a communication from Councillor Kelley, transmitting a memorandum regarding storage options for people experiencing homelessness

CAMBRIDGE CITY COUNCIL Craig A. Kelley City Councillor CITY HALL, CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS 02139 [phone removed] FAX: [phone removed] TTY/TDD: [phone removed] EMAIL: ckelley@cambridgema.gov MEMORANDUM To: Councillor Craig A. Kelley From: Mark Gutierrez, Council Aide William MacArthur, Harvard Square Homeless Shelter Date: May 21, 2018 Subject: Storage Options for People Experiencing Homelessness 1. Introduction Americans have 2.3 billion square feet of rentable storage space across roughly 50,000 locations1 and an average home size of over 2,600 square feet,2 providing ample room for storage of personal belongings. Storage is something we grossly underappreciate, and people experiencing homelessness lack access to these extensive options. Storage can be transformative for people experiencing homelessness—bringing stability, security, dignity, and peace of mind. It allows one to securely store clothing, sentimental items, medications, and important documents like birth certificates. Given the various challenges associated with some people experiencing homelessness, including mental health issues and lack of access to mobility, managing a storage facility that specifically serves either transitional or permanent homeless residents poses its own challenges. As with affordable housing, the need will be greater than the supply, requiring a storage unit assignment process beyond traditional market access. This memo reviews the benefits of providing storage options to the homeless and examines what actions other municipalities are taking. While the challenges of creating and managing suitable storage options for our homeless residents are significant, they are not insurmountable and the City should immediately focus on this issue for near-term solutions.

2 2. The Case for Providing Storage “If you carry around your belongings every day, there are just so many things that are not available,” says Heather Forbes, communications and resource development coordinator for First United Church, a service provider in Vancouver that runs a storage program for people experiencing homelessness. “You can’t go into a grocery store, you can’t go into a publish washroom, you can’t go into a job interview. Can you imagine, if you brought all your belongings to a job interview? Things open up for you that wouldn’t be possible.”3 Storage provides benefits both to people experiencing homelessness and to the cities in which they live. Restrooms are more accessible and properly utilized and trash and waste is reduced. Loads of personal belongings are taken off the streets, providing cleaner and clearer public spaces and reducing the risk of loss of personal property through clean-up efforts, theft, or damage. Far from putting the problem of homelessness out of sight and out of mind, transitional storage helps people reclaim autonomy, reducing a major obstacle to work, savings, the housing search, interactions with existing service providers, and advocacy. This aligns with the mission of existing service providers, such as the Cambridge Continuum of Care who strives to provide “assistance toward self-sufficiency” and “a continuum of housing and service options.”4 Storage is an unmet need for people experiencing homelessness in Greater Boston. There are no shelters in the area that offer year-round guaranteed storage units for their clients. Transitions from homelessness to housing require stability, and the absence of affordable and secure storage can be crippling. Lack of storage is a destabilizing influence that can eliminate progress toward housing, especially if people lose access to critical documents. Income spent on storage can detract from savings for housing-related expenses, particularly for people who don’t receive housing assistance. Cambridge has a large homeless population and a fairly comprehensive set of services for them (here, here, and here). Storage is an unmet need in this service landscape and models in other cities have indicated that providing storage lowers barriers for people who wish to access transitional services that Cambridge already provides. Few emergency shelters have the capacity to provide storage except for their current clients, and such short-term storage fails to provide meaningful stability, since many people migrate between shelters. At-Risk Populations • Latino and African Americans in Cambridge are disproportionately affected by homelessness, continuing the persistent crippling inequities along racial and ethnic lines. Percent of General Population5 Percent of Homeless Population6 African Americans 11% 29% Latino Americans 9% 18%

3 • Among adults (18+), 77% of people experiencing homelessness struggle with substance abuse, severe mental illness, HIV/AIDS, and/or domestic violence.6 • Families can benefit from storage even more so as it’s extremely difficult for a parent(s) to carry and keep track of an entire families’ belongings and year-round supplies (accounting for seasonality demands, like valuable winter clothing). Harvard Square Homeless Shelter A trial storage policy at the Harvard Square Homeless Shelter granted 49 locker compartments to clients on a seasonal basis between November 1st, 2017 and April 15th, 2018 and was broadly successful. • The compartments were used by 59 people, 5 of whom voluntarily gave up compartments after moving on to other housing situations. • Utilization averaged 77%, but was heavily skewed due to the ramp-up period from being the first program of its kind in the area. The average reached 87% after December 1st, and was at 100% for the last 4 months. • Feedback was positive. • Abandonment of property in compartments was low. 3. Storage Models for People Experiencing Homelessness in North American Cities San Diego: Transitional Storage Center This storage facility has 304 storage lockers and about 130 wheeled bins (similar to curbside bins), each of which is less than 10 cubic feet. It served 530 total clients in 20167 and is operated by a non-profit called Think Dignity with funding from the City of San Diego and supplemented by fundraising. It is open weekday mornings and evenings and Saturday mornings year-round, and clients retain their bins until they choose to vacate them. Its average total expenses are $33,235/year.8 This is the 4-year average from 2013 to 2016 due to fluctuations in expenses for capacity improvements. The figure may be lower Serious Mental Illness 22% Substance Use Disorder 39% HIV/AIDS 3% Victim of Domestic Violence 13%

