City can receive aid from Homeless Emergency Aid Program
The City of Healdsburg declared a homeless shelter crisis Monday evening when they voted 4-0 on the resolution. The move simultaneously helps to ensure the city is eligible for homeless funding through the Homeless Emergency Aid Program (HEAP), which works with cities to pool funds for shelters, navigation programs and supportive housing.
A busy night for the council, city council members also heard the first reading of the proposed parking changes amendment that would change timed parking from three hours to two around the Plaza.
Historically, municipalities receive funding to address homelessness through state and federal government mandated programs such as the Continuum of Care. In addition, here in Sonoma County, the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) has served as source of funding for working towards homelessness solutions.
While the CDBG is allocated to serve larger cities in the county, such as Petaluma and Santa Rosa, the Sonoma County Community Development Commission (CDC) works as a liaison with the Continuum of Care to provide funding for smaller jurisdictions like Healdsburg.
Recently, the “CDC has led an effort to redesign the Continuum of Care…,” according to the agenda item report.
This redesign, called the Homeless System of Care, will work to distribute funds from various sources, one of which is the state Homeless Emergency Aid Program (HEAP).
“We’ve continued to look for funding (for homelessness programs),” said Healdsburg Assistant City Manager Joe Irvin, and “HEAP has $12.1 million in funds to allocate.”
However, in order to get access to funds, cities must declare a shelter crisis.
“The challenge with this is, the state requires this specific language in order to access these capital funds, so if we want to access funds for brick and mortar programs, which is what we are proposing, then we have to adopt this,” explained City Manager David Mickaelian.
These direct funds from HEAP would go towards local homeless outreach and housing programs like Reach for Home and St. Paul’s Episcopal Church.
Reach for Home, lead by director Colleen Carmichael, provides aid through outreach, emergency housing, rapid rehousing and permanent supportive housing.
With the HEAP funds, Reach for Home could make improvements and update their Victory studios and apartments on Center Street with new roofs, solar panels, new appliances and tankless water heaters and make ADA accessible improvements.
St. Paul’s provides similar services with free access to showers, a weekly community meal and emergency inclement weather shelters.
Pastor Sally Hubbell of St. Paul’s said the shower ministry program also provides snacks, clean socks and a go-bag of toiletries.
Needed funding for these programs is also timely as the homelessness population in Healdsburg has jumped from 90 in 2016 to 111 in 2017, a 23 percent increase.
According to the latest figures from the 2018 Sonoma County Homeless Census Report, Healdsburg currently has an unsheltered homeless population of 81 and a sheltered homeless population of 48, a total population of 129.
City council members unanimously supported the declaration and Healdsburg Mayor Brigette Mansell thanked St. Paul’s and Reach for Home for addressing this burgeoning issue.
“Thank you for all of the work and all of the support especially this season,” Mansell said.
Parking limits to take new form, amendment inches closer to approval
Parking was also on Monday night’s agenda and the city council voted 4-0 to move along the proposed amendment, bringing it closer finalization; it will be voted on in a December city council meeting. The amendment would alter parking time zones in the downtown area from three to two hours around the Plaza.
“The city received direction at the Oct. 1 city council meeting to go forward with an implementation plan to change parking and time limit restrictions specifically on all streets that front the Plaza, North, Healdsburg, Matheson and Center and the opposite side of those streets from three hours to two,” said Irvin.
Also a part of the change, three-hour parking time zones would be extended on both sides of Center Street north to Piper Street and on both sides of North Street west to Grove, balancing out the demand for parking along Center and North Streets.
A three-hour parking limit would also be implemented in the southern section of Parking Lot A on Vine Street.
“The Plaza has high demand and high visit turnout and to turn those vehicles in a more efficient manner and to manage our overall parking system it made sense to create a zone right near the downtown that is quicker turnout,” Irvin said of the proposed change. “Those who need longer term parking could park in the Grove Street lot.”
Earlier this year Walker Parking Consultants, a nationally recognized parking consultant team, visited Healdsburg to observe the city’s parking habits. Based on current use and parking times, the consulting firm developed these three new recommendations for the city.
The group also advised that the city should keep all 73 of the new city hall spaces unrestricted.
Other new unrestricted spaces include 12 spaces in the Vine Street Lot A area. In the same lot, there will also be 25 new three-hour spaces.
These new spaces will be helpful, since according to the Walker Parking study, most parking lots and block faces near the Plaza were 100 percent full during peak time and beyond. Parking lots with no time restrictions also remained 100 percent full at peak periods.
While city council members seemed to approve of the parking amendment, there were some suggestions on how to improve wayfinding and parking signage.
Mayor Brigette Mansell voiced her desire to have parking signs with an artistic flair. Mansell also said it would be nice to have creative names for parking lots; however, Irvin said lots are typically named after their geographic location.
Healdsburg resident, Brian Sommer also suggested that city staff should be wary of how close signage poles are to the curb, as sometimes parking close to a sign can lead to a banged car door.
Overall, city council agreed with the suggestions presented and there were no disapproving public comments heard on the matter.
If the amendment is passed during the next meeting it most likely won’t go into effect until the start of the new year after the city updates its parking signs.
