Homeless In Ft Worth: Rack em, Stack em and Pack em...

Homeless In Ft Worth: Rack em, Stack em and Pack em...: Rack em, stack em and pack em is pretty much where our local emergency homeless shelters are these days. Notice how I call them Emergency ...

Rack em, Stack em and Pack em...

Rack em, stack em and pack em is pretty much where our local emergency homeless shelters are these days. Notice how I call them Emergency Shelters? Mainly that because that is what they were designed to be. A temporary place to go while you got your life back in order. The last recession we experienced changed all the rules.

Unfortunately the need for permanent shelter had crept into the mix and up until recently I used to see folks who had been living in the emergency shelters for several years. In a few cases I know of there were people who had lived in the shelters for as long as 10 years.

With all that being said, all the shelters here in Ft Worth are running at capacity as are, according to my latest reports, the emergency shelters in Dallas. Some of the shelters are now imposing a limit on how long a person can reside there and all of the shelters are doing their best to assist everyone who does live in them to find housing.

The Housing First program is gaining traction here which is a big help until funding runs out. But the real problem is the number of homeless people who arrive on our streets here. I suspect until adequate funding, social services and case management are made available the overcrowding problem at the shelters will continue.

Then there are the numbers of people living in encampments scattered around the city. Who wants to live in a crowded shelter when you can keep a low profile and camp out somewhere. That's what I did for over 10 years.

Shelter overcrowding is a real problem and has been for several years. Yes there are some people who are taking advantage of the system and they are being identified. Especially when they have an income of some sort but prefer to spend their money on things other than housing. But the real people that the shelters were designed for, the people or families who need a shelter for a short time, are being crowded out or not able to get into the shelter at all.

I've got no real fix here because the problem is so complex and funding is stretched to the limit. More funding would certainly help and identifying affordable housing would be a good start to. A couple of  tiny house / RV communities such as they have in Austin would be great too.

These problems will not be solved by the government alone. This is a problem where our society itself, you and me, should get directly involved and not wait for someone else to take care of the problems.

More to come....

Loaves and Fishes in Austin

I just bumped into a tweet about the Mobile Loaves and Fishes project in Austin, Texas.

Just last Saturday April 2 they opened up over 100 tiny houses for the homeless to add more housing space along with their already existing RVs and other housing structures in their homeless community located just outside of Austin.

Take a look at their website and videos at mlf.org/

Here's the link to a video and article posted by a local TV station in Austin. http://www.kvue.com/news/local/austin-opens-first-homeless-community/116024284

This is huge for the local homeless community there. Although the homeless must pay some rent and there are existing rules regarding life there, this sort of thing is a good first step for many people suffering from homelessness.

Take a look.