CC Minutes - 07/13/05 WS - Laserfiche WebLink

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Ms. Taylor supported homelessness prevention. She said one could not tackle the problem while fostering policies that made other people homeless. She felt helping people with their utility bills was a good activity. She asserted that those who do not pay the utility bill would have their electricity cut off and before they could be reconnected they had to pay a ~huge deposit" they could ill-afford. Ms. Taylor asked if people ;;graduated" from subsidized housing. She averred that people who moved out of subsidized housing made room for others in need of shelter. Mr. Kelly stated that there was a lot of background information that showed that people did move on from subsidized housing. He also thought there was something in the literature that demonstrated that having a better program to help homeless people did not bring an onslaught of them. He said the homeless population in a community tended to already be there. Mr. Kelly called homelessness an important and basic issue. He supported having the CCIGR look into opportunities for State and federal involvement. He averred that the cost of doing nothing was greater than the cost of taking action. He liked the focus on collaboration the proposed plan took. He encouraged staff to %ast the net wide." He noted that the Human Rights Commission (HRC) had a lot of passion for the issue. Ms. Solomon looked forward to addressing the issue. She wanted to better understand the needs of the homeless population and she wished to do what she could as a City Councilor to help improve the situation. She hoped to spend as much energy as possible on homeless families in order to keep children from going without shelter. Ms. Solomon also hoped that one result from the council's efforts would be a reduction in panhandling. She wished to fold in some strategies that would help to address this issue. Regarding Ms. Taylor's concern about people needing to ;;graduate" from subsidized housing, Ms. Solomon pointed out that one way to do that would be to improve their quality of life through the attainment of employment. She said the council played a key role in making sure that jobs were available in the community, especially for people with a low skill level. Mr. Pryor shared his excitement at the notion of getting %ome kind of handle" on the issue ofhomelessness. He said the plan implied the definition and understanding of homelessness without coming out and declaring a recognized definition of the nature ofhomelessness. Mr. Pryor suspected that each of the human services providers had a different definition of the nature of homelessness, noting that this was exemplified by some of the questions being posed by councilors. Mr. Pryor commented that the question of whether the homeless population was local or from out of town and whether doing a good job of service provision would bring more homeless people to town had ;;been around for years." He stated that he had been trying to get information on the issue and some of the figures provided to him by agencies that track this sort of statistic indicated that only a small percent of the people who sought services were not Lane County residents. He conveyed his interest in having more documenta- tion on the causes, the demographics, and the characteristics of homelessness so that he would be better able to develop effective strategies. He wished to determine what causes ofhomelessness would be focused on and what the demographics of homeless people were. Mr. Pryor pointed out that there were many different MINUTES--Eugene City Council July 13, 2005 Page 6 Work Session