City of Rochester and Olmsted County officials come together to address homelessness
(ABC 6 News) – The city and county are looking to act the homelessness issue in Rochester.
County and city leaders established a plan and detailed new strategies on how decrease the homeless population.
Essentially, it’s a system with the idea of making homelessness rare and brief called “Built for Zero.”
“We’re focusing on one population, and when you get that population down to ‘functional zero,’ it’s about scaling and moving the same strategies onto the next population,” Olmsted County housing program manager Mary O’Neil said.
The program uses national framework to end homelessness by reportedly addressing the issue at both the system and individual level.
The main idea is identifying who is experiencing homelessness, create real-time data, and then use that data to identify and target populations.
“How do we need to look at our system, how do we need to evaluate our response system in order to make those modifications necessary, to be able to understand when somebody’s experiencing homelessness in real time and how to connect them with the resources necessary to secure housing,” Olmsted County housing director Dave Dunn said.
City leaders said Built for Zero-like programs have worked for more than 100 communities, and Rochester wants to be added on that list.
However, some officials said the program lacks the services and resources to help for those needing that now.
The proposed statement on homelessness says “We strive to end homelessness by focusing on prevention and making homelessness rare, brief and non-recurring.”
Effectively, reducing homelessness to “functionally zero.”
Some officials said, as the city moves forward, people who are experiencing homelessness should have a seat at the table.
“I think their voice is going to be very important here as we move forward and we try to achieve this noble goal,” Councilmember Kelly Rae Kirkpatrick said.
The city and county will meet on this issue again in August, where the homeless response steering committee will present implementation strategies for the Built for Zero program.