Homeless task force asking for $2 million
Posted on Sunday, January 4, 2009
ANTHONY REYES Northwest Arkansas Times A task force will be created to assess the need of the homeless in the state and decide how to distribute a requested $2 million to deal with the issue in the state.
An official working with the homeless in Northwest Arkansas says each region and community needs to ensure it is looking at its own demographics when tackling the problem.
"You can't do a onesize-fits-all model for every region in the state," said Betsy Gross, program director at both the Seven Hills Homeless Center Day Center and Seven Hills/Walker Family Residential Facility, which opened April 9 for transitional housing.
She was responding to one of the key recommendations — to form a committee that would be appointed by the governor to oversee distribution of a requested $2 million to deal with the homelessness issue in the state — made by the Arkansas Legislative Task Force to Study Homelessness.
The task force released its final report and recommendations in November after a year-long look at the homeless issue. State Rep. Wilhelmina Lewellen, D-Little Rock, chaired the task force and was the legislative sponsor of the bill that created it.
Different areas should be represented on the governor-appointed committee because of the varying needs each region has, Gross said.
Those demographics include the predominant gender that is homeless and skill levels of the homeless population. That kind of information, she said, should drive what is offered to help homeless people.
The task force's recommendation states that "continuums of care" — a network of service providers in each region — provide a mechanism for distributing funds according to unique demographics and associated needs of their homeless populations.
Funding request
The task force's recommendation on funding is a request for $2 million from the Arkansas Legislature — earmarking one-fourth of the Department of Human Services budget — to finance a statewide system of services for people experiencing homelessness.
Gross said much more than $2 million is needed to meet the state's needs. While it would do something to help, she said, it would "probably have a very minimal impact."
But Kevin Fitzpatrick, Ph.D., a sociology professor at the University of Arkansas, says any amount is welcome at the state level, particularly if a certain amount of DHS money is set aside and it becomes a line item in either that agency's budget or a homeless state budget.
"That's fantastic. That only allows something like that to be built on," said Fitzpatrick, who also directs the Community and Family Institute at the UA that is funded by the Jones Trust.
As it is now, Fitzpatrick said, most of the homeless money comes from the federal government.
He said, however, that this may not be the right time to ask for the state earmark because it is going to be a tight budget year.
Day resource centers
Another of the task force's recommendations is to fund day resource centers for homeless people in five regions of the state. Those regions would include Northwest Arkansas, and the northeast, southeast, southwest and central portions of the state. Services provided at the centers would include shelter and counseling, and they would stock emergency items such as food and clothing. Staff would make referrals and follow-ups with agencies and providers.
Gross said the concept of regional centers is different depending on who you talk to. She said that other areas of the state are vastly underserved in terms of homelessness.
Fitzpatrick said it would be important to look at services in Northwest Arkansas that already exist and supplement them, or consolidate and take some of the burden off of agencies that are providing shelter.
Either way, he said, "it's a great thing. We could only benefit."
Still, he said, "you don't want to duplicate services."
Also recommended by the task force is having emergency vouchers for women and children in immediate crisis, such as domestic abuse, to provide emergency housing and services.
Gross says the vouchers could be useful, but she also said it depends on "exactly what" the criteria is for receiving them, and where they could be used.
"It has to be something applicable," she said, explaining that the vouchers need to be for things used by the people, such as a night's stay in a motel.
"Whatever it is, it needs to be really practical, so it's not something that's not doable," she said.
Transportation, health care issues in Northwest Arkansas
"A big barrier that we see is transportation, the lack of transportation and lack of employment," Gross said of this area, which includes Fayetteville, Bentonville, Rogers and Springdale.
Services that homeless people use, she said, are "pretty spread out," which means they have to travel "great distances to go from unemployment to Social Security."
She said health care access is also a big issue with the homeless in the area.
She also said that "there's a limited amount of temporary shelter."
While there is transitional housing and night shelter is available at the Salvation Army, she said, "people need something for two or three months."
Local study
One of the presentations for the legislative task force on homelessness was a study performed by Fitzpatrick, and sociology graduate students Kimberly Gross and Elizabeth Miller.
The name of this study was "Northwest Arkansas Area Point-in-Time Survey of Homeless Persons, January 25-26, 2007." It was submitted to the cities of Bentonville, Rogers and Springdale, and presented to the legislative task force in July.
That study estimated that on any given night about 1,170 adults and youth in the Northwest Arkansas area — Washington and Benton counties — are homeless. Fitzpatrick says that a lot of the people suffer from mental illness or substance abuse, which adds another dimension to the situation.
"If we're serving people in a capacity either in substance abuse or mental health services, and even in local jails, we have to do a better job of finding better ways of transitioning them back into the community," Fitzpatrick said.
He also said that it was stressed to the task force that the only transitional housing program in the state is in Northwest Arkansas.
"It's just not about providing people shelter," he said, adding that case management is critical.
Fitzpatrick said he supports all of the legislative task force's recommendations.
The task force, he said, paid "very good attention to what was said to them. I applaud them for really kind of going out on a limb on a lot of things, but also paying attention to what the data's telling them."
He is working with the United Way on developing a homeless initiative to address several of the recommendations made in the study.
One of the recommendations of the task force is that the Arkansas Department of Education should receive adequate funding to provide services and supplies to more school districts with homeless children.
"Nearly half of our population are kids in Northwest Arkansas," Fitzpatrick said.
He said another recommendation speaks to the untapped potential of the faith-based community. The recommendation states that partnerships between churches and other faithbased organizations and human services need to be "encouraged, strengthened and supported to the greatest extent possible."
But the report also states that the burden of support and assistance to the homeless should not lie squarely on the shoulders of the faithbased community.
FEEDBACK:
Something to say about this topic? Submit a Letter to the Editor online
