The Santa Maria/Santa Barbara County Continuum of Care helped dozens of homeless veterans find safe and stable housing.
The Santa Barbara County team launched the 100-Day Challenge to reduce homelessness among veterans in the county in November 2020. Their goal is to connect 75 veterans to stable housing and supportive services. After 100 days, the team connected 46 veterans those necessary services. The team says it is working toward its initial goals.
Kathy Simas, retired Santa Barbara Foundation North County Director, says, “The 100-Day Challenge was a fantastic opportunity for a group of cross-sector stakeholders to re-examine their models and implementation processes of housing veterans experiencing homelessness." She added, “Our key takeaways include better practices for information-sharing among organizations and improving their cohesiveness, plus we identified strategies that require additional attention. The ultimate result is that in a short period of time 46 Veterans were housed, and we have a commitment to continue collaborating to provide safe and stable housing and support for more vterans to live a happy and healthy life.”
Following the 100-Day Challenge, team members debriefed to share their experiences and reflect on additional outcomes such as developing regional landlord engagement practices.
The team also proposed the following actions to preserve the advancements made during the 100-day challenge: quarterly landlord engagement sessions, improvement of Veterans-specific case conferences, support of the Santa Barbara County Veterans Collaborative set to launch in 2021, and deploy and analyze the needs survey developed during the challenge.
Landlords who are interested in helping the county's efforts to end homelessness can view this flyer, and contact LBoss@countyofsb.org to register for landlord information sessions.
For more information about the Santa Maria/Santa Barbara County Continuum of Care, click here.
