City looks to streamline homelessness response at new call center
Sep. 26—From a distance, it looks like a plate of spaghetti. Or possibly a toppled bundle of sticks.
The city of Bakersfield's response system to homelessness can come off as a jarring, complicated nexus of providers and services that together, but somewhat separately, attempt the difficult task of reintroducing troubled residents back into society.
It's a daunting task. But that doesn't mean it should be an inefficient one, said Matthew Gregory, a lieutenant with the Bakersfield Police Department, who helped organize a four-month analysis of Bakersfield's rapid response system.
The results: some good, some bad. It reinforced for him and other city leaders that staff — outreach teams, shelters, park rangers and even street cleaners — do good work. But it's not the most efficient.
Gregory compared it to using "the wrong hammer for the nail."
Gregory, along with other city representatives, is working on establishing a unified community call center, titled the Community Vitality Project, whereby all the dialed-in problems underscoring homelessness in Bakersfield flow to a single source. From there, services can be rendered efficiently, from a sort of command on high.
"The right team for the right call," Gregory said.
At the center of the issue is how the city responds to an incident. This can be an illegal encampment, a mental health crisis, a bashed-in window, an overdose. Each requires a different response from the city's service providers — police, code enforcement, mental health staff, street outreach.
Yet, more often, the many service providers will overlap without a clearly outlined distinction of their role. Using a detailed map presented Tuesday to the Bakersfield Housing & Homelessness Committee, Gregory described the system as inefficient, with the potential to improve.
"As a municipality, we are desperately trying to get a handle on a problem that is not getting smaller. It's growing," Gregory said. "What we found is we're throwing as much as we can at the wall trying to stem the tide — everything we can. And what happens naturally is you look at the wall and there's just all these spitballs everywhere and you (think) there's really no organization to this."
As it stands, several providers are tasked with fielding emails, text messages and calls.
"But because there's so many different teams that are working in different facets, that sometimes results in some inefficiencies," Gregory said. "Repeated requests, inefficient responses, confusion on who's going to handle the specific request ... . Who is the best tool to handle this problem is oftentimes a little elusive."
City officials in attendance agreed, saying it's crucial to configure where each service fits in the greater puzzle.
"I think our teams have been doing good work," Bakersfield City Manager Christian Clegg said. "But the biggest opportunity for efficiency is really in coordinating our responses. Sometimes we'll have a team show up and our team was just there or arrived recently."
The call center, which will eventually be set up on existing city property at 3737 Stockdale Highway, is about a month out from an internal trial run, to be operated by existing city staff. From there, officials hope to have more information on it in the coming months.
"The learning curve is going to be a little steep," Gregory said. "But there's a lot of unknown at this point. We don't know what that workload is going to look like."
At the end of the day, Gregory said, the community simply wants to know that when you call for help, someone will answer and deal with matters swiftly.
"And for a long time that's been 911," Gregory said. "And what we found on the police side is we get inundated with these calls, while at the same time, people are stabbing each other, shooting each other ... just a massive amount of calls. And oftentimes we're not the right solution to this."
OTHER NEWS
Also at Tuesday's committee meeting, city officials reported that in the month of August, an average of 140 homeless people were approached each week in an attempt to provide them with city services.
At the city's Brundage Lane Navigation Center, an average of 69 people were turned away each week due to the shelter being at capacity. This includes those who received referrals, walked in or called ahead. The shelter, which has 249 beds, averaged 97% capacity through the month.
The city does not receive reports on shelter capacity for the other shelters, said Anthony Valdez, assistant to the city manager. But Flood Ministries does call each morning to check the shelter bed count.
A total of 445 shelter referrals were made in the month of August, with 215 instances where individuals reportedly refused service. Staff said reported refusals can result from a variety of situations, including a lack of space for pets, partner beds, shelter rules or mental health issues.
The city is on track to have 300 housing placements by the end of October. The city has for three years connected sheltered people with affordable housing as the final step before integrating them into society. While the city is currently at 292 placements, Valdez said, they are likely to hit this significant milestone.
