This one would double the numbers I’ve blogged about in the last 5 posts – it would be 214-238 less opportunities for houseless people to be housed.
LOCAL DECISIONS
So far, the lost of places for unhoused people to sleep indoors are mostly happening, as a result of local decisions making by nonprofits and local government and are happening, except maybe the campground – but that is a long shot.
- 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
FEDERAL SHITSHOW
At the federal government level – there is so much going on that I can’t . . . I just can’t. That would be another 2,593,342,037,628,459 blog posts of things Trump threatens, lawsuits that follow and judicial decisions to overrule the illegal activities. I will likely touch on some of this in future posts but its not my main focus. I tend to focus locally where we have some hope of influence over decision making.
However . . . this AP article caught my eye the other day. It explains that the Emergency Housing Vouchers that were issued during COVID are going to stop being funded. There vouchers allow tenants to pay 30% of their income toward the rent and the government pays the landlord the remaining portion. If these vouchers are lost “It would be among the largest one-time losses of rental assistance in the U.S., analysts say, and the ensuing evictions could churn these people — after several years of rebuilding their lives — back onto the street or back into abusive relationships.” according to the article.
LOCAL IMPACT
Locally, we have 114 of these vouchers for both families and singles. The City of Madison housing authority, called the CDA or Community Development Authority has 69 of these vouchers and the Dane County Housing Authority has 45. In our community the vouchers were used for “move-on” strategy to allow people who were stabilized in housing and in a unit that the housing subsidy required you to stay where you are to continue to get it. These vouchers allowed those folks to move to any qualified unit with a housing voucher and opened up a current unit for another person. The breakdown looked something like this in April 2022:
DCHA (45 vouchers)
- 24 went to “move-on” efforts for people who previously experienced houselessness
- 17 went to people currently experiencing houselessness
- 4 applications still being processed
CDA (69 vouchers)
- 35 went to “move-on” efforts for people who previously experienced houselessness
- 10 went to people currently experiencing houselessness
- 2 people ported (transferred their voucher) from another community
- 6 applications were still being processed and I’m not sure what happened with the rest.
At this time, we don’t quite have 114 vouchers for this purpose. Some people left the community, some poeple lost their voucher and yet others passed away. Seems as tho there will be funding for these vouchers through 2026 according to HUD. The plan was to trasition these folks to regular vouchers over time through the end of the decade so we wouldn’t feel this sharp loss, but now we have 3-4 years less to accomplish that. As with many things federal government, who knows what might happen.
Regardless, if folks lose this subsidy . . . chances as high that many of them will return to houselessness. Hopefully the folks from the “move-on” group continued to be stable and may be able to pay more of their rent, but in this housing market, that’s probably asking alot.
So . . . I’m sorry, I don’t have a lot of good news. See you tomorrow with more!