California lacks warming shelter legislation: Communities are left to fill in the gap
For residents of Nevada County, intense weather has become a facet of life. Amidst fire season evacuations, winter power outages, and last year’s snowmageddon, warming shelters have become critical to protect unhoused members of the community.
Differing from a year-round homeless shelter, warming shelters open when temperatures hit a specific threshold, to provide a warm, dry place to spend the night in the face of increasingly cold winters.
While Western Nevada County, including Nevada City and North San Juan, is set to open warming shelters this winter, Truckee is facing the possibility of not having a shelter.
The crisis in Truckee
In October, North Tahoe–Truckee Homeless Services (NTTHS) informed the Town of Truckee, Nevada and Placer County, Tahoe Forest Hospital, and Health and Human Services that they would not be providing a shelter this year.
“We have been trying to hire employees for the last few months, and this has been almost impossible with the wages that we were able to offer. If someone doesn’t live here already, it’s very hard for them to move into this area to work,” said Cathie Foley, program director for NTTHS.
Truckee has the lowest temperatures in Nevada County, with an average of 204.4 inches of snowfall each year. The temperature threshold to open in the shelter in Truckee is 15 degrees or less, a foot or more of snow or other severe weather-triggered conditions.
According to the annual report by NTTHS, last year the Truckee shelter was open for 79 nights with 640 overnight stays.
“There is no infrastructure in Truckee and East County, so if someone is facing an unsheltered night they will end up in the emergency room,” said Hardy Bullock, District 5 Supervisor, at the Nov. 7 Board of Supervisors meeting.
Due to the late notice given by NTTHS, Nevada County is currently working to identify new providers able to mitigate the crisis and reopen Truckee’s warming shelter.
“The County is fully committed to opening up a warming shelter in Eastern Nevada County. We are working diligently to align resources with our partners and find a location and have a program that will be in place for this winter,” said Alison Lehman, County Executive Officer (CEO) of Nevada County.
Nevada City’s Sierra Roots Shelter
Sierra Roots, a local nonprofit organization dedicated to addressing chronic homelessness, signed a contract with Nevada County, allocating $41,283 to reopen the Sierra Roots warming shelter.
Sierra Roots offers a low-barrier shelter that does not require drug or alcohol testing and allows for pets.
“We’re not here to judge anybody, we’re just here to make a safe environment for a night. This is not jail or rehab. This is just a place to get a good night’s sleep,” said Mike Clarity, Sierra Roots Shelter Manager, during their volunteer training.
This year, the Sierra Roots warming shelter will be held at the Veterans Hall in Downtown Nevada City. During the 2022/2023 season, the warming shelter was open 34 nights, an increase of 14 nights from the previous year.
Last year shelter services were provided 938 times, including meals, clothing, and supplies, according to a tally of each night’s participants.
Shelter beds were provided 677 times, with some shelter participants choosing to stay overnight in a vehicle or a campsite after receiving services while others in need of medical care were taken to the hospital.
Sierra Roots’ contract with Nevada County states that the shelter can open if the National Weather Service’s (NWS) low nightly temperature prediction for Nevada City is forecasted to be below 30 degrees or 32 degrees with snow on the ground, or if the NWS has issued a winter storm warning for Western Nevada County.
“This year if temperatures are borderline but not quite low enough to open, then we can apply windchill factor,” said Alice Johnson, Sierra Roots Shelter Coordinator.
Once temperatures are forecasted to reach the criteria, Sierra Roots has a minimum of 24 hours to prepare the warming shelter, find available volunteers, set up cots, and prepare meals.
Thirty volunteers attended the Sierra Roots shelter training at the Veterans Hall in Nevada County on Nov. 10 and were trained on how to de-escalate conflict, administer Narcan, and facilitate meal and clothing distribution.
When the weather reaches the temperature threshold, Sierra Roots will call its list of volunteers to staff the shelter. If they don’t have enough available volunteers, the shelter cannot open.
