LISTENING SESSION

Neighbors in Need/Unhoused Residents Special Committee

You're Invited

Please join us for an upcoming listening session with the Unhoused Residents and Neighbors in Need Committee Chair Mr. Tom Lally. We will be offering both a virtual and in-person option.

About the Special Committee

The goal of the Neighbors in Need/Unhoused Residents Special Committee is to establish minimum standards for wrap-around community-based services that addresses local housing costs, rising homelessness, warming stations and shelters, food insecurity and substandard housing. This committee will also address emergent needs and focus their efforts on moving our unhoused population to housing and the impoverished population to a sustainable level of prosperity.

The scope of this committee should entail several projects detailed in order of priority below: 

• A baseline assessment of the unhouse population, residents living at or below 200 percent of the poverty level, housing costs and other available community resources and services that meet basic needs must be conducted;
• Root causes and effective strategies designed to move this population from poverty to self-sustainability are to be identified;
• Duplication of services or gaps in services must be identified to address the needs of our unhoused residents and neighbors in needs;
• Best practices from other communities that have successfully addressed the problem of housing inequity are to be explored;
• Policies that emphasize market-rate construction but fail to address the land and building costs, extreme income inequality, predatory lending practices, redlining, restrictive covenants, and other discriminatory practices that have shaped the housing landscape in this county must be researched and revised;
• Additionally, policy reforms that preserve and expand the supply of affordable housing, incentivize first time homebuyers, increase tenant protections, prevent displacement, foreclosures, and evictions, and remove barriers to housing for vulnerable populations, including individuals with criminal records, and low-income renters, and promote fair and healthy housing are to be identified and reviewed;
• Federal, state, and local resource opportunities are to be explored to address the challenges identified; and,
• Program, practice, budgetary and policy recommendations that address housing insecurity are to be crafted to reform how the Unified Government currently addresses our current crisis.