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| | Issue #20.33 :: 08/15/2007 - 08/21/2007 | Disunity Defines Efforts to Solve Homelessness
| BY ERIC K. WARD
| Efforts to address homelessness in the Columbia area could be described as a thousand points of light — all shining in a different direction.
It’s an understanding grounded in the reality that most things in life have their good side, and their bad side.
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| Volunteers search during a count earlier this year of the Columbia area homeless population. File photo. |
Of the positive, there have been and continue to be many vigorous attempts to help the homeless. In a developing example, the local Christ Central Ministries is making plans to build a centralized services hub downtown to meet the needs of the indigent.
“We haven’t closed on the property,” pastor Jimmy Jones, founder and president of the ministries, says of a 4-acre site at Main Street and Elmwood Avenue the ministries has identified for the hub.
On the downside, disunity defines the multi-pronged work on behalf of the homeless. “Well quite frankly I think there is fragmentation in the community right now,” says Jennifer Moore of the United Way of the Midlands, acknowledging what many people involved in the issue perceive. Moore directs the United Way’s community council on food, shelter, safety and transportation.
The United Way helped the Midlands Area Consortium for the Homeless conduct a count of the local homeless population earlier this year. It was part of a biennial nationwide survey of the homeless that the federal government uses to allocate funding to local and state governments under the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act. Passed in 1987, the act is up for reauthorization in Congress.
Observers expected figures from the local count to have been released already. Moore says the data are still being compiled. “It took a lot longer than we thought this year,” she says, adding that the statewide total could be ready in a couple of weeks. “The one here locally won’t be out until October.”
Meanwhile, in the latest example of hands not working together, city officials announced Aug. 14 that they are issuing a request for proposals for a pilot project under the national housing first model.
Gaining acceptance across the country, housing first is a new approach to dealing with homelessness. It calls for, literally, placing the homeless in housing first, then trying to help them deal with their issues — medical problems, drug dependency or what have you — instead of the standard method of assisting the homeless in getting their lives together and then finding housing for them.
The city’s foray into housing first is an outgrowth of an aggressive approach the local government took to dealing with homelessness beginning last winter by providing city shelter for the first time.
The approach rankled some local service providers.
Mayor Bob Coble says he isn’t sure if or when that will change. “But I know that the city just needs to move forward,” Coble says.
The city has allocated $900,000 in the current budget year for homelessness, part of which will be spent providing winter shelter again this year, he says.
Amid heads butting over the issue, a new party aims to end the discord and get all the stakeholders working to implement a 10-year blueprint to end local homelessness that the Midlands Area Consortium developed.
Called the Columbia Interfaith Homeless Coalition, it consists of a broad range of religious groups as well as representatives of the business community.
Bringing unity to efforts to address homelessness in the Columbia area is a tall order, but Moore of the United Ways says the coalition just might be able to pull it off. | |
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