Housing for a Healthy Santa Cruz County

January 2024 – January 2027 Three-Year Strategic Framework to Reduce Homelessness

The Santa Cruz County Housing for Health Partnership is proud to announce the updated Three-Year Framework (2024–2027) has been approved by the Board of Supervisors in April 2024.

At the beginning of 2024, the Housing for Health Partnership held community meetings to gather innovative ideas and new partnership recommendations to ensure all county residents have stable, safe, and healthy places to live.

Information gathered at these sessions helped inform the updated Three-Year Framework for 2024 to 2027.

Building on the goals and successes of the prior Framework, the revised Three-Year Framework includes goals to:

• Lower the average length of time people experience homelessness by 10 percent each year.
• Reduce the number of people returning to homelessness each year by 20 percent.
• Ensure community partners capture data on our outcomes and community needs to help improve local programs.
• Coordinate increased outreach and access to services countywide.

The updated Framework also calls on our community to support all jurisdictions in the county in meeting their Regional Housing Needs Allocation for very low-income housing production goals in order to help reduce homelessness in the community.

The updated Framework can be found here.

Regionally Coordinated Homelessness Action Plan: Public Meetings

You’re invited to help our community develop a “Regionally Coordinated Homelessness Action Plan” and update our Housing for a Healthy Santa Cruz Strategic Framework.

Regionally Coordinated Homelessness Action Plan Updated Draft

The Housing for Health Partnership held two community meetings to gather innovative ideas and new partnership recommendations to ensure all county residents have stable, safe, and healthy places to live. Information gathered at these sessions informed the updated three-year framework for the Housing for Health Partnership.

Topics covered will include:

• Improving access to housing services and supportive programs
• Reducing the number of unsheltered people in our community
• Helping people keep their housing and avoid homelessness
• Helping more people secure homes more quickly
• Improving street outreach and responses to encampments
• Reducing exits from institutional care into homelessness – criminal justice, health and behavioral health care, foster care
• Increasing incomes – public benefits, education, and employment
• Small cost and big impact ideas

Housing for Health Partnership Community Meetings

Action Plan Community Meeting Notes - Feb 7 2024 Meeting

Action Plan Community Meeting Notes - Feb 6 2024 Meeting

January 2021 – January 2024 Three-Year Strategic Framework to Reduce Homelessness

Homelessness severely impacts the health and quality of life of those living without homes and the entire community. The County of Santa Cruz, cities within the county, and community members recognize the need for strong collaborative action to ensure all county residents have stable, safe, and healthy places to live.

The County and its partners created the Housing for a Healthy Santa Cruz County Strategic “Framework” through a collaborative process that used the experience, knowledge and input of a broad set of community stakeholders including cities, non-profit organizations, County Departments, and people with lived experiences of homelessness. Work on it began in March 2019 with a review of current local efforts and data on homelessness, along with an evaluation and discussion of experiences in other communities.

The Framework outlines coalition action steps that can reduce unsheltered and overall homelessness countywide by January 2024. The County Human Services Department’s new Housing for Health (H4H) Division will provide leadership and the backbone administrative support for implementation of this Framework.

The Framework sets goals to reduce the number of households experiencing homelessness at a point-in-time by just over 25% between January 2019 and January 2024. It also calls for a 50% reduction in the number of households living “unsheltered” in places such as the streets, parks, cars, and unsafe structures. Click here for the full Framework.

Goals to reduce the number of households experiencing homelessness