Homelessness is down more than 26 percent in Lexington over the last two years – that’s the assessment of the city's Office of Homelessness Prevention and Intervention.
A stubborn problem for many communities, chronic homelessness also dropped by half since 2015 thanks to a multi-pronged approach. The momentum started a year earlier, when the city created the dedicated office and began investing $2 million annually in an Affordable Housing Trust Fund.
The chairman of the homelessness task force that got the ball rolling, Vice Mayor Steve Kay says coordinating the city's various efforts created "more impact, more bang for our buck."
"What this city has chosen to do is to take an approach to the issue of homelessness that is compassionate rather than punitive," Kay explains. "We're not trying to make the people who are homeless wrong. We're not trying to penalize them for their situation. We're putting resources in to help them, to keep them out of that situation if possible, to help them if they get into it."
The man many credit with tying together the loose funding threads and unifying the city’s vision is the office’s director, Charlie Lanter.
"Shelters are not the permanent housing answer," the former senior manager with Community Action Council says. "For so long, there has been no coordination in Lexington on moving people off the streets and out of shelter."
Lexington’s battle against homelessness is being waged on several different fronts – from a Housing First pilot project to a new Mental Health Court to a vouchers that have to 400 veterans over the last 18 months. The Housing First initiative, which placed 26 homeless Lexingtonians in permanent housing, utilizes a model that's shown promise cities. It's cost effectiveness is currently being studied by the University of Kentucky and a report is due out next year.
Still, Lanter cautions that the remaining homeless population, estimated at about 1,000, represents some of the toughest cases and will require more resources and creative thinking to reach.
