Governor Andrew Cuomo announced supportive housing and homeless shelter funding recently. Three organizations in Monroe County have been awarded a total of more than $6 million through the Homeless Housing and Assistance Program.
The Catholic Family Center, Volunteers of America, and the Dimitri House will receive state funding for homeless shelters and supportive housing projects.
Lisa Lewis with Catholic Family Center says that the funding will largely go towards rehabilitating the St. Francis Center, an emergency shelter with 40 beds. It will soon include nine new housing units as well.
“The funding we hope will extend the life of the building so that we can keep providing these services, emergency housing and supportive housing,” Lewis says.
Supportive housing is a more permanent option for people experiencing chronic homelessness, or who need extra assistance. It can offer services like case management, preventative medical care, recovery support, and job readiness.
Over at the Cooper Union building, a Volunteers of America housing project, seven more supportive housing units will replace what has been vacant retail space. Pat Drake with VOA says that the services help residents become more independent.
“Volunteers of America provides on-site case managers to help connect the people we serve and the residents of our housing programs to the resources that will help them stay stabilized in housing and also to become more self-sufficient,” Drake says.
She adds that around 200 people are on a waiting list for supportive housing in the area and that many live with mental illness and need extra assistance.
The announcement comes about a month after four local organizations, including the V-O-A lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in state funding for homelessness services through a different state program.
Lisa Lewis says that the CFC's aim is to help people struggling with homelessness get to a more stable living arrangement.
“Catholic Family Center serves about 49% of the homeless that are placed through the Department of Human Services. And what we do is provide housing, supportive services, case management and stabilization services to kind of really move them to permanent housing,” she says.
Lewis adds that to combat homelessness, there needs to be more affordable housing, where rent is set at
30% of a household’s income. She says that to fight poverty levels, wages need to increase as well. In Rochester, 33 percent of residents and more than half of children live in poverty.
