Gov. Gavin Newsom joined local officials for a ribbon-cutting ceremony of a new homeless services center in Fullerton Oct. 27.
The Homeless Outreach and Proactive Engagement, or HOPE, Center connects social workers with local law enforcement to work together on getting people off the street.
“You’ve seen a 23 percent reduction in your point-in-time count [of homeless] in this county—one of the best-performing counties in the state, and it’s because of the leaders here today,” Newsom said at the ceremony. “Let’s keep up the good work.”
“I believe success leaves clues,” he said.
Fullerton Police Chief Bob Dunn said at the ceremony that his department has been collecting names of chronically homeless individuals in order to better keep track of “people who fall out of the system, and to shore up those areas with money or programs or nonprofits.”
This effort is aided by data with help from experts at the California State–Fullerton’s social sciences department, Dunn said.
Newsom said it could take years for a homeless person to finally accept help from volunteers or social workers.
He praised the county for its efforts to send out vans of social workers to meet with transients to aid them.
Assemblywoman Sharon Quirk-Silva (D-Fullerton) was also praised for her work on the issue over the years.
According to Quirk-Silva, nearly 40 individuals died on the street each month, and the number keeps growing.
“We have to keep those numbers of people dying on our streets down. And that’s only going to happen with collaboration, communication, and compassion,” she said.
Newsom also praised state Sen. Josh Newman (D-Fullerton) for leading the way for the new center.
Also at the ceremony, Sen. Tom Umberg (D-Santa Ana) praised Newman’s persistence on the issue, adding that it was a “great day for Orange County, a testament to innovation, to leadership, to compassion and collaboration.”
Newman said at the ceremony, “Today’s ribbon-cutting builds on five years [of efforts to create] an innovative and promising model to address the root causes of homelessness—using data-centric, evidence approaches.”
In the spring of 2017, Newman met with multiple area police chiefs and city managers to discuss ways to address homelessness, he said.
Out of that meeting, the group worked on a “regional, multi-city collaborative” approach to the issue.
“And we’re doing it without arrests,” Newman said. “We are making progress without having to arrest our way out of it, and that’s a change that makes a huge difference.”
