FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — A Fayetteville city meeting Tuesday night was a packed house full of supporters for the permanent housing ordinance. The City of Fayetteville tabled the conversation last month, and on Tuesday night the city tried to figure out an effective housing plan to help everyone.
The idea is to increase permanent supportive housing by using a little more than a million dollars in ARPA funds to house eight "chronically homeless" people at a time.
“The truth of the matter is these are eight of our highest utilizers of service in our community, these are individuals that have higher health care needs, higher first responder responses, and higher interactions with law enforcement and the courts and jail systems,” said Sarah Moore, city council member for ward 2.
Moore sponsored this resolution and says that in Washington County there are about 100 people in the detention center who are either homeless or using a 7hills address.
"Unfortunately, what happens so often is because of unmet needs, individuals end up in our courts or in our jail system, and that's a very inefficient way to handle housing. It ends up costing us $30,000 a year, so those 100 individuals are costing a great deal of money in our communities,” Moore explained.
One Fayetteville resident agreed with Moore’s statement.
"And if they have affordable housing then the homeless are going to decrease, you're going to fix your problem slowly but surely. Locking someone up in jail and they lose everything you just prolonging the problem, you're not fixing it," said resident Terry Logan.
According to Housing and Urban Development, a "chronically homeless" person is someone who has been homeless while struggling with a serious mental illness, substance use disorder, or a physical disability.
"You can easily find the eight [people that would be impacted by the change]. 200 or 300 individuals need assistance to get into housing,” Moore said.
Logan added that "Affordable housing is needed because you have a lot of people that have mental illnesses and have nowhere to go, their life could be in danger, and they have to fight every day to live.
All council members say they are adamant about solving the ongoing housing crisis, but some say they don’t want to rush the process. City council members say they will look for alternative situations for this issue.
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