In the face of cuts to the Boston Housing Authority’s Housing Voucher Program, Mayor Thomas Menino and the city of Boston Leadership Council on Homelessness announced on Thursday a new three-year homeless action plan.
The plan, called "Bringing Boston Home," is expected to impact more than 800 households in Boston by 2016.
But, after $10 million in budget reductions in May for the Boston Housing Authority’s Section 8 subsidies, the $7.4 million program will need to reattribute and raise additional funds for the program.
The program has almost $2.5 million in existing resources, but will rely on reprioritizing existing resources and fundraising to gather $4.9 million over the next three years for the action plan.
"The subsidies cuts are one of the things we need to recover from," said Lisa Pollack, spokeswoman for Boston’s Department of Neighborhood Development. "We’re making sure the right resources are going to the right targets."
With this plan, the goal is to target the root problems, said Menino, including long-term homeless individuals and vulnerable populations such as seniors, unaccompanied youths and persons with chronic substance abuse and mental and physical disabilities.
"Bringing Boston Home" will also focus on preventing homelessness due to evictions.
Over $500,000 has been allotted for the first year of the program to provide housing court advocates or funds for housing voucher recipients who have been unable to pay rent and face eviction.
"All it takes is one unexpected thing, like a car accident or a trip to the hospital, something that these people can’t absorb fiscally like you and I can," said Pollack.
On average, subsidized tenants facing eviction owed $1,552 in back rent in 2010, according to the "Bringing Boston Home" data. Meanwhile, housing assistance company HomeStart found that it costs $10,000 to evict and approximately $30,000 a year to shelter a family.
The Leadership Council on Homelessness set a goal to reduce the number of those evictions by 25 percent by the end of 2016.
Drains on the system such as High Utilizers of Emergency Services (homeless individuals who use Boston hospital emergency rooms as regular shelter options and health care providers) are another target of the program. Numbering around 80 individuals, they represent by far the most costly subset of Boston’s homeless, according to a press release.
"This is an ambitious plan, but our past efforts have led to success, so we have confidence because these are the right targets," said Sister Margaret Leonard, Director of Sustainability & Outcomes at Project Hope, who spoke at the plan unveiling.
Currently, Boston has the lowest percentage of unsheltered homeless out of 25 Continuum of Care districts, including New York City, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.
Slightly over three percent of Boston’s homeless are unsheltered, and overall, the city’s number of homeless individuals has dropped by 23 percent since 2009.
In a press release, Menino said that the city "cannot rest until every Bostonian has a place to call home."
