July 31, 2019 — The parking lot at Building Bridges, the new homeless services center in Ukiah, filled up early Tuesday afternoon. Visitors crowded under a few shade structures to listen to speeches and take a tour of the premises, where various service providers plan to start helping homeless people, starting in the first week of August. One centralized location for homeless services is a key recommendation of last year’s Marbut Report, which has been accepted by the County of Mendocino and the City of Ukiah. Service providers plan to offer classes and workshops, help find housing, and offer connections to healthcare and programs like CalFresh and CalWorks.
The next phase of the project, which hasn’t been fleshed out yet, is to build housing on the property owned by Redwood Community Services (RCS), the non-profit organization that operates the facility.
The building is at 1045 South State Street, which was formerly an empty warehouse with a motorcycle shop out front. A photo album on a table in the freshly painted lobby documents the progress of the renovation, including bare spots on the earth out front where a shower trailer was installed the first winter. Renovations are ongoing for a shelter to open in November, which RCS hopes to run year-round. A year-round shelter in Ukiah is one of the goals of the county’s 2019 plan to address homelessness. The winter shelter has been at 1045 South State Street for the last two years. RCS also wants to increase the number of beds from 44 to 60. Both modifications are dependant on city approval to changes in the current major use permit.
RCS bought the building with a Community Development Block Grant, federal funds from Housing and Urban Development that are distributed by the county Board of Supervisors. The project also receives funds from Partnership HealthPlan of California and the Homeless Emergency Aid Program, a state block grant that comes to the county through its continuum of care.