While investigating LifeMoves Mountain View, an interim homeless shelter program, reporters found that the program often falls short of its promises. But there are also major hurdles that make it difficult for any interim shelter model to succeed.
Don't have time to read the full stories? Check out our top findings.
Data shows the program falls short
Santa Clara County data suggests that LifeMoves Mountain View is not living up to the expectations heralded at its opening. Data shows it places its clients in permanent housing at a significantly lower rate than other interim shelter programs in the county, ranking close to the bottom.
"There's no way that 90 or even 120 days of housing can stabilize people enough to somehow, miraculously, find housing,” given the lack of low income housing available in the Bay Area and California, said former Mountain View City Council member Sally Lieber.
LifeMoves Mountain View struggles with management and staffing
Both clients and former staff say that LifeMoves Mountain View started accepting residents before a program director was in place. In its first year and a half of operation, the site has shuffled through at least three program directors.
One of those directors left his job after allegedly pushing a client. A former resident who said she experienced repeated sexual harassment during her stay at LifeMoves, and left because the program director at the time refused to evict her harrassers, despite a written policy prohibiting such behavior.
Most of the clients interviewed said they never received specialized help to find housing, despite the LiveMoves Mountain View's promise to provide it. A former employee said the program was chronically understaffed when she worked there.
One size doesn’t fit all
The LifeMoves Mountain View program is unique in that it serves a wide variety of people: families escaping domestic violence, seniors living on fixed incomes, single parents with teenage children and more. But current and former clients interviewed said this approach creates problems.
There are a myriad of rules intended to keep everyone safe, from a nightly curfew to providing only plastic utensils for meals. Clients are assigned chores, including cleaning communal bathrooms frequently described as filthy, need permission to be away overnight and aren’t allowed visits from family or friends at the site. Those interviewed said they chafed under the restrictions and come to resent the loss of independence.
"The way the rules are set up, I would characterize my being here less as a client and more of an inmate," said a current resident.
The homeless population is hard to count
Throughout this investigation, LifeMoves leadership, elected officials and the city of Mountain View pointed to Santa Clara County’s point-in-time count as evidence that the interim shelter model is working. According to the count, Mountain View's unsheltered homeless population dropped from 574 in 2019 to 206 in 2022.
But experts say that point-in-time count data can be misleading. They said that Mountain View’s reduction in unhoused people could be attributed to a number of factors, including people who are still unsheltered but have moved on to other cities. Overall, the county’s homeless population increased by 3%, suggesting that the region’s homelessness crisis isn’t improving.
There’s not enough affordable housing to make it work
Even if an interim shelter program does everything right, a housing-first model can only be successful if there’s affordable housing for people to move into. And according to experts, the overwhelming demand far exceeds the available low-income housing units.
"The reality in California is we simply don't have the housing," said Dr. Margot Kushel, director of UCSF's Benioff Housing and Homelessness Initiative. "So organizations can be amazing. They can do everything that they're trying to do. And if there's no place to discharge people, there's no place to discharge people. If there's no housing, there's no housing."
Comments
Registered user
Another Mountain View Neighborhood
on Apr 3, 2023 at 5:17 pm
Registered user
on Apr 3, 2023 at 5:17 pm
There is cause and effect, a single cause can have more than one effect !!
That people have been forced to move to the streets to live in cars, vans, and old motorhomes (and yes, some in tents) is an effect. That people in the interim housing programs that have been taken from living on the streets, are expected to transition to renting in 90 to 120 days, is way wild; since the cause of people forced to live on the streets has not been addressed !!
For this effect, people say that it is because there isn't enough low income housing. It is proposed here, that, that is not the cause, ... not enough low income housing is also an effect with the same cause as above !!
So what maybe the cause ? Management via city councils, counties and the state, have created an environment for corporations, many with stockholders, to build large (many units) luxurious rentals, for the purpose of big, really big profits to the corporations and their stockholders !! Therefore, some people will get rich, very rich more quickly every year, with ever increase rates. Of course it is very nice to live in a luxury rental, if you can afford it. But there are no incentives by cities to build lower income housing / rentals with smaller profits. In decades past, apartment rentals had smaller number of units, and not luxurious with pools, spas, gyms, and ...., and were not build / owned by corporations to extract ever increasing profits.
Since it is not likely, that this cause can be undone or walked back, then more and more people will be forced to street living. The cities, the counties, the state have to respond, by implementing a mechanism to create an environment, provide incentives, or they have to do it themselves, to build rental housing for those that cannot afford luxury rentals, to at least brake financially even, or financially self sustaining housing that takes the income from the rentals and reinvest in maintenance and beautification of the rental units, this can be done.
Registered user
Another Mountain View Neighborhood
on Apr 3, 2023 at 5:25 pm
Registered user
on Apr 3, 2023 at 5:25 pm
Pardon, but I will continue the comment above:
This 'new neighborhoods', they would not be an economic burden to the rest of the city residents. They have to, the city management, they must create this 'new neighborhoods'.
With the current wealth distribution unevenes, and the economic trends can cities really only have +$1 M neighborhoods, and only $3500 to $4500 per month rental neighborhoods ?? We need 'new neighborhoods' as per above for the ever increasing numbers of lower income citizens. And perhaps, organized parking neighborhoods with reasonable rents for motorhome, or vans, or cars living, not RV parks, since people are not there for recreation, or decent tiny home rental neighborhoods. These can be done.
For the billions of dollars that have been spent in our state, and continuing, sufficient 'new neighborhoods' could have been built for low income housing thru out every city in the bay area.