Ohio's growing homeless population could be state's 7th largest city

November 25, 4:47 PMColumbus Government ExaminerJohn Michael Spinelli

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Thanksgiving family gathering (Photo/John Michael Spinelli)

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- With Thanksgiving day upon us, a day that celebrates the bounty of the harvest and the community's collective gratitude for it, there is a growing number of Ohioans who will not enjoy the happiness of having family and friends gathered together under a cozy roof to enjoy it all.

Sadly, if the current number of homeless people in Ohio lived in one place, it would represent Ohio's 7th largest city, sandwiched in between Dayton and Parma. .

As economic conditions in Ohio continue to deteriorate, evidenced by an unemployment rate of 10.5 percent, continuing problems with home foreclosures as poverty rises, the population ages and more people going hungry, the grab by some state legislators of $30 million from the state's Housing Trust Fund to partially fill a nearly $900 million budget hole is way out of bounds, according to the leader-in-chief of Ohio's leading homeless and low-income housing advocacy group, the Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio (COHHIO).

If you're homeless, you need all the help you can get, which is why Bill Faith, Executive Director of COHHIO, believes the no-bid contract of about $76,000 awarded to a Louisiana firm to keep track of them all is important, as it continues administration of a statewide Homeless Management Information System (HMIS) that will better direct help to these people.

Faith, in an email exchange with this Examiner, said the additional federal stimulus dollars flowing to Ohio for homelessness prevention warrants changes in the HMIS system to incorporate the organizations providing those services across the state into the existing system is a good thing. Bowman Systems, LLC, of Shreveport, Louisiana, designed the original system for the Ohio Department of Development (ODOD). The contract, already in progress, will be approved retroactively at the November 30th meeting of the Controlling Board.

COHHIO, which has provided a voice for the underrepresented for more than 30 years, has as its noble, humanitarian mission the ending homelessness and the promotion of affordable housing. While achieving its dual mission is still over the distant horizon, Faith said his group will continue to be involved in a range of housing assistance services in Ohio, including homeless prevention, emergency shelters, transitional housing and permanent affordable housing with linkages to supportive services. He said COHHIO assists hundreds of housing organizations and homeless service providers in Ohio through public policy advocacy, training and technical assistance, research and public education.

While state funds will flow to a non-Ohio company, Faith says local communities are required to have a Homeless MIS system in place in order to qualify for ongoing support for homelessness funding from HUD. ODOD administers the homeless and housing money for the state and it also applies for homeless funding from HUD for the smallest 80 counties in the state – therefore necessitating the need for an HMIS system for all of those counties. Last year HUD provided about $10 million for homeless programs in those 80 counties, Faith said, noting that Ohio's eight largest counties apply directly to HUD and must also comply with the HMIS requirement.

"We work closely on all of this stuff with ODOD and have done so for many years," said Faith, who clarified that even though Ohio has its own agency dedicated to jobs and family services, it has never administered any of funding for homeless or housing projects in the state. "I guess that is similar to the separation of responsibilities between HHS and HUD at the federal level," he surmised.

Faith estimated that "there is probably in the ballpark of 150,000 Ohioans who will be homeless at some point this year and no doubt the requests for services is growing in these tough times."

He said the stimulus money in the homeless arena is for homelessness prevention or emergency rent assistance to help people avoid eviction or to help housing costs in order to leave emergency shelters. Despite the passage of the stimulus package earlier in the year, Faith said the funding has just recently started to flow and is expected to last two to three years.

"I don’t know what happens if the funding stops flowing – I guess more people will be evicted and others will be stuck in shelters longer," he said of what happens when one-time funds for homelessness, like those for other uses, dries up.

Follow me on Twitter @ohionewsbureau. Read more stories on people, politics and government in Ohio here.