Healthy and Safe Communities

Summary of Objective Implementation Status

This objective, which speaks to “continuing to collaborate with local partners, including the CoC,” is indeed continuing.  The most significant collaborations in recent months have been around:

1. Developing a model for subregional street outreach, including local By Names Lists.
2. Adding transparency to the Continuum of Care’s funding and evaluation process, with clear direction in Notices of Funding Availability (NOFAs) to link programs and strategies to the Strategic Plan as well as to agreed-upon metrics.
3. Embarking on a plan to replace the vulnerability and assessment tool for permanent housing placements (known as the VI-SPDAT), as the current tool can bias housing placements by race and ethnicity (harming BIPOC Sonoma County residents the most).
4. Expanding participation in two key case conferences – the Friday Coordinated Entry Case Conference and the Wednesday IMDT Case Conference.
5. Expanding participation of our HEART Team at DHS to increase our interventions with in-city encampments.
6. Adding our Project Homekey cohort to the IMDT effort at DHS, which sends DHS personnel into the regions’ Homekey sites to provide supportive services for high-needs clients.
7. Our DHS team, as Lead Agency to the Continuum of Care, has worked to increase participation of and representation by the tribal community in homelessness funding and policy decisions.    

Key Milestone Update

An ongoing effort.

Coordination and Partnership Update

We have partnered with the Continuum of Care, local cities, persons with lived experience, service providers, other levels of government, and “best practice” policy advisors (via Technical Assistance) in the above activities. 

Community, Equity and Climate Update

The most specific equity-based efforts are:

• Adding tribal representation to the Continuum of Care Board
• Replacing the race-biased VI-SPDAT with a non-race-biased assessment and prioritization tool.

Funding Narrative

These activities did not receive Strategic Plan funding, and instead are funded via County discretionary funds, Measure O funds, State homelessness funds, and Federal homelessness funds.