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SOS Richmond's Response to Recent National and State Policies Affecting People Expereincing HomelessnessAuthor: Loris Mattox, Board Member The Supreme Court ruling in the case of Grants Pass v. Martin has sparked widespread concern among advocates and organizations that serve people experiencing homelessness. The decision, which upholds the criminalization of unsheltered residents for sleeping in public spaces when no adequate shelter is available, effectively penalizes unhoused neighbors for circumstances beyond their control, exacerbating their marginalization in cycles of displacement that perpetuate poverty. It will have severe consequences for unhoused individuals, who already face numerous challenges, including lack of access to housing, healthcare, and employment opportunities.
The decision resulted in California Governor Newsom issuing an Executive Order that mandates state agencies and departments to adopt policies that will clear encampments on state property. It encourages local governments to do the same and threatens sanctions on these jurisdictions that fail to enact similar policies. The executive order poses significant threats to the well-being and safety of our most vulnerable populations, coercing and modeling for cities to enforce anti-camping bans without providing shelter, potentially posing a severe injustice to unsheltered residents and exacerbating the homelessness crisis nationwide. The impacts on public health and safety are profound. Even in a city like Richmond, which will strive to deter its response to this directive, the state’s order will erode our basic level of care and our deference for even-handed approaches. Immediate responses from neighboring cities should inform us of the impending degradation of our standards. Criminalizing basic survival acts, such as sleeping in public spaces, not only strips unsheltered residents of their dignity but also exposes them to greater risks of harassment, violence, and incarceration. It underscores the urgent need for a comprehensive, humane approach to homelessness that prioritizes housing, support services, and community-based solutions over punitive measures. SOS will continue serving our unhoused neighbors who were born and currently reside in Richmond and Contra Costa County, and by human right call this their home. SOS’s unhoused workforce provides leadership each day. In partnership with local public agencies and community-based essential service partners we uplift and expand our community of care through the peer accompaniment provided by competent agents for change. Draconian measures are never solutions. Empowering and dignified approaches are required. Learn about ways you can contribute to the mobile services and wellness centers convened by SOS, including in-kind and financial donations to support our brothers and sisters.
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Where Permanent Supportive Housing Meets Affordable Community Housing: A Review of Recently Published Local News on Homelessness and Opinion Author: Tomi Nagai-Rothe, Director of Strategy and Operations  Kamaʻoku Kauhale, Kapolei, Oahu, HI  In local and national conversations, the needs of unhoused residents are most often addressed separately from the needs of affordable housing for the currently housed. Yet both groups sit side-by-side in the continuum that spans unhoused to securely housed residents. They both struggle with increasing housing costs and for those who are employed, stagnant wages.
California will never build itself out of its housing crisis through traditional construction, zoning and financing. The state’s 2016 legislation on accessory dwelling units (ADUs - i.e., casitas, in-law units) and the California HOME Act that took effect in January 2022 were smart moves to make it easier for homeowners to add housing units on existing property. Though helpful, that legislation is only part of many creative solutions required to address our unaffordable housing crisis. If employed and housed California residents aren’t having their housing needs met, then helping our unhoused neighbors will require an even deeper examination of our assumptions about housing solutions—and even more creative solutions. California Counties’ AT HOME Plan The California State Association of Counties (CSAC) just unveiled its AT HOME Plan to clarify the role of cities, counties, the state and federal government vis-a-vis responsibility and funding to help our unhoused neighbors. The plan acknowledges the current fragmented and disorganized approach to solving homelessness. It recommends ongoing funding for housing as well as wraparound services - and more. It says that we collectively need to “Increase resources needed to acquire, build and operate housing solutions across the full housing continuum, especially permanent supportive housing for individuals with complex needs.” Housing First or Work First? The