Mayor Chris Beutler today announced that local agencies serving the homeless have been awarded a record $1,630,861 million in federal grants. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) awards “Continuum of Care” grants through a competitive process. The grants provide permanent and transitional housing as well as job training, health care, mental health counseling, substance abuse treatment and child care.
Mayor Beutler said the latest efforts to count the homeless in Lincoln shows that 1,500 to 2,000 people are identified as homeless in the community.
“You can judge the strength of a community by how it takes care of those in need,” said Beutler. “We can take pride in how our City is responding to those families experiencing homelessness. Because of the excellent planning by the two dozen members of Lincoln’s Homeless Coalition, our community has continued to receive HUD funding for its key programs. The City also has been successful in obtaining HUD funding for new programs to meet the needs of our homeless population.”
A partnership between CenterPointe Inc. and the City of Lincoln for the Shelter Plus Care project will begin this spring and represents continuing efforts to meet the needs of the chronically homeless. The program received funding for four units of permanent housing. CenterPointe also will administer a grant of $185,591 to provide 30 units of permanent housing for chronically homeless individuals with serious mental illness or substance abuse disorders.
All other grants received by Lincoln agencies are renewals:
- CenterPointe, Inc. – $187,612 for its GlidePATH Transitional Housing Project (22 beds); and $443,273 for its Adult and Youth Residential Program (25 beds).
- Lincoln Action Program (LAP) – $449,539 for LAP’s Supportive Housing Project, which provides leasing assistance for 55 housing units across the City.
- Saint Monica’s – $140,456 for the Women in Transition program, which provides transitional housing and services for 13 women and their children.
- CEDARS Youth Services – $130,707 for the New Futures project which provides transitional housing for four homeless pregnant and parenting teen-agers and their children.
- Catholic Social Services – $93,683 for the Transitions project, which serves seven families.
The local agencies that provide services to those in need are members of the Lincoln Lancaster County Homeless Coalition, founded in the mid-1980s. The Coalition formed a Continuum of Care Planning and Evaluation Committee in 1996 to submit the application for federal funds, to identify service gaps, to coordinate the “Point in Time Count” of the homeless and to conduct peer review of service providers.
The total in grants awarded to Nebraska agencies is $4.678 million. Details on the HUD grants can be found at www.hud.gov/offices/cpd/homeless/budget.