RECAP: Housing and Homeless Committee, March 19, 2024
Potential support services for the homeless in free-fall
The Housing and Homeless Committee consists of the five Planning Commissioners, Jessica Cure, Alex Garcia, Leslie Paahana, Max Walker and Chair Jim Krushat along with community members Andrea Keller and Veno Nathraj and meets as an agenda item of the Planning Commission. All seven committee members were present for this meeting. As per usual we will be covering highlights. The agenda packet contains little information on the meeting other than mentioning “updates” but can be referred to here.
The Housing and Homeless Committee (HHC) will have been meeting for a year as of May 2024. It suffers from a peculiar formation. Since all five Planning Commissioners sit on the Committee along with two community member, it’s not quite a committee and not quite the Planning Commission.
This tweener status has led to a lack of clear agendas because the meetings are listed as a topic of the Planning Commission as opposed to a standalone committee. Although mics and recording are on for the Planning Commission meetings, the minute the HHC starts, commissioners shut off their mics, making the discussion difficult for the audience to hear and report on—crucial because this portion of the meeting is also not livestreamed or recorded by the City.
Meetings are sometimes held as “study sessions” that don’t follow the usual process of discussion organized by topic, with public comment and often a vote to move items forward. On this March evening, the result was a meandering conversation covering the three topics being updated: showers, a navigation center, and cooperation with the Coachella Valley Housing Coalition (CVHC). What became clear over the 45-minute meeting was that the two homeless initiatives brought forward by the public in the last year, showers and a navigation center, have collapsed.
A lack of capacity
The one concrete piece of news that emerged was reported by Councilmember Octavious Scott: Morongo Basin ARCH has decided it lacks the organizational capacity to run a navigation center for the unhoused. Last September, City Council granted funding to support renting 6594 Adobe Rd., but the landlord pulled out of the deal before it was finalized.
Per ARCH, primary objectives of the center included:
Addressing the immediate needs of Twentynine Palms’ underserved, underrepresented homeless population,
Strengthening homeless prevention methods,
Advocating for the development of affordable housing units, and
Provide extreme weather programs and food programs working toward a Whole Person Care Approach.
While the City has continued to supply funding to ARCH in support of general unhoused services, a complete budget for running a navigation center has not been established by the City.
No showers at Shadow Mountain Church
In August the Committee had forwarded a letter from Paster Mike Maddy of Shadow Mountain Church to the City Council. Maddy had offered to lead a coalition of churches to host showers for the unhoused via a portable shower trailer. Council allocated $15,000 for the purchase of a trailer at its August 22 meeting, but it was not determined who would responsible for potential costs such as maintenance, insurance, staffing, and water disposal.
The deal was contingent on an memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the City and Shadow Mountain that was being drawn up by Community Development Director Keith Gardner. The MOU had yet to be finalized as of the November 7 Committee meeting. At the January 16 Committee meeting, Gardner revealed that Shadow Mountain has withdrawn its offer because the church did not agree to maintain the showers.
As with the navigation center, a budget for running and maintaining the showers was never developed.
Research is initiated
When the homeless committee meeting kicked off, Planning Commissioner and Committee member Max Walker asked whether an existing home could be rented to serve both the navigation center and shower functions. By the close of the meeting it was decided that Walker would research existing rentals, preferably in commercial zones, that could serve this purpose. Committee member Veno Nathraj similarly offered to research rehabbing abandoned commercial structures for these purposes. While the Committee recognized the need to develop a budget for running a combination shower / navigation center facility, it was unclear how or when this budget would be developed. At the conclusion of the meeting Commissioner Leslie Paahana reminding Gardner of the need for a “portable budget,” perhaps referring to the showers, and Gardner committed to working on that.
However, are there area Community Benefit Organizations (such as ARCH) with the capacity needed to run such a facility or would this fall to the City? An inventory of available homeless services introduced by Gardner last fall continues to be developed.
Progress on self-build affordable housing
Gardner announced that CVHC (our most recent reporting here) had looked at the three sites proposed for the self-build housing and decided on a preferred location. Gardner also mentioned that the lot line adjustment and certificate of compliance was filed for the 100 units of affordable housing planned for construction east of City Hall near Veteran’s Park. These units were discussed at a May 22, 2022 Planning Commission meeting and Council voted on funding in June 2023.
The next Housing and Homelessness Committee meeting is scheduled for May 21.
Community members interested in supporting the unhoused community with a focus on food support and building community capacity can attend a community meeting on Monday, March 25 at 5 pm at Black Cactus Co-working, 6259 Adobe Rd. Unit A, Twentynine Palms.
Editor’s note 3/23/24: The building pictured in the original article was incorrect. It’s been fixed.
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The potential navigation center was at 6594 Adobe, south of the fire station. That property is also listed for sale, but not the building described in the article.