The Regional Homelessness and Affordable Housing Compact is part of a countywide plan started in 2022 to address homelessness in San Luis Obispo County.
“Discuss homelessness throughout the county and how we want to go about addressing it together instead of each individual city doing their own thing,” said John Craig, Morro Bay City Manager.
Morro Bay City Council members recently gave the green light for the city to be a part of it.
County officials told KSBY News that means all seven cities in the county are now part of the compact.
“We have direction, we have focus, we have that movement forward, but each city also has a responsibility to really come up with their own strategies and their own focus,” said Chief Amy Watkins, Morro Bay Police Department.
Chief Watkins also said that Morro Bay specifically focuses on services like the 805 Street Outreach Program, which provides free laundry and showers every Monday.
“Reaching out to Probation and having them come and be an active resource here in our communities so that our community members don’t necessarily have to travel to San Luis Obispo,” Watkins added.
She said the plan includes different focuses such as addressing shelter capacity, homeless prevention, and sharing data like the Point-in-Time Count.
While individual cities could focus on different things, they all share the same six commitments, which include treating everyone with dignity, strengthening regional collaboration, expanding housing and services, sharing responsibility and resources, promoting transparency and accountability, and fostering community well-being and safety.
Linda Belch, County Deputy Director for the Adult and Homeless Services branch, said that this could also help the county become more competitive when applying for homelessness-related grants.
“We have a regional support group that the city managers all get together, the city clerks all get together, and so this is just a furtherance of trying to help out each community with certain ideas on how we can all work together and sort of work towards this compact,” Craig said.
