Ventura County must end its unsheltered homelessness

We need to make shelters more abundant and housing more affordable

Yesterday concluded Hunger & Homelessness Awareness Week.

“This is arguably one of the most contentious issues ever,” said Oxnard Mayor Tim Flynn about a new 110-bed homeless shelter on Tuesday night. Public comments from neighbors expressed concern over drug use, safety, and even insufficient parking, while homelessness advocates emphasized the need for compassion and shelter. Ultimately, Flynn joined four councilmembers in approving the shelter lease, marking a step toward addressing unsheltered homelessness in Ventura County.

We need far more decisions like these. 1,669 Ventura County residents are homeless, of whom 1,258 lack shelter. Those numbers increased 29 and 53 percent, respectively, over the past year.

They should be zero: Nobody in Ventura County should be forced to live on the streets or in parks without access to restrooms and medical care. As Oxnard City Manager Alex Nguyen said at Tuesday’s hearing, “This is a public health crisis.” We agree, and it should be addressed as one.

Homelessness is a public health crisis.

With a combination of more shelters to house our homeless neighbors, more subsidies to keep at-risk families in their homes, and more homes to make housing more broadly affordable, we can end unsheltered homelessness in Ventura County. But first, the facts.

Debunking homelessness myths

Perceptions of homelessness are often based on its most visible instances. Seeing a homeless person doing drugs in public can be shocking, and it’s not unusual to then assume that this is the norm.

Those salient occurrences are unrepresentative, however. The stereotype of a chronically homeless out-of-towner with a mental health problem abusing substances on our streets isn’t just rare in combination, it’s rare for homeless people to have even one of those characteristics.

While three quarters of homeless people in Ventura County lack shelter, only about a quarter are new to Ventura County, have mental health or substance abuse problems, or are chronically homeless.

For the subset who do suffer from substance abuse or mental health problems, the stability of shelter is all the more important. We have the resources to help these people get the care they need, but providing that help is difficult when they sleep on a different street corner every night.

The shelter shortage

As of January, Ventura County had 464 emergency shelter and transitional housing beds, one for every 3.6 homeless people. A new 110-bed shelter has since opened, but that still leaves over 1,000 beds just to provide one for each homeless person.

Realistically, ending unsheltered homelessness requires more beds than homeless people, since shelters aren’t always where our homeless people are (Ventura County is over 2,200 square miles), and each shelter tends to serve a specific subpopulation. For example, the 73 vacant beds were disproportionately reserved for domestic violence victims.

84 percent of beds were utilized as of the point-in-time count, so assuming the same rate moving forward, and considering the newly built and approved shelters, we need 1,300 more shelter beds to end unsheltered homelessness.

Ventura County needs 1,300 more shelter beds to end unsheltered homelessness.

This has worked elsewhere: for example, New York City’s unsheltered homeless rate is a quarter of Ventura County’s. How did they do it? More shelters.

Preventing homelessness through housing affordability

A 2018 Zillow-commissioned report found that “homelessness rises faster where rent exceeds a third of income.”

While half of U.S. households spend more than 30 percent of their income on rent, 3 in 5 Ventura County households do.

To cut households’ risk of homelessness, we need to boost incomes and/or reduce rents. Achieving the former can mean promoting economic development to raise wages, or providing subsidies or cash transfers to low-income renters.

Evidence increasingly shows that achieving the latter — lower rents — requires building more housing. This is especially important in Ventura County, which has 20 percent fewer housing units per adult than the nation, and a 30 percent lower rental vacancy rate. With abundant housing of all sorts, low-income households won’t have to compete with higher-income households for insufficient housing stock — under threat of homelessness if they don’t win — and formerly homeless people will have an easier time re-entering permanent housing.

We need a more humane approach to homelessness. Instead of rounding up tent dwellers as they move from one park to the next, let’s build shelters for them to live in. Instead of assuming the worst in each homeless person, let’s recognize that they are largely our neighbors who could no longer afford rent. Let’s build an affordable, inclusive Ventura County where unsheltered homelessness is a thing of the past.

If you believe in this approach to homelessness, consider joining Ventura County YIMBY and other pro-homeless organizations in the area.