a Place to Send Homeless

Tue, 01 Nov 2011

Clifton Jasper has come a long way since December, when he was living on the streets of Los Angeles, all but crippled by multiple ulcers on his legs. For eight years he tended his ulcers by himself on the streets, changing his dressings in bathrooms in public libraries and restaurants -- any place he could find running water and soap. Emergency room nurses at Harbor UCLA Hospital helped him here and there, but the ulcers only worsened. Finally the pain became unbearable, he said.
On January 2nd, Jasper was admitted to Harbor UCLA hospital and kept for ten days. When he was deemed stable enough for discharge, he could have been turned back to the streets, like most homeless people. He could have been relegated to caring for his wounds in unsanitary sinks again. Instead, on January 18th, Jasper was discharged to the JWCH Institute's Recuperative Care Program in Bell. There, he was given a clean bed in a small dormitory with other ]]>[...]

Post Hospital Stay is Whirlwind of Beds, Programs

Tue, 01 Nov 2011

    On a morning in late August, 57-year-old Mary Manning (a pseudonym, at her request) was resting on her sister Jackie’s porch. She was midway through a rugged course of chemotherapy for breast cancer. Manning looked at her younger sister and said, “You know, I’m dying, sister. I think this poison is killing me.”
     When Jackie went to check on Manning later in the day, she wasn’t at home. Calls to her cell went unanswered. Finally, at around 10pm., a nurse from Cottage Hospital called to inform her that her sister was in a bed on a medical ward there, receiving treatment for pneumonia, diarrhea and dehydration. “I went to visit her the next day and she was almost dead,” recalled Jackie. She said Manning was curled up on the bed in a fetal position.
    After about ten days of acute care, Manning was released to Casa Esperanza. Like William Richardson, and other homeless ]]>[...]

Santa Clara Hospitals Give Homeless Patients a Respite

Tue, 01 Nov 2011

    Über prosperous Silicon Valley isn’t a place one expects to find thousands of homeless people. But a 2006 Housing and Urban Development (HUD) count found over 7,600 men, women and children without a home in Santa Clara County, which includes not just Silicon Valley but Palo Alto and San Jose.
    Unnerved by the count, the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors commissioned a Blue Ribbon panel on Ending Homelessness and Solving the Affordable Housing Crisis. One of the panel’s recommendations was that a facility for homeless people just released from the hospital be started, so there would be a place for them to recuperate fully. Surprisingly, in 2008, seven private and public hospitals from up and down the county, including Stanford University Hospital, began collaborating on The Santa Clara County Medical Respite Center.
    In its first two years, the center spared participating hospitals 783 bed ]]>[...]

Homeless Discharges

Tue, 18 Oct 2011

A map of Homeless ]]>[...]

Where Do the Homeless Heal?

Tue, 01 Nov 2011

On a sweltering Wednesday afternoon last month, a tall, mild-mannered homeless man was walking up State Street when he became dizzy and short of breath. He sat down on a bench in front of Chipolte Mexican Grill and within minutes became unconscious. Forty-one-year-old William Richardson did not know he was a diabetic or that his blood sugar was soaring above 760. (Normal is 120 and below.) His body was shifting into the deadly state of ketoacidosis.
Coincidentally, Richardson’s mother was walking up State Street too, and saw her son just before he collapsed. She informed a Paseo Nuevo security guard, who called paramedics. Richardson was taken by ambulance to Cottage Hospital’s Emergency Room and admitted to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). After two days of medical intervention, his condition stabilized. Nurses taught him how to inject himself with insulin--something he would need to do four times ]]>[...]

Wallerstedt: Supporting the Homeless Richly Rewarding

Mon, 17 Oct 2011

     I am passionate about connecting homeless men and women with the resources they need to reach their goals for their life.
You and I – those of us who are housed and working – have a network of friends, family, co-workers, church friends, acquaintances (and perhaps, virtual friends). We reach out to this network in times of joy and sorrow, for information and guidance, for emotional or financial support, for referrals and references. We must not underestimate the wealth of this network.
     Many people who find themselves homeless have burned through one layer after another of their social network. Even family eventually cuts ties. Most un-housed people have made new friends on the streets and have a group to hang with. However, this new group of friends may be similarly disconnected with their own social networks.
     Stop for a moment and consider what is involved in finding a doctor in a ]]>[...]

County Responds To Grand Jury Re: Jailed Mentally Ill Homeless

Fri, 07 Oct 2011

The Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors responded to the 2011 Grand Jury report "Homeless Mentally Ill Recidivism: This Recycling is Not Good for the County” on Tuesday and advocates are bound to be underwhelmed.
The five Supervisors approved a response letter in which they decline to enact 90 percent of the Grand Jury’s recommendations for fixing the problem of mentally ill homeless people cycling in and out of the County Jail with no improvement in either their health or circumstances.
The Board didn’t walk away from problem however. Dennis Bozanich, assistant to County Executive Officer (CEO) Chandra Waller, has been tasked with preparing a comparison of the costs of maintaining the status quo with the costs of providing homeless mentally ill indigent with enough services to keep them off the arrest, re-arrest merry-go-round. On top of that, Bozanich is analyzing how much it would ]]>[...]

