Stimulus funding recommendations

Just when you think the Community Development Block Grant stories are done, we get another round of funding courtesy of the federal stimulus package. I'll be mulling over some of the recommendations from Athens-Clarke County's Human and Economic Development organization in some coming posts, but I'll start with the Homeless Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing funding.

The intial recommendation from HED, presented to the Athens-Clarke County Commission last night, allocated the $604,969 evenly among three primary organizations - The Stable Foundation, AIDS Athens and Advantage Behavioral Health Systems. This was done, I presume, largely because those three agencies are three of the four which have programs targeted toward rapid re-housing (Project Safe being the other). While well-intentioned, I personally think this recommendation is flawed (though, in a broader sense, the narrow definition of usage of the funds - which restricts them, for all practical purposes, to rent subsidies and utilities - is flawed as well).

Speaking as a board member of TSF, I'd be hesitant to accept a chunk of funding that large. We're still in the incubation status (as part of the Non-Profit Development Alliance run by Community Connection of Northeast Georgia), and the proposed $191,573 is roughly three times the size of our existing budget ... which is literally our first budget.

During last night's work session, however, some commissioners recommended changes to the proposal. And one of the ideas involved that has much merit would be allocating the lump sum of funding to one agency - Community Connection was recommended - for them to either manage a program that would, in essence, act as a landlord for those needing this service or allocate the resources to other agencies and the existing populations they serve.

I like this concept. And I like it largely because it attempts to increase capacity and use an existing non-profit to partner with other non-profits in addressing this problem.

Ideally, it would be nice for whatever program is drawn up to take a serious approach to lopping our homeless number down. For instance, the most recent homeless count showed that there were approximately 450 homeless persons in Athens-Clarke County. Out of that number, 12 were unsheltered, temporarily homeless families.

Why not put this funding to use and make it live up to its name by putting those 12 families into housing? And then provide funds to existing service providers to expand their capacity and service provision, thus minimizing duplication of services?

This is temporary money, but let's think about utilizing it in a way that provide a permanent benefit.