Public Gets First Glimpse Of Ad Hoc Committee on Homelessness During Rollout of Proposed County-Wide Action Plan

Four members of the inter-agency AT HOME Ad Hoc Committee listen to a fellow committee member speak during the committee’s first public meeting on December 14. From left, City of Shasta Lake Mayor Janice Powell, Shasta County Supervisor Kevin Crye, Redding Mayor Tenessa Audette, Anderson City Council Member Susie Baugh. Photo by Annelise Pierce.

On Thursday, December 14, newly-appointed Redding Mayor Tenessa Audette chaired the first publicly accessible meeting of a recently formed, multi-jurisdiction ad hoc committee to address homelessness.  

Shasta County Health and Human Services Agency Director Laura Burch told her fellow committee members during the meeting that the amount of collaboration that is occurring on the committee already indicates success.

“The great achievement here,” Burch said, “is that you have every single one of these elected officials in one room agreeing on creating a framework . . . and a framework for trying to accomplish what has not been accomplished before.”

The committee was formed in June after being approved by county supervisors, who also voted to place two of its board members on it. The city councils of Redding, Anderson and the City of Shasta Lake also each voted to appoint two of their members to serve.

The AT HOME ad hoc committee was so named because organizers said it was intended to align with a proposal of the same name put forward last year by the nonprofit California State Association of Counties (CSAC). 

But on Thursday, Redding City Manager Barry Tippin, who also sits on the ad hoc committee, said the local group’s efforts won’t necessarily align with CSAC’s proposed six-pillar plan after all.

“We just use that acronym to sort of coalesce with them,” Tippin said, in response to a question from a member of the NorCal Continuum of Care about why housing was not a priority of the action plan,. “But (we) kind of do what we thought was what our community needed.”

Shasta County Supervisor Kevin Crye agreed, indicating that while he doesn’t expect CSAC’s plan to work even at the state level, the local committee that has been formed is still important.

“When (the AT HOME plan) bombs at the state,” Crye explained, “this group can keep doing what it’s doing and doesn’t have to call itself AT HOME.”

Over the last six months the committee has met both as a whole and also in subcommittees and formed a proposed two-year action plan focused on five main objectives. Last week they approved this plan, which includes improving fiscal responsibility, increasing the functionality of the current housing data management system, and implementing what is referred to as a “navigation/day resource center” for the unhoused.

The committee’s action plan also includes an objective titled “choice, accountability, incentives and crime” which includes expanding jail space, proactively engaging the unhoused to prevent the formation of large long-term homeless camps, and increasing engagement with members of the unhoused community who have been arrested for an alleged crime. County Supervisor Patrick Jones spoke briefly on this objective, saying there is a need to increase jail space for what he referred to as the “criminal homeless.” 

A final objective is titled “focus” and includes developing success metrics, holding workshops for both the committee and the public, and coordinating donations by private entities to serve key priorities. The plan doesn’t address what needs will be considered key.

Tomorrow, December 19, the ad hoc committee’s action plan will be presented to the councils of Redding and the City of Shasta Lake as well as the board of Shasta County. Those entities are being asked to “endorse” the ad hoc committee’s plan but it’s not clear what such an endorsement would mean other than providing a general seal of approval.

The Redding City Council is also being asked to consider reappointing two council members to to serve on the ad hoc committee on a continuous basis.

So far, the ad hoc committee has been legally meeting out of the public’s view because it was formed as a temporary committee with a limited time and scope, meaning members did not have to comply with the provisions of the Brown Act, California’s public transparency law. In order to implement the approved two-year action plan, it seems likely the committee would have to continue to meet long-term. Doing so would require compliance with Brown Act requirements, including holding public meetings and posting publicly-available agendas and minutes.

The committee does not have the authority to apply for or distribute funding, or to make decisions on how local funding should be spent. But what it lacks in funding authority, it could make up for in political strength. By leveraging the influence of the elected members that sit on it the committee may be able to sway the votes of the four primary legislative bodies across the county to help approve significant funding decisions around housing and related services moving forward.

The intent to influence local governing bodies was clear during last week’s meeting, as committee members strategized publicly on what city and county government meetings to attend to ensure a positive response to the committee’s ongoing work. and as HHSA Director Burch discussed what she perceives as the value of the group’s work.

“Everyone . . . (plans) to bring this to their board and city councils to get this approved,” Burch said. “And (those entities) will have it at the forefront of their mind when different funding or board items or council items come before them. This plan is now part of their DNA and their commitment to the community.”

Distributing funding for housing and related services across Shasta County largely belongs to the NorCal Continuum of Care (CoC), an inter-agency entity that distributes Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) funds for seven North State counties. 

The CoC used to be led by the Shasta County government, but only one day after the county’s board approved the new ad hoc committee, the county’s Health and Human Services Agency Director Laura Burch announced that the county would no longer perform that role, which it had been doing for around five years. Burch cited financial difficulties as the reason for the change. 

Since that announcement, the CoC has been working to rebuild its administrative structure and rearrange its funding to fill the leadership and responsibility gaps. The change has significantly impacted the distribution of funding to service providers in the area.

The search for a new administrative lead agency has also impacted the ability of the CoC to complete a Point-in-Time count, an annual count of unsheltered community members that informs coordinated plans and works to ensure appropriate availability of services.This year is the first year since 2016 that the CoC will not be conducting a coordinated count of individuals living outside. 

The CoC was listed as a partner agency on thirteen of the fifteen action items on the ad hoc committee’s agenda this week. But as some members of the Shasta Advisory Board of the CoC pointed out during the meeting, the ad hoc committee has not asked for any formal input from the CoC.

“I appreciate that our name has been put on a list of service providers that sit at that table but I question why we haven’t been part of that conversation from the start,” said Lesha Schaefer, Executive Director of local non-profit Pathways to Housing and a voting member of the Shasta Advisory Board to the CoC.

That’s important because participants in the CoC Advisory include representatives of nearly every service agency that works directly with the unhoused in Shasta County. Their experience working with unhoused communities and applying for, reporting on, and distributing funding to address homelessness makes up a large part of the existing system to address housing insecurity and homelessness in Shasta County. 

Other public speakers at the meeting, including local advocate Laurel Park, expressed concern that while the ad hoc committee may have future plans to include input from unhoused community members, the committee’s action plan was developed without considering their perspectives. Park, who has strongly supported a variety of micro shelter projects in Redding, told the ad hoc committee that they can’t forget to include all citizens. 

“I want to make sure that . . . as we are talking about the need to be accountable for federal funding that goes to the citizens,” Park said, “We can’t forget that the homeless are part of our citizens . . . they’re fairly important. And so let’s make sure we include them in the conversations.”

In response, Audette emphasized that unhoused community members would be included in conversations related to the ad hoc committee’s action plan, saying the group is trying to be inclusive and will hold future workshops.

“I think in all of this,” Audette said, “we’re just trying as much as we possibly can to figure out how do we bring people together to have the greatest impact for this community; to get them whatever it is that they need to stabilize their life.”

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