Community plans to end county homelessness

Leaders from around the county are trying to decide who will be targeted in their plan to end area homelessness.

Local groups working to implement the Orange County 10-Year Plan to End Homelessness held its second meeting Wednesday to continue developing plans to eliminate homelessness in the county.

Local municipalities and nonprofit organizations, with the help of consultants J-Quad and Associates LLC, are cooperating on the initiative.

The present hopes are to educate a core group on the reasons, needs and best practices in targeting homelessness so that its members might guide the process, encourage community input and thoughts, and make decisions.

Participants in Wednesday's meeting outlined the steering committee's roles and duties, discussed the implementation of 15 focus groups to better access the community's specific homelessness needs, presented a rough cost analysis of county homelessness and gave an update of a point-in-time count to take place later this month.

A large portion of the meeting focused on chronic homelessness as defined by federal guidelines.

Martha Are, homelessness policy coordinator for the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services homelessness policy coordinator.

According to the federal definition, a chronically homeless person is a single individual with a disability who has been homeless for at least one year or four or more times in three years.

Future meetings will determine whether the Orange County initiative will aim to eliminate chronic homelessness or to target a broader demographic.

Are maintained that those considered chronically homeless make up a very small portion of the homeless population, making the elimination of chronic homelessness a more conceivable goal.

But she cited North Carolina cities, such as Asheville, Durham, Raleigh and Shelby, that have completed plans that are not limited to solving chronic homelessness.

The Inter-Faith Council for Social Services and Orange/Person/Chatham Area Program are key nonprofit organizations in the initiative.

Armed with a newly rewarded $270,000 federal grant from the U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department to be applied to the homelessness situation, the group is further equipped to assist those in need.

Chris Moran, executive director of the IFC, said his organization's portion of the money is going to be applied to data management required by HUD.

"It is part of a statewide initiative to collect better information (regarding the homeless)," he said.

Billie Guthrie of the OPC Area Program added that the money will go directly to services for the homeless.

Focus groups for the 10-year plan will begin meeting the last two weeks of February, and future meetings are tentatively scheduled for mid-March and -April.

 

Contact the City Editor at citydesk@unc.edu.