School program that sheltered families after floods expiring – The San Diego Union-Tribune

The Jan. 22 flood sent three feet of water, mud and trash sweeping through the entire Southcrest home where Brittany LeMoine lives with her mother, teenage son and middle-school daughter.

Since then, theyve had to throw away couches, beds, dressers, socks, underwear and all the childrens shoes. Their home has sat for weeks without restoration and growing mold, LeMoine said, due to insurance delays.

And her family, unable to afford several nights in a hotel, has bounced around sleeping arrangements. They slept for three nights at the Red Cross shelter at Lincoln High and even slept on an air mattress in their empty home for two nights.

The chance to have their own room finally came via her daughters school counselor at Marston Middle. The counselor referred them to a countywide program, funded by school COVID-19 aid dollars, provides free temporary motel stays for families experiencing homelessness.

LeMoines family checked into a National City motel a week after the flood. They were able to sleep and take showers, LeMoine said, and it was easier for her to take her daughter to the school bus stop and return to work. We actually got a little comfortable, she said.

LeMoine is one of more than 200 families displaced by the Jan. 22 flood who have received free motel stays through a schools program called Project Rest. Officials say its the first program of its kind in San Diego County where public schools pay for temporary housing for students and their families experiencing short-term or long-term homelessness.

The program has provided motel stays for more than 1,500 San Diego County families since its inception two years ago, said Susanne Terry, homeless education coordinator for the county office of education, which funds the program run in partnership with San Diego Youth Services.

The program provides minimum 10-day stays, which can be extended up to 30 days, at Motel 6 locations across the county. Public school students who lack a fixed, regular and adequate residence can request a hotel stay by contacting their schools or districts homeless liaison.

Providing motel stays for families is crucial because there arent enough temporary housing options in the county, educators said. Shelter demand often exceeds capacity, and shelters are generally located in downtown San Diego, out of reach for families experiencing homelessness in the suburbs. And some shelters enforce restrictions that make it difficult for families, such as prohibitions on men or pets.

There has been more demand for Project Rest than Terry initially expected. The program has regularly received between three and 10 referrals a day, she said. In the weeks following the flooding, that has jumped to 25 to 30 referrals a day.

The need was far greater than I had realized, Terry said.

The program had funds available to accommodate the influx of flood victims it has not yet run out of funds and was able to provide rooms for families weeks before the county opened its own emergency temporary housing program.

But the program is set to expire this fall. Its funded with one-time money from the American Rescue Plan Act, the source of the nations largest pandemic aid package for schools, which will sunset this September.

Advocates are working with some legislators in pushing for a one-year extension of the homelessness funds. They note that homelessness has risen in the last couple years as evictions have resumed, following a pandemic moratorium, amid a worsening housing affordability crisis.

The need for this funding is not less than during the pandemic. Its actually more, said Barbara Duffield, executive director of youth homelessness nonprofit SchoolHouse Connection.

The American Rescue Plan provided $98.8 million for school homeless services in California money schools could spend on goods and services for students, including gift cards to buy school supplies, cell phones, internet devices and temporary housing. It was the first time public schools were explicitly allowed to use federal or state funding to pay for housing for students, Terry said.

The idea is that students cannot fully participate in school or even get there if their basic living needs arent met.

It highly affects attendance when youre that transitory, said Andrea Frost, homeless and foster youth liaison for La Mesa-Spring Valley School District. And when you affect attendance, it affects everything else.

Last school year, more than 16,600 public school children in San Diego County were counted as experiencing homelessness. Even that is likely an undercount, advocates say; some families experiencing homelessness dont consider themselves homeless, so they go unidentified.

Homelessness among children is less visible than among adults because most are not living in homeless shelters or or on streets. Instead, they are doubled up in other peoples homes, staying in motels or sleeping in their families cars, educators said.

Schools are a crucial but often overlooked part of addressing homelessness, Terry said. They serve as not just education centers but resource hubs that can provide food, clothes, school transportation, medical services and mental health counseling for students. Teachers and staff are often sources of emotional support, and school can serve as a needed constant in childrens lives.

Schools are situated to help families pretty easily, in that everyone goes to school, Terry said. We can create some stability for young people.

Up until last months flood, LeMoine and her two children were living with her mother on Beta Street.

(Nelvin C. Cepeda/The San Diego Union-Tribune)

Education is also important in preventing homelessness, experts say. Researchers have found a lack of a high school diploma is a strong risk factor for homelessness among young people.

In addition to the motel vouchers, the county education office has also used federal COVID-19 dollars to start a new outreach program to homeless families that Terry said has helped bring more children to school.

Once a month, a county office homeless liaison visits major shelters to meet with children and parents to inform them of their rights to an education, enroll them in school if they are not attending and connect them to services, such as developmental screenings for young children.

Theres still a lot of families who arent aware that they can enroll their kids in school even when theyre unhoused or their housing is unstable, Terry said. Whenever we go out ... were finding families who dont have their kids going to school.

Under the federal McKinney-Vento Act, children experiencing homelessness have the right to enroll in school and participate in all school activities, even when records officially needed for enrollment are missing. Children also have the right to keep attending and get free transportation to their original school if they are displaced or have to move due to homelessness.

The outreach program is something the county office probably shouldve always been doing, even before the pandemic, Terry said.

Educators are grateful for the American Rescue Plans homelessness funding, but they say its overdue.

Its funding that homeless education programs have needed for a long time, unrelated to the pandemic, Terry said. We have, in my opinion, been very underfunded for many, many years.

The federal aid package provided more than six times as much funding as is typically allocated specifically for homelessness. About 10,000 school districts received homelessness funding under the package; normally only 4,000 get dedicated homelessness funding, according to SchoolHouse Connection.

California does not provide dedicated state funding for schools to help students experiencing homelessness. And the federal government provides little dedicated funding for services for such students, school officials say.

This school year, $13.7 million was provided for California schools, and fewer than 10 percent of school districts were awarded any money, according to the California Department of Education. Of that money, less than $1 million this year went to San Diego County schools, with almost a third going to the county education office and more than a quarter going to San Diego Unified.

Only seven of San Diego Countys 42 school districts were awarded dedicated funding for homelessness services this year, according to the state education department. Some districts with hundreds of students experiencing homelessness got no money, according to the state among them Vista Unified which has about 650 such students, and National Elementary, where almost one out of every 10 students is experiencing homelessness.

One of the biggest problems with a lack of funding is is it tends to correlate with under-identification of students experiencing homelessness, Duffield said. Funding allows districts to train school employees to identify signs of homelessness, get the word out about homeless childrens education rights and about services in the community and provide transportation for students experiencing homelessness.

In order to get help to go to school and be successful in school, someone has to know youre experiencing homelessness. And given the shame and stigma families feel, that has to be really proactive on the schools part, Duffield said.

As for LeMoine, Project Rest sheltered her family for 20 days. Last week she said she was told that the National City motel where she was staying no longer had room for her family. She would have had to move to a motel in San Ysidro, which she said is too far for her daughter to get to her school in Clairemont.

So she has since switched to a county-run hotel voucher program for flood victims, which offered her a hotel closer to her daughters school, she said. Their voucher will last them until March 11.

I hope we get extended, because our house is nowhere close (to) being done, she said in a text message.

Contractors finally began lead-abatement work in her house last week, the first step to restoring her home.

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School program that sheltered families after floods expiring - The San Diego Union-Tribune