Fort Wayne staff outline count and multi‑agency plan to address homelessness

Amanda Fall, speaking at a Sept. 9 Fort Wayne Common Council committee session, presented a six‑month status report on the city—s homeless services and an outline of a multi‑phase strategy to reduce unsheltered homelessness.

Fall said the position she now holds was created when Mayor Tomika L. Tucker took office and that her first priorities were to reduce homelessness, improve the local continuum of care and create a coordinated encampment response strategy. She described the presentation as a "50,000‑foot view" and said staff have launched pilot programs and triage processes to learn what works in Fort Wayne.

Fall described near‑term operational work already under way: expansion of shelter capacity, increased outreach and case management, a multi‑agency Encampment Task Force that pairs enforcement and social services, and efforts to align federal ESG (Emergency Solutions Grants) and CDBG (Community Development Block Grant) funding to housing priorities. She said the city and provider community are building a shared bed‑tracking system and exploring a data dashboard to track outreach and housing outcomes in real time.

The presentation included data from a two‑week outreach effort in July involving 20 local agencies. Fall said the count found 253 named people living unsheltered, 40 households in hotels, 47 households living in vehicles and 462 people in shelters; she added 33 additional people were noted in surveyor margins and that about…