If you're viewing the story in app, click here for multimedia.
The Stanislaus County Board of Supervisors have declared a shelter crisis and they expect most of the cities within their county to follow suit.
The board approved this declaration on Tuesday, Dec. 11, along with a laundry list of other recommendations, as a step forward to help solve their homeless problems.
"We've known we've had a crisis here for almost four years," Stanislaus County Supervisor Terry Withrow said.
The declaration was prompted as more than 400 people are living out of tents together in Beard Brook Park, and what's known to be nearly 1,000 other homeless people countywide, according to the most recent count.
"That's part of the requirement in order to get the funding," Withrow said.
Withrow says it's more of a formality for now, but this declaration could free up more than $7 million worth of state Homeless Emergency Aid Program (HEAP) funding.
"Now that we have this additional funding coming, we welcome it and we are in a position to receive it and put it to work on a lot of projects that we've been working on," Withrow said.
And there will be a team of city and county elected officials working with the private sector to figure out where the money goes in the Community System of Care.
"The key to this, what we want to do in the county here, is to make sure that we have measurables, that we have data that we can measure if programs are working or successful," Withrow said. "We don't want to just throw money at things again. We want to make sure that we're getting results for the dollars that are being spent."
The county also agreed to move the Beard Brook Park homeless camp under the 9th Street bridge within the next two months to a place called the Tuolomne River Regional Park Gateway across the street, as a temporary fix.
"It's going to deter people from coming down and using the park in the way that it needs to be used," Meg Gonzalez, the Director of Outreach Education for the Tuolomne River Trust Central Valley Program said.
Gonzalez says her team at the Tuolomne River Trust has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to clean this area up and attract families in.
"Everybody's saying 'not in my backyard,' and what we're saying is, not in the community's backyard either, and the river and river parks are for all of us," Gonzalez said.
Stanislaus County says this is just a temporary solution and they say that folks will only be staying here for about six to nine months and they say they have a full year from now to restore it back to what it looks like today.
"We're in the middle of winter at this point. We can't leave these people on the side of a hill, where they are right now, as rivers run through their tents," Withrow said.
The county also approved cutting a $500,000 check to an organization called Turning Point, which will come in and help operate the new outdoor shelter around the clock.
Eight of nine cities within county boundaries will vote on the same shelter crisis declaration. The city of Ceres opted not to make this declaration.
For more information on the other moving parts to this plan, click here.
Continue the conversation with Lena Howland on Facebook.