Jessica Cejnar Andrews / Tuesday, Aug. 13 @ 4:05 p.m.
A Year After Getting a $10.8 Million Grant, Del Norte Supervisors Get First Look At Emergency Homeless Shelter, Micro Village Layout, Cost Breakdown
Del Norte County Supervisors got their first look at what a micro village and emergency shelter campus might look like. | Screenshot
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Del Norte County supervisors on Tuesday got their first look at the proposed layout for the micro village and emergency shelter that will provide a path out of homelessness for those who want it.
That better look also included a more precise breakdown of how the Department of Health and Human Services will use $10.8 million in state Encampment Resolution Funding dollars.
According to DHHS Director Ranell Brown, this has flipped from the initial budget allocations of roughly $3 million for site development and about $7.2 million for personnel and client support services. Instead, the project budget now calls for about $3.1 million for personnel and client support services and roughly $7.2 million for site development, specifically fixed assets.
After her presentation, Brown requested, and secured, permission from supervisors to purchase fixed assets primarily to establish the emergency shelter alongside the micro village near the agricultural building on Williams Drive in Crescent City.
“The shelter building is going to cost the county about $2.8 million to build,” she told supervisors. “We all — the ad-hoc [homelessness] committee, Del Norte Mission Possible — we all are 100 percent support of creating the infrastructure for the community for this project. In conversations with county counsel and others, it makes sense for the county to own the fixed asset structures on county land.”
Brown said Del Norte County would enter into a use agreement with Del Norte Mission Possible, which will operate the emergency homeless shelter. She said she’s working with Mission Possible to figure out how to make up for the loss in funding for personnel and client support services.
There are other funding sources that Mission Possible has, including Homeless Housing Assistance and Prevention Grant dollars and Housing and Homelessness Incentive Program moneys that are filtered through Partnership Health, which administers MediCare services in Del Norte County, according to Brown.
Other fixed asset expenditures using ERF grant dollars include renovating a modular building as well as building a storage facility and other site work. Brown also updated the cost for the micro village and the kitchen facility.
Brown told the Outpost that her presentation wasn’t a request for additional funding.
“The way the budget works, the Board has to approve fixed asset purchases,” she said. “We didn’t have the shelter building in the initial cost. We now have a better idea of how much everything is going to cost and where it’s going to be spent within that $10 million.”
Del Norte County received its $10.8 million Encampment Resolution Funding grant in Nov. 7, 2023. On Dec. 12, 2023, the Board of Supervisors authorized transferring those dollars into the county budget.
In February, county supervisors Mission Possible’s proposal to house a 60-bed emergency shelter in a Sprung building on the Williams Drive campus.
The nonprofit had been searching for a location to operate a shelter for about two years, looking at more than 38 different properties.
On Tuesday, Brown said instead of a Sprung building, the emergency shelter will be a metal building.
Project Manager Jeff Smith said the dimensions are a bit smaller, about 75 by 80 feet, however it will still house 60 beds. Kitchen, laundry and shower facilities will be housed within the emergency shelter. There will be an outside area as well as a place for pets. The structure will be enclosed by a fence separating it from the nearby micro village, Smith said.
The micro village will consist of 25 small duplexes, about 8 feet wide and 20 feet long with a divider down the middle. Each structure consists of two units, so the village will house 50 individuals, Smith said.
There will be two restroom and shower facilities, a modular kitchen where food will be prepared and a community building where the residents will eat and also have an opportunity to do their laundry.
The micro village will be located behind the county’s agricultural building and surrounded by its own perimeter fence. There will be restrooms and showers, a modular kitchen and a community building that will also house laundry.
The micro village will be located to the rear of the county’s agricultural building and surrounded by its own perimeter fence, Smith said.
The Williams Drive campus will also include an administrative building for staff, Smith said.
Daphne Cortese-Lambert, founder of Del Norte Mission Possible, addressed the Board’s concerns about funding for personnel. She noted that one service the emergency shelter will provide is recuperative care where those who are unhoused can recover from a hospital stay.
Cortese-Lambert said Mission Possible receives funding through Partnership to provide those services.
“Currently we use motels for that, and that’s quite costly and it’s really not great for our tourist trade as well,” she said. “That’s going to bring in income as well through Partnership.”
She said the kitchen will be used for job and life skills training such as providing catering for the community.
Since receiving its ERF grant, Del Norte County has cleaned up the Williams Drive site, which included removing surplus cars and chainlink fence. They’ve also completed soil testing and a site survey and began asbestos remediation on the old mental health building, which is expected to be demolished by Sept. 30.
DHHS has also finalized contracts and agreements for professional services to “complete various aspects of the department.” This included collaborating with the Community Development Department, Building and Maintenance, Administration, IT, County Counsel, the sheriff’s office and the auditor.
The modular building, which will site staff and supportive services, is expected to be renovated by the end of November. The emergency shelter is expected to be finished by February 2025 and the whole project will be done by March 2025.
Fifty percent of the ERF grant must be spent by June 30, 2025 and 100 percent must be obligated by then as well, Brown said.
“Currently we’ve spent about $1.1 million and we’ve obligated 8.1 million so we’re in a good place as far as the spending of funding goes,” she said, adding that construction depends on the demolition of the old mental health building. “Operations are to go through March 31, 2027.”
According to 2023’s Point-in-Time survey — the most recent unsheltered count in Del Norte County — 694 people in Del Norte County identified as homeless, with about 70 percent of those surveyed saying they had lived in the county for more than 10 years.
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