(Photo via Kevin L. Smith of The Cortland Voice).
Cortland County Legislators in the Health and Human Services Committee on Tuesday unanimously voted in favor of a recommendation for funding an emergency housing program managed by Catholic Charities of Cortland County.
The proposed emergency housing program, which would start in 2024, would help house people in the county who find themselves without a home. The county could potentially provide $210,000 in funding for the program.
Kristen Monroe, the director of the county’s Department of Social Services (DSS), said the funds would go toward paying for apartments that Catholic Charities can rent from local landlords to help temporarily house people.
People in this emergency program are expected to be housed at these apartments for around two weeks while they look for a permanent home.
“We will be placing folks who are homeless and would otherwise be placed in motels,” Monroe said. “Folks from Catholic Charities would then try to find permanent housing for folks. It would primarily help us with large families, where we usually tend to rent more than one motel room.”
For now, County DSS and Catholic Charities have two apartments that can be used to house people once the program starts next year, Monroe said.
“With the intent that Catholic Charities may lease other apartments from a local landlord,” Monroe added.
Results from the 2023 Point-In-Time Count for the state’s region 511 – which includes Binghamton, Union Town/Broome, Otsego, and the counties of Chenango, Delaware, Cortland, Tioga – suggest there are 169 homeless people in the area.
At least 156 of them are in emergency shelters and 13 of them are unsheltered. The Point-In-Time Count is a federally mandated exercise where volunteers and local agencies document the number of homeless people in an area. The results of the count determine how much federal funding is sent to municipalities for certain social safety net programs.
The measure will be on the floor at the Legislature’s Finance and Administration Committee meeting next Tuesday (Oct. 17) and will be voted on by the entire county legislature on Oct. 26.
