FISCAL IMPACT:
No General Fund impact. All funds are provided to the County on a formula basis through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance Number: Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) Program - 14.218
BACKGROUND:
On May 10, 2016, the Board approved the Contra Costa County Action Plan for the use of FY 2016/17 CDBG funds. Under the Public Services category, $22,224 of CDBG funds were committed to provide support toward Homeless Street Outreach services; however, due to the reorganization of the County’s homeless Continuum of Care service approach to embrace the new Coordinated Entry system strategy, no agency was identified at that time to carry out the service.
Implementation of the new Coordinated Entry system is now underway. Under the new strategy, Contra Costa County Health Services Department (CCC-HSD) will be the lead entity providing oversight to the CORE Homeless Street Outreach Program, which is comprised with day and evening/weekend homeless street outreach teams. This will ensure that all homeless outreach operates with the same protocol, with warm hand-offs between the teams, and will give jurisdictions an accurate and unduplicated count of persons served by the combined team and programmatic effort. At this time, there are two day teams which are staffed by CCC-HSD, with one peer outreach worker on each team. The daytime teams and supervision are being funded by a combination of State Emergency Solutions Grant (ESG) funds and other sources, such as Mental Health Services Act (MHSA) funds and other County funds. Night/weekend homeless outreach is overseen by CCC-HSD but the actual evening/weekend service teams are provided through a sub-contract that CCC-HSD has with Anka Behavioral Health, the non-profit agency which was the winner of the County's Coordinated Entry Request for Proposal process for evening outreach.
County staff utilized the recent State ESG procurement process and results to fulfill CDBG procurement responsibilities for the Homeless Street Outreach provider. Utilizing this procurement process, CCC-HSD submitted a CDBG application for homeless outreach requesting $22,224 to be utilized in the last half of FY 2016/17.
Family and Human Services Committee: Typically the Family and Human Services Committee considers staff's funding recommendations for Public Services projects prior to going to the Board of Supervisors; however, the Family and Human Services Committee does not meet in the month of January. Therefore, given this circumstance and the urgency of this type of service, staff's recommendation is being forwarded directly to the Board of Supervisors for its consideration.
Recommendation: Staff recommends that $22,224 in FY 2016/17 CDBG funds be allocated to CCC-HSD to support its CORE Homeless Street Outreach Services Program. CCC-HSD was awarded State ESG funds to provide these services in the County and the additional $22,224 in CDBG funds will allow the program to further extend those services to cover more areas of the County. The total program budget for the CORE Homeless Street Outreach Program is $333,191 and the County CDBG funds would equate to approximately seven percent of the total budget. CCC-HSD proposes to serve a total of approximately 700 homeless persons in the County, of which 225 (or 32 percent) will be from the CDBG Urban County area (the Urban County area is comprised of all incorporated cities and unincorporated areas of the County, except for the incorporated Cities of Antioch, Concord, Pittsburg, and Walnut Creek). The total County CDBG cost to fund this program equates to approximately a $99.00 per client cost.
CONSEQUENCE OF NEGATIVE ACTION:
A delay in approval or denial of approval will delay the expansion of the homeless outreach services to more areas of the county.
CHILDREN'S IMPACT STATEMENT:
Most of the projects and programs funded with CDBG funds address at least one of the five community outcomes established in the Children's Report Card.