When you can’t beat a problem no matter how hard you try, how much you spend, and how much you actually accomplish, maybe the best response is to change how you define success. That’s the message the Santa Barbara County supervisors received loud and clear from the county’s Community Services Department Tuesday on how it attacks the issue of homelessness.
Joe Dzvonik, assistant director in charge of homeless programs, said after spending $76 million — in mostly one-time state and federal dollars — over the past four years, the number of new homeless people seeking services in Santa Barbara has kept going up at a greater rate than the number of homeless people successfully transitioned into housing. In the past year, 1,368 people transitioned out of homelessness and into housing; that’s the good news. In that same time, 1,712 first-time applicants sought homeless services, thus bringing the total number of people seeking help last year to 4,457.
Rather than establishing a goal to “reduce overall homelessness,” he said, “it is more realistic — and more likely achievable — to set a goal of making homelessness less frequent and more brief,” he said…