The Sedona City Council voted to allocate $15,000 to a voucher program run by Catholic Charities Community Services to provide homeless individuals with overnight hotel rooms during periods of inclement weather on Jan. 29.

“City Council had directed staff to allocate $15,000 for a cold, wet weather emergency program in fiscal ’24,” Housing Manager Jeanne Blum said. “We are in fiscal ’25 and we are just getting this off the ground.”

Former city Housing Manager Shannon Boone stated in March 2024, shortly before she was terminated, that she had been unable to set up an emergency voucher program because she could not find a printer to print the vouchers.

The program will be administered by the Sedona Police Department. Blum explained that police officers will identify those individuals they think should be assisted and that a determination as to whether the weather conditions are necessary to trigger the program will be “at the discretion of the police department.” Officers will then contact a participating hotel, transport or escort the homeless individual to the hotel and hand them off to the hotel manager.

Acting Deputy Police Chief Chris Dowell said that individuals regarded as being disorderly will not be admitted to the program.

“We have about six properties right now that are willing to participate,” Sedona Lodging Council President Cheryl Barron said. “We’re discussing the rates to be between $130, $150 a night.” Rates will not vary among hotels.

Catholic Charities will subsequently receive information on each person from SPD, pay the hotel, be reimbursed by the city and register the homeless in the federal Homeless Management Information System database, which is referred to as “coordinated entry.”

“There is no liability to the city of Sedona with this structure,” Blum said.

Mayor Scott Jablow said that he did not think the hotels would have cooperated without the involvement of SPD.

Responding to comments made to council on Jan. 28 by resident Bill Noonan, who had raised the topic at an earlier meeting, Blum said that Catholic Charities was an independent nonprofit and “a worldwide, very known public organization” that had been vetted by the city’s Housing Department and that “there have been no issues in their long history in the state of Arizona.”

Noonan had asked on Jan. 28 that council not “award any contract to Catholic Charities Services, which is a troubled nonprofit organization that is scandal-ridden and plagued by fraud, embezzlement and allegations of illegal conduct.”

“If this program is approved tonight, how long before it starts?” Councilman Derek Pfaff asked.

“We could probably get it up and running in three weeks, a month, something like that,” Blum said.

The council approved the voucher program unanimously. Catholic Charities will receive a three-year contract to operate the voucher program that will allow up to 30% of the funding received to be spent on overhead and administrative costs.

Homelessness

Following the vote, the council held a three-and-a-half hour discussion with representatives of various organizations and groups working with the homeless in the Verde Valley in order to help plan the city’s future homelessness strategy, including Catholic Charities, the city’s homeless consultants from Viam Advising, the Arizona Department of Housing, the U.S. Forest Service, St. Vincent de Paul, Arizona Complete Health, Yavapai County District 3 Supervisor Nikki Check, the Sedona Fire District, the Cottonwood Police Department, the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office, the Yavapai Justice and Mental Health Coalition, Spectrum Healthcare, Polara Health, Sedona Area Veteran and Community Outreach and the Sedona Community Food Bank.

Themes that emerged from the discussion included prioritizing services for homeless individuals seeking housing and denying service to those who prefer to remain homeless; the need for expert management of the homeless by police, city staff and nonprofit employees; and tracking the homeless.

Public Camping

Councilwoman Melissa Dunn asked for staff to break out the number of itinerant workers from those who are both homeless and jobless in future presentations.

“I’m not interested in supporting that lifestyle,” Pfaff said. “I think we need to work to try to root those people out.”

Christian Roper of USFS said that the Forest Service is closing up to 15% of its public lands or restricting camping on them to eliminate long-term campers, including 80,000 acres in the Coconino National Forest and 30,000 acres in the Prescott National Forest.

However, Roper noted that enforcement efforts so far have simply dispersed the campers rather than driving them away.

“The problem moves around,” Roper said. “We can squeeze the toothpaste but it’s going to go somewhere.”

“That’s why they’re all going to the forest,” Dowell said. “The resources are in the forest.”

Several speakers said efforts should be used to benefit individuals who could be economically productive. Bill Mitchell of Arizona Complete Health said his organization’s goal was to help those who want to “get themselves back into a working environment.”

“Some of them need that push to — ‘here’s some services, here’s some drug services, here’s some work services,’” Dowell said. “Alternative sentencing and deferred prosecution are huge tools.”

“It’s important to keep them engaged in the payment of their rent,” said Maureen Koza of St. Vincent de Paul. “Someone once said to me ‘I live on the gift economy,’ and that’s not what St. Vincent de Paul is. That’s not our philosophy.”

“We’re not clinicians, we don’t claim to be,” Cottonwood Police Chief Brian Freudenthal said, but added that having a homelessness officer who had a “close relationship” with nonprofit experts would be “armed with the tools and the knowledge and the community connection with these individuals, how to connect that person to the services he believes they need.”

“This is just one of those areas where you have an officer that’s an expert in this field,” Freudenthal said.

Tracking

Councilman Pete Furman wanted to know what progress had been made on building a Verde Valley-specific database of the homeless and expressed interest in whether there was an app the police could use to track homeless persons in real time.

Camie Rasband of Catholic Charities said that use of HMIS is mandated by ADOH but access to the database could possibly arranged for SPD.

David Bridge of ADOH said that the department is working to integrate the HMIS database with those of other state agencies in order to target individuals with mental health conditions first.

Roper said that the USFS is already using an app to track visitors that allows them to mark individuals whom officers consider a safety risk to themselves.

“About 5% of the interactions we have with visitors are considered a safety risk,” Roper said, out of an estimated 30,000 entries over the last five years.

No homeless individuals spoke during the meeting.