federal government and many states and municipalities are focused on a “Housing First” approach that aims to get people into stable housing as a base for addressing other needs. This makes good sense and has proven effective, IF it’s economically possible to house all those who need it. Sadly, in Richmond and West Contra Costa County, Housing First isn’t possible due to a lack of agency and non-profit coordination and financing. Safe Organized Spaces Richmond (SOS) takes a Work First approach by creating trusting relationships with encampment residents and offering those who are interested paid work. The starting rate is $18 per hour and hours increase with experience and a desire to work more. 85% of our staff were hired directly from encampments and their work serves unhoused neighbors, including friends and former neighbors. An income allows staff members to take care of basic needs and have money to put toward housing when it becomes available. Although SOS is known in Richmond for encampment services that include trash pick-up, mobile showers, a laundry shuttle, drinking water, ongoing outreach to encampment residents and response to urgent needs, the core of our work is decreasing isolation and fear by connecting to unhoused neighbors at every opportunity. Our staff gets to know them and their needs on a day-by-day and week-by-week basis so that SOS can help if urgent needs or a crisis arises - and so that help will be accepted from a friend at SOS. Long term our North Star is equity empowerment and healthy, employed people in permanent housing – so we are closely tracking housing policy trends and how we can help bend the long arc of the moral universe toward (housing) justice. What Really Works The September 2022 Mercury News research on which Bay Area solutions to homelessness have been most effective yielded useful lessons:
Opportunity Housing is Real Housing Many shed and tiny house experiments have been conducted in the Bay Area in the past five years. To the point about tiny home villages as permanent housing, Heather Knight of the SF Chronicle reports, “Turns out a plan to shift that terminology could provide one answer to the decades-long quest in the city and state to get its poorest people off the sidewalks and under real roofs. It could also provide a ;missing rung’ on the housing ladder between sometimes dreadful emergency shelters that people often refuse to enter and uber-expensive permanent supportive housing that takes years to build.” She goes on to say, “The legislation, SB634, would clarify that tiny homes — or what Becker likes to call “opportunity housing” or “midterm housing” — are indeed housing even though they lack permanent foundations and aren’t intended to be in one location forever. Instead, they are often built on land slated for eventual development and can be moved to new locations with forklifts when that development begins. The shift in thinking would allow residents to become tenants and stay longer than they can in emergency shelters, perhaps using 30% of their income or government-funded vouchers to pay rent . . . “ Be Realistic About the Time and Money Required to Achieve Success Solutions created by well-intentioned city and county officials and non-profits over-focus on housing (institutional approaches) and under focus on the need to develop trusting relationships that make it possible for unhoused residents to be willing to improve their living situations, develop healthier habits, consider work and develop a vision for their future (equity empowerment). This has always been a key part of SOS’s success in Greater Richmond. Our staff have personal relationships with folx living in encampments - some of whom were former neighbors of theirs. San Francisco’s targeted project in the Castro District is a good example of what is required. The Intersection of Barely Housed and Unhoused Residents This is where it’s helpful to break down strict funding and conceptual categories regarding solutions intended for unhoused vs. housed people. Historically, mobile home parks have been an affordable housing option. (This is why RVs - a smaller, less expensive form of mobile homes - become homes for those who can access them.) Residents own their unit and rent space to park it and access utilities. It’s affordable until the landlord raises the space rental for their mobile home. The corporatization of mobile home parks has put profits over resident needs. California passed mobile home space rental protection legislation in July 2021 because many mobile home owners - many of whom are seniors on fixed incomes or low income workers - experienced unexpected rent increases that caused financial hardship. One new approach is the purchase of mobile home parks and the creation of resident owned co-ops . This builds on an existing, affordable option and creates more control and protection from eviction for residents. Could RV/mobile home/tiny home parks be created - inhabited by