4 because not all staff time spent on the project was required to be reported. The service is in high demand and has a waiting list of over 100 people.7 Vancouver: First United Church This storage facility offers 60 bins for residents of an affiliated shelter, 95 bins for people experiencing homelessness city-wide, and 50 spaces for shopping carts and larger luggage. The program allocates storage by weight and caps it at 50 pounds, but there is no time limit on storage. It also offers day-storage for people attending court, and this service was used by 120 individuals in 2016.9 As a whole, the facility served 690 total clients in 2016. It’s operated by the First United Church and open seven days a week, morning and evening. First United connects clients to other programming, and its annual report notes that “storage continued to generate much interest from city leadership locally and abroad since it serves as a gateway toward accessing other services and programs.”9 Denver: Two Pilot Programs Denver is currently piloting two approaches to storage. The first model, a multi-agency partnership, grants 30-60-day access to street-based storage lockers.10 Notably, these units cost $3,000 each, and only 10 have been built. Ray Lyall and other advocates for people experiencing homelessness have criticized the pace of the effort.11 The second model more closely resembles models in San Diego and Vancouver—the effort is a public-private partnership run by the Saint Francis Center, expanding on their existing storage program, to place an additional 200 units of storage on site at an employment office. These units supplement similar storage offered by the nonprofit at their Day Center, which allows clients to store one 30-gallon bag for a 30-day with an option to renew.

5 Los Angeles: The Bin This storage facility offers 1,462 storage bins.12 It is operated by a non-profit called Chrysalis which aims to support people in their transitions out of homelessness. A client named Monica Rodriguez reports that the service is important “Because our stuff isn’t just junk. It’s our important papers. Like Social Security papers. Or legal documents.”12 Emily Chin, the Operations Manager of the program, corroborates this, stating “Many of the clients have to use the service to keep their job. They have somewhere to store their property so they can go to work every day.”12 Washington, DC District law requires the City government to fund storage for people for the first 90 days after they experience an eviction.13 The program is managed by the Department of Housing and Community Development. Evictees are entitled to storage assistance that include “the moving a tenant’s items out of the rental unit, loading, transportation, delivery to a storage facility, unloading at the facility, and paying the storage fees.”14 Small units (<50 gallons) Large units (>50 gallons) Management Capital cost Operating cost Term San Diego 304 130 City/ Nonprofit $137,978 $39,757 Perm. Vancouver 155 50 Nonprofit UR UR Perm. Denver 200 10 City/ Nonprofit $130,000 $99,000 Temp. Los Angeles - 1462 Nonprofit UR UR Perm. 4. Feasibility in Cambridge While a greater feasibility study may be necessary for Cambridge’s context, the City appears uniquely capable of providing this service effectively. In Cambridge, the city could lease storage in a privately managed facility for this purpose. • Cambridge’s population of 517 individuals experiencing homelessness could be fully

6 accommodated by a single facility on the scale of successful models in San Diego and Vancouver or largely accommodated by additional units in existing service providers as piloted in Denver. • Based on these models, capital expenses would reach between $100,000 and $150,000 if the site were incorporated in an existing city property. This expense could be covered either through Participatory Budgeting or through an appropriation. • Some models could require additional staffing capacity. Two staffers working 35-hour weeks could cover 7am-9:30am and 4:30pm-7pm drop-in times with two staffers on shift at all times. At least one of these positions should be reserved for a person who has previously experienced homelessness, and staffing capacity from the Office of Workforce Development could support the efficient operation of any facility. References 1 https://www.sparefoot.com/self-storage/news/1432-self-storage-industry-statistics/ 2 http://www.aei.org/publication/new-us-homes-today-are-1000-square-feet-larger-than-in-1973-and- living-space-per-person-has-nearly-doubled/ 3 https://www.citylab.com/solutions/2014/08/cities-can-ease-homelessness-with-storage-units/379073/ 4 http://cambridgecoc.org/ 5 https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/cambridgecitymassachusetts/PST045216 6 https://www.cambridgema.gov/~/media/Files/DHSP/Documents/2016/HomelessCensus.pdf?la=en 7 http://www.thinkdignity.org/sites/default/files/documents/2016_AnnualReport.pdf 8 http://www.thinkdignity.org/annual-reports-financials 9 https://firstunited.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/16551-FU-2016-Annual-Report_Spread-002.pdf 10 https://www.denvergov.org/content/denvergov/en/mayors-office/newsroom/2017/city-increases- storage-options-for-people-experiencing-homelessn.html 11 https://www.denverpost.com/2017/05/23/denver-storage-unit-pilot-program-homeless/ 12 https://www.marketplace.org/2015/06/26/wealth-poverty/skid-row-storage-helps-put-order-lives- homeless 13 http://app.cfo.dc.gov/services/fiscal_impact/pdf/spring07/120707_1.pdf 14 http://www.dctenants.com/sites/default/files/D.C.%20Code%20%2042-3505.01.pdf