Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Housing First Plan

Fargo’s plan to end long-term homelessness in 10 years is moving ahead with the opening of the new Emergency Shelter coming shortly into the new year. This effort kicked off with the formation of a Mayor’s Task Force, made up of people throughout the community who came together several mornings to study the issue and discuss ways to begin solving it.

The long range plan is to get the chronic homeless into housing so they can be found by those who can help them. This “Housing First” plan has worked in many other communities. The first step is the Emergency Shelter. Next step will be transitional housing and then finding and working with landlords willing to alter some renting policies and accepting a homeless person as a renter with the city standing behind that person.

Howard Barlow, NRS, Fargo

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