At the June 28 San Benito County Board of Supervisors’ meeting, Jim Rydingsword, director of the San Benito County Health and Human Services Agency (HHSA), and Enrique Arreola, deputy director of the Community Action Agency, gave their regular monthly update, with a bit of a twist.
The twist being a pitch for a high tech recycle center, along with a housing plan, that they say may just help reduce the number of homeless in the county.
“One of the things we did earlier this year was to begin to talk about a community collaborative,” Rydingsword began. “I’m dealing with issues around low-income folks and homeless individuals in the community. We know that lives are impacted a lot by social and economic conditions, and the best way for us to address those individually or as a community, is to look at them in a ‘whole person’ concept.”
Rydingsword said there is a growing interest at all levels of government to improve the coordination of social services, behavioral health, and public health and safety to work more efficiently with community partners who are also willing to step forward to work with county entities on issues facing the homeless and low-income families.
“We’ve talked to you before about housing first—a National Alliance to End Homelessness homeless assistance approach that prioritizes providing people experiencing homelessness with permanent housing as quickly as possible, according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness—and that seems to be the model that is having the most success across the country,” he said. “Utah adopted a housing first strategy a couple years ago and, according to reports, have reduced their homeless population by 94 percent.”
The program concentrates first on getting people into permanent homes, along with supporting services and focusing on how to begin helping people access health education and employment services.
Arreola updated the board on homeless services, including a 2004 grant. He said the agency has submitted all “special conditions” the state requires for the grant.
“Our goal is that those items be approved by the state,” he said, “All these items were submitted and we’re still waiting for a response. Once we do, that will trigger the 2016 grant. At the moment, we are moving forward and we had our first public hearing last week and we had about 17 community residents to get some good input on what the needs are.”
An emergency solutions (ESG) grant was being applied for, Arreola noted. The grant, should it be awarded, would be used to help with operations expenses for the warming shelter next winter. He said another grant for $50,000 was applied for and would be used to service the homeless community.
Rydingsword added that there was also a pilot project, amounting to $75,000 a year for three years, that would help pay for low-income medical services. Then he went on to discuss the ‘whole person care’ concept.
“We were in the process of applying for some federal funds that would have focused on the homeless community or people at risk of becoming homeless,” he said. “We would have used this particular model which involves an individual assessment and then you bring agencies together to work on those issues. That process was going forward, but we discovered last week that we just could not meet some of the state and federal requirements for cash flow, the requirement for non-federal match dollars by June 30. We have pulled this application. If there is an additional round of funding we will take a look at it again.”
Funding does not drive all decisions, Rydingsword said, and that sometimes the concept is what is important. He said discussions would continue on the whole person care with the county’s community partners to see if there is a better way to do things, whether federal funds are available or not.
On the topic of economic development, Rydingsword said there are four areas under study: a high-tech recycling center, a food processing center, a food preparation/management center, and a home services training center.
He described the four centers as broad topics of discussion and then he asked Brent Barnes, resource management agency director, who, along with Rydingsword, had gone to Indianapolis to tour a recycling center, to speak about what they saw. He described it as a high-tech recycling center that uses a low-tech process to sort recycled materials into commodities that could then be resold or recycled into other products.
“For example, the gold off circuit boards are extracted with computerized technology and sorted into waste bina and then sold on the open market, a good part of where they make their money,” “Barnes said. “The important part for us, and the reason we wanted to look at it, was the labor force, which is largely a work-release program. We envision that is a model that could work here as a training center for folks with a lesser amount of skills and get them into mainstream kinds of jobs like forklift and machine operators.”
He went on to describe how the floor manager of the 80,000-square-foot building had at one time been homeless and living under a bridge.
“He hooked up with these folks and then proceeded to work through the chain of command to become a second-level manager of the entire facility,” Barnes said. “It’s a good success story and a vision for those who work there. They have a path to move forward.”
Other than a computer-guided sorting machine, most of the operation is low tech and could be accomplished on a fairly low budget, Barnes said.
“We’re thinking this would be an interesting project because it meets a lot of goals for the city and the county and the general community,” he said. “It meets the sheriff’s goals of pulling folks out of incarceration and giving them a path, and it meets our goals of innovative ways of recycling and diverting stuff from the landfill.”
Barnes said he wasn’t requesting the board to move forward with a specific project, but he was interested in hearing their opinions to determine if individual sites should be investigated. He also said the center could operate as a training facility, which would help with the new homeless services center that has 5,000 square feet available for such use.
“This is the kind of operation that might go in the building we already have,” he said.
Rydingsword said members of the California Community Economic Development Association (CCEDA) were also at the facility. He said they have been involved with it for the past 10 years and that part of the decision to move forward with a similar project would be to explore with CCEDA the feasibility and funding in the county. He said that he had asked the people running the facility if such a facility were to be built in the county would it be competing with them.
“They said ‘no,’” Rydingsword said. “They said they welcome these kinds of efforts around the country. They said they hope people can replicate what they are doing because in the United States we only recycle six percent of these products back into the market. There’s a lot of growth here and we can all share in.”
Supervisor Margie Barrios encouraged him to be proactive and move forward.
“The concept is wonderful,” she said. “It gives people jobs and it has a lot of pluses. I cannot imagine not pursuing it.”
Supervisor Anthony Botelho said with the county’s efforts with the homeless center will not be successful unless something like the recycle center and other services are also incorporated. He said the county is uniquely positioned to promote such a project.
“I’m very supportive of this and, hopefully, we’ll take the steps to accomplish it,” he said.
Supervisor Jerry Muenzer stated succinctly, “If you’re looking for encouragement, you’ve got it from me.”
Supervisor Jaime De La Cruz was supportive of the idea as long as general fund money was not used.
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