PUBLISHER’S NOTE: This story was updated at 8:40AM on 12/8/24 to remove an inaccurate and out of context quote by Sedona Councilman Pete Furman regarding affordable and workforce housing. This was a Sedona Red Rock News editorial error. We apologize to Councilman Furman for any issues this error may have caused.
The Sedona City Council heard a presentation from consultants Jonathan Danforth and Matt White of Viam Advising, with commentary from Sedona Deputy Police Chief and newly-elected Cottonwood City Councilman Christopher Dowell, during its Nov. 26 consideration of the city’s ongoing assessment of homelessness in the Verde Valley.
Per Sedona Housing Manager Jeanne Frieder, the assessment is intended to precede the development of a city strategic plan to reduce homelessness.
“We believe there are roughly 600 individual households or persons that are experiencing homelessness during the course of the year,” White said. “Unfortunately, we don’t have defensible, concrete data sources to draw from, so we had to create this number.”
Their sources for the estimate included the Homeless Information Management System, a set of interlinked federal databases used to track homeless individuals who have enrolled; working with local food banks to track their clients; and discussions with local officials who have contact with the homeless, including police and U.S. Forest Service personnel.
“There aren’t a lot of homeless services for people to participate in, so a service-based enumeration is challenging,” White said.
Danforth and White then forecast a 6% per year increase in homelessness in the Verde Valley over the next five years based on historical rates of increase within Yavapai County, which they predicted would bring the total number of homeless people in the Verde Valley to 800. The Verde Valley has a population of approximately 67,000 and Yavapai County has a population of 236,209.
Using a nationally-developed typology for categorizing homelessness, White estimated that 60% of the homeless would be experiencing “transitional” homelessness for less than three months, while another 30% would be cycling in and out of “episodic” homelessness over the course of a year.
The remainder of the homeless population, White said, consisting of about 60 people across the Verde Valley experiencing chronic homelessness, is “a relatively small proportion of the total homeless population” but “the most visible … there’s more opportunity for them to be seen across the community … and there’s always a co-occurring disability.”
“Research shows that homelessness is driven by a lack of affordability and availability of housing,” Danforth said. Regarding mental health or substance use, he said that “research does not show that those are drivers of homelessness; those are exacerbating factors for homelessness.”
In Sedona and the Verde Valley, White said, “many of the people we spoke to — at least half — are longtime residents of the area” who have run into family, health or housing problems.
However, Danforth said, moving on to recommended actions for coping with homelessness, “housing development is not an immediate answer.”
White stressed “preventing the inflow of newly homeless” through services such as vehicle repair, employment assistance, modest financial assistance and “supporting the relocation of people to other jurisdictions” by providing them with moving assistance to other areas where they might have family members to support them.
“I would say that many of the people that we spoke to would be willing to have the conversation,” White said of relocation.
To reduce existing homelessness — “more people on the streets and in public spaces that’s not consistent with your vision for Sedona and the Verde Valley” — White continued, the city could offer rent subsidies, inhome support and outreach and other services that do not currently exist.
By providing services, White said, “you’re actually reducing visible homelessness in the community.”
Council Questions
Mayor Scott Jablow asked if homeless individuals were liable to relocate to an area where services were available.
“There’s not a magnet effect, or this attraction effect, that you would expect,” White said. “People experiencing homelessness are experiencing extreme poverty and often lack executive function … it’s very difficult for people to think, ‘I’m going to relocate’ … and if they did have that thought, they don’t have the economic means.”
White added that directing spending toward helping the transitional homeless would give the city the best bang for its buck, but “if your interest is reducing the visible homeless, the people that are seen on the street that are flying the signs, that are the reason you’re getting calls from constituents, what feels to be so inconsistent with the character of Sedona,” then spending money on the transitionally homeless would have little effect.
Communities that attempted to penalize homelessness with citations and other punitive measures, White noted, were discovered to have “experienced a slight uptick in homelessness” in a recent study.
“Can you do a little bit of both?” Councilman Derek Pfaff asked. “Carrot and the stick approach, does that work well?”
Danforth replied that police action only had a long-term effect on homelessness numbers when housing was available.
Councilman Brian Fultz asked about the status of city staff’s proposed cold weather voucher program to put homeless individuals up in local hotels.
“We haven’t been able to create a partnership with a hotel,” Frieder said. “To date, we have had zero interest.”
Fultz then asked about the estimated $11,817,363 annual cost of a regional homelessness prevention and support system in the report.
“Why is that a good expenditure of resources?” Fultz asked. “How should we be thinking about that as a benefit to the community? … Selling it is 95% of the challenge.”
Danforth said that the benefit would consist of getting the chronic, visible homeless off the streets, while White said the number was intended “to start the conversation about what is the community willing to live with.”
“You have to build community will as part of this effort,” Danforth said. “When you have political will … that is a really powerful statement that communities usually respond well to.”
The city’s proposal to create a homeless camp at the Sedona Cultural Park was rejected by 64% of voters in a referendum on Nov. 5.
“I don’t want us to get too hung up on, this is the price per homeless person,” Pfaff said, adding that having services would “take some pressure off the police department. It’s going to improve the peace of mind of our residents who are no longer going into stores and having people standing in front of the store asking for money. You really can’t put a price on this.”
Cottonwood Input
“It doesn’t do any good to write them 40 tickets and put them in jail,” Dowell said, based on his experience as a police officer and former interim police chief in Cottonwood. He argued for the importance of more coordination of existing community resources, and of a voucher program, which he said “goes a long way … and we don’t look, as a city, like we don’t care about them.”
Dowell detailed a Cottonwood effort to get businesses to give police officers advance permission to trespass anyone from their property so that officers do not have to request a managers’ permission each time.
Sedona Councilman Pete Furman asked about the connection between panhandling and homelessness, and Dowell replied that about 10% of panhandlers “are people who have resources.”
“The transitional people, they’re out trying to make a living,” Dowell said. As for others, “they’re doing it for their fix or maybe to buy food,” not to pay rent or child support and discussed “professional” panhandlers who he said could make $60 an hour.
“This is America. You’re free to do what you want to do,” Dowell said. “You want to live on the street, live on the street. You can do all these things. What you can’t do is you can’t affect somebody else’s quality of life. Once you do that, now there’s consequences.”
Public Comment
“Why are we counting homelessness in the Verde Valley? I can’t think of seven more disparate cities,” Sedona resident Bill Noonan said. “It’s probably conceptually incorrect to be looking at this.”
“Your consultant is wrong; spending money on homelessness does in fact increase homelessness,” Noonan continued. “I think we need look no further than California, which spent $24 billion over a five-year period and managed to increase homelessness by 25% … National opinion has turned decisively against programs like the ones recommended by your consultants.”
Sedona resident Suzanne Strauss said the study “inaccurately combines data from Sedona with the entire Verde Valley,” uses “flawed methodology” and “outdated data” and “perpetuates a false narrative … harmful to Sedona’s reputation as a beautiful and welcoming destination.”
“The residents have spoken two to one on this issue on Nov. 5 in order to rein in the out-of-control, out-of-touch council and staff and its out-of-control spending,” Strauss added. “It’s studies like these that give credence to no home rule.”
Following the meeting, Frieder said that city staff have no current plans to repeal the city’s anticamping ordinance, to use vacant city buildings to house the homeless, previously suggested by Fultz, or to create a voucher program to pay private individuals with spare rooms to take in homeless individuals.
