Without funding, the Dairy Drive Campground for people living outside on the streets, in vehicles or on the streets will shut down in September.
Full disclosure: I am the Executive Director of Madison Street Medicine and we operate the city-sanctioned campground that is on property owned by the city. We do this with the help of our partners Kabba Recovery.
WHO STAYS AT THE CAMPGROUND?
The campground is only for people who would otherwise be unsheltered homeless, i.e. they don’t use the shelter. They are sleeping outside on the streets, in vehicles, in tents or other places not meant for human habitation.
Up until February of this year, people were chosen as follows:
- People staying in Reindahl Park in November 2021
- People staying at Hwy 30 in January 2022
- People who were staying at Reindahl Park in 2021 and then in the City Hotels that were closing in October 2022
- People with the highest vulnerability scores in the Homeless Services Consortium(most barriers to being successful in housing and most likely to die on the streets)
- People who previously stayed at the Dairy Drive Campground
WHAT SERVICES ARE OFFERED AT THE CAMPGROUND?
The campground is a bit of a untraditional setting because the folks that stay there haven’t been successful in more traditional programs. They generally don’t go to shelter for a variety of reasons and have not been interested or successful in other programs.
The campground offers:
- 8’x8′ Weatherproof Cabins
- Electricity
- Heat and air conditioning
- A door that locks and privacy
- A bed (actually 2 beds)
- Refrigerator, microwave
- Community Bathrooms – each with a shower, toilet and sink/mirror
- 2 ADA accessible
- 4 smaller restrooms
- Food
- We strive to provide 1 hot meal per day – food provided on site or at community meal sites
- Food pantry with food ordered from Second Harvest Foodbank available on site
- Rides to food pantries
- Food pantry deliveries
- Laundry – Monday and Friday rides to laundromat where we pay for laundry
- Transportation – We provide bus passes for all our campers, have a van for group transportation and also provide some cab rides when case managers can’t transport people to appointments.
- Case Management (Monday – Friday 10am – 5pm) and nights and weekends staff (Monday – Friday 5pm – 1 am, Saturday and Sundays 10am – 1am and staffing 1am. 5am throughout the week)
- Primarily focused on housing, mental health and substance use
- Helps with day to day issues – skill building, de-escalation, food planning, anger management, conflict resolution
- Also helps with anything that will help people be more successful in housing – resolving legal issues, job searching skills, applying for social security disability, getting driver’s license or id, getting social security cards,
- Harm Reduction – we have a strong harm reduction program
HOW SUCCESSFUL HAS THE PROGRAM BEEN?
We got the contract in October 2021 and it started November 1, 2021 and by November 15th we were set up and ready to move the first people in with a mostly new staff. Since its opening we have had 97 people stay there. 29 are still there, so that means 68 people have left the campground. Some have been there multiple times – they leave and come back for various reasons – healthcare, legal, treatment, lost housing, etc.
Sadly, too many people passed away before they got into housing. Three people passed away while staying at the campground.
When the 68 people left the campground, they went to the following places
- 42 (62%) went to housing
- 11 (16%) went to institutional settings
- 1 (1.5%) went to the hospital long term
- 1 (1.5%) went to long term care
- 1 (1.5%) went to treatment
- 8 (11.5%) went to jail
- 8 (12%) returned to houselessness
- 2 (3%) went to shelter
- 6 (9%) returned to the streets/tents
WHY IS IT CLOSING?/FUNDING
As of today, unless something changes, the campground will be shutting down on September 30th of this year. The campground had been funded with ARPA funds, or Covid relief funds, and those funds have run out.
This year we have
- $174,500 from Dane County
- $228,986 from the City of Madison
- $199,000 from HUD
So only $403,485 per year comes from local government and we have a grant that runs through August of 2026 for the rest.
Unless we can close that gap, find funding for the city costs of electricity, water, trash pickup and pest control plus find funding to close down the campground when it eventually closes, we cannot continue.
SO . . . HOW MANY UNITS HAVE BEEN LOST?
If you are following along with my blog posts for the last few days . . .
- 8 Porchlight SRO (Single Room Occupancy) units
- 11 – 15 Tellurian SRO units
- 32 Porchlight units (87 single room occupancy rooms (SROs) and 15 efficiency units)
- 20-40 Rethke/Enso units (and in reality, its higher than that as the units still sit empty while they are taking applications to fill them a year later)
- 29 Madison Street Medicine campground cabins
This brings the total up to 100-124 less places for single unhoused people in our community to sleep at night. Stay tuned, I’m not done yet!