Chattanooga making emergency allocation to fund homeless housing
The city of Chattanooga will make an emergency allocation of up to $49,500 to fund temporary shelter for dozens of people who were displaced after a homeless encampment downtown was shut down earlier this month.
More than 130 homeless men and women were told they had to relocate from a lot behind a city-owned wellness center on East 11th Street, saying the land was contaminated after years of being used as a waste dump decades ago.
The city originally provided $15,000 to the Chattanooga Community Kitchen to reopen an emergency cold weather shelter for two weeks to house people, but that mantle will now be carried by the Salvation Army, which is receiving this second allocation. The kitchen has housed an average of 60 people per night, according to the city.
Employees in Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke’s office briefed the city council during a strategic session on Tuesday afternoon, proposing that the city extend temporary shelter to those individuals displaced by the action until June 30 for an estimated cost of $750 a night.
“That total cost was calculated assuming that all 60 people live there for the duration,” said Stacy Richardson, Berke’s chief of staff. “We anticipate scaling that down over time as people are moved out and into permanent housing.”
More than half of the people displaced earlier this month applied for permanent housing through the Chattanooga Housing Authority, which is working to process those requests as quickly as possible, but those efforts are hampered by a lack of housing options.
As of Tuesday afternoon, 11 people have been moved into housing and another 27 have been approved and are waiting to move into units that have yet to become available. City officials hope to continue taking advantage of the situation and house as many people as possible in one fell swoop.
“We’re all really trying to turn a crisis into an opportunity here for people that wouldn’t have had this resource otherwise,” said Sam Wolfe, the city’s homeless program coordinator.