County alters homeless services for the pandemic
CONTRA COSTA COUNTY—Our Homeless Continuum of Care is one of the areas in which the county has made drastic changes due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Under normal circumstances, our shelters and warming centers would be providing temporary housing. But the health officer determined it is difficult or impossible to maintain proper physical distancing in shelters, so people living at these facilities are at higher risk.
Contra Costa County has de-congregated our shelters and moved the sheltered individuals into hotels, with Health Housing and Homeless (H3) staff on site to provide services.
On March 21, the health officer requested a moratorium on homeless encampment abatement from all law enforcement agencies in the county, unless there was a significant health and safety issue. This was to reduce unnecessary community movement and loss of connections with service providers.
Contra Costa County has procured hotel rooms under Project Roomkey, a state program to master lease hotels/motels for the homeless population. This program allowed shelter residents who are at high risk of serious illness from COVID-19 due to their age or health to isolate themselves more effectively. These rooms have been 97 percent to 98 percent occupied throughout the pandemic.
About 100 rooms secured through Project Roomkey are reserved for members of our county’s homeless population who test positive for COVID-19, who are awaiting test results or who have been exposed to someone with COVID-19 and need to quarantine. Our Homeless COVID-19 Data Dashboard is updated daily, and we have had more than 600 people daily in hotels over the last few weeks.
As the pandemic has continued to grow, the state of California announced Project Homekey. The state grant program will purchase hotels/motels to become permanent housing. Through this program, Contra Costa County was awarded $21.5 million to purchase a 174-room motel in Pittsburg. Of that, $17.4 million will go toward the purchase and renovation of the motel and $4.17 million toward staffing and operation of the former motel as temporary housing for county residents experiencing homelessness and to provide wraparound support services. This was badly needed as we only had 20 shelter beds in East County.
The Coordinated Outreach Referral and Engagement (CORE) program works to engage and stabilize homeless individuals living outside through consistent outreach to facilitate and/or deliver health and basic need services and secure permanent housing. CORE has continued to operate throughout the pandemic. While they are not currently transporting homeless individuals, they are still providing resources, education, connection housing navigation and other homeless services.
The CORES teams do visit the camps to ensure they have any services possible and so at-risk individuals can get connected to Project Roomkey. To learn more about the work that H3 does, please visit cchealth.org/h3/.
Karen Mitchoff is Contra Costa County District IV supervisor. Email questions or comments to Mitchoff at supervisormitchoff@bos.cccounty.us