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San Joaquin County gets $2.1 million to house homeless residents dealing with mental illnesses

Record - 7/13/2021

San Joaquin County is transforming an empty lot in downtown Stockton into affordable apartments for unhoused people using a $2.1 million grant the state awarded it late last month.

The empty lot at East Sonora Street and the commercial building located at South El Dorado Street will soon be revamped as Sonora Square Apartments: two buildings of roughly 16,000 and 10,000 square feet and containing 21 and 11 units respectively. The units will be available for rent for those dealing with serious mental illness and who are homeless.

Occupants will likely be able to move in in the fall of 2023, Peter Ragsdale, the Executive Director of the Housing Authority of the County of San Joaquin (HACSJ), said in an email.

"Everybody here is a close-knit family," said Charlie Briggs, a resident of the nearby Crossway Residences affordable housing development. "My hope is that all three properties [including Sonora Square] will be one interconnected community."

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To be placed in a unit at Sonora Square, potential residents must receive incomes that are considered "extremely low" or "very low" by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, Ragsdale said.

In San Joaquin County, an annual income of $25,900 or less for one person is considered "very low," and an income of $15,550 for one person is considered "extremely low," according to county guidelines for admission to public housing.

Potential residents may include children dealing with serious emotional disturbances and their families, adults with serious mental illness, and those likely to need residential treatment or inpatient or outpatient care due to mental illness, according to a plan San Joaquin County Behavioral Health Services (SJC BHS) sent to the state. They must also be unhoused or at risk of chronic homelessness, the plan states.

San Joaquin County's housing shortage and high levels of unaddressed homelessness led SJC BHS and HACSJ to apply several times for California's No Place Like Home program, finally succeeding in June, Hilary Crowley, Special Projects and Communications Manager at San Joaquin County Behavioral Health Services, said.

"We just kind of got scrappy and pieced it together," she said. In total, the development will cost about $14.7 million, and will be paid for using a variety of funding sources.

Signed into law by former Gov. Jerry Brown in 2016, the No Place Like Home program dedicated up to $2 billion to developing permanent supportive housing for people experiencing both mental illness and homelessness.

What sets Sonora Square apart is just that - its permanence. If tenants meet certain requirements, they can live at Sonora Square for as long as they need to. Under the 2016 law, Sonora Square must be reserved for 20 years for use by the population of those who face serious mental health challenges.

Sonora Square will reflect a "housing-first" approach to mental health care, Crowley said. "It's challenging [to treat] a population that's unhoused ... you don't have that Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs," she said. Sonora Square is also intended to address the frequent inappropriate placement of those dealing with mental illness into hospitals or jails, Crowley said.

For his part, moving into an affordable housing development created "a sense of stability [he] didn't have before," Briggs, the Crossway resident, said.

During their tenancy, Sonora Square residents will have access to services including case management, peer support activities, mental health care, substance use support, physical health care and benefit counseling.

Sonora Square could be a strong next step for participants in local transitional housing programs, Wayne Richardson, CEO of the Gospel Center Rescue Mission, said.

"A project like this ... when it comes onto market, for us ... it's a blessing," he said. Gospel Center Rescue Mission provides emergency lodging, residential addiction treatment, recuperative care and other services.

"This can be a step ... but it doesn't have to be the final step," Ragsdale, the Executive Director of HACSJ, said.

Despite the construction of new affordable housing, demand continues to outpace supply. "We should be doing all the housing projects we can," Ragsdale said.

The scale of the challenge is evident even in Briggs' social circle, he said many of his friends are still waiting for housing. People who are eligible for housing at Sonora Square "will be notified by their Behavioral Health Services case manager or treatment team," Crowley said in an email.

"This is a piece of the housing puzzle for homelessness," she said. "All of them are needed."

Record reporter Aaron Leathley covers business, housing, and land use. She can be reached at aleathley@recordnet.com or on Twitter @LeathleyAaron. Support local news, subscribe to The Stockton Record at https://www.recordnet.com/subscribenow.

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