COMMITMENT • INTEGRITY • LEADERSHIP	View full PDF report View Selected Abbreviations
Homelessness in California State Government and the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority Need to Strengthen Their Efforts to Address Homelessness Report Number: 2017-112

Response to the Survey From —
Humboldt County CoC

 

HUD provides two lists of California Continuum of Care (CoC) key contacts: one for Northern California and one for Southern California.
You can find these lists at https://www.hud.gov/states/california/homeless/continuumcare.

1. Enter the CoC number for which you are completing the survey.
   
   CA-522
2. Enter the CoC name for which you are completing the survey.

   Humboldt County CoC

   
   

3. Enter the organization within the CoC that you represent.

   Humboldt County Department of Health and Human Services

4. What type of organization do you represent?.
Joint Powers Authority
County government agency
City government agency
Non-profit
Other (please specify)





5. How many staff (full-time equivalents) does your organization employ?

   1294

6. Does your organization provide homeless services directly for clients?
   No Yes (If so, what types of homeless service programs does your organization provide?)
   
   

   Permanent supportive housing, rapid rehousing, transitional housing, vouchers for emergency accommodation, mental health care, substance use disorder programs, HIV, AIDS programs, outreach programs, employment programs, disability benefits advocacy, coordinated entry.

7. Are you a direct recipient on your CoC's HUD application?
   No 
   Yes
8. Approximately what percentage of the funding your organization administers is from HUD for the CoC program?
   

   0

9. If not your organization, is there another organization in your CoC that administers the majority of homeless services funding?
   Not applicable. My organization administers the majority of homeless services funding.
   No. There is not one organization in my CoC that administers the majority of homeless services funding.
   If yes, what is that organization?
   
   

10. Does your CoC conduct an unsheltered Point-in-Time (PIT) count annually? (Including those years not required by HUD)
    No (Skip to questions 17-19, and resume the survey on question 20.) 
    Yes (Continue on questions 11-16, and resume the survey on question 20.)
11. In which year did your CoC begin conducting an annual unsheltered PIT count?
    

12. Why did your CoC decide to conduct an annual unsheltered PIT count?
    
    

13. What funding sources do you use to conduct the annual unsheltered PIT count? (Check all that apply.)
    City funding
    County funding
    HUD planning funding
    Private funding
    Other (please specify)
    
    

14. How did your CoC facilitate the annual unsheltered PIT count?
    (For example, did you increase the number of volunteers, or find additional funding?)
    
    

15. Did your organization have any challenges in implementing an annual unsheltered PIT count?
    No.
    Yes. If so, what were they and how did you overcome them?
    
    

16. How has conducting an annual unsheltered PIT count affected your CoC's operations and/or outcomes? If you have any data or analyses, please share specific metrics.
    
    

17. Why does your CoC not conduct an annual unsheltered PIT count? (Check * all that apply)
    
    Lack of funding
    Lack of volunteers
    Lack of internal capacity
    HUD does not require an annual count
    Annual variations in numbers are not enough to justify the expense of a count every year.
    Other (please specify)
     
    

18. Please elaborate on the reasons why your CoC does not conduct an annual unsheltered PIT count.
    
    

    Other than the CoC Planning Grant that we prefer to use on other activities, we don't receive any state or federal funding for these activities. Staff that have other pressing duties have to carve out time to work on PIT related business. Attempting to recruit and coordinate large numbers of volunteers is frustrating, difficult work. People that do work on the count are invariably publicly criticized because the number of unsheltered people isn't as large as some people think it should be.

    
    
19. What would cause your CoC to conduct an unsheltered PIT count in the years not required by HUD?
    
    

    I'm not sure what it would take but if someone were to pay a firm like Applied Survey Research to do all of the work including volunteer recruitment and coordination that would probably be enough.

    
    
    
20. What sources does your organization use to fund the HUD-required PIT count of unsheltered homeless? (Check all that apply)
    
    City funding
    County funding
    HUD planning funds
    Private funding
    Other (please specify)
     
    

21. How much did your CoC's 2017 PIT count cost?
    
    unknown
22. How many people did your CoC require to conduct its 2017 PIT count? (Staff, volunteers, and others)
    
    

    85

23. How many of those identified in Question 22 were volunteers?
    
    

    60

24. Does your CoC recruit volunteers for its unsheltered PIT count from organizations outside the homeless services community?
    No.
    If yes, from which organizations/communities (outside of homeless service providers) did you recruit volunteers for the 2017 PIT count?
    
