MILTON — Loaves and Fishes Soup Kitchen has nine months to find funding to support its Transitional Housing Program, which serves homeless families in Escambia and Santa Rosa counties.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has previously provided approximately $235,000 in funding but due to a change in the kinds of housing programs it supports, HUD cut off Loaves and Fishes THP entirely.
"As it was explained to me, HUD (has) some programs that are called Housing First and Rapid Re-Housing that takes a more permanent housing (approach) than transitional housing," Loaves and Fishes Soup Kitchen President Rick Humphreys said.
Loaves and Fishes has received HUD funding for transitional housing for the last 15 years, according to Humphreys.
"Housing First is an approach to quickly and successfully connect individuals and families experiencing homelessness to permanent housing without preconditions and barriers to entry, such as sobriety, treatment or service participation requirements," according to HUD.
Loaves and Fishes offers a program toward self-sufficiency paired with accountability, according to Humphreys.
"We don’t let people stay in the program doing drugs, getting drunk all the time or prostituting out of our houses," he said. "As I read (about Housing First), it seems that those are not criteria for disqualification necessarily."
Escarosa Coalition on the Homeless operates as the umbrella organization that regulates distribution of federal and state funding to providers that are working to alleviate homelessness in both counties. ECOH Executive Director John Johnson said he believes in the Housing First model.
"It’s a proven practice that we are now implementing," Johnson said.
The ECOH program I-Care is based on the Housing First model.
"We’ve housed 26 homeless men and women," Johnson said. "The idea is you don’t have go through a treatment program. There are no conditions other programs require. Of that 26, 24 are still housed."
One of the two who left the program went to jail, Johnson said, and the other refused to sign a lease.
"One requirement we do have is we want them to have ownership of the apartment and the landlords require they sign a lease," Johnson said.
Johnson described one Housing First resident who might not have made it into a home in a transitional housing program.
"He epitomizes the word ‘obnoxious,’" Johnson said. "Often, with events, law enforcement is called to move him on. He’s loud…You turn the other way when you see him coming."
ECOH put him into a home.
"Everybody else rejected him," Johnson said. "This guy is thriving. We’ve seen a miraculous change in his attitude. He’s more calm and collected."
Johnson attributes it to getting into a home.
"There is a change," he said. "You house somebody first (and) you give them a new sense of purpose."
Fourteen churches support the Loaves and Fishes transitional homes but more help will be necessary to cover what HUD gave the program.
"We believe God is in control of it all anyway," Humphreys said. "He’s got to work a miracle to keep the program going."
Loaves and Fishes is considering alternatives, Humphreys said, from a sliding scale for rent to adding those homes to their three-week emergency shelters for families in crisis instead of transitional homes.
"Really not anything is definite at this point in time," Humphreys said.
Family Promise of Santa Rosa County also provides transitional housing, serving only families in the county. However, the program is solely funded by the community and is unaffected by HUD, according to Executive Director Shane Nation.
Criteria to get into one of the 13 Family Promise homes includes not being a sex offender or convicted of a violent felony and having at least one child under 18.
"For us 100 percent have graduated out of transitional housing into permanent housing," Nation said. "It takes the case management still to get to that point."
This article originally appeared on Santa Rosa Press Gazette: Homeless housing program faces $238,000 funding cut