Homelessness in Silicon Valley: How Things Have Changed

The Housing 1,000 SV kicked off  in Santa Clara County Monday and Tuesday.

Today, those efforts continue throughout the county.

But while the early morning outreach to this vulnerable segment of society might resemble the bi-annual homeless census required by the federal government, officials say it's more about faces than numbers.

"The housing 1,000 SV campaign is different because rather than talking about the numbers, we are trying to create a registry to identify individuals and match them with services," says Ky Le, Santa Clara County director of homeless systems.

Participants survey every individual spoken to. The survey has two purposes: to identify and prioritize services based on their health and then, within Santa Clara County, house 1,000 chronic homeless people within the next two years, Le says.

"Our local chapter is part of a larger effort sponsored by Common Ground," he says. "We use this information while maintaining all their privacy rights to identify homeless individuals and see how they are actually impacting, not only county services, but community services as well."

Since 2005, the county adopted and supported the development of "Keys to Housing: A 10-Year Plan To End Chronic Homelessness in Santa Clara County."

The plan has representatives from cities, nonprofits and community organizations and focuses on preventing chronic homelessness, providing permanent housing and services, increasing income through benefits and employment and garnering resources.

And in 2007, San Jose and the county sponsored the Blue Ribbon Commission on Ending Homelessness, now called Destination: Home.

"We’ve been trying to implement those plans, but what we see now is a reinvigorated effort," Le says. "By ending and preventing chronic homelessness, we will be saving lives and improving services and eventually saving money to the county systems."

Santa Clara County Homeless Census 2009

Changes in SV homeless efforts

, the county's Homeless Concerns coordinator, has been with the department for five years but prior to that was with EHC Lifebuilders for 13 years. He says the changes in homeless issues have been surprising.

"There are more homeless families for sure," he says.

One of the biggest changes that surprised him was the actual number of homeless in the county. Preliminary numbers from a homeless census conducted in January have shown a drop, he says.

"It didn’t go up," Dolci says, "Actually, it went down a little from the last count in 2009. With the economic downturn we expected that number to go up because of the severity of loss of jobs and income."

The funding for many of these programs has also changed.

"We have been able to house some of the shelter population, not so much with federal funding but with local funding," he says.

One example of this was the ability to provide vouchers through the Housing Authority to 200 individuals since October 2010. He hopes that they will be able to duplicate those efforts this year and add another 200 homeless individuals to those 200 now in permanent homes.

But the most significant difference in the effort to end homelessness in the county is the support of what Dolci describes as the "politicos."

"At this point in time, this is the most political will and effort to respond effectively to end chronic homelessness in this county than I have ever seen in my 18 years working" he says. "The effort by the Mayor of San Jose, several council people and supervisors banding together through their Blue Ribbon Commission to end homelessness and the strategies to end homelessness within 10 years and dedicate resources to this have been huge."

Most recently, the Santa Clara County Executive Office is conducting an analysis of services to see if there's a better way to realign those for better results.

"That's a huge commitment by the executive office to help in this effort," Dolci says.