So many questions about this project. And so few answers. The lack of county transparency once again is alarming.
Here’s Heidi explaining the issues.
Ironically, this Gorman project wouldn’t help one single homeless family get into housing if it was available today. At the Homeless Issues Committee last night they gave a three month update of our numbers on homelessness and if we want to affect homelessness, we need to target the right needs – this isn’t it. That is not to say that we don’t need affordable housing across the board, we need 26,000 units, so there is ALWAYS a need for more, but if we’re spending precious few dollars on affordable housing, is this where we want to spend it?
Here’s those numbers comparing October 10, 2017 to January 8, 2018.
Singles held the same or saw decreases across the board, but are clearly the greatest need in the community.
– Slight decrease in single adults from 791 to 777
– – held steady at 276 chronically homeless individuals
– – single vets decreased from 42 to 31
– – youth decreased from 71 to 65
With families we are near to meeting our needs for housing in the community.
– Huge decrease from 146 to 90 families
– – An increase 18 to 19 chronically homeless families
– – We now have ZERO veteran families on our list – there were 4 three months ago.
And a quick reminder, “chronically homeless” is a very specific HUD definition of being homeless for an entire year or 4 times in 3 years AND having a disability.
