Permanent Supportive Housing

6.1. Invest in Permanent Supportive Housing through scattered-site leasing and affordable housing development for chronically homeless households.

Strategy

1. Invest $3.6 million in a scattered-site leasing program to serve 200 households. Partner with an experienced provider to implement and operate the program.

2. Use existing affordable housing resources and funding to increase a portion of set-asides for extremely low-income (ELI) and permanent supportive housing in new requests for funding.

3. Utilize available data through the PIT Count, Consolidated Plan, Annual Action Plan, and Coordinated Entry to track progress and determine ongoing needs

III. Report Design

The Coalition collected qualitative and quantitative data in its analysis of Manatee County. This report first examines community outreach conducted during the research phase, including surveys, interviews, and focus groups. The analysis then turns to a discussion of the effectiveness of the local housing crisis response system, a phrase used to describe the broader systems responsible for addressing homelessness. Then it offers insight into the challenges presented in Manatee’s system. Finally, a review of available data is included, including locally available data on homeless system performance measures, point-in-time count data, and data on the broader affordable housing environment.

It is important to note that Manatee County is included in a two-County Continuum of Care (CoC). This means that the CoC Lead Agency, Suncoast Partnership to End Homelessness, reports much of its data through combined Sarasota and Manatee counties data. Data has been disaggregated to separate the counties wherever possible. Finally, the report details specific recommendations and strategies, which we project to take up to three years (2023 through 2026) to implement. Each recommendation aims to bolster Manatee County’s housing crisis response system to become robust, driven by best practices, and fiscally sustainable. While the recommendations do contain specific strategies and funding recommendations, the Taskforce will be responsible for gaining consensus on recommendations and strategies, creating a detailed timeline, identifying funding and capacity, and creating specific tasks related to each strategy.

The authors provide full names with acronyms where possible. A list of terms and definitions can be found in Appendix B.