Coordinator for the homeless starts anew

Board chair: It’s been ‘dysfunctional’

SPRINGDALE — The board tasked with coordinating the fight against homelessness in Northwest Arkansas failed and is starting anew, the chairman of that group told a public meeting Thursday.

“It has been dysfunctional,” Angela Belford of Fayetteville confirmed in an interview about the Northwest Arkansas Continuum of Care. She became chairwoman of the group this week. She made her remarks at a monthly meeting of the Northwest Arkansas Reentry Coalition, which helps state prisoners reintegrate into society. The group met Thursday at the coalition’s Returning Home NWA center in Springdale.

The continuum is a coordinating group of organizations helping homeless people in Benton, Washington, Carroll and Madison counties. “The truth is that whoever got the most HUD dollars ran the show,” Belford told the meeting, attended by at least 50 representatives of local groups and other interested parties. She referred to federal Department of Housing and Urban Development spending in the region among the various continuum members. There

was very little coordination done. “We were all throwing rocks in the pond,” she said.

Solomon Burchfield, director of operations at 7 Hills Homeless Center, and Joe Bruton, a founding member of the Reentry Coalition, agreed with Belford the continuum needs an overall plan, and its past is something that it needs to overcome. The continuum is drafting a plan now, similar to one that solved the homelessness problem in Mobile, Ala., and is showing similar results other cities such as Gulfport, Miss., Belford said.

Groups such as the continuum are set up as required by HUD guidelines. The continuum receives $382,645 from HUD directly, according to group figures. About 30 organizations in Northwest Arkansas that provide some kind of housing are supposed to be coordinated though the group.

A major regional facility for homeless people was saved from foreclosure recently only by last-hour, anonymous donations. The 7 Hills group operating the day center providing a place to shower, get a meal and do necessary tasks such as filling out job applications had $325,000 in loan payments due May 25. The facility serves about 2,000 people a year, according to 7 Hills figures. The group’s board president told the Fayetteville City Council on May 30 a group of “angels” agreed to take over the loan from the bank it was owed and refinance 7 Hills debt on terms it could manage.

The lack of coordination forces homeless people, for instance, to fill out applications at each separate charity or program offering relief, Belford said. Not only is this a laborious process for those in need, it creates a useless paperwork burden for the groups trying to help, she said, and others agreed. What is needed is a single application process with each applicant, whether individual or family, scored on its need. That score will account for the time the applicant has spent waiting, but will not be as much like a first-comefirst-served system in place now, Belford said. Applicants on the list can then be sorted by score, with the most urgent needs rising to the top. Other regions have adopted and refined such systems already, she said.

The privacy of clients and “protecting the data of our most vulnerable people” also is a concern, but those concerns have been successfully met in other areas, Belford said.

Belford is the chief executive officer of the Belford Group, a regional marketing company. She was homeless as a teen, she told the meeting Thursday. When she was a child, her family once lived out of a station wagon in Oklahoma and was evicted twice in eight months while in Northwest Arkansas.

Homelessness in Northwest Arkansas can be solved, as it has been in Mobile and elsewhere, by 2025 if the Continuum of Care can get on track and prove to Northwest Arkansas residents it deserves support, Belford said. The approach she has seen in other states that impressed her most is long-term but uses a “100-day action cycle” to build momentum and show results.

Groups such as the continuum are set up as required by HUD guidelines. The continuum receives $382,645 from HUD directly, according to group figures. About 30 organizations in Northwest Arkansas that provide some kind of housing are supposed to be coordinated though the group.