Housing Matters team visits Congressman Jimmy Panetta in Washington D.C.

Written by: Julian Crown, Policy and Research Associate

While in Washington DC attending the National Alliance to End Homelessness conference, members of Housing Matters’ Executive Team met with Congressman Jimmy Panetta and his staff to discuss progress addressing homelessness in our region, federal policies that impact our work, and the impact of the recent Grants Pass Supreme Court decision.

Our conversation began with an update on progress ending homelessness in Santa Cruz. Despite our region’s nationally unmatched housing affordability crisis, preliminary PIT count data available at the time of our meeting showed ongoing progress addressing homelessness, with overall numbers stabilizing. We discussed our exceptionally high utilization rates for Emergency Housing Vouchers and shared our significant progress addressing Veteran’s homelessness, including exciting news that we continue to move towards functional zero for veteran homelessness. This is evidence that with dedicated resources and best practices, it is possible to make homelessness rare, brief, and nonrecurring.

We also spoke about federal policies that impact our work. Housing Choice Vouchers (HCVs) and Project-Based Vouchers (PBVs), commonly known as Section 8, are two of the federal governments’ largest programs for promoting affordable housing. We acknowledged the importance of HCVs as tools for preventing homelessness and helping tenants pay for Permanent Supportive Housing; we also spoke to the direct role that PBVs play in our work, contributing to 60 of the permanent supportive housing units that will be built as part of Harvey West Studios. We discussed the benefits of programs funded through federal Homeless Assistance Grants, including EHVs. In times of budgetary constraints and rising rents, we shared and supported messaging from the National Alliance to End Homelessness that encouraged support for increasing federal appropriations for Homeless Assistance Grants and tenant-based rental assistance (Section 8).

Finally, we discussed the potential impact of the Supreme Court’s Grants Pass decision on our work and region, providing context on a regional shelter shortage that leaves many people with no choice but to sleep outside. We echoed Justice Sotomayor’s argument that sleep is a biological necessity and not a crime, and we shared our hope that our local government will not move towards a more punitive approach to addressing homelessness. We encouraged Congressman Panetta to join a sign-on letter to President Biden urging the President and his administration to treat homelessness as a structural issue and to eschew policies that criminalize being unhoused in favor of evidence-based Housing First practices.