County awards grants to three west county housing and homeless organizations
County awards grants to three west county housing and homeless organizations
Sonoma Applied Villages (HorizonShine), West County Community Services and CommonSpace Community Land Trust get funding from supervisors
In May, the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors approved $7.14 million in grants related to homelessness, including several to three west county organizations: Sonoma Applied Villages (HorizonShine), West County Community Services, and CommonSpace Community Land Trust.
The funding for these grants came mostly from federal Community Development Block Grants, as well as the federal HOME Investment Partnerships Program and federal Emergency Solutions Grants.
SAVs/HorizonShine
The board of supervisors awarded two grants to Sonoma Applied Villages (SAVs), which operates HorizonShine, the RV enclosure at the north end of Sebastopol. A $100,000 grant will go support HorizonShine’s operational expenses for 2023-24, while a $139,478 grant will pay for a team of homeless outreach workers.
“They go out and help homeless people all around the county,” SAVs board president Adrienne Lauby said of the homeless outreach team. “They also work in homeless encampments. They’ll go out and make sure people are warm enough and have a snack and just take care of people a little bit and let them know that we care about them.”
“It's really heartening to see the support for what's a relatively new project,” Lauby said of the county grants.
County staff has also recommended that HorizonShine be awarded $723,000 from Measure O — the county’s mental health fund — though that has yet to be approved by the supervisors.
West County Community Services
The board of supervisors also awarded three grants to West County Community Services, which, among other things, runs Park Village, Sebastopol’s low-low-income housing site.
One grant for $213,851 will help turn George’s Hideaway in Guerneville into permanent supportive housing for the homeless. Another grant for $200,000 will pay for three homeless outreach workers—one of whom currently works with Sebastopol’s homeless. The city, which currently pays for all of that worker’s salary, will only be paying for half of it thanks to the grant—a savings to the city of around $40,000.
“The city is getting an outreach worker, basically that same outreach worker. It's just that half of it will now be paid by WCCS,” said WCCS Director Tim Miller.
The third grant WCCS received, for $72,200, will help pay for the organization’s Homeless Prevention and Rapid Rehousing program, which is located in Guerneville but serves west county at large.
CommonSpace Community Land Trust
CommonSpace Community Land Trust was founded in Sebastopol in 2017. Community Land Trusts are a way to remove property from the speculative market and develop it into affordable housing. The supervisors awarded Commonspace $120,000 to aid in the renovation of a south Sebastopol property into three units of affordable housing. (We will be publishing an in-depth article on this interesting new housing model next week.)