Board allocates funds for shelter in Hot Springs
Space billed as nonprofit hub
HOT SPRINGS — The city identified the need for a central location where nonprofits can marshal their collective resources to serve the homeless at the poverty summit it convened almost two years ago.
City Manager Bill Burrough told the Hot Springs Board of Directors earlier this week that the coronavirus pandemic has provided the city the means to make that happen.
The city received $572,399 in U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act funding last year. In January, the board allocated $317,926 from the funding to put toward a quarantine shelter for homeless and low-income residents.
That money will be combined with $363,364 from the annual Community Development Block Grant the city receives as one of HUD’s more than 1,200 entitlement cities. The balance of the city’s $439,471 allocation for the federal fiscal year that ends in September will pay $76,104 to administer the annual allocation.
“That is a higher figure than we usually see for planning and administration,” Planning and Development Director Kathy Sellman told the board. “That cost was estimated based on the need to do substantial environmental investigation for a site that would be selected as a location for that shelter.”
Deputy City Manager Lance Spicer said Thursday the city is developing a request for proposals from realtors or brokers who can help it secure a location.
“At this point, we don’t have a specific location we’ve identified,” he said. “As part of HUD’s process, there has to be a good deal of due diligence and investigation from an environmental standpoint. There’s quite a bit that goes into it.”
The board typically distributes the city’s annual Community Development Block Grant allocation to more than a dozen applicants, but Burrough recommended earmarking the entirety of this year’s funding for a shelter. The board ranked programs for the homeless and low-income seventh out of the 18 goals and priorities it established for 2021.
It voted 5-1 earlier this week to adopt a 2021 Community Development Block Grant annual action plan focused entirely on a quarantine/ homeless shelter. District 3 Director Marcia Dobbs-Smith voted against the enabling resolution.
“If we want to tackle this problem we need to do it while we have over $300,000 to move into that, and with the additional CDBG money, we’re able to build a shelter,” Burrough told the board. “If we seriously want to make an impact in the homeless population within our community, we’ll never have a better chance, in my opinion, than what we’ll have tonight.”
The growing conspicuousness of panhandlers emboldened by a federal court’s invalidation of the state loitering statute brought homelessness into focus for the city. When attempts to address panhandling through regulation proved unsuccessful, with a federal judge striking down the city’s anti-begging ordinance in April 2019, the city shifted course.
It fostered collaboration between area nonprofits that serve the homeless, challenging them to develop a cooperative approach that addressed the underlying causes of homelessness, and started The Hope Works Jobs Experience Program in partnership with Jackson House.
Boyce Mitchell of Ouachita Behavioral Health and Wellness said a central location where nonprofits can provide services en masse rather than on an individual basis is needed.
“We have to have a hub for these folks to gather, so we can start giving them these resources they need in order to break the cycle of their situation,” said Mitchell, who is the area coordinator for the Project for Assistance in Transition from Homelessness federal grant.
Mitchell said he worked with 330 homeless people last year from Garland, Hot Spring and Clark counties and many were new to homelessness.
“When the pandemic hit, I was getting people who had never been homeless before and never been in danger of being homeless,” he said. “But when the pandemic shut everybody’s job down, and they were not able to continue to go to work, through no fault of their own, and they were trying to get on unemployment, the system was so clogged up with millions of people trying to get on it. It took two or three months to even get through to the unemployment.
“They became homeless. When you don’t have an address or cellphone anymore or access to a computer, it becomes even harder to do the things you need to do to get yourself out of that situation.”
Several people spoke against the annual action plan, telling the board a shelter can’t be a quarantine space and a hub for serving the homeless. Some questioned if setting up a shelter was within the city’s purview, or if the pandemic was a pretext for pursuing a “pet project” of the city.
“We are able to walk and chew gum at the same time,” Cooperative Christian Ministries and Clinic Executive Director Kim Carter told the board. “It will be a quarantine and a shelter. It can be both things. This will be able to provide a quarantine situation for those persons who are in need of quarantine, along with a place people can go and receive resources.”
Carter said the warming shelter the city helped organize at the First United Methodist Church Family Life Center during the winter storm in February showed the potential of a central location. Cooperative Christian Ministries and Clinic opened 37 cases, taking down information that will help people get driver’s licenses, birth certificates and other documentation needed for housing, employment and government assistance.
Mitchell said most of the city’s homeless set up camps in wooded areas. Cleaning up those sites costs the city money, Burrough told the board.
Burrough said homelessness shouldn’t be viewed as an abstract societal ill. It’s a problem that affects people, individuals whose identities shouldn’t be reduced to their unfortunate circumstances.