New Detox Facility Opening Delayed

Fri, 07 Oct 2011

     Santa Barbara’s recovering and would-be recovering addicts and alcoholics will have to wait till February or March for a new detox facility. The new location for Project Recovery's detox facility, a two-story Westside residence, must undergo a remodel to meet state requirements for handicap access.
      The New England-style shingled house was purchased by the City of Santa Barbara last Spring with over $800,000 in Redevelopment Agency funds. But the project hit a thicket of regulatory red tape this summer when Housing Authority officials discovered licensure requirements from the state Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs, said Rob Fredericks, Deputy Director of The Housing Authority of the City of Santa Barbara (HACSB).
    Fredericks said the HACSB, which owns the property, needs to build two exterior handicap ramps and reconfigure the house's bathrooms and kitchen to accommodate ]]>[...]

ADMHS' Performance Measures Criticized

Wed, 28 Sep 2011

When creating its annual budget every spring, each department in Santa Barbara County government provides methods by which its performance can be measured; goals to gauge its success or failure.
Some homeless advocates in Santa Barbara are casting a critical eye on the performance measures the Alcohol Drug and Mental Health Services Department (ADMHS) is using to gauge its effectiveness as the sole provider of mental health care to poor and indigent residents here. The measurements, listed in the ADMHS 2011-2012 budget (www.countyofsb.org/ceo/), are presented alongside proposed spending levels for different departmental programs.

Some are innocuous and by the book. But the ones relating to adult mental health and inpatient treatment---also known as psychiatric hospitalization--read as if the department is measuring success by the number of hospitalizations it can avoid this fiscal year. ]]>[...]

Riviera a Rare Resource for Dually-Diagnosed

Fri, 23 Sep 2011

     Un-housed people who are dually-diagnosed struggle harder than the rest to return to the land of the living; harder than the plain old sick, the flat broke, and the simply addicted.
    But at this very minute in Santa Barbara, at The Hotel de Riviera, 33 formerly homeless men and women with a dual diagnosis are making progress in this grueling battle. Between 12 and 15 of them will graduate this year into permanent housing . . . completely sober. Seventy-five percent will never be homeless again, according to John Jamison, a Riviera program director. Here in this historic old bungalow on West Carrillo Street, a tight-knit team of seasoned recovery specialists is running an 18- to 24-month abstinence-only program that is unlike any other in the county.
    The Hotel de Riviera is owned and operated by the nonprofit Santa Barbara Community Housing Corporation (SBCHC) and runs on funds from the U.S. Housing and Urban ]]>[...]

Pre-Obama Care Plan to Aid Homeless

Mon, 19 Sep 2011

      Homeless advocates here and all over the country are anxiously awaiting Obama Care, a.k.a. the law that launched the Tea Party, because, according to officials in the Santa Barbara County Public Health Department (PHD), when the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is rolled out in 2014, most homeless people will become eligible for Medicaid --- or Medi-Cal in California. That’s not all, because aspects of the law incentivize preventative care, supportive services for the formerly homeless may be Medi-Cal billable.
    “[It’s] a very real possibility,” said John Lozier, executive director of the National Healthcare for the Homeless Program (NHCHP). “The [law contains] lots of incentives for doing things that keep people well.” And, he said, keeping people in housing is one of those things.
    While Obama Care is two years away, funds from a program called ]]>[...]

Fugate Shows Off His Garden

Sat, 17 Sep 2011

     Paul Fugate has been leaving messages on my cell. He’s been wanting me to visit him and see his garden for weeks.
     I met Paul, 64, outside Casa Esperanza last year, when he was still homeless and drinking. He was friendly and chatty then. Now that he has a home, he’s doubly so.
    Last Thursday, coincidentally the 5th anniversary of the El Carrillo apartments, Paul’s little ground floor studio was tidy. He was lying on his bed watching “Law and Order” when I showed up. Though watching may not be exactly what he was doing, because his eyesight is severely compromised from cataracts. He wears sunglasses indoors and out to protect them from UV rays and will have corrective surgery this Wednesday.
   For most chronically homeless people, housing is not a cure-all. It’s a first step. Paul, for example, is out of harm's way, no longer gets robbed of his ]]>[...]

City Endorses Merging of Homeless Agencies

Thu, 15 Sep 2011

     The Santa Barbara City Council unanimously endorsed the concept of consolidating the three main organizations that focus on homeless issues in the county Tuesday, September 13th, giving momentum to a process that will dramatically change the way homeless policies are decided and implemented here.
    Observing the proceeding, it was almost as if the seven Councilmembers were seeing eye-to-eye on a homeless issue. Almost. In reality, what they were agreeing on is a mere basic framework for an organization and the idea that greater coordination of homeless services and policies will serve the city’s goal of moving homeless people off the streets.
     The finer points of merging Bringing Our Community Home (BOCH), Common Ground SB, and the three regional Homeless Advisory Committees into one big organization are going to be worked out later in the year. Questions as to where the power will be centered, how ]]>[...]

