Tuesday, September 14, 2004

County Earns State Award for Housing Homeless Families

The Atlantic County Department of Family and Community Development will receive an Excellence in Housing Award on September 28 in recognition of its innovative use of emergency assistance funding to secure permanent housing for homeless families. The award will be presented on behalf of the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs and the New Jersey Housing and Mortgage Finance Agency during the New Jersey Conference on Housing and Community Development to be held at the Atlantic City Convention Center.

The county's Project Permanent Housing initiative was implemented 18 months ago at which time there was an average of 60 families receiving federal and state assistance that were housed in local hotels and motels. According to County Executive Dennis Levinson, this number has been steadily reduced to a current average of two families as a result of this program.

"We were deeply concerned that families were living in hotels for long periods of time, leaving many children without permanent homes, not to mention the high cost of maintaining them there," he said. "So we set out to develop intervention strategies to remedy this situation."

Under the direction of Department Head Forrest Gilmore, a model was developed to help transition homeless families into permanent housing. It included realigning services to ensure continuum of care and effective case management, ongoing case conferencing with the state Division of Youth and Family Services, creating mobile staff teams to assess families and address housing barriers and attaining emergency assistance funding to hire a housing "realtor" to exclusively serve families that are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless.

"The results are very encouraging," stated Gilmore. "While our staff remains dedicated to serving all residents, it is especially satisfying to help those who are most in need."

"By maximizing our existing resources, the department was successful in meeting its objective," added Levinson. "I applaud all those involved for their innovative efforts."

For more information, please contact Forrest Gilmore at (609) 343-2377.

County News