Broward receives $8 mil for county's homeless

Funds to be used for more shelters

The Broward County Homeless Initiative Partnership has been awarded over $8.1 million in grants by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to support the county's "A Way Home" Plan to End Homelessness program.

The new grants will fund 18 renewal initiatives and 1 new project providing permanent housing, transitional housing, supportive services, and Homeless Management Information System support. The projects plan to specially provide 705 permanent, 112 rapid rehousing, and 25 transitional beds (842 beds total) with related supportive services to Broward's homeless population. These new funds will also create 30 new permanent supportive housing beds for chronically homeless persons, in partnership with the Broward County Housing Authority and Broward Housing Solutions.

The new program is specifically targeting vulnerable adult and youth clients, including families, veterans, those with mental, emotional and physical disabilities, individuals with substance abuse disorders, and those who are "chronically" homeless and those who have co-occurring disorders

All the projects funded help fulfill goals set out in the "A Way Home" Plan to End Homelessness, approved by the Broward County Board of County Commissioners in August 2013.

This year's Broward County Point-in-Time (PIT) Count, conducted over a three-day period on January 26-28, 2016 shows that the total number of sheltered and unsheltered persons experiencing homelessness in Broward County has decreased by 12 percent, from 2,615 to 2,302. The number of unsheltered persons decreased by 5 percent from 815 to 782. Both figures are comparisons to the same count done in January 2015.

For the Point-in-Time Count, the federal government identifies homelessness as those individuals living in places not meant for human habitation, emergency shelters or transitional housing programs.