MORE HOMELESS, LESS HELP Last year, many questioned Opening Doors' PIT count. Community Health CEO Chandra Smiley told the Board of County Commissioners that her organization served the health needs of more than 7,000 homeless people in the area in 2021 and expressed doubts about the Opening Doors 2022 count of 727. Escambia County Administrator Wes Moreno agreed. "The numbers for the count, they just seem extremely low," Moreno said. The additional help from the county and groups like Community Health might have made a difference this year, but Smiley still believes the number is low. She told Inweekly, "It's way understated. We had a more coordinated effort in Escambia County, but Santa Rosa is way understated. And we didn't even really get to the north part of Escambia County like we really should have. So, it's still significantly low."
By Rick Outzen Escambia and Santa Rosa counties have more homeless people and fewer dollars to help struggling families pay their rent and utility bills. Even as the area's economy continues to rise, parts of our community are being left behind as inflation and housing devour more of payroll checks. Opening Doors of Northwest Florida revealed at its April general coalition meeting that the 2023 Point-in-Time count tallied 1,180 homeless individuals in the two-county area, a 62% jump from last year and the highest number since 2007. The previous record was 1,160 in 2010. The count is an annual exercise done in January that assesses the local homeless population. The count is conducted in communities across the country, with the data then reported to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. In the past, HUD has used the information when determining its fund allocations to address the needs of homeless communities in varying areas, but Opening Doors PIT Coordinator Martika Baker says that is no longer the case.
88
"HUD does not award us based on the number of people we count for the PIT," Baker said at the meeting. "The goal for communities is to identify the number of people who are homeless, and we build a collaboration plan to address homelessness in our community." The "we" is the Continuum of Care that Opening Doors runs for Escambia and Santa Rosa counties. The CoC is charged with establishing and operating a coordinated entry system that provides a process for conducting comprehensive entries of housing and services needs for individuals and families. A considerable part of the meeting was devoted to rehashing the coordinated entry system that HUD mandated five years ago but still hasn't been fully implemented locally. Baker was pleased with the 2023 PIT count. "We did a wonderful thing this year with PIT. We are thankful to BRACE, Emergency Management, Code Enforcement and Community Health Northwest Florida for helping us with Escambia County's coverage of the unsheltered count," Baker said. "The partnership with 90 Works helped us to push further into Santa Rosa County than we've probably ever done before."
ASSISTANCE SHUTDOWN
As we move to get better at reporting our homeless population, federal funds to help families keep their shelter dried up in April. Opening Doors has exceeded the number of applications for rent, utility and deposit assistance, according to its website. New applications for assistance were closed April 13, and the program won't resume until July. At the meeting, Opening Doors offered few suggestions for attendees to help their clients in May and June. Inweekly checked with Doug Brown, the Community Action Program (CAP) executive director, whose nonprofit also provides assistance. He had positive news. Thanks to Sen. Doug Broxson and Rep. Alex Andrade, the CAP will have assistance funds to help locals with rent and utilities, Brown said. "We have been informed that a budget resolution has been reached that has fixed funding issue effective immediately," Brown said. "We should be made whole on all obligations as quickly as their finance department does its processing." He added, "It's a huge, huge, huge fix. Rep. Andrade, who heads up the subcommittee for
DEO (Department of Economic Opportunity), and Sen. Broxson, who heads up Senate Appropriations, were the key champions to getting this resolution." DEO administers four programs funded with federal dollars—Community Services Block Grant, Low Income Home Energy Assistance, Low Income Water Assistance and the Weatherization programs. "Those four programs are funded from the Fed, and then Tallahassee, by population, directs those dollars to each county," Brown said. CAP has been running those programs since its inception. "It's cost reimbursement. We all do the work, invoice DEO, and the state promises to pay us within a certain time." "We spent beyond that authority that the legislature had given them, and DEO failed to project that the bank account was getting low because there's folks using these programs around the state," Brown said. "On Good Friday, DEO dropped this bomb. Agencies literally shut down operations immediately." CAP had to rush to submit all its vouchers by April 13 to be considered for reimbursement, Brown said. "That led to the huge scramble to get payments in but with no expectation of when we would get those funds back. At the same time, those pledges are still pending at these utility companies. We were on the hook to the utility company with a promise to them because we've got a promise from the state." Fortunately, Andrade, Broxson and other lawmakers fixed DEO's poor process, and funds became available. Andrade shrugged off the praise from Brown. "A lot of people helped with this," Andrade told Inweekly. "These assistance programs are important because they offer a hand up to people." Unfortunately, Brown said the budget resolution would not help Opening Doors because its funding comes from a different pot of money. CAP will reopen its assistance programs once DEO begins processing its outstanding reimbursement requests. {in} To learn more about CAP, visit capc-pensacola.org. The PIT count can be found at openingdoorsnwfl.org.
inweekly.net