Homelessness

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Homeless and Unstably Housed in Mountain View

Homelessness is a significant and growing issue, driven in large part by shortfalls in housing supply and affordable housing throughout the region and the State. The City’s has collaborated, built, and leveraged a range of strong partnerships. The City aims to maintain and where limited resources allow, enhance the partnerships, programs, and policies to make a more sustainable impact on this critical regional issue over time.

Since 2016, the City has developed programs and policies and dedicated over $11 million (as of Aug. 4, 2021) in funding to serve homeless and unstably housed residents. Throughout this time, the City has actively collaborated with the County and community-based organizations that have staff expertise and dedicated funding streams for working with homeless and vulnerable populations.

The needs and services related to homelessness can be viewed within a continuum for “coordinated care,” which includes homelessness prevention, rapid rehousing, permanent supportive housing, emergency shelter, and interim/temporary housing. Across this continuum, services also include programs to meet basic health and safety needs that are important in their own right and also support the ability to sustain stable housing.

The City is a committed and recognized leader in addressing the regional problem of insufficient housing supply, by looking tactically and strategically at solutions and taking meaningful actions by leading in areas such as:

Range of the Unhoused

The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) categorizes homelessness into four broad categories: (1) Literally Homeless, (2) Imminent Risk of Homelessness, (3) Homeless Under Other Federal Statutes, (4) Fleeing or Attempting to Flee Domestic Violence. HUD does not have a specific category for individuals living in vehicles, this population is considered unsheltered by the County of Santa Clara for its comprehensive, biannual, “point-in-time” (PIT) homeless count. Broadly individuals living on streets, in cars, in recreational vehicles (RVs), in tents/ encampments with very limited support services are all considered homeless/unhoused.

Continuum of Housing


HOMELESS PREVENTION	Programs to stop homelessness before it starts by providing financial assistance and services to prevent families and individuals from losing their housing. Assistance may be one-time or for a short period. Supportive services may be provided in addition to financial assistance, or households might be connected to other resources in the community. (e.g., Rent Relief).
EMERGENCY SHELTER	Programs respond to the crisis of homelessness, providing immediate shelter from the elements, access to meals, and connections to services and resources. Overall minimal supportive services for unhoused persons, limited to occupancy of three months or less.
SUPPORTIVE INTERIM / TRANSITIONAL HOUSING	Short-term, dignified environment where community members can be housed and supported with services and case management. (e.g., LifeMoves MV) The County also uses the term: Transitional Housing programs provide temporary housing (usually no more than two years) with attached services focused on helping people prepare to obtain housing upon program exit. Units can be anything from an enclosed cubicle with reserved bed at a shelter facility to an apartment in the community.
PERMANENT SUPPORTIVE*	Designed for chronically homeless and other highly vulnerable individuals and families who need long-term support to stay housed. Community-based housing without a designated length of stay, and includes both permanent supportive housing and rapid re-housing.* (Rapid Rehousing provides short-term financial assistance and support (four to six months, on average) to quickly rehouse homeless households in their own independent permanent housing.)
AFFORDABLE HOUSING<	Residential dwelling units that is affordable to households at extremely low income, very low income, low income and moderate-income levels.
MARKET RATE HOUSING	Residential dwelling unit that is not an affordable housing unit or a unit occupied by on-site property management staff. No supportive services are provided.

