Is Santa Barbara’s Homeless Day Center Too Successful for Its Own Good?

FARO Center Stirs Serious Backlash over Unresolved Security Problems

Despite last week’s lawyer letter from City Hall calling for the FARO Center’s “immediate temporary closure,” the homeless day center’s doors remained opened to guests this week. | Credit: City of Santa Barbara

Just a month ago, Santa Barbara Mayor Randy Rowse was singing the praises of Santa Barbara’s relatively new homeless day center on the 600 block of Chapala Street at the State of the City address, a ceremonial high mass at which South County mayors get a chance to toot the horns of their respective municipalities. In fact, Rowse displayed a three-minute video of the FARO Center as it’s called, FARO being both an acronym (Fostering Access, Resilience, and Opportunity) and the Spanish word for “lighthouse.” The center was a much-needed one-stop shop, Rowse bragged, where people struggling to get on their feet and off the street could connect with multiple helping hands from multiple public and private social service agencies and get jobs, rehabbed, and eventually perhaps even housed.

When the center opened last June, it was nothing less than a historic occasion; for the 20 years prior, such a center had truly been the impossible dream. In its first 11 months, FARO’s performance exceeded all expectations. When still on the drawing board, the thinking was the center — managed by the Santa Barbara Alliance for Community Transformation (S.B. ACT) — would accommodate 35 to 50 people a day. In reality, 70 unhoused people were going through its doors five days a week; its maximum was 91.

That, it turns out, might be way more success than the neighborhood can handle.

S.B. ACT executive director Rich Sander speaks at the FARO Center’s ribbon cutting in June 2024. | Credit: Ingrid Bostrom

On April 28, City Hall — which holds the master lease from the property’s owner, Ken Marshall — sent S.B. ACT Executive Director Rich Sander a lawyer letter “directing the immediate temporary closure of the FARO Center to public access,” citing unresolved security problems relating to smoking, trespassing, public urination, screaming, and other transgressions by center guests. Triggering this dramatic step was a March 11, no-nonsense, five-page letter written by the law firm retained by Jodi House, the brain trauma care center located adjacent to the FARO Center, charging that City Hall is in violation of its lease and threatening to challenge the city’s lease. The letter included details of 16 specific incidents by FARO clients that intruded on the ambient tranquility of Jodi House clients.

For the time being, however, the center doors remain open for business and its guests accommodated. This Monday, Sander said the plan was to keep it open. At this writing, all parties — Sander and City Administrator Kelly McAdoo — have emphatically insisted they are committed to finding a workable solution to keep the center open and operating. However, no date has been set for such a meeting. Nor is it clear what actions can be taken to rectify the problems to the satisfaction of Jodi House and what palliative improvements S.B. ACT can address or believes it to be within its purview to do so.

Sander said he’s increased staffing at the center from 6 to 10 at any given time in response. He just hired a private security company. (City Hall had done so prior for two weeks. In that time, nine incidents of trespassing had been documented.) The policy for suspending and expelling clients has expanded, Sander added. Public smoking violations are more vigorously enforced. He also stated S.B. ACT faces jurisdictional limits. “If someone’s smoking across the street, we can ask them to go somewhere else. But we can’t make them.”

He states with a sense of urgency that trust needs to be established with the clients. That requires as many “touches” as possible, he said. He also believes the real cause of homelessness is not so much mental illness or addiction as it is housing accessibility and housing affordability.

Others in the field see it somewhat differently. They report seeing larger percentages of chronically homeless people, struggling with far more acute addiction and mental-health disorders than before. They note, as well, that in recent years, hundreds of new units of transitional and permanent housing for the unhoused has been built and occupied. The people left on the street, they say, both face and pose tougher challenges.

Lindsey Black of Jodi House issued a statement expressing a conditional openness to any meeting that might take place. But she expressed disappointment in S.B. ACT’s response to Jodi House’s many complaints before the March 11 letter went out. “We were consistently dissatisfied with their limited response or lack of action,” she said. She also cited three incidents that have taken place since April 1. In one, a FARO client entered Jodi House through the back door and refused to leave. Cops ultimately had to be called.

Should worse come to worst — at least from the viewpoints expressed by City Hall and S.B. ACT — City Hall will pull the plug on S.B. ACT’s sublease on August 1. That’s the first optional renewal date specified in S.B. ACT’s lease with City Hall. It’s not clear what landlord Ken Marshall’s first opportunity would be to abrogate his contract with City Hall. In the meantime, Jodi House’s attorneys are very emphatic. “It is imperative that we also put you, as the landlord and property owner, on notice of your potential liability in this instance.”

Meanwhile, City Hall and S.B. ACT both agree the program has succeeded in helping many people who would otherwise not have gotten help. To date, 987 unique clients have been served. Of those 53 have transitioned to interim housing. Twelve have secured permanent housing.