    

    We put out press releases seeking volunteers that were published in local media.

25. Please share your perspective on the reasons your CoC's unsheltered homeless population in 2017 did or did not change from that in its previous unsheltered PIT count.
    
    

    Our unsheltered count was down significantly from 2015. We increased our permanent supportive housing and rapid rehousing capacity from 2015 to 2017, and we improved our prioritization for those programs by launching our Coordinated Entry System in 2016, so it's certainly possible that these efforts contributed to the decrease we saw in the unsheltered PIT count. Unsheltered counts are problematic because people need to be seen or surveyed to be counted and it's highly likely that some people that were unsheltered on the night of the count were not seen or surveyed, but we have no way of knowing how many of these people there were.

26. Has your CoC reallocated funding in the past?
    No.
    Yes. If yes, please provide additional details or comments regarding reallocation you would like to share.
    
    

    The CoC reallocated funding from a transitional housing project to rapid rehousing during the 2015 CoC competition.

27. How often does your CoC reevaluate final priority rankings for the HUD CoC Program Notice of Funding Availability (NOFA), based on HUD priorities?
    Never
    Every year
    Other (please specify)
    
    

28. How often does your CoC perform the following gap analyses?
    
    Housing gap analysis—Biannually
    
    Funding gap analysis—NA
    
    Service gap analysis—NA
    
    Other (please specify)—
    
    
29. In what year did your CoC perform each of the following for the first time, or leave the row blank if it is not applicable.
    
    Housing gap analysis
    NA
    
    Funding gap analysis
    NA
    
    Service gap analysis
    NA
    
    Other (as you identified in question 27)
    
    
30. Does your CoC employ specific strategies for identifying alternative funding for programs that are reallocated or do not receive HUD funding?
    No.
    Yes. (If yes, please share some strategies your CoC employs to identify replacement funding.)
    
    
    
    
31. Does your CoC have a strategic plan that integrates other publicly-funded programs that provide services, housing, and income supports to poor persons whether they are homeless or not (mainstream benefits and services)?
    No. (Skip to question 36.)
    Yes. (Continue to questions 32-35 and skip question 36.)
    
    
32. Please provide a web address to your CoC's most recent strategic plan or email it as an attachment to CoCSurvey@auditor.ca.gov.

    https://goo.gl/UuLXe6

    For display purposes, we abbreviated the full URL the lead agency provided

33. When did your CoC complete its first strategic plan?
    
    

    2009

34. How often does your CoC update its strategic plan?
    
    

    No set schedule for updates, last updated 2016.

35. How has your strategic plan benefited your CoC?
    
    

    It's helped us strategically reallocate resources to more effective interventions.

    
    
36. Why has your CoC not developed a strategic plan?
    
    

37. What grant-seeking or fundraising activities does your CoC engage in?
    
    

    The CoC was organized to seek CoC and ESG funding. The various member organizations engage in a variety of fundraising and grant-seeking activities.

38. Are there any strategies or unique actions your agency takes that have strengthened your CoC?
    
    

    My agency is committed to implementing Housing First with fidelity, expanding PSH capacity and prioritizing people that are the most difficult to serve and house.

39. Please provide any information about these strategies or actions.
    Feel free to provide web addresses to any reports or email them as attachments to CoCSurvey@auditor.ca.gov.
    
    

    By targeting those that are most difficult to house, we are focusing our efforts on those that are least likely to get out of homelessness without outside intervention. Historically, many providers have focused on those that they believed were "ready" for housing, and therefore a lot of the people they assisted would have become housed without intervention, which means their efforts did not efficiently reduce the overall number of people experiencing homelessness. We believe that everyone is ready for housing and that it's our job to provide the financial assistance and services to make that possible for the people with the most severe service needs and the longest histories of homelessness.

40. If you have any additional perspective or concerns, please provide this information in the space below.
    For example, if you would like to share additional information regarding homelessness, services, or funding.
    
    

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