Funding crunch may force Santa Paula homeless shelter to close

The Spirit of Santa Paula homeless shelter could run out of operating money by the end of June, leaving it with no way to pay its bills and shelter its residents until more federal grant money is available in the fall or winter.

Kay Wilson-Bolton, the founder and executive director of Spirit of Santa Paula, said she told the organization’s 15 employees about the funding crunch on Tuesday. She hasn’t broken the news yet to the 49 residents, as she scrambles to find private donors or government agencies who might be able to rescue the shelter. The organization needs about $70,000 per month to stay open, she said.

“I’m praying for a miracle,” Wilson-Bolton said. “I’m just heartbroken that I have to beg for money, and I might have to close a shelter that’s been so important for the welfare of the community.”

Spirit of Santa Paula owns its building on Harvard Boulevard outright, so it wouldn’t lose the location.

But it would have to lay off its employees and stop collecting donated food from grocery stores. Its residents would also have to find someplace else to take them in or wind up back on the streets.

The building is a former nightclub that was purchased by a Santa Paula resident in 2019 and donated to the shelter.

Spirit of Santa Paula is just wrapping up 1,500 square-foot expansion that includes a new office and classroom, funded by a $1.5 million state grant. That money was earmarked for construction and can’t be used for salaries or other operational costs.

“The irony is, we have a grand opening scheduled for June 15, and then we might have to close a couple weeks later,” Wilson-Bolton said.

To fund its operations, Spirit of Santa Paula relies in part on Community Development Block Grants, federal funds awarded to nonprofits and other service providers by local governments. That was the money Wilson-Bolton had earmarked to keep things going this summer.

Spirit of Santa Paula’s grant from the county of Ventura for the 2022-23 fiscal year has already been spent. The shelter has another $93,000 grant lined up for the next fiscal year, starting July 1. But Spirit of Santa Paula has to spend its own money first and then get reimbursed by the county, using money from the federal grant.

There are two problems with that: First, Spirit of Santa Paula doesn’t have the savings to fund its operations without federal grant money, even if it’s going to be reimbursed later. Second: The county can only reimburse the nonprofit after the federal government has released the 2023-24 funding, which could be in September or even months later, Wilson-Bolton said.

The executive director said she thinks the difficulty arose after Spirit of Santa Paula’s grant writer left the nonprofit in January. She took on the role herself, but she runs the shelter on a volunteer basis and has her own real estate brokerage and property management firm.

“I feel kind of ashamed like I allowed this to happen,” she said.

There is hope. Wilson-Bolton said she told the staff “we will find a way to keep everyone paid, safe and sheltered.”

She’s talking to private donors, the county of Ventura, the city of Santa Paula and other government agencies.

Jenn Harkey, who runs the county’s homelessness services as director of its Continuum of Care program, said one option would be a cost-sharing agreement between the county and the city of Santa Paula to support the shelter, which is how the shelters in Ventura and Oxnard are funded. Representatives of the city of Santa Paula did not reply to a request for comment.

The county and city have a joint application in for $1.2 million in funding over a three-year period from the state’s Encampment Resolution Fund program, Harkey said. They should hear a decision on that within the next week or so, she said, and if it is approved, Spirit of Santa Paula would be a logical place to spend some or all of it.

Spirit of Santa Paula’s budget is about $1.8 million a year, Wilson-Bolton said, but only a little more than $1 million is in cash revenues and expenditures. The rest is the estimated value of the food donated by grocery stores and served in the shelter’s kitchen.

Spirit of Santa Paula is one of three year-round, 24-hour-a-day emergency homeless shelters in Ventura County. Wilson-Bolton founded the nonprofit in 2002 as a general community service organization.

It found its purpose in 2008, after a homeless person died while sheltering overnight in a church in Santa Paula on Christmas Eve. After that, Wilson-Bolton’s group began feeding the homeless, and a few years later it started sheltering people, in a series of temporary, seasonal homes.

Wilson-Bolton said her shelter is both effective and efficient. So far this year, it has helped 16 residents move into permanent housing. The cost per person, per night is $48, which Wilson-Bolton said is “well below the national average.”

The key, she said, is case management. Every resident gets a six-month plan detailing how they’ll move in from the shelter, qualify for government benefits, find a doctor, get a job, enroll their kids in school and find permanent housing. Then the organization’s case workers help them get there.

“Without case management, it just can’t work,” she said.

But the shelter has never found a permanent, stable source of funding.

"The government funds animal shelters for stray animals. Well, I've got a bunch of stray humans who are going to become really stray in about 30 days," Wilson-Bolton said. "I don’t understand why there isn’t support for an essential function like this. We're preventing suffering, and we're saving the taxpayers money."

If Spirit of Santa Paula can’t secure the funds it needs by July 1 and it has to shut down, there are options for its residents, but no guarantees. Harkey said one option for at least some shelter residents would be motel vouchers, funded by the state’s COVID response program.

The federal COVID money that funded the early days of California’s Project Roomkey program is gone, and the state has taken over the funding. That means the requirements that the funds go to help the most COVID-vulnerable homeless people, like the ill and the elderly, are gone, too.

“We have a little more flexibility to help people with motel vouchers, if we have these kind of emergencies that pop up,” Harkey said.

Tony Biasotti is an investigative and watchdog reporter for the Ventura County Star. Reach him at tbiasotti@vcstar.com. This story was made possible by a grant from the Ventura County Community Foundation's Fund to Support Local Journalism.

This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: Santa Paula homeless shelter faces possible closure