During a recent election forum in Lompoc, it was alleged that the reason Santa Barbara County wasn’t going to provide more housing for the homeless in our city was because “the city of Lompoc wasn’t building any new units to house the homeless.”
The speaker obviously didn’t know what she was talking about.
In 2018 the city of Lompoc informed the California Tax Credit Allocation Committee, a group that approves tax credits for low or very low-income housing units, that 29 percent of the multi-family housing stock in Lompoc was used for so-called affordable housing.
The next highest allocation in the county was 6 percent. The number of low-income units has increased since this report.
As far as homeless housing goes, in 2018 a Lompoc City Council staff report was very informative on the homeless issue in our city at the time:
“During the 2017 Point in Time (PIT) count, 219 persons were counted as experiencing homelessness and living without shelter in Lompoc. While there is one homeless shelter that serves the City’s homeless population, it is a 56-bed year-round emergency shelter, which is often full year-round. In fact, the city, like many other cities throughout the State of California, declared a housing shelter crisis in October 2018.”
That was five years ago, and the number of beds provided hasn’t improved. Why? Because the county hasn’t provided more housing units. But the use of motel rooms to house the homeless has increased.
In 2023 the PIT count the team members identified 158 unhoused people living in Lompoc.
If my math is right, there are the same number of homeless today as there were four years ago. But if 100 new units were built, maybe they wouldn’t all be on the streets. Well, that’s not true because one of the rules is that the occupants of homeless shelters must vacate the premises every morning, so they are back on the streets or in the riverbed every day.
So, who gets the funding and has the responsibility to house these people? Is it the city of Lompoc?
The federal Housing and Urban Development Agency (HUD) provides the state of California funding to support homeless housing programs. The state then, after skimming off “program management staff costs,” portions out what’s left to all the counties in the state.
The counties then have funding, but just like the state they take a percentage of the funds to fund management of the homeless housing program. They then provide grants to several nonprofit organizations to provide housing. When the grants run out, the projects shut down.
The county also provides vouchers for homeless folks to stay in several older motels around town. But the city of Lompoc does not receive any funding to build, operate or maintain any homeless housing units.
And when the Community Development director was asked in a hearing last year about temporary housing for the homeless, she said that when offered, many homeless simply refuse to accept temporary housing and instead choose to stay where they are.
So, when someone in a position of power threatens to withhold funding for new homeless units in Lompoc because the city isn’t building any new units, they should take another look at who really has the responsibility and funding to provide housing in the first place and stop pointing fingers.
Considering that Lompoc provides six times the amount of low or very low-income multi-family housing than any other city, I would say our community has provided more housing for those who might have been homeless than anywhere else in the county.
Lastly, are 56 units enough to address the need identified in multiple point-of-time counts? And is the Sweeney Road Bridge House site, zoned for agriculture, adequate for the size of project needed to meet the need?
And should Lompoc, with a low-income population nearly six times larger than any other city, be tasked to identify a location for more low-income projects?
References:
Bridge House Homeless Shelter – 2025 Sweeney Road, Lompoc, California (homelessshelterdirectory.org)
2023 Point in Time: e0e2bb17-79b5-4780-88b6-94064196f24b (civicplus.com)