The City of Somerville looking to amend its one-year action plan in order to receive the HUD funding that has been offered to help fight homelessness.

By Harry Kane

The U.S. Department of Housing and Development offered an Emergency Solutions Grant to the city of Somerville in the amount of $70,741 to be allotted for rapid re-housing and homeless prevention.

“HUD did acknowledge that this is a very short turnaround from the notice of the funding to the time that we have to submit these written standards,” said Dana LeWinter, Director of Housing.

City officials have a limited time to draft a proposal, get local feedback, and submit their application for approval before the May 15 deadline.

In order to accept the money from HUD the city of Somerville needs to do an amendment to their one-year action plan that they previously submitted.

“We do a one-year action plan for HUD, which is basically a plan and a budget for our community development block grant, our home and our emergency solutions funds each year,” said LeWinter.

The one-year plan is guided by the priorities set forth in the 5 year consolidated plan.

Previously the grant was called the Emergency Shelter Grant, and for this fiscal year Somerville was awarded a sum total of $125,761. Those funds were allocated to emergency shelter operations, street outreach and administrative services.

As of Jan. 4 HUD renamed it, the Emergency Solutions Grant. With this transition also came the additional allocation of funds, i.e. the $70,741.

Pending the amendment needed to secure the funds, HUD will allow the city of Somerville to use the second allocation for 4 main areas. These areas are Rapid re-housing, to help those families who are living on the streets or in shelters to become housed; homeless prevention, to help families or individuals remain stable; administration costs; and HMIS, which are consultants that help with policy, procedures, training, troubleshooting and preparing reports.

“We hope to be able to rapidly re-house 10 persons, and with the homeless prevention fund we hope to be able to provide prevention services for as many as 20 people,” said Penny Snyder, Project Manager for Public Services and the Emergency Solutions Grant.

When both funds are combined it equals a total of $196,502.

Within the Emergency Solutions Grants Program the proposed budget breakdown is as follows:  The Homelessness Prevention program would be allocated $38,741, the Rapid Re-Housing program would be allocated $16,000, the HMIS program would be allotted $5000, and the total administrative costs would come to $11,000.

This would breakdown to roughly a 70 percent addition in funds for homeless prevention and a 30 percent addition in funds for rapid re-housing programs.

Some feedback has already been noted as residents are concerned that too much of the new funds are being allocated to the administrative costs. Snyder says, “someone did ask, ‘how locked in are we to these numbers.’ I did check with our finance director and he said ‘there is some flexibility,’ so something like that [a reduction in administration costs] could conceivably happen.”

Susan Hegel, manager at Cambridge and Somerville Legal Services, said, “I think it’s much more cost effective to do the prevention.”

Hegel said she sees a “steady stream of evictions” because landlords are raising prices, landlords may be selling their properties, or if it’s subsidized living the landlords are claiming the residents did not pay the rent.

Hegel thinks that the $16,000 allocated for re-housing 10 people is fairly ambitious. She feels that these funds would only be able to help 5 people. “A lot of the rapid re-housing are single people, where as, a lot of the preventions are going to be families,” said Hegel.

Lisa Davidson, The Director of Housing from Somerville Homeless Coalition said she was “very happy with the money for prevention; it’s going to help a lot of families stay housed.”

Davidson, however, made a point of saying the prevention program, while aimed at helping families and households, actually is helping 20 individuals.

“We are counting hearts,” said Penny Snyder.

With these new funds that could be allocated to homeless prevention and rapid re-housing, 30 people may soon be rescued from the streets and given a second chance to make a life for themselves.