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Your gift to Housing Matters supports ending homelessness for families and individuals in Santa Cruz County by helping to get them into permanent housing. With 35 years of experience, we are committed to empowering our unhoused neighbors to reclaim the dignity that can only come with stable housing.
In the last two years, more than 550 people found permanent housing with the support of a Housing Matters program. These are children, women, and men who may otherwise still be living without a home.
As a partner to our unhoused neighbors, your donation empowers our participants to move forward on their pathway to permanent housing.
Housing Matters works in partnership with Santa Cruz City, Santa Cruz County, and nongovernment organizations to end homelessness. Over 35 years, we evolved into a dedicated Housing First campus with four pathway-to-housing shelters including a Recuperative Care Center, plus onsite medical and dental clinics. We are the largest service provider for persons experiencing homelessness in the County, serving 2,400+ individuals annually, including case management for 500+ persons living throughout the county. Our goal is for our clients to secure permanent housing.
The Housing First model implements a stable, safe home as the first step to addressing the needs of individuals and families. People in permanent housing can more effectively participate in job training, substance use and behavioral health treatment, and more.
Our work to end homelessness in Santa Cruz County is a coordinated effort with private and public entities to provide basic necessities such as shelter, food, and hygiene, while simultaneously providing individuals and families access to services to address the root causes of homelessness, including health issues, the shortage of affordable housing in our county, transportation, and job training. Housing Matters spearheads efforts to build smart solutions to homelessness in Santa Cruz County through the implementation of evidence-based practices.
The Loft is a low-barrier shelter for up to 57 individuals at a time, open to adults who are currently experiencing homelessness and who are partnering with us to end their homelessness.
The Recuperative Care Center shelters up to 12 individuals experiencing homelessness to recover/stabilize after a hospital stay while receiving integrated social services including housing planning, mental health care, benefits enrollment, and substance use treatment. The Recuperative Care Center aims to reduce recovery time from significant medical events and to decrease the likelihood of recurring hospital stays.
Rebele Family Shelter provides emergency shelter for up to 28 households with children (approximately 90 individuals). Families reside in the shelter while working toward obtaining permanent housing.
Page Smith Community House is being transitioned out and will be the future site of 120 units of permanent and supportive housing for people in our community experiencing chronic homelessness. To learn more about our new project, Harvey West Studios, visit www.buildingwithpurpose.org.
Day Services are free and open to the entire community, regardless of participation in a housing or employment program. We offer hot showers daily, restrooms open 24/7, and a mailroom where more than 1,000 people who don’t have a permanent address get their mail.
In Santa Cruz County, the most recent point-in-time homeless census counted 2,167 people experiencing homelessness on a single given night in January 2019. 403 people were experiencing chronic homelessness — approximately 18% of the total homeless population. Our services and programs touch the majority of people experiencing homelessness in Santa Cruz County in one way or another.
Among those who were chronically homeless, 69% lacked shelter on the day of the census. Based on the point-in-time homeless census, the median age of persons who experience homelessness in our county is 41-50 years old. The census identified them as predominantly white (67%) or Latinx/Hispanic (33%) with some individuals reporting multiracial (14%), Black (8%), and American Indian or Alaska Native (10%). This corresponds to the racial and ethnic demographics of Santa Cruz County. There were more males than females experiencing homelessness (67% male, 33% female, <1% transgender). 151 were veterans (6.9%), 85% of whom lacked shelter. Among persons experiencing homelessness, 52% were unable to work, with 39% reporting one disabling condition (32% psychiatric/emotional conditions, 30% alcohol/drug use, 30% post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), 26% physical disability, 21% chronic health condition, 12% traumatic brain injury (TBI), and 3% HIV/AIDS).
Medically and socially vulnerable persons who experience chronic homelessness are our neighbors; they lack coordinated care, using emergency rooms to treat ongoing health conditions. These individuals are more likely to die on our streets, without a stable home.
Our newest project, Harvey West Studios (buildingwithpurpose.org), is the first project of its kind in our community and was designed after discovering a gap in the continuum of care in our county. Harvey West Studios will bring 120 units of permanent supportive housing to people experiencing chronic homelessness.
Santa Cruz County’s lack of housing with onsite support services perpetuates chronic homelessness in this community. Individuals experiencing chronic homelessness, by definition, experience prolonged and repeated periods of living unhoused and struggle with a disabling condition. Their stability relies heavily on access to daily supportive services—like medical care and ongoing case management—alongside affordable, permanent housing.
This 120-unit building of affordable housing with essential services onsite will ensure people experiencing chronic homelessness have the support they need to have a stable and comfortable place to call home. This is the essence of permanent supportive housing and the solution to ending homelessness for this subset of people who cannot live independently.
We utilize our own internal data collection to evaluate outcomes and adjust programs.
In January 2019, the Santa Cruz County point-in-time homeless census identified 2,167 individuals experiencing homelessness. There were 82 fewer individuals identified as homeless during the 2019 count compared to the 2017 count, despite homelessness rising significantly across California. During that time, Housing Matters helped more than 500 people find permanent housing. Without this organization and its supporters, homelessness in Santa Cruz County likely would have increased by as much as 20 percent.
Housing Matters began more than three decades ago as the Santa Cruz Citizens’ Committee for the Homeless, an affiliation of faith-based and secular organizations that recognized the need to provide the basics, such as food and shelter, for persons experiencing homelessness. In 1998, we began offering case management services to address the needs of the most vulnerable persons experiencing chronic homelessness.
Working closely with the community of Santa Cruz, we recognized the need for a family shelter and we opened the Rebele Family Shelter in 2005. In 2008, the Paul Lee Loft Shelter was opened with help from Habitat for Humanity. The Paul Lee Loft continues to provide emergency shelter for adults. In addition to shelter, residents receive services including pathways to permanent housing, assistance with applying for benefits, transportation, and job training.
The Recuperative Care Center (RCC) is a 12-bed respite care center opened in 2014. The RCC is operated in partnership with the Homeless Persons’ Health Project; an HPHP clinic is located on the Housing Matters campus. The RCC serves homeless adults who have been discharged from the hospital and provides meals, housekeeping, security, medication management support, clinical social work, and case management for permanent housing.
Would you give $4 a month to support four nonprofits that are making a big difference? Join forces with other 52andChangmakers to automatically give to every Cause of the Week. Every Monday, you’ll wake up knowing you’ve already made a difference! As our community grows, so does the impact!
Together we’ve become volunteers in places we would have never expected, planted milkweed for butterflies, provided books to kids in need, helped save endangered turtles, helped turn excess food into nutrition, helped bring art to youth, educated one another about how we are connected to our delicate food systems, helped save abandoned horses and given old dogs new hope, watched foster youth shine in the spotlight of movie making, helped clean tires out of rivers… we could go on and on and on. It is an absolute joy to be a part of such an amazing network of humans making a difference.
“ALMA reconnects the lives of the formerly incarcerated back to the fabric of society. Our participants have the chance at attaining gainful employment and becoming self-sufficient. Urban Farming helps everyone involved explore the relationships between plants, animals and humans as a way of creating a profound connection to both nature and their community.” - ALMA Backyard Farms
While we’re writing this and you’re reading it, Pajaro Valley Loaves and Fishes is out there, finding ways to provide food to more people in need throughout Santa Cruz County, where one of three residents are reported to be food insecure.
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