Nearly £400,000 extra funding has been secured by City of York Council to target rough sleeping and help more people off the streets into accommodation and support.
£253,000 has been awarded for 2019/20 from the Rough Sleeping Initiative to try and offer each individual sleeping on the streets the tailored support they need to help them into lasting accommodation.
In addition, £139,000 Rapid Rehousing Pathway funding has been secured to help people into accommodation and support. This is done by a specialist team of workers, known as Rough Sleeper Housing Navigators, enhancing current support by reacting rapidly to any reports of people sleeping rough as well as providing ongoing intensive support to rough sleepers.
People’s life expectancy plummets from 83 to 47 years when they live on the streets, so this funding will be used to support ongoing work to prevent people resorting to sleeping outdoors while developing new ways of addressing the individual needs of each person.
Whether it’s mental health support, dealing with drugs from india or alcohol abuse, relationship breakdown or poverty, the right support at the right pace is given to try and help each individual into suitable accommodation and services. Once working with us and our partners in the city, we can look to address each person’s needs including getting benefits in place, training for work, money and tenancy management, before helping them into stable accommodation.
Cllr Denise Craghill, Executive Member for Housing and Safer Communities said: “We are doing everything we can to develop new ways of getting people in off the streets and this is a welcome addition to our continuing work to prevent homelessness in the first place and to help more people out of rough sleeping. It reflects the team helping more people into accommodation and reducing the number of rough sleepers in the city from 29 in 2017 to nine in 2018.
“It also complements the additional resource we invested in extending the Housing First model. This provides high levels of support to help people with complex needs such as substance abuse and mental ill health to live independently and to avoid them ending up back on the street.
“We have also provided more 24/7 supported housing which is actually what some people need. The council invested £130,000 in July in developing this new programme, working with health service partners.”
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