Monarch Housing’s Blog!

We found this story on Camden’s suburb across the Delaware River announcement of an increased effort to end homelessness of interest. As the Philadelphia Inquirer described it “teaming to battle homelessness, the city and the Philadelphia Housing Authority will begin providing 700 housing units and beds for homeless people, Mayor Nutter announced yesterday.” The size and scope of the plan along with its partnership with the Housing Authority make it not only newsworthy but a plan that we should watch closely. To end homelessness takes a united effort and what works in Philadelphia may be applicable to New Jersey.

To read the Philadelphia Inquirer article click here.

The highlights according to the article are:

To deal with the growing numbers, the Nutter-PHA plan calls for 500 PHA housing units to be given over to the homeless - 300 for families and 200 for individuals.

There’s no additional cost to PHA, spokesman Kirk Dorn said. The units will simply be designated for the mayor’s program, he added. Part of the $8.3 million cost will fund support services for people placed in the PHA units.

Although there is a 48,000-person waiting list for PHA housing, PHA does have the right to use the units “to tackle this crisis,” Dorn said.

He added that PHA is compelled to ask, “Where is the need the greatest?” Although people on the list are mostly the working poor and in genuine need, “they probably have some kind of housing already.”

The city’s contribution includes 200 units and beds. They consist of 125 units of “permanent supportive housing” - that is, a combination of housing and services to help people. Units would be added in 2010, 2011 and 2012.

The city will also be funding 50 “safe-haven” beds in various residential-treatment facilities for homeless people with acute addiction and behavioral-health problems. The city also has committed to providing an additional 25 beds, which could be used either for safe-haven beds or supportive housing.

To read the Philadelphia Inquirer article click here.

Philadelphia is not only our friendly neighbor to the west, it has also been a leading example of success at ending homelessness.  This success has recently been criticized as the numbers of homeless has increased. This posting, which is from KnowledgePlex, provides an update as well as links to two recent news stories.

An increase in people sleeping on Philadelphia streets has some people wondering whether the city’s widely emulated approach needs redoing, according to articles in the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News. An intensive outreach and service effort launched in the late 1990s earned the City of Brotherly Love a reputation as a national leader in efforts to reduce homelessness. In 1997, the annual average of people sleeping on the streets was 500, with that summer’s count reaching 842. The annual average fell to 203 in 2003 but “has been creeping back up,” the Daily News said. Recent counts have placed the number of street homeless at around 350, with some advocates saying the summer street population may be as high as 500. Still, some homeless advocates say the city’s model still works, having moved more than a quarter of the people who were on the streets last year to shelters or addiction treatment centers. 

Read the rest of this entry »