LISTEN: President Joe Biden's top official on housing appeared in Savannah for an announcement on nationwide spending to combat homelessness. GPB's Benjamin Payne reports.
Federal money for Georgia's homelessness response efforts will increase 16% over last year, as the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development this week announced $58.2 million for the state as part of the agency's annual spending on housing and supportive services.
HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge visited Savannah to unveil nationwide funding of $3.16 billion, the largest amount ever for the department's Continuum of Care Program.
“I could have gone anywhere, but I chose Savannah,” Fudge said at City Hall on Monday. “I know that you are going to do the work that is needed to be done. I know that you are going to treat the people that we serve with the utmost respect. You're going to help them get their lives back together because this nation should be what everybody thinks it is.”
In the Savannah area, the Chatham-Savannah Interagency Council on Homelessness — also known as the Chatham County Continuum of Care — will receive $4.1 million from HUD, marking an increase of $544,210 over the previous fiscal year.
“Too often when we give resources to communities, they are still trying to figure out what to do with them,” Fudge said. “I'm here because you all know what to do. You're already doing a good job, and I just want to help you do a better one.”
HUD is also increasing its funding to each of Georgia's seven other metro-specific continuums of care, which serve Atlanta, Fulton County, DeKalb County, Cobb County, Athens-Clarke County, Augusta-Richmond County and Columbus-Muscogee County.
The rest of Georgia is served by the “Balance of State” continuum of care, which serves 152 counties. It will receive $24.1 million — the largest amount of HUD's funding in the state — amounting to a 12.7% increase over the previous year.
“The power of a continuum of care is not simply collaboration and convening — it's consensus-building,” said Chatham Savannah Authority for the Homeless executive director Jennifer DuLong. “Our community agrees that the experience of homelessness in Chatham-Savannah should be rare, brief and non-recurring. But it takes a systems approach to do that. It takes strategic investment to do that in communities, and we have been making strides. It might be inch by inch, but eventually it's going to be mile by mile.”
Fudge told GPB that, even as HUD's continuum of care funding has increased since the COVID-19 pandemic, homelessness has worsened across the country, owing to the end of pandemic-era federal programs.
“We had emergency funds to do many things,” she said, pointing to rental assistance and foreclosure moratoriums. “We did a lot of work to keep people in their homes. But once those resources went away, people started to fall back into the situation they were in, even some prior to the pandemic.”
After making the funding announcement at City Hall, Fudge met privately with local leaders involved in Savannah's homelessness response efforts, before touring a new tiny home community for formerly unhoused veterans.
