Anewly established nonprofit organization is working collaboratively with Middlesex County to stop area homelessness before the year 2020.
Coming Home of Middlesex County was created to implement the county’s 10-year plan to stop chronic and family homelessness in part by providing permanent housing and economic opportunities, creating a single point of entry for those seeking help, and increasing education and advocacy.
“We are really moving from just managing homelessness to actually doing something about it, because what homeless people actually need is a home,” said Bridget Stillwell Kennedy, director of the Division of Social Work Services for the county’s Department of Human Services.
Although the agency is a separate entity, it works in collaboration with the Middlesex County Housing Continuum of Care to allocate funds provided by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The funds are used for a variety of purposes dedicated to stopping homelessness and creating permanent housing.
County officials began work on a plan to stop homelessness long before Coming Home of Middlesex County’s establishment, but decided it was necessary to create an organization that solely concentrated on implementing the 10-year goal. The organization had its first meeting at the Middlesex County Fire Academy in Sayreville in September.
“We had been working on [the plan] for quite a while,” Kennedy said. “We had the annual meeting of the organization and sort of publicly unveiled the plan and reported on progress we’ve made on implementing the 10-year plan.”
Although Middlesex County is already densely populated, the 10-year plan will focus on creating 520 units of permanent affordable and/or supportive housing.
“That’s why we have a multipronged approach. We know there’s not a whole lot of vacant land in [the county] that we can purchase to do new construction,” Kennedy said. “We don’t have a single focus on how we’re going to get those units. We’re trying to be flexible.”
One way being considered is through the construction of 120 units of affordable housing, in which 25 percent would be set aside for the chronically homeless, on the remaining 24 acres at Camp Kilmer in Edison, according to Kennedy. Although HUD approved the plan, construction won’t begin until the Army vacates the area in 2011.
At present, the homeless and shelter system is inefficient in Middlesex County and needs to be improved, according to Kennedy, and that is what the organization hopes to accomplish.
“Part of what happens right now is we have emergency shelter systems, and in Middlesex County we actually assign people case managers and they have to come up with their own plan of what they need, to ensure they won’t be homeless again,” she said. “But our shelter system is always pretty much filled.”
If there are no vacancies in the shelters, the organization will put the homeless up in a hotel or motel until the next business day when social service agencies are open.
“And what we’re saying is that it is not a permanent solution,” she said. “What we want to do is move more quickly to get them into permanent housing or supportive housing for as long as they need that support.”
Kennedy said a variety of factors, including the severity of the homelessness or other situations, determine the amount of time a person should receive support.
“If we can catch them very quickly, when they first become homeless, and do a good assessment, we may find that if we just get them that one or two months of rent so they can put that money in for a security deposit, they may not need anything else,” she said. “There are other people, depending on the situations in their families and the longer they are homeless, who may need support longer.”
Once the homeless person attains sustainability, they may no longer need services, though in some situations, such as with persisting medical conditions, they may require services for the rest of their lives, Kennedy said. Another important aspect of the 10-year plan is the creation of a “Single Point of Entry” program to simplify the process for homeless people seeking help.
“We want to have a more formalized system so you can come in and get assistance and be assigned someone to follow along with whatever your needs are. You are in the system and now you are being taken care of,” Kennedy said. “We want to simplify it so we have a better handle on them.”
Kennedy said right now there is no place to go directly, but the 10-year plan is looking to set up a direct place where an immediate assessment can be completed and a permanent case manager can be issued. A person who calls the county’s Homeless Hotline will be given a place in the shelter, but if the shelter is full, they will be set up in a hotel or motel until a case manager can meet them, she said.
This will help the organization keep track of the homeless, ensure they are receiving the help they need, “and to give them some hope,” Kennedy said. “To say, ‘Things are going to get better, just stay here for the time being.’”
The last two aspects of the 10-year plan are to prevent homelessness and increase economic opportunities.
“We want to get a better handle on closing the front door of homelessness,” said Kennedy. “If we can prevent people from becoming homeless, that’s the perfect scenario and we need to do a better job of that. We need to invent that intervention so we can help them out on a more permanent basis.”
Coming Home of Middlesex hopes to accomplish its preventative goal by promoting public education and economic opportunity. The three-pronged approach to increasing economic opportunity involves increasing skills for those whose primary reason for being homeless is because they lost their job; providing jobs for people in all fields; and saving taxpayers money by decreasing the amount of homeless people that may seek costly measures for help, such as visiting the emergency room on an unbearably cold night, according to Kennedy.
Especially in the current economic downturn, where people are experiencing homelessness for the first time due to layoffs and foreclosures, it is important to provide specialized skills so they may re-enter the job market at an advantage.
“Some people who lost their jobs may need to be encouraged so that they can increase their skills so they can get a better job and can be sustainable themselves without any mainstream resources for the people who really have special needs,” she said. “It’s not just for the homeless person or the taxpayer but hopefully it’s for the overall economy as well.”
Due to the current status of the economy, people have been finding themselves in a situation of homelessness in a way they never have before, said Kennedy.
“There are some people who are facing issues that they never thought they would face before, so although there’s additional [stimulus] dollars coming in, there’s more people that are afraid of losing their homes, or what have you, so a lot of these new dollars coming in are pinpointed to people who are facing homelessness for the first time ever,” she said.
Executive board members of Coming Home include Middlesex County Freeholder Blanquita Valenti, secretary-treasurer; Robert Mulcahy, chair; Elizabeth Hance, vice chair; elected officials and representatives of the corporate, private and nonprofit sectors; and people who have been homeless.
Those who may find themselves in need should call InfoLine of Central Jersey at 888- 908-4636 to be placed in a shelter and given a case manager. For more information, visit the website at www.cominghomemiddlesex. org.