Homelessness Strategic Plan

Housing Adult Senior

About the Homelessness Strategic Plan

In 2022, the city of Santa Monica commissioned a homelessness study from Moss Adams LLP that evaluated the city's homelessness response and prevention efforts. During this process, the city and Moss Adams conducted community outreach to understand strengths and challenges in the city's homelessness response and outline the community's priorities related to homelessness.

The Moss Adams Homelessness Study outlined several recommendations to improve the city’s homelessness response and prevention efforts.

One of the recommendations of the report was to develop a homelessness strategic plan to better coordinate and allocate resources between city departments, local service providers and regional partners. In the FY2023-24 budget, the City Council directed staff to create a Homelessness Strategic Plan, or HSP, that aligns all city departments around a shared vision, goals and investment of resources for addressing homelessness.

Last year, the city hired BerryDunn, a consulting firm with extensive experience in local government and homelessness strategic planning, to help guide the effort. BerryDunn reviewed the community feedback gathered through the Moss Adams report; interviewed key city staff to gather input on the city’s current strategies, goals, and needs for the future to further the work; and facilitated meetings with city leadership.

The goal of the leadership meeting was to bring all city departments together to lay out the foundation for the HSP by:

Developing mission, vision and guiding principles
Setting actionable, focused objectives for achieving the city’s goals on homelessness

Taking the ideas and goals from the leadership strategy session, city staff and BerryDunn are working to refine and finalize the framework for the HSP, which will build upon the work done over the last decade to lay out a transparent and systematic vision for the city’s homelessness response. The initial HSP framework will be presented to the City Council in early 2025.

Components of the HSP

Vision: A short description of the city’s aspirations for a desired future state and the community impact it aims to achieve with its homelessness response.
Mission: The purpose of the city's homelessness response.
Goal: The specific outcomes the city aims to achieve over the time period of the strategic plan.
Objective: The precise actions or measurable steps the city will take to make progress toward each goal.
Performance measures: Quantification of an activity or set of activities that provides objective evidence of the degree to which a performance result is occurring over time.

Project milestones

The creation of the city’s Homelessness Strategic Plan is a highly collaborative process involving all city departments and staff at all levels within the city who are involved in Santa Monica’s homelessness response. Milestones include:

Moss Adams recommendation to create a Homelessness Strategic Plan
Current State Assessment to Inform Development of the Strategic Plan
Development of Strategic Plan Components, including Mission, Vision, Values, Strategic Pillars, Goals, and Objectives
Development of Accountability Framework and Performance Measures
City Council Adoption of Homelessness Strategic Plan
Creation of Implementation Plan and Metrics

Upcoming presentations to boards and commissions

Recreation and Parks Commission: Nov. 21 at 6 p.m., Council Chambers

Past presentations to boards and commissions

Disabilities Commission: Oct. 7 at 6:30 p.m., SMI Training Room
Human Services Commission: Oct. 9 at 3 p.m., SMI Training Room
Library Board: Oct. 10 at 1:30 p.m., Annenberg Community Beach House
Housing Commission: Oct. 15 at 6 p.m., Council Chambers

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FAQ

What is a strategic plan and why is it important?

Strategic planning is an organizational management activity to set priorities, focus energy and resources, strengthen operations, ensure that employees are working toward common goals, establish agreement around intended outcomes/results, and assess and adjust the organization’s direction in response to a changing environment. It is a disciplined effort that produces fundamental decisions and actions that shape and guide what an organization is, who it serves, what it does, and why it does it, with a focus on the future. Effective strategic planning articulates not only where an organization is going and the actions needed to make progress, but also how it will know if it is successful.

Why does Santa Monica need an HSP?

A strategic plan is the tool that keeps the team and the entire organization headed in the same direction and serves as a blueprint for the long-term sustainability of the city, its programming and services, its operations, and its infrastructure related to homelessness. A strategic plan prioritizes mission-critical activities and how to align the city's budget and resources with these priorities to increase efficiency and effectiveness. If the city does not think strategically and make the effort to plan for the future, we may struggle to maintain our focus and make progress toward the outcomes that are most important for the residents and businesses in our community.

Who is developing the HSP?

City departments are working to develop the strategic plan with support from BerryDunn.

Our consultant is BerryDunn, a national consulting firm dedicated to serving state and local government agencies. The firm was chosen through a competitive procurement process. BerryDunn’s team members have decades of local government experience.

What will we do with the HSP upon completion?

The strategic plan is a living document that we will use to define future policies and actions related to the City's homelessness response. Having a strategic plan allows us to:

Communicate our priorities within a credible, forward-thinking, and well-understood framework so we can make effective budget and policy decisions and secure the resources we need to sustain the City into the future.
Maintain a guiding “north star,” providing stability and more certainty in the face of election cycles, changes in leadership, economic fluctuations, and changes to the state and federal regulatory environments. This gives the City greater ability to influence and steer its future direction and make better decisions during turbulent times.
Make decisions and evaluate our policies, plans, programs, and service delivery related to homelessness City-wide.