For this Sense of Community segment, we’re hearing from advocates who have proposed an idea to Springfield and Greene County officials: they want to create a safe, healthy place for low-income residents to transition from homelessness into permanent housing.
“The routines for what we have to do now [aren't] really helping anything for me. So, I mean, I have the finances to move somewhere, I just can’t get anybody to approve me,” said Debbie Tyre, an unsheltered resident of Springfield. She says she became homeless after her roommate died, leading to her eviction from a rental place.
Now, she’s finding that Springfield has a severe shortage of low-income housing, which is needed to help solve the problem of homelessness.
The Connecting Grounds Church has been serving the homeless community through outreach since launching in 2018. One of of its latest efforts is to propose a plan: specifically, the Roots of Community program, a housing community that would meet several needs in Springfield to reduce the number of people living without shelter.
Katie Kring is a homeless advocate and the director of the Springfield Street Choir. She supports the Roots of Community proposal.
“Roots of Community is a data-based solution to fill in a lot of the gaps that exist in Springfield’s current system of addressing homelessness and helping people make the transitions out of it. We have some pieces of the puzzle that exist right now in Springfield, but something that brings all of them together and really supports people as they move from the homeless stage of their lives into the next stage of their lives, does not really exist,” Kring said.
The big picture of this plan is to create two transitional sheltering campuses in Springfield: one for families, and the other for single adults and couples without kids.
One of the main goals is to bring stability and security to people transitioning out of homelessness until they can figure out their next steps. In other words, it gives a person a short-term solution so they can figure out the best-case, long-term solution for their life.
Christy Love is the pastor of The Connecting Grounds Church, a major force behind this proposal.
“This program is designed to be transitional, supportive sheltering. So that, individuals who are experiencing homelessness in some capacity in Springfield, can come and receive support services, help getting back onto their feet, navigating programs and social services, job training and medical hurdles. All those different kinds of things, which are often barriers to people who often need to dig out of those cycles, that they get trapped in so easily when we are unsheltered,” Love said.
The shelter could provide health care and legal services. There would also be job skill training programs and coaches that would help people find a job.
The City of Springfield has acknowledged that there’s a severe shortage of affordable housing units needed to fix its homelessness problem. But it isn’t sold yet on the specific Roots of Community proposal.
We asked city officials for their response to this idea.
City spokeswoman Cora Scott said city officials will consider it—but they are also looking at other solutions. In an email, Scott said, “We also have other proposals regarding homelessness from the Ozarks Alliance to End Homelessness, which includes 35 agencies working together to end homelessness.”
The Roots of Community proposal would need zoning approvals and financing through ARPA or other private funds, according to Scott. Land would also need to be purchased.
The Connecting Grounds Church has outlined a 5-year plan to have both buildings completed by 2027.
Once funding is granted, Katie Kring thinks the rest of the plan would follow quickly—and she says the city would get a positive return on its investment.
“It does not take very long for a 12-million-dollar investment, in getting people off the streets, to start paying off,” Kring said.
That’s because homelessness impacts so many sectors of a local economy, from health care to retail to tourism and beyond.
You can read the proposal here.
