Newsom’s Prize Patrol Hits Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara County Awarded $5.3 Million in State Homeless Funds
It wasn’t the Prize Patrol, but for Santa Barbara County homeless housing providers, it may have been the next best thing. Santa Barbara County just got awarded $5.3 million in state homeless funds, courtesy of Governor Gavin Newsom’s fifth and latest installment of HHAP (Homeless Housing, Assistance, and Prevention) grants, in which Newsom disbursed $827 million to 37 regional areas statewide to get people off the streets and into transitional or full-time housing.
This announcement comes at a time when state and federal funds for such purposes is drying up, but Newsom’s sense of urgency to get people off the streets is ramping up. The money will be used to create incentives for landlords to take in tenants who would otherwise be homeless and to underwrite the cost of “wrap-around” services designed to make the transition from outdoors to indoors more successful. Ten percent of the money is to go to youth experiencing homelessness.
Such funds have reportedly served 1,681 individuals — unduplicated — countywide since 2020. Of those, 800 have reportedly transitioned into permanent housing. Most of the new funds will be used to get people into short-term transitional housing.
