The Votes Are In!
2024 Readers' Choice is back, bigger and better than ever!
View Winners → Politics Sep 14, 2023
A member of Riverside's homeless outreach team speaks with two people at an encampment. | Photo courtesy of the city of Riverside/YouTube
by
share with
The Riverside City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to create a new department to harness the city’s existing resources with a renewed focus on preventing and reducing homelessness.
The new Department of Housing and Human Services will include a Housing Authority and Office of Homeless Solutions, which currently report to City Manager Mike Futrell, city officials said in an announcement of the council’s action. Two additional entities — the Neighborhood Engagement Division and the Community Development Block Grant program — that previously were not under Futrell will also be part of DHHS.
The new department will consist of six divisions: Housing Authority, Administration, CDBG Management, Human Services, Neighborhood Engagement and Outreach Services.
Director Michelle Davis will lead the new department and report to Futrell, who was appointed city manager earlier this year.
Futrell proposed DHHS “to foster increased coordination and greater efficiency in formulating and delivering programs to help people avoid becoming homeless and, when necessary, get off the streets and into shelter and then housing,” officials said.
“The issues of housing and homelessness are inextricably linked, so our response must reflect that,” Futrell said in a statement. “This new approach will make us more nimble, more responsive and better equipped to take a more universal approach to fulfilling the promise of the city’s Homelessness Action Plan.”
The creation of DHHS comes as the city adds personnel to its team of outreach workers and clinical therapists, who directly help people experiencing homelessness, officials said.
“Outreach teams will now operate seven days a week from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m.,” according to the city. “This is in conjunction with expanded hours at the city’s Access Center, the starting point to recovery and self-sufficiency for Riverside residents experiencing homelessness, and expansion of the city’s jail in-reach program working with inmates in danger of becoming homeless when released.”
The council’s move appropriates an additional $503,945 to the city’s anti-homelessness effort and transfers to DHHS another $10.1 million that is currently in the budget for the existing entities that now comprise DHHS, officials said. When DHHS fully staffed, the additional personnel costs are estimated to be $915,489.63 annually.
“I am encouraged by the ways in which this new department can help us move the needle on the objectives identified in our Homelessness Action Plan,” Mayor Pro Tem Erin Edwards said in a statement. “We have the right plan, and now we have the right structure in place to achieve the goals envisioned in that document.”
Officials expected the creation of DHHS to bolster the city’s anti-homelessness efforts through the building of new housing and assisting families remain in their existing residences. DHHS officials also aim to strengthen efforts to make sure families have consistent access to food and other essentials.
City officials also noted that the new department’s CDBG program “will ensure a coordinated and more effective approach to providing services to low- and moderate-income families who might be at risk of losing their housing.”
