On March 22, the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to allocate $950,000 in capital funds for the L&M Village in Healdsburg and $600,000 for The Studios at Montero in Petaluma, both of which are Project Homekey sites. The funding commitment ensures that the two sites will secure additional matching allocations from the State of California to assist with funding gaps.
The L&M Village, formerly the L&M Motel, was approved for Project Homekey funding in December. The City of Healdsburg, in partnership with Reach for Home, was awarded $7 million in Homekey funds to transform the 22-unit hotel into an interim housing site for Healdsburg’s chronically homeless.
On Jan. 18, the Healdsburg City Council unanimously approved the purchase/sale agreement for the 22-unit L&M Motel and accepted the $7 million-plus Project Homekey grant for the project.
The project, the first of its kind for the City of Healdsburg, is a collaboration between the city, Reach for Home and Burbank Housing.
“It’s not only significant in size and scope, but it’s also significant because it addresses a long standing need in our community, the ability to provide a safe and stable location for our most vulnerable residents,” Healdsburg Housing Administrator Stephen Sotomayor said during a Jan. 18 Healdsburg City Council meeting.
The purpose of the housing site is to get people off of the streets and on a path toward permanent supportive housing. The site will house individuals rather than families for up to 30 days with the opportunity for extending the stay for another 30 days.
Both the Healdsburg and Petaluma sites will open later this year and individuals accepted into the housing sites will receive benefits including behavioral health and substance use treatment and counseling.
More specifically, at the L&M site, the program will offer case management seven days a week with a 3:1 resident to case manager ratio; daily therapeutic activities; an on-site mental health professional available once a week by appointment; community mobile health and wellness unit on site once a week; on and off-site drug and alcohol treatment as needed; employment services and job seeking assistance; a community garden program; and a facilities mentoring program.
With the addition of the two hotel sites, Sonoma County has now received approval for five homeless housing sites under the state Homekey program since 2020, according to a press release from the County of Sonoma.
The first sites to be awarded funding were the Mickey Zane Place in Santa Rosa and Elderberry Commons in Sebastopol in December 2020.
The five projects have been awarded over $51 million from Homekey funds and created about 230 units of permanent or interim housing in Sonoma County.
The county has now submitted two additional Homekey applications to the state. One is for a 21-unit permanent supportive housing project in the western portion of the county and another is for a 56-unit transition-aged youth and senior homeless housing project in unincorporated Santa Rosa.
According to the same county press release, “In late February 2022, the county, the continuum of care and partnering cities and nonprofits concluded the annual Point-in-Time Count to calculate the number of sheltered and unsheltered people experiencing homelessness. While the data is still being compiled and analyzed, the county continues to work towards the goal of reducing homelessness by 10% yearly. Efforts to achieve a decrease in homelessness include increasing the number of beds in temporary and permanent housing as well as providing support services to address the physical and mental causes of homelessness.”
