The city of Sedona’s Housing Department has not yet set up its proposed voucher program to provide homeless residents with hotel rooms when nighttime temperatures fall below freezing.
“I can’t say for sure right now, I’ve got somebody working on ordering a physical voucher and I don’t have an answer back from a printer as to when those might be available,” Housing Manager Shannon Boone said on Feb. 21. “It’s as soon as possible. It’s just one step at a time.”
The program was proposed in October when the city of Sedona rescinded its small grant award of $15,000 to the Sedona Area Homeless Alliance to support SAHA’s Operation Code Blue, which provides hotel rooms to the homeless on freezing nights, in response to an audit of SAHA that found no evidence of malfeasance and issues with the Arizona Corporation Commission that have since been rectified.
“It’s clear that the city is not going to follow through with the voucher program as they promised,” Moore said. “Four and a half months of cold weather has passed without one voucher being provided from the $30,000 allotted for it while many people suffered in dangerous weather conditions … Very disappointing.”
Boone said the same amount of money will be allocated to the housing department’s hotel voucher program in the fiscal year 2025 budget.
“It’s going to our police department,” Sedona Mayor Scott Jablow said on Feb. 20. “If someone needs a Code Blue voucher, they can go to the [Sedona] Police Department [and] register. So [we] know who the person is, and who’s going to be now checking in at that hotel instead of somebody collecting a whole group of vouchers, and then we don’t know where they went.”
“Program guidelines of [SAHA’s] Code Blue include that all participants remain anonymous and that we rarely divulge other details, including where we shelter at anytime,” Moore said. “We share data on numbers of participants and other deliverables in our annual report, which [we] will also post on our new website.”
As of Monday, March 4, the website had not yet been updated.
Moore had previously stated that she books rooms for participants through SAHA and not under the participants’ names to protect anonymity “and because it’s a clear message to our clients that this is a SAHA room and therefore they must follow all of our guidelines that they agreed to in advance,” she said. SAHA continues to provide rooms in the absence of the city grant. “Emergency cold night shelter has [been] served [by SAHA] each year since 2015 and continues to do so,” Moore said.
The Sedona Police Department has, for about the last five years, had a program to use gift cards from two unnamed local organizations to provide hotel rooms on freezing nights. Sedona Police Chief Stephanie Foley said it is not a “formalized program,” and was not able to provide any data on how often it had been used.
“We were not keeping track of exactly who received assistance or when,” Foley said.
Boone said that the Housing Department “hasn’t contracted with any property at this time” to provide rooms, but said that “three Sedona hotels have shown an interest,” and that participants in the city program will “likely” be required to show identification in order to curb the reported bad behavior of some SAHA participants; several of the hoteliers that housed SAHA’s participants alleged property was damaged.
“What we came up with is that a lot of bad behavior was due to the fact that basically, no one knew that they were there because they were registered under another name or organization,” Boone said. “Multiple homeless folks were being put in the same room, which was creating kind of a party atmosphere. So we would only allow an individual or a family group to share a room. Each person will be given an individual room and an individual place, they have to register under their own name, and they have to follow hotel rules, and the hotels are being told they’re just like any other guests. If they’re not following the rules, you can ask them to leave.”
SAHA
SAHA was administratively dissolved by the ACC on Oct. 14, 2021, for failure to submit its annual report. The dissolution allowed Portal Gardens LLC to make a name reservation for the name “Sedona Area Homeless Alliance.” Portal Garden LLC itself is registered to Angus Gascoigne, who, along with Janine Miller Gascoigne, is a former SAHA board member.
Moore subsequently filed a name reservation for the name “Sedona Area Homeless Alliances” on Aug. 15, 2023. The Gascoigne’s name reservation lapsed on Jan. 3 and Moore refiled for the name on Jan. 4.
“Although we had reserved the name, there was no intention on our part to do anything with it,” the Gascoignes said in a statement. “Hopefully, Moore will now support her current board members in performing their duties and responsibilities within the scope and skillset of their specific positions, while heeding their advice … [Moore] may also now see the importance of operating with administrative and fiscal responsibility within the laws that govern nonprofits, including but not limited to annual reporting, filing of required taxes and open books to both the board and the public upon request.”
“Settled,” is how Moore responded when asked about her attitude about the temporary loss of the name.
