Homelessness Strategic Plan

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Blog post: City launches comprehensive Homelessness Strategic Plan

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.

In 2023, 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.

In 2024, taking the ideas and goals from the leadership strategy session, city staff and BerryDunn (HSP Project Team) worked to refine and finalize the framework for the HSP, which builds upon the work done over the last decade to lay out a transparent and systematic vision for the city’s homelessness response. The HSP Project Team then met with service providers and the Boards and Commissions listed below to gather and incorporate input. The HSP was presented to the City Council on March 11, 2025 (see blog post).

Presentations to boards and commissions:

Disabilities Commission: Oct. 7, 2024 at 6:30 p.m., SMI Training Room
Human Services Commission: Oct. 9, 2024 at 3 p.m., SMI Training Room
Library Board: Oct. 10, 2024 at 1:30 p.m., Annenberg Community Beach House
Housing Commission: Oct. 15, 2024 at 6 p.m., Council Chambers
Recreation and Parks Commission: Nov. 21, 2024 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 developed the HSP?

City departments developed 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 now that the HSP is developed?

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.