Continuum of City Strategies to Address the Range of Homelessness

Strategies to Address Homelessness (not in priority order)	Mountain View Actions and Initiatives
Congregate Shelter	Funding for a transitional shelter (Graduate House operated by LifeMoves), which has capacity for five adults; and a youth shelter (Quetzal House operated by Bill Wilson) with capacity for 40 youth serving North County. Emergency sheltering, with 65 seasonal beds provided in conjunction with the County. Expanded land use ordinance update with options for sheltering.
Safe Parking	Developed Safe Parking Ordinance and permit program for private lots. Funded all necessary site setup and support for a nonprofit start-up. Coordinated with the County and partner CBOs to expand on-site services and provide running water, mobile showers, laundry services, and mobile medical unit visits. Created a program with 114 parking spaces, which is the largest site in the County, provided in conjunction with the County of Santa Clara; operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Interim Housing	Supported development and provided funding for LifeMoves Mountain View with 100 units of interim housing serving approximately 300 people per year.
Core Housing Programs/Homeless Prevention	Funding for 200 units of rapid rehousing/ permanent supportive housing. Approximately 1,628 affordable housing units in the City. Approximately 861 additional affordable housing units in various stages of development. A significant pipeline of inclusionary below-market-rate units. Approximately 14,950 rental units rent-protected under the Community Stabilization and Fair Rent Act voter initiative adopted in 2016. Approximately 1,130 mobile homes rent-protected under the Mobile Home Rent Stabilization Ordinance adopted in 2021. Homelessness Prevention Programs like the $4.6 million in City Rent Relief Program (including supplementary COVID-19 response program). Funding a permanent supportive housing contract with the County, providing assistance to approximately 20 households. Supported and provided funding for County’s conversion of Crestview Hotel into 48 units of affordable housing.
Outreach Services	Joint City-County funding for CSA outreach. City multilingual outreach strategies and multi-channel communications. Coordination with CBOs working with the unstably housed population. Mountain View Police Department (MVPD) Neighborhood Event Services (NES) unit has a Community Outreach Officer position with a compassionate enforcement approach. MVPD Outreach Team distributes resource flyers (multiple languages) to vehicles believed to be used by unhoused people, meeting residents where they are.
Community Resources, Access, or Case Management—Links to Continuum of Care (CoC), safety-net services, and path to housing	Joint City-County funding for CSA Homeless Case Manager for housing referrals and current City full funding for the ongoing program. Funding for case management/permanent supportive housing units for 20 chronically homeless households in partnership with the County (New Directions—A Program of Peninsula Healthcare Connections).
Basic Services (food and other items)	Gift card (grocery/essential needs) programs for COVID-19 response. Capital funding support for Meals at Hope’s Corner. Support for CSA and Second Harvest grocery distribution programs. Food Talk group and coordination of local information (seven-day-per-week access options during COVID-19).
Sanitation and Hygiene	Funding expanded mobile shower services added at CSA for COVID-19 response. Portable toilets and hand-washing stations for COVID-19 response, and services continue at the main safety net providers (CSA and Hope’s Corner)

Santa Clara County Point-In-Time Count

The County of Santa Clara completes the comprehensive, biannual “Point-in-Time” (PIT) homeless count, which serves as a baseline for understanding homelessness in the region.

This count includes the unsheltered and unstably housed, measuring the number of individuals and families who are sleeping in emergency shelters and transitional housing as well as people sleeping on the streets, in vehicles, in abandoned properties, or other places not meant for human habitation.

The PIT count is an inherently imperfect snapshot that is based on observations and data from just one night. The numbers typically change from one year’s count to the next. However, dramatic shifts can occur and are usually associated with changes in programs, sheltering, affordable housing capacity, or count methodology. The 2022 count was the first post-Covid-19 pandemic count when many new programs had been implemented countywide creating some challenges in interpreting the data.

The one-year shift for Mountain View from 2022 to 2023 is mainly explained by a data collection change in which the safe parking program count was done directly by the safe parking provider, Move-MV, the County’s subcontractor. The PIT count contractor has determined that participants in Mountain View’s safe parking program were likely not counted in 2022.

	2015	2017	2019	2022	2023
City of Mountain View	276	416	606	346	562
County of Santa Clara	6,556	7,394	9,706	10,028	9,903

City Living in Vehicles Count

In addition to the County count, the City also conducts an annual street-by-street count of vehicles that appear to be used for living purposes. The counts may fluctuate over time due to the mobile nature of vehicles used for living, but in recent years the trend has been modestly declining. The most recent count shows an increase in the number of vehicles used for living purposes on City streets.

The County’s count considers residents living in recreational and other vehicles as unsheltered.
Map of Locations with Residents Living in Vehicles - Counts conducted July 2024

Annual Update for Human Services