Housing Support Specialists
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Please SUPPORT the annual appropriation originally recommended by the Governor for $1.5 million in FY 09. This amount is part of a 50% match requirement, creating a total $3 million program budget.
The Housing Support Specialists (HSS) program will serve 1,200 persons with 70 outreach specialists statewide and will be administer by the Homeless Housing Trust Fund of the Department of Community Affairs. This program will give homeless persons with mental illness, developmental disabilities, and other conditions and disabilities, opportunities to end their homelessness.
In Economically Insecure Times, an Investment in Housing Security
The Housing Support Specialists (HSS) program will stabilize chronically homeless persons, currently using costly emergency services across the state. These supports will dramatically lower public costs and greatly improve the quality of life of the persons served. Housing support specialists will link their clients to housing, social services, medical services, benefits, child care, and employment.
• The use of service support staff connected to housing has proven to be both more effective and less costly than short term emergency health and justice systems. Jails and hospitals don’t provide any lasting answers for long term homeless persons.
• Over the last two years the Regional Commission on Homelessness has funded 24 organizations to provide housing support services. The raw data consistently shows that over 90% of program participants stay in their programs or go forward to a better circumstance.
• Georgia Rehabilitation Outreach Inc provided intense services to 63 severely mentally ill persons and after a year, showed a dramatic $1.2 million net savings.
• A national study by the Lewin Group (2004) shows a day in supportive housing costs one tenth of a day in the hospital. Dollars spent on the treatment of physical or mental disease show greater positive outcomes when the patient is housed and the return to jail is much less likely.
• Housing with appropriate services can help individuals avoid institutionalization.
Why in the Department of Community Affairs (DCA)?
The state’s affordable housing tools, (bond financing, low income housing tax credits, federal HOME funds, and HUD homeless programs) are vested in DCA. The Department’s community development programs give it close ties to county and city officials, faith organizations and to the non-profit agencies that are likely to conceive and carry out projects. The Trust Fund has a special constitutional provision.
Click here for more information on Homeless and Special Needs Housing.
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