Dianne Weichel, Sierra Roots board member, has worked for the organization for the past eight years and manages their weekly lunch program and clothing distribution.
“Even if you can’t volunteer, there are so many things that people can do. We accept donations so we can go out and get exactly what is needed. Even if people can drop off a meal, donate warm jackets, boots, whatever they have. Bring in a case of hand warmers. We need to keep people warm, we need to keep them dry, we need to keep them alive,” said Weichel.
North San Juan’s Grassroots Warming Shelter
The shelter in North San Juan, commonly referred to as the Ridge, is operated by the grassroots organization, North San Juan Community Center at 29190 CA-49, North San Juan.
“This is something that the Community Center has done for the past few years, and we definitely want to do it again because our most vulnerable citizens definitely need it. It’s especially close to our hearts right now because we just lost one of our houseless residents, he passed away in his car overnight,” said Pamela Rasada RN, Chair of the Board of Directors of the North San Juan Community Center.
The North San Juan shelter will open if the temperature is 37 degrees or if there are two consecutive days of rain.
North San Juan Community Center plans to apply for funding from Continuum of Care (CoC), as soon as the application becomes available and has a contingency plan to still operate the shelter regardless of receiving CoC funds.
According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the CoC Program (24 CFR part 578) is designed to promote a community-wide commitment to the goal of ending homelessness; by providing funding for efforts by nonprofit providers, states, and local governments.
“We’re making plans so if we don’t get funding, we can still open the shelter. We’re setting up places where people can drop off sleeping bags, hats, coats, and gloves so that we all have a good stock of items for when we start opening up our shelter this year,” Rasada said.
While there is no guarantee that the shelter will receive CoC funding, the Community Center plans to build partnerships with the food bank and community resources.
“We’re just doing everything we can to make sure we’re ready. That way when the weather shifts and it’s looking like that’s going to be at the end of this month, we can open up and give our people a warm place to stay at night,” Rasada said.
The lack of state legislation
California does not provide legislation to address the need for warming shelters, leaving the matter to be decided on a county-by-county basis and by faith-based or grassroots organizations.
“There’s no state law requiring weather-triggered homeless shelters to be opened. Nevada County has leaned into supporting our existing cold weather shelters more than a lot of other jurisdictions,” said Ryan Gruver, Director of Health and Human Services for Nevada County.
California also does not provide a temperature threshold to open warming shelters, leaving it at the discretion of providers or counties to decide.
In a recent Statewide Study of People Experiencing Homelessness (CASPEH), released in June 2023, California has the largest population of people experiencing homelessness in the United States.
CASPEH estimates that more than 171,000 people in California experience homelessness daily.
Those experiencing homelessness are more vulnerable to the risks of prolonged exposure to cold temperatures, such as Hypothermia. In the 2018-2020 study by the CDC, death rates attributed to excessive cold or hypothermia were higher in rural areas.
The National Coalition for the Homeless (NCH) report estimates that seven hundred people experiencing homelessness are killed from hypothermia annually in the United States. NCH lists hypothermia as a leading, critical, and preventable cause of injury and death among those experiencing homelessness.
“The state makes some limited allocations for funding for homeless services, some of which goes through the Continuum of Care (CoC) to be allocated in a community process, and some of it goes to the county. That funding is not enough to cover baseline services for people experiencing homelessness, let alone warming shelters,” said Gruver.
Long-term solutions
In 2017, the Board of Supervisors for Nevada County made addressing homelessness a county policy objective.
Nevada County Health and Human Services created the Joint Homeless Action Plan in partnership with Continuum of Care (CA 531) to implement strategies including providing housing assistance to youth and families and expanding services to prevent entry into homelessness.
The plan also addresses street outreach, increased mental health services, expanded year-round shelter capacity, and facilitates the development of affordable and supportive housing.
“We’ve been very aggressive going after state grants to bring every dollar that was available to our community,” said Lehman, who helped open Nevada City’s first warming shelter over a decade ago when she was Director of Social Services, “This was about getting people housed and providing services that are long-standing.”
