Dixon said solving the problem does not just involve building more housing, they need to get many people mental health and substance abuse treatment as well so they can be successful.
“We have to have a coordinator that wraps their arms around all these different things that are going on in this new laser focused group, but also manages the outcomes. It can’t be left to the agencies that are reporting,” Dixon said and later added, “This independent person that fills this role will be a coordinator for all these services, they will be the one that’s digging in and asking the tough questions of what’s the outcome, how many (people) have you had, how much did it cost for treatment, how much is that for housing. This person will not be connected to anybody, they’ll be the auditor. That way we can make sure we’re getting the most for our dollars.”
The commissioners have said other local jurisdictions, state and federal lawmakers must contribute their time and money to this effort. The county plans to commit funds from several revenue sources. The Butler County Mental Health and Addiction Recovery Services Board just passed a new $6.6 million levy and Dixon said they can use some of that for the cause.
Plus County Administrator Judi Boyko said the county also has $3.5 million of national opioid litigation settlement money in the bank and they will received roughly $1.2 million annually for the next decade; $3.5 million in one-time, American Rescue Plan Act HOME funding and the county receives roughly $1 million annually in federal HOME Investment Partnership Program funding to invest in affordable housing for low-income households.
“When you start adding these numbers up it’s a pretty substantial amount,” Dixon said. “I think our job and the job of this committee and this group is to figure out how we can redirect these funds and have a real impact and have some way of measuring the success of these programs. That’s part of the challenge.”
Kathy Becker, director of law enforcement and criminal justice for Access Counseling, who has helped the homeless for decades, told the commissioners they’ve “hit the nail on the head” with this approach because “we all have our own little fiefdoms and it’s not going to work that way because they are all our citizens and we have to work together to find a solution.”
“If any money is involved we have to look at accountability, you are so on target,” she said. “Because people want to put their hand out but they don’t want to report the outcomes and outcomes are not always good. But when an agency is reporting their own outcomes we’re going to look at tweaking them a little bit to make them look better, so I think you’ve hit the nail on the head.”
In order to get federal funding through the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) the county needs to do a “point in time (PIT) count annually. According to the 2019 PIT count — which was the last available — there were 166 people in emergency shelters, 86 unsheltered people and 46 in transitional housing for a total 298. The point in time count is when the homeless living on the streets are counted on a given night in January, as mandated by HUD.
A small independent homeless work group lead by Commissioner Cindy Carpenter and others, has been meeting for years on the issue. They issued a report last summer that shows 146 unsheltered individuals and 227 in emergency and transitional housing for a total PIT count of 373 this year, but they say the numbers likely don’t tell the true story.
Carpenter noted at the previous meeting their expert said 47 additional emergency shelter beds are needed and 250 more permanent supportive housing units are required. The Permanent Supportive Housing program — known locally as Shelter Plus Care — provides rental assistance and treatment for the homeless who also suffer from mental illness, the county currently has 113 units at a cost $1.16 million.
Boyko ticked off five “common themes” identified by various stakeholders at the previous summit that the commissioners want to incorporate in the plan:
- Expand affordable housing options and opportunities.
- Optimize services for case management with a focus on results.
- Deploy a countywide approach while respecting individual needs of each community.
- Focus on treatment for stabilization of mental illness and substance abuse within the homeless population.
- Develop a metric-driven program to measure success of publicly funded assistance and to make providers accountable.
Oxford Assistant Manager Jessica Greene said she was glad to hear there is money available to address the broader issues.
“The biggest issue in my opinion is that wrap around service and care to help them stay housed and get the treatment they need,” she said. “I’m particularly interested in funding case management and how local communities through their local partners or county partners can apply for that funding. Particularly with that opioid funding lasting for 10 years, kind of ongoing, maybe there’s something we can apply to for ongoing case management because that is hardest thing for a local city to pay for.”
Carpenter’s work group had suggested convening a Butler County Housing Solutions Board, including representatives from the four big cities, other county agencies like Job and Family Services, courts and people who are in the trenches like the Serve City shelter.
Dixon told the Journal-News they want the larger group, involving the entire county to participate and serve on subcommittees to delve into various aspects of this endeavor and the coordinator will marshal all those efforts. They haven’t discussed a salary yet but they want to hire in January if possible.
Boyko said they welcome input but they believe the main subcommittees should include one for law enforcement; a group to inventory current resources like substance abuse and mental health providers “that can catalog everything” and another committee to define success measures. She said they hope to make committee assignments in the first quarter of next year.
Commissioner T.C. Rogers said he was going to be “bold and more specific” about how they want this operation to go.
“I think we determined we want to get this coordinator,” he said. “But I’d like to make a goal of finding the needs of 30 of the most mentally impacted people by the end of six months to have them taken care of.”
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