As California has continued to lead the nation in homelessness, a new measure would provide grants to local municipalities to fund qualified assessment teams to help direct individuals into appropriate programs.
The bill, SB 1006, will help local communities get homeless individuals off the street and into treatment programs and housing more quickly, the bill’s author, state Sen. Brian Jones, R-Santee, said in an email response to the Northern California Record.
“Currently local law enforcement officers are, more times than not, the ones tasked with clearing homeless individuals from public property, often with little or no resources nor direction as to how to get the homeless individuals into treatment programs and housing,” Jones said.
As of January 2020, California had more than 161,000 people experiencing homelessness, far more than any other state in the nation, according to the most recent data available from the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness.
“SB 1006 will help remedy this by authorizing a funding grant program through the Dept. of Justice for local law enforcement agencies (primarily county sheriff’s departments and city police departments) to establish ‘wrap-around’ assessment teams to go out into the field and help homeless individuals, not just get off the streets, but also into treatment programs and housing,” Jones said.
“The ‘wrap-around’ assessment teams will be comprised of a law enforcement officer, a county welfare representative, a medical professional (or medical student affiliated with a non-profit), and a mental health professional (or mental health student affiliated with a non-profit) and be empowered to immediately assess the needs of homeless individuals and get them placed in treatment programs and some sort of housing."
Before the Super Bowl in Los Angeles last week, many homeless camps were cleared, raising questions about what type of continuum of care was provided for the people who were moved.
Jones noted that wrap-around teams are set up to address such issues.
“This ‘wrap-around’ assessment team approach has been employed in a half a dozen counties already and seems to be showing promise,” Jones said. “The homeless crisis will not be solved simply by throwing money at the problem as Governor Newsom has been doing for years. The homeless problem will also not be solved by a top-down, government knows-best dictates by Sacramento.”
“Rather a locally based approach involving non-profits, the faith-based community, the private sector, and local community leaders, should be employed,” Jones said. “SB 1006 is just such an approach.”