Leaders to Unveil Rapid Rehousing Initiative

Todays News

Community leaders say a new venture will create a more efficient way to get individuals off the streets and into permanent housing. Philanthropic leaders this morning will announce a $1-million investment in rapid rehousing for those defined by Housing and Urban Development as chronically homeless. Foundations will fund a new partnership with St. Vincent de Paul CARES, a social services agency based out of St. Petersburg and the largest rapid rehousing provider in Florida. 

The effort expects to pull 135 individuals now living without homes in Sarasota County and get them set up in apartment units scattered throughout the region. The rehousing initiative will target chronically homeless, defined by Housing and Urban Development guidelines as those living continuously in homeless conditions for a year or those with some disabling condition who have four episodes of homelessness over three years.

Ed DeMarco, CEO of the Suncoast Partnership to End Homeless, hopes the program will be the “tipping point” in managing chronic homelessness. This new venture means additional dollars and manpower to find the chronically homeless and move them into housing. Then, case workers will provide “wraparound services” from skills and job training to alcohol and drug rehabilitation. 

The approach aims to make more meaningful progress in ending homelessness. “Everyone has been doing good work for years,” DeMarco says. “It’s not a matter of effort. It’s a matter of focus.” This launch happens as a taskforce for the Suncoast Partnership makes a renewed effort at addressing homeless populations in Sarasota and Manatee counties.

Michael Raposa, CEO of St. Vincent de Paul CARES, says the new program intends to remove as many barriers as possible to individuals, especially those who may be ineligible for other social services. “You don’t need to be clean or sober. You don’t need a job,” he says. “This is a holistic approach to ending homelessness for this client.” 

Jon Thaxton, the Gulf Coast Community Foundation’s senior vice president for community investment, says the new effort represents the culmination of a year of dialogue between independent sector and government leaders. The new program, which will provide access points throughout the county, builds on the success of local law enforcement Homeless Outreach Teams. The HOT teams in the city of Sarasota and in Sarasota County reach out directly to homeless individuals to connect them with social services. Thaxton says those teams, along with recent contracting by the city of emergency shelter beds at the Salvation Army, make housing the next appropriate component.

Raposa says the goal of rapid rehousing will be to get individuals into apartments within 30 days of accessing the program, though he noted it could take time to reach that level of efficiency. A similar effort by the organization in Pinellas County over the years has cut rehousing times from about 60 days in 2012 to about 33 days now. St. Vincent de Paul CARES currently offers rapid rehousing services in Pinellas, Hillsborough, Polk and Pasco counties, serving a 3,500-square-mile area already.

The $1-million investment in this new program draws from an investment by an anonymous donor to the Gulf Coast Community Foundation. A $500,000 donation from that individual is being leveraged with another $500,000 being contributed by donors to the Community Foundation of Sarasota County. Thaxton expects the program will benefit far more than those chronically homeless individuals now living in Sarasota County.

“I cannot tell you how many hours of work are invested in this partnership,” Thaxton says. “This issue (homelessness) has a demonstrable impact on our local economy, creating a deterrent to doing business downtown. It’s amazingly costly to law enforcement, the judicial system, Sarasota Memorial Hospital, other healthcare providers. We are spending tons of money, and it’s a recurring thing every year.

“But frankly, what’s motivating this working group is this is morally the right thing to do. You have individuals with the most suffering, debilitating illnesses, continuing on a path toward decline, and this is a moral intervention.”

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