CONTINUUM OF CARE
Chair, Jay Robard, Burrell Homeless Services
This group is a sub-committee of Housing. Today, there are more than 600 men, women and children in our community who have no home to call their own - they are Springfield's homeless. Staff and the Continuum of Care wrote and oversaw the HUD Super NOFA grant of nearly one million dollars, which goes directly to local agencies to provide shelter and emergency housing assistance.
In October 2004, HUD mandated that all grant recipients conduct a one night count of unsheltered homeless. To establish a beginning baseline for tracking trends over time, twentyeight volunteers headed out at 4:30 a.m. on a cold January morning to count the number of people living in alleys, woods, cars, and camps. While the count yielded only 34, we know that many knew we were coming and left before they could be included in the census. As the count was conducted in January, a significant number would have been expected to have spent the night in a shelter. This count will be conducted again in the summer of 2005.