photo credit: Sonoma County Department of Health Services

Sonoma County is distributing millions of dollars to a constellation of nonprofits and programs tackling homelessness and mental health supports.

The money comes mostly from Sonoma County's Measure O.

That was passed by local voters in 2020 to create a decade-long quarter-cent sales tax dedicated to paying for mental health and homeless support services.

Sonoma County supervisors recently approved spending $12.4 million, $10 million from Measure O, and $2.4 million from the state.

The money is doled out via a notice of funding availability, or NOFA.

"This is probably the last time we'll put out a NOFA of this size ever," noted 2nd District Supervisor David Rabbitt. "I don't want to say ever, [but] you know, we need to figure this out or else everything we're funding today is not going to be funded in a short while."

Measure O raises about 25 million dollars a year, and has specific spending categories like building or maintaining behavioral health facilities, providing emergency psychiatric and crisis services, treating substance use disorder, and paying for supportive housing.

Measure O's passage followed a major low point for Sonoma County's behavioral health and homelessness services, but it is set to expire in 2031.

Though uncertainty is looming, this latest round of funding, said 1st District Supervisor Rebecca Hermosillo is being spent across the county.

"If you look at the 18 folks that are getting funding, it is a lot of the funds that we had heard from constituents that really needed it," Hermosillo said.

18 separate community organizations and city partners are being awarded money in the current round. That includes groups like West County Health Centers for its youth support work, and projects like the City of Rohnert Park's Labath Landing supportive housing site.

Nolan Sullivan, director of Sonoma County's Department of Health Services said there's still a large demand for support services.

"We are talking about $26 million of requested funds that we're not able to fund," Sullivan said. "So while we had $10 million to give out, we had $36 million in requests."

St. Vincent de Paul's Gravenstein Commons 22 unit supportive housing project in Sebastopol received 1 million dollars, the largest award allowed under the measure.

Sullivan said Measure O's funding stream is under strain, and future funding past 2031 is an open question.