Santa Barbara County Grand Jury
• 2020-2021
• Agency Response
City of Santa Maria*
⚠️ Translation Notice: This content has been automatically translated. The original English text is the official version. Translation may contain errors.
⚠️ Este contenido ha sido traducido automáticamente. El texto original en inglés es la versión oficial. La traducción puede contener errores.
Note: Missing finding numbers detected: F4
Findings and Recommendations 4 findings
F1
During the COVID-19 pandemic Project Roomkey demonstrated the value of providing rooms, with appropriate services, for the vulnerable elderly homeless with underlying health conditions. Response: Agree
Related Recommendations (1)
R1
That the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors and all city councils within the County establish programs similar to Roomkey in both North and South County to continue to provide rooms, with appropriate services, for vulnerable elderly homeless with underlying health conditions. Response: Will not be implemented. Hotels and motels in Santa Maria are either used for tourists and visitors, or for housing seasonal farmworkers. As of the date of the Grand Jury report, no hotel/motel operators have expressed interest in participating. Resources for supportive services in Santa Maria are also limited. However, if there is future interest by a property owner to convert a motel/hotel to permanent and supportive housing, the City will review the proposal for General Plan, zoning, building, and fire code compliance.
F2
Few hotels and motels throughout Santa Barbara County were willing to participate in Project Roomkey. Response: Agree
Related Recommendations (1)
R2
That the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors instruct the Santa Barbara County Community Services Department to form an alliance with all city councils within the County to develop a roster of hotels and motels willing to participate in a Roomkey-type program. Response: Will not be implemented. See response to Recommendation 1. Also, City staff already provides information and participates collaboratively in the County's COVID-19 homeless task force meetings, Elected Leaders Forum, Continuum of Care, and other County-driven committees.
F3
Buildings for Homekey conversion have been difficult to locate and acquire. Response: Agree
Related Recommendations (1)
R3
That the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors and all city councils within the County identify possible Homekey sites including government owned properties in each jurisdiction. Response: Will not be implemented. See responses to Recommendations 1 and 2. Government-owned properties are not locations of existing hotels and motels and therefore, would not be identified as Homekey sites.
F5
Both Project Roomkey and Project Homekey are reliant on short-term or one-time funding from the State and Federal governments. Response: Agree
Related Recommendations (1)
R5
That the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors and all city councils within the County develop and implement a plan for funding Roomkey and Homekey-type programs. Response: Will not be implemented. See responses to Recommendations 1 and 2. Without interest from property owners, hotel/motel operators, and housing developers, Santa Maria will not commit limited staff resources to develop a plan for funding. U. Fotino ALICE M. PATINO Mayor
* This report's PDF did not contain easily extractable text and required Optical Character Recognition (OCR) for analysis. There may be minor errors in the extracted findings and recommendations due to OCR limitations with scanned documents.