Salisbury Mayor Randy Taylor says he will continue with the Housing First program for the homeless but with changes to make it more effective. In this excerpt from Delmarva Today host on Don Rush talks with the mayor about what concerns he has and the changes he envisions. The full interview can be heard on our website delmarvapubicmedia.org.
RUSH: The Mayor of Salisbury is looking to revamp the Housing First program that provides assistance to the homeless seeking to transition to affordable housing. This is Don Rush. The program has been around for a number of years, begun under former Mayor Jake Day. Along with the Ann Street Village, it has been a hallmark program to help the homeless in Salisbury. But Mayor Randy Taylor says it's now time to take another look at improving the results. Here's an excerpt from this week's Delmarva today.
TAYLOR: So what we're trying to say, what I'm saying about housing first was is that we spend, we have Ann Street, which is one tier of [it], and that's more of a person that relatively stable, still homeless, but trying to work back towards permanent housing. Then we have the Housing First program, which was designed, I believe, to be a pathway to permanent housing, but that we would help people for 18 months or so. There's different views on that and what the intent was, even if you assume it was supposed to be permanent housing, I don't think it is the right use of resources relative to most people. So we're hoping to say, okay, there are going to be people that are going to be permanently housed with support, and then there's going to be a whole bunch of people that maybe the window is 12 to 18 months, maybe as much as 24, but then they transition to some other form of permanent supported housing that we won't be the final stop. So we're trying to redefine it as sort of a pathway, but in no way is this a taking, this is a re-imagining and perhaps even an expansion of our current base of funding to do more for more people, and I think you got a better result.
RUSH: So in terms, by the way, of Ann Street Village, what do you see in terms of the change there?
TAYLOR: So Ann Street is about, I think 17 or 18 people out of 22 spots. That's more of a unique person that can, we have no overnight supervision there. So people have to be able to sort of self-manage, manage their own spot. So we have a fairly high bar relative to that, but there is a niche and there is a population of folks that works for, but the idea is there, they can stay up. I think it's up to two years. I think that's where we ended up. At the end of the day, we would like to see 'em save their money, transition to permanent housing. But again, this is a supply/demand. We got that supply/demand problem. So we're looking at alternatives there. There's a lot of creative things that are being worked on. I think that will solve this problem, at least for a healthy percentage of folks.
RUSH: So in your vision, Ann Street basically stays the same or do you expect to have some changes there?
TAYLOR: No, I think Ann Street will stay the same in terms of its approach. I think where we'll tweak things is on the rest of our program, and that's basically the two programs. There's Ann Street and the First Housing first.
RUSH: What kind of things do you then think you want to do in terms of Housing First? What kind of difference in terms of either subsidies or help, that kind of thing. What sense do you get about how you're going to change that?
TAYLOR: Yeah, I think that's what we're working on now, and I think at the end of the day, here's what you can be guaranteed. We will be helping more people, period, the existing as well as others, but we're going to do it on a qualified basis. There's a fine line between we want to help the people that need help, but we also want to create an environment where people can launch and be successful on their own.
RUSH: Mayor Randy Taylor on plans to revamp the Housing First program that provides assistance to the homeless in Salisbury. Full interview can be heard on this week's Delmarva Today at noon on WSDL and WESM, this is Don Rush for Delmarva Public Media.