Studies Find Treatment First Inefficient

Thu, 15 Sep 2011

Anyone who pays attention to homeless issues here or anywhere in the United States has probably heard about “Housing First,” the only new approach to ending chronic homelessness that's emerged in decades. In concept, it’s fairly simple: Instead of making an addicted or mentally ill homeless person jump through hoops to get sober and psychologically stable before being housed, give them a place first and then urge (not demand) them to tackle their illness and substance-abuse problems. The thought is that a housed person is far more capable of taking on their personal challenges than a homeless person is.
Even though Housing First is receiving endorsements from the experts at The United States Interagency Council on Homelessness and other think tanks, there are still pockets of doubt among addiction experts and people in the public health field. Here in Santa Barbara, there are no ]]>[...]

Three Agencies, Footwork, Yielded Faulkner's Housing

Thu, 15 Sep 2011

While the two-bedroom apartment that materialized for Delbert Faulkner and Larry Olsen last week seemed like angels’ handiwork, it came about through very worldly channels---a collaboration between three agencies and a half-dozen individuals determined to get people on the Vulnerability Index (V.I.) housed.
Faulkner, who placed in the top 100 of the V.I., was on the waiting list for a Section 8 Housing voucher and had been for some time. But that list is notoriously long; the wait, even for veterans, can take years. Fortunately for him, last summer, the City of Santa Barbara designated $200,000 in Federal HOME Grant money for a Tenant-Based Rental Assistance (TBRA) program for chronically homeless persons. This TBRA money went to the City’s Housing Authority to be doled out in vouchers, very much the way Section 8 Vouchers are doled out, except targeted to the chronically homeless.
[...]

Faulkner's Homeless Days Draw To A Close

Wed, 07 Sep 2011

    As homeless people go, Delbert O’Neil Faulkner is one of the luckier ones. Lucky in his unluckiness, that is.
    This large, defiantly buoyant veteran has been on the streets of Santa Barbara since 2002, sleeping in a handcrafted covered wagon he calls Frankenstein and making people laugh with self-deprecating jokes. But while accruing citations for illegal lodging (about six a year he says) and applying for disability benefits (which he finally received) he came down with a case of basal cell carcinoma on his head that, by the time it was detected, was about to enter his skull.
   That was the unlucky part.
   The lucky part came when Dr. Robert Gaines, who runs the outpatient Veterans Administration Clinic in Goleta, recognized Faulkner’s cancer while doing medical street outreach with the group Doctors Without Walls-Santa Barbara Street Medicine (DWW). The other lucky part was a when a social ]]>[...]

Common Ground SB Readying 2nd Volunteer Army

Fri, 02 Sep 2011

     A subcommittee of Common Ground Santa Barbara is meeting every other week to plan a mass training of volunteers who can be deployed to help chronically homeless people adapt and succeed in housing units, as the process of housing people from the Vulnerability Index (VI) moves forward.
     Sound familiar?
     Not unlike the original army of volunteers Common Ground SB deployed in the pre-dawn hours of late February, to survey homeless residents, this new battalion will focus entirely on supporting people once they are housed. The vision, according to Common Ground SB’s Jeff Shaffer, is to have volunteers work in teams of 10 or 12, with each assigned to a single individual.
   Yesterday, September 1st, this “Faith Communities Subcommittee” met for the third time in the offices of the Village, where Shaffer is a housing manager. About 20 people, mostly ]]>[...]

Brown Vetoes Homeless Hate Crimes Bill

Thu, 01 Sep 2011

Governor Jerry Brown disappointed homeless advocates recently by vetoing a bill that would have extended legal protections under the Ralph Civil Rights Act to homeless people in California. Essentially the law would have given homeless residents the same authority to pursue legal remedy as gays, minorities, and other protected classes of people. The bill, AB 312, had passed the California State Assembly and the Senate but died August 5th under Brown’s pen. An identical bill was vetoed by former Governor Schwarzenegger last year, and a similar measure killed by Pete Wilson before him.
The struggle to extend hate crimes protection to homeless people under federal and state law has not been going well in other parts of the country either. Though some states, including Florida, have passed such measures, most legislative bodies take one look at this kind of bill and say, as Brown did, that existing civil rights laws ]]>[...]

Shelter's Dinner Tradition Brings Housed and Houseless Together

Thu, 01 Sep 2011

On April 1st 1985, when Transition House homeless shelter opened in a funny-looking Quonset hut on Ortega Street, it relied on local faith communities to serve dinner to the families that stayed there. Transition House asked faith groups, and other charitable organizations, to take responsibility for the evening meal once a month. In a time when helping the homeless is sometimes frowned upon, this stystem is a refreshing model of volunteerism, one that Common Ground Santa Barbara is trying to emulate.

Ron Costa, Sr., the shelter’s manager, showed me Transition House’s dinner calendar the other day and it was jam-packed with the names of churches and their volunteers. A host of Christian groups were listed, including Trinity Episcopal, First Presbyterian, All Saints by the Sea, plus the Quakers, the Knights of Columbus, the Organic Soup Kitchen and, of all places, Pascucci’s Restaurant. ]]>[...]