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Several agencies in Greene, Christian, and Webster counties will be receiving some financial help thanks to a grant given by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. KSMU’s Chasity Mayes tells us how the organizations were selected and how they plan to spend the almost 1 million dollar check.
The grant, totaling 881,000 dollars, is going to help with the increasing demand for housing services within the Ozarks homeless population.
Michelle Garand is the director of the community collaborative initiative at Community Partnership of the Ozarks. She says the community has benefited from this grant before.
“We have received this funding for over a decade or even longer, through the continuum of care initiative. The continuum of care is a HUD initiative where all of those HUD funded agencies come together at local continuum levels and they submit a consolidated application,” says Garand.
Some of the local organizations benefiting from the grant include the Salvation Army, The Kitchen, and Harmony House. Garand says the organizations already have plans on how the money will be used.
“The Kitchen will use the money for support of services, so they’ll be able to assist their clients with all of the case management services and the support that are needed to be in place like education, job training and job connections as well as child care. The Salvation Army will use their funding for their family enrichment center. And then all other funding goes directly to transitional housing. So, the housing authority provides apartment space and then OACAC through the Department of Mental Health and Harmony House all use those for transitional and permanent housing,” says Garand.
Garand also says that the funding wouldn’t be an option if a local continuum of care wasn’t available. She says this grant is just once piece of what the community can do to address homelessness. Currently, Community Partnership meets once a month to discuss new ways to address this issue. It’s all part of a 10 year plan to put an end to homelessness in the Ozarks.
For KSMU News, I’m Chasity Mayes.