Homeless Services Network of Central Florida

Much has been said in the days since several media outlets reported on New York City’s Project Reconnect program that purchased transportation for homeless folks so that they could live with other family members.  The City feels it’s cheaper to reunite people with loved ones willing to take them in rather than continue to burden its own homeless programs.

Reactions were passionate on all sides of the issue.  Homeless advocates in NYC called the program a poor solution to the City’s homelessness problem.  Cities that were reported recipients of the more than 500 families helped by the program blasted NYC for exporting homelessness to their towns.

Orlando was one of the destinations specifically mentioned in the news reports, as were cities in places as far away as France, South Africa, and India.  Local officials weighed in on the program; you can read a response by Orange County Mayor Rich Crotty and a letter to editor of the New York Times by Brent Trotter, Executive Director at Coalition for the Homeless.

Family reunification programs like NYC’s Project Reconnect are just a small part of larger plans to end homelessness that major U.S. cities have developed.  Central Florida’s own Regional Commission on Homelessness recommended family reunification as part of its 10-year plan to end homelessness.

Research-based family reunification programs are based on four principles:

• Client needs assessment;
• Client participation in the decision process;
• Investigation and evaluation of resources in both locations;
• Confirmed buy-in by family hosting the relocated homeless household.

The process is thorough and fair:

• Clients are assessed to determine the barriers they have to become housed in their current location (no job, poor credit, no transportation, skills that don’t match current employment opportunities).
• Clients are asked if they have family with resources in another city to help them become housed and self-sufficient (extra space to house the homeless family without violating a lease or housing code; available medical services; assistance with childcare; potential job opportunity; local church support).
• Family members are carefully interviewed to determine if sufficient resources are available and the family is willing to provide housing for the clients.
• Clients are asked to choose which setting they believe will provide the best and fastest setting for a return to housing and self-sufficiency.
• If they choose, clients receive transportation assistance.
• Clients are called two days, two weeks and two months after they complete their travel to assess housing stability and link them to needed local services.

Homeless Services Network piloted its own reunification program, called Homeward Bound  and found that when properly implemented, such programs can best serve the needs of a small segment of the 8,900 homeless in Orange, Osceola and Seminole Counties.  For the first few months of 2009, Homeless Services Network paid for bus fare to reunite 35 homeless people (23 individuals and 12 people in 3 families) with loved ones in other cities.

Certainly, such programs are only one of many solutions for homelessness. Unfortunately, the media coverage has treated them as a way to “export the homeless from City A to City B” without addressing the thoughtful, responsible methods used to determine which individuals and families would most benefit from such a program.

Here’s hoping that this discussion can move past the “knee jerk/sound bite” approach and into discussion of the practices that have been proven to end homelessness.

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Uncategorized by Joel Remigio