Prior to taking his show before the Santa Barbara City Council this week, Jeff Shaffer explained the secret to getting homeless people off the street. “It’s not the first time that does it,” he said. “It’s the 14th.” Such persistence, he said, is essential to establishing trust, and trust is essential to getting people to accept help they may not think they need.
For the past 15 years, Shaffer has been dealing with homelessness one way or the other. His latest organization, SB ACT (Santa Barbara Alliance for Community Transformation), is a nonprofit dedicated to fomenting better collaboration among nonprofits, government agencies, business organizations, and homeless people themselves.
Last year, City Hall invested $100,000 in SB ACT; the Santa Barbara Foundation tossed in another $100,000. Shaffer showed up at City Hall this Tuesday to explain what he and SB ACT’s Rick Sanders and Barbara Andersen had been doing with that money for the last three months. What the council heard was a lot of big-picture talk and a description of some very focused outreach.