Considering a Sullivan homeless shelter

FRITZ MAYER
Posted 6/27/18

LIBERTY, NY — No matter how sympathetic people may be in principle to the plight of the homeless, they tend to resist having a homeless shelter on their block.  Yet county officials have a …

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Considering a Sullivan homeless shelter

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LIBERTY, NY — No matter how sympathetic people may be in principle to the plight of the homeless, they tend to resist having a homeless shelter on their block.  Yet county officials have a legal obligation to provide emergency housing to people who are identified as being homeless. According to a county-prepared fact sheet on the issue, “Sullivan County Family Services has nine contracts with area hotels/motels scattered throughout the County where single individuals and/or families are placed for temporary emergency housing.”

The county offers a host of social services at several county-owned buildings on Sunset Lake Road in the Town of Liberty, and there has been some discussion about the possibility of building an emergency homeless shelter there.

But that discussion led to rumors that the county was considering creating a shelter for sex offenders at the Liberty complex. That, in turn, prompted the chair of the county legislature, Louis Alvarez, and the county manager, Josh Potosek, to send a letter to Town of Liberty Supervisor Brian Rourke to assure him that’s not the case. The letter said, “We are penning this letter to you to emphatically affirm this legislature is NOT planning to locate sex offender housing at that location.”

A few years ago, the county was spending more than $1 million per year on housing the homeless, but the number of people needing emergency housing is not likely to go down. A county document shows at the end of 2015, “The average number of daily placements was ranging from 50 – 80, although during the winters of 2015-16 and 2016-17 average numbers for the winter months expanded to between 80 – 105.”

So the need is there, as is the concept of a homeless housing intake and processing center. The document says, “Logically this vision connected with the Liberty campus, where the Offices of Family Services, Public Health, Community Services and the Adult Care Center are located on several hundred acres of county-owned property with an almost 100-year history of services to those in need. A one-story building of approximately 3,200 feet can meet all these needs.”

But deputy county manager Dan DePew points out that no decision has been made, and in fact that the county has a form called a “Grant Concept Approval Form,” but that no such form has been filled out for this project.

Still, there are reasons to move forward, as the county-prepared fact sheet explains: “Sullivan’s current and historical delivery model of emergency housing services relies on a diverse pattern of facilities where support services are limited or unavailable, utilizing a program model eligible for 29% reimbursement for all single individuals; whereas an administrative model (where all the services are on-site) would make us eligible for a DOUBLING of the reimbursement rate.”

And building a center at the Liberty campus makes some sense. Again from the fact sheet: “This is the one and only place in Sullivan County where every essential support service is available, including supervision and security 24/7; it is the only placement that is not in some other party’s backyard—it is our backyard.”

Asked if county residents could see movement on this issue, though not necessarily at this location, within the next year, Depew said that is likely.

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