Addressing Homelessness: City launches comprehensive Homelessness Strategic Plan

Addressing Homelessness: City launches comprehensive Homelessness Strategic Plan

March 12, 2025 1:50 PM
by Heather Averick

At its March 11 meeting, the Santa Monica City Council received the comprehensive five-year Homelessness Strategic Plan, or HSP, presented by the city's Housing and Human Services Department.

Developed by city leadership and key staff in partnership with consultant BerryDunn, the city's Homelessness Strategic Plan for 2025-2030 aligns all city departments around a shared vision, measurable goals and resource investment for addressing homelessness.

Consistent with the strategic pillars adopted by Council in March 2019, the HSP is organized around four pillars. With the HSP, the pillars have been updated to encompass the entirety of the city's work on homelessness and to detail specific, measurable outcomes to track progress.

Pillar 1: Prevention

Goal: Help prevent housed Santa Monicans from becoming homeless through responsive service provision and increasing diverse housing supply so every resident can afford to remain and thrive in Santa Monica.

Prevention initiatives include:

• Build affordable housing, including supportive housing
• Expand the city's Preserving Our Diversity, or POD, program, which provides cash-based assistance to long-term Santa Monica seniors in rent-controlled apartments
• Expand the city's Right to Counsel program and creating a Flexible Financial Assistance programs
• Seek additional funding sources to support the development and operation of supportive housing
• Explore additional mechanisms to develop middle-income and workforce housing

Pillar 2: Intervention

Goal: Minimize the length and severity of homelessness and its impacts on the community by providing effective supportive services.

Intervention initiatives include:

• Use data to drive outreach and operations, and improve the flow of information between departments and service providers
• Establish and maintain a network of 24/7 responders, including outreach and law enforcement, that can connect people experiencing homelessness to the appropriate level of care around the clock
• Expand diversion programs, such as STEP Court and the upcoming SaMo Bridge, to intercept individuals before they enter the criminal justice system
• Activate community spaces using national best practices to help ensure quality experiences for all

Pillar 3: Coordination

Goal: Collaborate with key partners in the region and advocate for policies at the local, state and federal government to advance strategic plan goals and help ensure equitable allocation of services and resources.

Coordination initiatives include:

• Advocate for California Department of Transportation, or Caltrans, to effectively maintain its jurisdiction
• Advocate for Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, or LA Metro, to coordinate regional solutions that mitigate impacts on the E Line from its End-of-Line policy
• Work with the Westside Cities Council of Governments to implement specific goals and objectives for providing regional homeless services
• Advocate for better coordination of Los Angeles County investments in programs and initiatives on the westside to fully address the area's behavioral health, housing and employment needs

Pillar 4: Communication

Goal: Coordinate communication to clearly convey the city's homelessness response and outcomes and promote community input.

Communication initiatives include:

• Implement a citywide communications strategy to educate and inform the public about the city's work on addressing homelessness
• Establish an integrated and robust process for triaging requests and concerns related to homelessness submitted by community members
• Create a citywide internal communications strategy and coordination processes

For decades the city has invested significant resources in building affordable housing and preventing and addressing homelessness. However, in recent years, as cities throughout the state grapple with rising housing costs and a dramatic increase in homelessness, it has become even more urgent to find both local and regional solutions to the housing and homelessness crises.

In February 2023, the Santa Monica City Council declared a Local Emergency on Homelessness, joining other local jurisdictions including the city of Los Angeles, Culver City, Long Beach and Los Angeles County.

Declaring a state of emergency allows the city to:

• Advocate for additional funding and resources at the county, state and federal level
• Remove barriers to building affordable housing, including use of anticipated Housing Trust Fund resources to incentivize affordable housing production
• Encourage partners in our region to urgently address the crisis of homelessness
• Streamline hiring for staff positions that are critical to preventing and ending homelessness

The Emergency Order was extended in May 2023, and again in May 2024. In the last year, the Emergency Order enabled the city to fast-track critical efforts including:

• Loan commitment to Community Corporation of Santa Monica for the development of affordable housing at 1342 Berkeley Street
• Expedited several contracts for the SaMo Bridge program
• Expedited contracts for compliance monitoring for affordable housing programs
• Expedited employment verification software for Santa Monica Housing Authority programs

At the March 11 City Council meeting, the Council voted to extend the Emergency Order through December 2026 to allow the city to continue to address the homelessness crisis efficiently and effectively.

Read the full staff report for the HSP and Emergency Order here. Learn more about the HSP here and see a one pager here.

Authored By

Heather Averick
Director of Housing and Human Services

Categories

Housing, Programs