both previously unhoused and housed people? A resident-owned approach would provide more housing security and rental rates that are fair, without the fear of regularly escalating rents. Existing mobile home parks would need to be purchased and saved. Residents would need coaching in self-governance and park management. Unhoused residents would need upgraded RVs, tiny homes or mobile homes. The core infrastructure already exists and cities and counties are familiar with it. Community First Approaches: Replacing Images of “Urban Renewal” with Self-Governing Villages As a whole, our country lacks a vision and values for affordable congregate housing. Many families come from a culture of extended family living but our built infrastructure favors the market-driven single family home. We need to take seriously the robust models of sustainable cooperative living that exist. The Community First! Village in Austin, TX created a 51 acre oasis in the the city that provides permanent supported housing to more than 200 formerly unhoused people in Phase I. Some housed neighbors have given up their large houses to join them in a commitment to deep community that connects beyond housing status.. The village includes a large garden, chickens and donkeys, an art studio and several micro-enterprises. The predominantly Native Hawaiian residents of Puʻuhonua O Waiʻanae follows a Community First approach to housing. Twinkle Borge, the community leader, calls them “Not homeless — a village without a place.” The 250 resident community has its own governance and operations systems and a detailed design for building their 20 acre farm village on the leeward side of Oʻahu. Kamaʻokū Kauhale, a permanent supported housing community in Kapolei, Oʻahu, HI is part of a housing continuum - emergency, interim and permanent housing. It was the brainchild of current governor Josh Green, MD. Before being elected governor, he advocated to create a public-private partnership to create the project. Urban community land trusts provide stable, affordable housing by taking housing stock out of the market-based system and protecting it in perpetuity from the endless upward spiral of land and housing costs. Both Oakland and San Jose have created models for this approach. What Can I Do? Separate and apart from complex legislation and expensive building projects, there are many steps we can take as individuals to improve the housing environment in our communities.
Closure of the Castro RV Encampment, 2020-2023: A PerspectiveAuthor: Daniel Barth, Executive Director On June 30th, the last residents of the Castro RV Encampment moved into housing. Finally cleared, the paved city lot was fenced in with new gates arriving, and security still patrolling it. On Monday July 2nd, a 10-member SOS Streets Team removed the last 12,000 pounds of encampment debris, working against the clock before barricades sealed it shut.  But Castro is really about its survivors. Three of the four young men in the photo below lived and survived in the Castro RV encampment. Each has moved to permanent housing, and their lives continue to unfold with new, greater possibilities. They can now sustain their housing in part because of their employment with SOS. These three young people are enrolling in the YouthWORKS work experience program and have begun this journey. They are being prepared to provide security for the upcoming Richmond Tiny House Pilot project next to RPAL and GRIP, breaking ground in July.  Rising Stars: Outreach team member and youth ambassador Mernard Washington, with Joel (age 29), Salvador (age 20), and Michael (age 22) taking time away from their homes at Castro to prepare for their presentation to the Richmond Reimagining Public Safety Community Task Force in May 2023. But what was Castro? For three years the encampment was Richmond’s largest. It quickly grew in 2020 as a place of last resort. In time, the encampment became too large, unwieldy and unsafe, and the City of Richmond raised $4.8M of State funds to “resolve” it. Most of the funding was dedicated to transitioning residents into housing (paid for one year) and to provide for security until the encampment’s closure. The encampment was never secure. The housing is only temporary. In 2020, following a neighborhood outcry about RVs parked on residential streets, a local elected official sought answers and asked SOS to intervene. Within 72 hours, SOS convinced a half dozen RVs to move from the curbside. A few RV households were already situated underneath Richmond Parkway, and it soon became the location for the future Castro RV encampment. This site had already been a safe haven for a group of car thieves who stole cars and brought them here, “chopped them up” for parts and left the carcasses. City agencies removed 13 abandoned vehicles, making space for RVs to get off the streets and into an informal but nonetheless dedicated area. SOS cleaned the mess and surrounding area of intense illegal dumping.
