The Safe Haven Clinic Institute (SHCI, a California 501C3 organization), is raising funds and support for “Gatherings Around the Hill,”. The linked Gatherings Around the Hill proposal describes the scope and vision of this project, and details a $200,000 budget. Outcomes of this project will include an evaluation of the impact of government funded initiatives on encampment-level homelessness reduction in Santa Barbara County, and provide lessons learned. 

California’s unprecedented investments in homelessness reduction—through CalAIM, Enhanced Care Management, Community Supports, and Encampment Resolution Funds—represented a historic opportunity to improve outcomes for our most vulnerable neighbors. Yet, following the rapid roll-out of overlapping initiatives aimed at encampment level homelessness reduction in California, there is a demand for careful, participatory evaluation to identify what has worked, what doesn’t, and how communities can adapt as resources and political contexts shift. SHCI’s project is distinctive in its commitment to “nothing about us without us,” centering the voices of people who have lived the experience of encampment resolution, and ensuring their perspectives inform both the process improvements and the policy recommendations.

The “Gatherings Around the Hill” initiative will convene people with lived experience, managed care plans, housing providers, county agencies, public safety, business owners, faith groups, and other stakeholders in a year-long series of participatory gatherings, anchored by the film The Hill. The Hill is a short documentary about a year in the life of residents of the Santa Barbara Creekside encampment, as seen through the eyes of young filmmakers in 2024-25. Working as the documentary film producers for The Hill, under the name “the Grassroots Filmmakers Collective,” SHCI has chosen to create and fund Social Justice Film Fellowships to engage young filmmakers to tell the story of encampments with the goal of having a fresh and independent point of view on this complex ecosystem. 

The Hill documents the lived experience of a Santa Barbara encampment as it is being torn down, and generates a framework for quality improvement. SHCI and the Grassroots Filmmakers Collective will next begin replicating this model created with The Hill and subsequent “Gatherings around the Hill” in Berkeley CA—creating a multi-site comparison that will yield even deeper insights for California’s diverse communities. 

With funder’s support, SHCI will deliver not only a rich case study of Santa Barbara’s encampment resolution, but also a replicable playbook for other communities, a guidance framework for quality monitoring, and a roadmap for ongoing system learning and improvement. 

If funded, SHCI plans to engage a Program Director to lead this project. Our top candidate for this role has a decade of experience managing complex programs, grants, and stakeholder convenings and ensuring that projects deliver rigorous insights that drive meaningful, scalable policy change. To amplify the potential of this grant proposal, Noemi Doohan and Ellen Badley, both SHCI board members, will provide pro bono professional support to the program director.