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While a consultant funded with state No Place Like Home dollars helps develop a program to serve the chronically homeless, county health officials are using a different pot of money to keep people in their homes.

Using $361,000 from the Homeless Emergency Assistance Program, or HEAP, the Del Norte County Department of Health and Human Services has helped 500 people either stay in their home or find housing, Director Heather Snow said.

This temporary assistance program helps working families with security deposit, rental assistance or help paying utilities, Snow said.

“The people we help you never hear about,” Snow said. “It’s not the population you’re going to see on the street. We hope to catch them early before their health deteriorates and their social equity; before they get too far down the road.”

According to the most recent Point-in-Time Count, 184 Del Norte County residents identified as homeless. This includes 118 people who identified as chronically homeless, 21 veterans, 53 who were convicted of felonies, 12 families, seven youth ages 18-24 and 29 children, according to the numbers.

Required by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Point-in-Time Count is spearheaded by the Northern California Continuum of Care. This seven-county consortium includes Del Norte, Lassen, Modoc, Plumas, Shasta, Sierra and Siskiyou counties and is governed by an executive board in Redding.

The Point-in-Time Count is conducted in January to provide a more accurate count of those who are unable or unwilling to find emergency shelter, according to the 2019 report. According to this year’s count, a total of 1,349 people identified as homeless in the seven county region.

“I haven’t been able to read the whole thing, but an interesting point they covered was we know that there seems to be a high correlation of people who’ve been released from criminal justice involvement,” Snow said. “I don’t think it’s unusual for someone exiting jail or the criminal justice system to be homeless. Locally we have had really good success working with law enforcement. When we know if there’s someone who has had mental health issues in jail we work closely to coordinate their release.”

According to Snow, the Northern California Continuum of Care also administers Del Norte County’s HEAP grant.

Last year those dollars allowed DHHS to provide housing assistance to about 500 people, Snow said. Of those, 300 were behavioral health clients needing access to mental health or substance abuse services, she said.

“It was determined that housing was a part of their treatment plan,” Snow said. “For them to improve in their recovery, they needed to have stable housing.”

The remaining 200 people were served through DHHS’s housing support program and were able to take part on other public programs such as CalWorks, Snow said.

Del Norte also plans to put a portion of those HEAP dollars to use by setting up a mobile showers program. Snow said she’s been working with District 2 Supervisor Lori Cowan, who has brought a handful of local nonprofit organizations to set it up.

That group is in the final stages of putting together a plan to purchase a mobile shower unit, Snow said. The Del Norte Senior Center is working with DHHS staff to look at what a unit would cost and how to obtain one, she said.

Our Daily Bread Ministries, which has a long history of working with those who are homeless, have also spoken with their clients to see if a mobile shower program is something they’d support, Snow said.

“It’s something they’re asking for,” she said. “It’s something we can offer that gives them a chance to clean up and feel like they can hopefully be treated with dignity and respect and maybe make them feel better for the day.”

Our Daily Bread Ministries is currently working on becoming a full-time rescue mission. Though it’s run into obstacles, including needing to install a sprinkler system and fix its ceiling, the ministry’s program coordinator, Daphne Cortese-Dean, said she has been part of the plan to start a mobile shower program.

“We have written a letter of support,” she said. “We would welcome the ministry to be a site for that mobile shower. We have volunteers that can man it maybe two days a week when we aren’t actually doing work here.”

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