Homeless service coordinators, city discuss a permanent shelter before end of the year
Representatives of four nonprofit groups dedicated to helping the homeless population are in discussions with the city about partnering on a permanent homeless shelter before the end of the year.
Four coordinators behind an emergency warming shelter made available to the local homeless population during February’s inclement weather recently sat down with The Sentinel-Record to discuss the need for a permanent shelter that offers a place for “our homeless neighbors” to lay their heads while also providing services to assist in rehabilitating their lives.
City Manager Bill Burrough said the city supports their endeavors, but would not be involved in operating the shelter.
“It actually is not the city’s responsibility to come up with a shelter,” coordinator Sally Carder said. “They are going far and above really what they should do. We’re working with them, and God bless them … one of their 2021 goals is to try to find a solution to homelessness. And they can’t do it by themselves.”
Burrough said with the Hot Springs Board of Directors making homeless services one of their “high priority goals” for 2021, he is hopeful to use one year’s portion of Community Development Block Grant funds to secure a shelter location.
“Right now, what we have, is about $317,000 in CDBG-CV grant funds, and that is a special earmarked amount of money that the federal government gave as a CDBG COVID-related offense,” he said. “So, with that money, we’re trying to find a building that can be a tempo
rary shelter in case we have to quarantine or do any of those efforts with the homeless population. I’m hoping that if we’re able to secure something on a temporary basis, to back in and use some of the regular CDBG grant funds to make that a permanent establishment.”
Burrough said he is going to do “everything in (his) power” to help establish a permanent homeless shelter by the end of the year, but noted the city does not want to operate it.
“That’s not what cities primarily do; we’re about providing basic services,” he said. “But we want to partner with nonprofits such as St. Luke’s Ministry or (Cooperative Christian Ministries and Clinic) or Ouachita Behavioral — whoever it may be — United Way; and my thought is we will try to establish a facility and then have that managed and operated under an umbrella of each one of those.”
While the city puts forth the effort to secure a location, the shelter coordinators are banding their nonprofits together to create a foundation to handle the intricacies of its operation.
Shelter coordinators include Carder and Kathy Randel with St. Luke’s Homeless Outreach Ministry, CCMC Executive Director Kim Carter and Trish Nooner with Full Circle Missions.
“A shelter is the beginning to fixing this problem,” Carder said.
“What a shelter is going to do,” Carter said, “is it’s going to provide a place where we can actually bring people in, we can understand their needs better. And then we’re able to not just find housing, of course, housing is our goal, but we’ve also got to get all those other things that support them, once they get in housing.”
“The main thing a shelter is going to do,” Carder said, “is be a place where they come and where we have access to them and we can make the services available to them. It gives everybody access.”
Carder said services will include things like rehabilitation, food planning, mental health services, and assistance in things like getting an ID or birth certificate so they can move forward in getting jobs and housing.
“It’s not going to be a place where they live, it’s a transitional part,” Carder said.
As for the shelter’s funding, Carter said it would have to be a “community investment.” The community would have to “buy-in” to the idea, and “buyin” is what they witnessed firsthand with the warming shelter recently held.
The four women named countless organizations that pitched in to orchestrate the warming shelter, providing shelter, food, medical assistance, and other needs to local homeless for nine days.
Burrough said just from witnessing the success the warming shelter had in February, he feels good about the potential of a permanent shelter.
“We had a couple of physicians there that were doing mental assessments and they were able to get follow-up appointments, we were able to get them bus passes, we had one gentleman that went into the Teen Challenge organization,” he said. “I think you’ve got to start somewhere, and I think that’s a good grassroots effort.”
“I’m hoping to see (a permanent shelter) come to fruition; it’s a goal,” Burrough said. “It doesn’t mean it’s going to happen, but it’s certainly one that we’ll be working on throughout the year.”