 We Are Family: Castro residents in 2022 – people who called this home and their community. Castro became a home for more than 100 people at one time. Castro was a community – rife with risk – but still a place where people could find something that bonded them together.  Neighborhood: Castro in 2022, straddling the SF Bay Trail. As with the Rydin RV Encampment, SOS first attempted community organizing to facilitate the establishment of “community agreements” for maintaining order and safety and improving living conditions in the growing encampment. But the encampment as a whole was not receptive. Instead SOS took a 1:1 approach to improve lives, employing 17 Castro residents over the three year period to invest in a process that could model for others and deliver resources essential for survival, such as drinking water, handwashing stations, showers, toilets, trash removal, laundry, food, clothing, fire extinguishers, and RV weatherproofing. Health Ambassador outreach services in partnership with LifeLong Medical Care have been engaged since January 2023 with great impact on building trusted relationships. Care management support will next keep connections with households now in housing. A “Personal Vision” 8-week curriculum will engage housed and unhoused residents in personal goal setting, a partnership with Community Housing Development Corporation. Richmond WORKS will provide work experience and career opportunities for housed and unhoused residents.
Over time the RVs became unsuitable for habitation, and the households experienced similar traumatic symptoms: RV degradation (rats eating vehicle wires, fires, forced entry, overuse, weathering) and the loss of control over the environment became indicative of the unsustainability of living without the protections of a stable, safe, and secure community. To curb the critical safety issues at Castro, some 25 city-led cleanups were conducted with police, fire, public works, code enforcement and traffic enforcement all present to move the dial toward safety. Agencies met with community partners several times each week to move Castro toward resolution.  SOS staff planning a clean-up event. Castro's resolution began in the second half of 2022, and it was led by city agencies and community-based partners. The former residents of Castro were helped – household by household – into housing. RVs were bought back by the City of Richmond and towed away to be destroyed. Every day in 2023, culminating in the large-scale effort through June, the partners focused on each household’s transition into housing. One by one, residents packed their belongings and moved.  Home Removed: On June 29th, Mario moved from his truck into housing in Richmond. It is not enough to achieve dignified, stable, safe and sustainable permanent housing. People need inclusion and belonging in a peer community. Castro residents “belonged” and have shown their pride in this sense of belonging. As a dispersed community, where is the belonging? SOS’s ongoing outreach will try to keep tabs and understand this question for each household. Access to even temporary housing is difficult in West County, where SOS has identified 89 encampment areas of significance (encampments of larger numbers in a stable location). When SOS recently counted the people in El Sobrante, for example, it roughly counted 150. All in need of housing support. Meanwhile, the County published a total count of 5 people in El Sobrante in 2023’s Point In Time encampment assessment. No wonder people feel neglected and tossed away. They are literally not even counted. SOS currently conducts an Encampment Mapping project to identify these key encampment areas, the number of inhabitants in each location, and a Fire Safety Risk Rating for each locale’s conditions. SOS will eventually establish a connection with many or most of these residents and will supportively track their residency locations, and stay connected even after they secure housing. Recognizing people for who they are is the only way to create and maintain ongoing, trusted relationships. It’s possible by the plain act of Peers Helping Peers. Regardless of where people live, in a tent or in housing, ongoing connection is essential for supporting a sense of belonging and deepening a Community of Care approach. We cannot wait for institutions to show up. As neighbors across the housing line, we all – housed and unhoused neighbors alike – have responsibility to work together to address homelessness.  Peers Helping Peers: SOS passed out tarps donated by the city during the heavy rains. As a result of making consistent contact, Joel (center; 2nd in intro photo) connected with SOS so he can support his wife and newborn. Former residents of Castro must adjust to new conditions of housing and improve their long-deferred health, incomes, and build a sense of purpose beyond day-to-day survival. The real test of time, and the most important challenge, is for each former resident of Castro to live in a community of connections and trusting relationships. This is still a struggle for former Rydin residents whose encampment was resolved 10 months ago. Whether former Castro residents live tonight in housing, or they are dispersed to other encampments due to being ineligible for city support, the Castro diaspora will need new ways to feel a sense of belonging among peers and neighbors. An encampment’s resolution is only a beginning.  We are not only survivors, we are Stewards for Change.
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