Clark county approves homeless action plan

The Clark County Council unanimously approved its 2019-2022 Homeless Action Plan to guide how public dollars are spent to address homelessness.

“The main focus of the plan is really on increasing the capacity of our entire homeless crisis response system,” Kate Budd, executive director of Council for the Homeless, said to the county councilors during their Tuesday meeting. “We need to focus on increasing the resources we have from outreach to serving people who are experiencing homelessness on the street to emergency shelters to the different housing programs that move people into permanent housing and stabilize them into the future.”

The Homeless Action Plan, a requirement of the state Department of Commerce, guides the disbursement of a mix of state, federal and local funds, namely to Vancouver, Clark County, Vancouver Housing Authority and Council for the Homeless.

Michael Torres, program manager with Clark County Community Services, said in an interview that the county has to annually report performance measures to the state. This new plan is more focused on outcomes than the last plan, which he described as maintaining the status quo.

“This homeless action plan is pretty comprehensive and a lot more specific with recommendations and data,” he said.

Torres said there isn’t enough money to accomplish everything outlined in the plan, but the county is requesting public dollars to increase the system’s capacity. Money to increase some services could be doled out as early as July.

If the housing market were to expand and more document recording fees (a major source of homeless service funding) were collected than expected, the plan shows where those additional dollars should go.

“It give us a blueprint of what to prioritize,” Torres said.

Success within the homeless crisis response system would be measured by looking at the average length of homelessness, the number of people exiting shelter or transitional housing to permanent housing, and the number of people participating in services who return to homelessness.

At 16 percent, Clark County’s current overall return to homelessness rate is higher than the national rate, and the average stretch of time people are homeless (48 days) is higher than the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s goal of 30 days.

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