Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee announced this week that she is creating a new city department to tackle homelessness.
Lee said the Office of Homelessness Solutions will be responsible for the implementation of her new five-point plan to address homelessness using funds from, among other sources, Measure W, which was passed by Alameda County voters back in 2020.
“The Office of Homelessness Solutions and our 5-Point Plan are about common-sense action — uniting our talented city teams, community partners, and regional allies under one strategic vision,” Lee said in a news release Tuesday.
Sasha Hauswald, the city’s chief housing policy official, will lead the office on an interim basis.
The goal, according to Lee’s announcement, is to create a department that can coordinate the delivery of homeless services that already exist throughout local, state and federal agencies, as well as those provided by nonprofit organizations.
Department staff will use “data to guide policy and program decisions” and will work to improve outcomes for all manner of services, including encampment and emergency shelter management, as well as permanent housing solutions, according to city officials.
Lee said the details of her five-point plan, dubbed the Homelessness Strategic Action Plan, will be released by the end of the year, but she said Tuesday that it will broadly include strategies to prevent homelessness and will scale up Oakland’s Keep People Housed Program to “reduce the inflow of 2,500 people becoming homeless each year.”
It also includes the deployment of more outreach workers to connect people to homeless services and treatment programs, new rental support funding to help newly homeless people get off the streets, the creation of new shelters and interim and permanent housing, according to city officials.
The new department is eyeing money from a $1.83 billion pool of funds created by Measure W, 80 percent of which Alameda County supervisors voted to set aside for countywide homelessness solutions in June.
Distribution of those funds, generated by a half-cent sales tax increase, was freed up by the courts in April after a lengthy legal challenge ended in defeat.
It’s unclear when the Office of Homelessness Solutions will be up and running but City Administrator Jestin Johnson said it will be phased in over time.
The new office’s budget is still being worked out but it will be funded from existing city sources, according to the mayor’s office.
Hauswald and her successor will oversee two new leadership positions dedicated to improving Oakland’s homelessness services system and encampment strategy, while the city’s existing Homelessness Division will be folded into the new office and will have a team of up to nine staffers.
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