Department veteran to take on role as chief of Sonoma County Homelessness Services Division

Following a national search, a Sonoma County Department of Health Services staffer has been selected to lead the county’s efforts to tackle homelessness, taking on a critical role at a time when the number of people who are homeless in the county has risen again.

James Alexander will start in the role of director of the department’s Homelessness Services Division July 23. Currently, he is the division’s health program manager, charged with connecting people who are homeless to county services. Alexander’s predecessor, Dave Kiff, resigned in April to take a job as a city manager in Southern California.

Alexander, 61, joined the health services department in 2012 as an alcohol and drug abuse counselor and rose through the ranks, becoming a case manager with the transitional youth team and other programs before starting to work on homelessness issues in 2018.

“James stood out from all the other candidates because of his extensive experience, skill set and commitment. He was the unanimous choice of the selection panel,” county Health Services Director Tina Rivera said in an email.

Alexander’s base salary will be $175,198.40.

A focus on interim shelter

As its chief, Alexander’s responsibilities are to include setting the division’s priorities and developing programs for homelessness services.

Working with people who are homeless to get them into housing that also provides services such as counseling, medical care and substance abuse treatment will be high on his list, he said.

“I really want to focus on our interim shelters. We want to have a place where people can stabilize as they move toward their permanent supportive housing,” he said.

“The interim shelter sites … give us the tool, the capacity to be able to place people who are otherwise out in the encampments. It gives us the ability to offer them a place where they can stabilize and get wrap around services to go further on their journey,” he said.

Those efforts will revolve around Eliza’s Village, two former juvenile hall dormitories being renovated into temporary housing near the Los Guilicos tiny home emergency housing site, he said.

Eliza’s Village can house about 80 people, Alexander said.

About 18 people moved there in June from the emergency tent shelter at the county administration center in Santa Rosa, which was opened March 2023 for people evicted from a large encampment on the Joe Rodota Trail.

“Eliza's Village will be our model, it will be where we focus our attention,” Alexander said.

Establishing relationships

In an interview Thursday, Alexander highlighted the importance of outreach teams consistently “engaging” with people who are homeless, especially those considered chronically homeless.

The number of people who are chronically homeless rose 10% this year, from 550 in 2023 to 606 this year, according to the latest annual count of homelessness in Sonoma County.

“It can't just be a one-time meeting. There has to be some kind of rapport to really effect change and let people know these services are available in order to assist and help them on their housing journey,” he said. “It's very necessary for these relationships to be made.”

The importance of building those relationships can be seen within the context of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent ruling, in Grants Pass v. Johnson, that local governments can enforce anti-camping regulations meant to curb public homelessness, Alexander said,

For example, in the event another encampment develops on the Joe Rodota Trail — as has repeatedly happened since 2019 — “We would engage that population hopefully prior to enforcement” in attempts to move people into shelters, Alexander said. “Our team goes out to encampments pretty much on a daily basis.”

Still, he added: “We can't force them to (engage). They're free to choose whether or not they wish to engage with us or work with us. And in the event that you have individuals who actually refuse to work with us and law enforcement chooses to clear an encampment, they are well within their authority to do so.”

‘Not judging anyone’

One “major challenge” Alexander will face, said Rivera, is implementing a sweeping state initiative dubbed Cal-AIM to generate more revenue for the Homelessness Services Division.

The initiative is intended to improve outcomes among low income Medi-Cal recipients by expanding the type of and number of services the state will reimburse counties for. Those expanded offerings range from assisting people to find housing to peer support programs.

Alexander said he will take a nuts-and-bolts approach to ensuring that the county will be able to qualify for reimbursement for those services — which, of course, is what would allow his division to provide them.

“In order to fully utilize (Cal-AIM) we have to document, document, document and have data to show all of our interactions,” he said. “That will help with funding streams moving forward.

“It's just a matter of making sure that if I have my team engaging 10 people at an encampment, we have to just make good notes and develop the data from those engagements,” he said.

Alexander, a Marine Corps veteran, said his background as an alcohol and drug abuse counselor and as someone who long ago was incarcerated (he declined to elaborate on what he described as an “accidental incident that happened 41 years ago”) help him work effectively with people in particularly vulnerable straits and often excruciatingly difficult circumstances.

“It really gives me the perspective of not judging anyone but of wanting to be of service to all of my fellow human beings. None of us are above anyone. We’re all human beings trying to do our best on this journey,” Alexander said.

“Some people have more barriers than others, let there be no doubt. And there are certain barriers that stand in the way,” he said. “But I am optimistic that by engaging with another human being and listening to their story, we can make a change, we can make a difference.”

You can reach Staff Writer Jeremy Hay at 707-387-2960 or jeremy.hay@pressdemocrat.com. On X (Twitter) @jeremyhay