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1 Santa Clara County: Community Plan to End Homelessness Focus Area 1 Prevent people from becoming homeless. Strategy A – Expand programs and investments to prevent people from becoming homeless. Sub-Strategies A1: Increase public and private funding for homelessness prevention programs. A2: Strengthen and sustain a high-impact homelessness prevention system. A3: Align policy and affordable housing investment to improve housing stability for households at-risk of homelessness. Strategy B – Ensure services are effective to prevent people from becoming homeless. Sub-Strategies B1. Prevent evictions through early identification, tenant protections, and system coordination. B2: Enforce fair housing protections and increase access to legal services to combat housing discrimination. B3: Leverage health care resources to prevent homelessness. Strategy C – Enhance coordination across systems to prevent people from becoming homeless. Sub-Strategies C1: Prevent homelessness at discharge or system exit through coordination with health care or behavioral health institutions, foster care, or criminal legal systems.
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C2: Establish partnerships to increase income and employment for those at-risk of homelessness. C3: Strengthen partnerships with safety net services for a community-driven approach to preventing homelessness. Focus Area 2 Continue to house people and support them in retaining their housing. Strategy A – Increase and maintain a range of housing options that meets the need. Sub-Strategies A1: Increase public and private funding to build more permanent housing and implement system improvements. A2: Increase public and private funding to expand temporary housing capacity and implement system improvements. A3: Prioritize development of housing for extremely low-income individuals and families making 30% of Area Median Income or less and set joint targets. A4: Build up programs and services to reach geographically underserved areas of the county. A5 Strengthen and diversify permanent housing capacity and options to meet varied needs and acuity levels. A6: Strengthen and diversify temporary housing capacity and options, including Emergency Interim Housing (EIH), to meet varied needs and acuity levels. A7: Co-design innovative and inclusive housing and service models with people with lived experience that expand access to diverse, permanent housing solutions. Strategy B – Increase consistency, diversity, and quality of housing and services for people accessing the housing system. Sub-Strategies B1: Standardize high-quality service delivery and individualized care across the housing system. B2: All housing programs are safe, healthy, and accessible to everyone.
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B3: Improve tenancy support for participants in permanent housing programs. B4: Invest in equitable workforce development programs for people with lived experience within the homeless system. B5: Promote skill-building and career advancement opportunities for people with lived experience within the homeless system. B6: Support the development and implementation of programs led by people with lived experience that provide peer support, housing navigation, and mentorship. Strategy C – Improve system coordination throughout the housing system. Sub-Strategies C1: Reduce returns to homelessness and program exits. C2: Increase coordination between property management and service providers to ensure housing stability. C3: Reduce housing search time and expand landlord capacity for scattered site housing programs. Focus Area 3 Strengthen access to care and services for people experiencing unsheltered homelessness. Strategy A – Build capacity and expand access to trusted, culturally responsive, and coordinated services and resources throughout Santa Clara County. Sub-Strategies A1: Identify sustainable funding for increased access to care and services for people experiencing unsheltered homelessness. A2: Prioritize peer-led and community-driven outreach and communications models to effectively serve underserved regions and populations who are historically underserved or overrepresented in the homeless system. A3: Improve system-wide access to real-time, understandable, and comprehensive resource information and availability. Strategy B – Increase consistency, variety, and quality of outreach, basic, and essential needs services.
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Sub-Strategies B1: Expand service delivery offerings for basic and essential needs and to support stability. B2: Ensure that service providers are equipped with the skills, capacity, and ability to effectively serve those in unsheltered situations. B3: Create a consistent, person-centered approach to address vehicular homelessness. B4: Connect impacted populations to culturally responsive services. Strategy C – Invest in approaches that improve outcomes and reduce harm for people living unsheltered and the community at-large. Sub-Strategies C1: Strengthen coordination between behavioral health, homeless service providers, and public safety partners to divert non-violent homeless-related calls away from law enforcement. C2: Expand re-entry and behavioral health services as alternatives to arrest or emergency room admission. C3: Decrease the number of people residing in encampments and reduce criminalization of homelessness for those who are unsheltered Focus Area 4 Center and invest in people with lived experience to lead and transform the homeless system. Strategy A – Expand the representation of people with lived experience in leadership roles and decision-making bodies. Sub-Strategies A1: Build capacity of local jurisdictions and organizations to increase lived experience in leadership roles and decision-making bodies A2: Create accessible and flexible leadership opportunities that consider varying interests, availability, and backgrounds A3: Reduce structural barriers to participation.
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Strategy B – Build leadership capacity and advancement pathways for people with lived experience. Sub-Strategies B1: Provide opportunities such as mentorship and education for people with lived experience to establish pathways for leadership advancement. B2: Support transitions from advisory roles to formal decision making and leadership positions. B3: Advance equity in hiring, advancement, and retention of people with lived experience. Strategy C – Equip homeless system partners to effectively partner with people with lived experience. Sub-Strategies C1: Establish standards and best practices to support authentic lived experience engagement C2: Formalize processes to regularly evaluate the quality and depth of lived experience engagement and use findings to drive improvement. C3: Develop clear accountability measures to transparently demonstrate how lived experience input informs decisions and system change.