Boards back seven-part plan to prevent family evictions, fund case managers

A joint session of the Alachua County Board of County Commissioners and the Children's Trust voted unanimously to support a seven-part package of recommendations emerging from a community convening on family eviction and housing stability.

Children's Trust presenters summarized convening findings that included wage insufficiency, the impact of eviction records on housing access, high move-in costs and inadequate case management capacity. Staff recommended the trust fund two case managers at Family Promise at $118,000 per year for two years, focused on families with children, and asked the county and municipal governments to consider matching the positions.

Dr. Nancy Hart, who has led trust conversations on family homelessness for two years, told the boards that while Grace Marketplace and other adult homelessness programs have reduced unsheltered adult counts, there has been little capacity to serve families. "Of the families in crisis, only 20 percent of them will be just fine after that sort of short intervention," Hart said, and she argued that most families need longer-term case management.

Claudia Tuck, director of Alachua County Community Support Services and chair of the local homeless continuum of care, described additional actions already underway: a coordinated-entry and data-driven prevention platform, $205,000 in state and federal prevention grants effective July 1, ongoing rapid-rehousing funds and a $342,000 continuum-of-care funding stream targeted to faith-based providers willing to operate family shelters. She also said the continuum's HUD grant awards to the region currently total about $1.3 million.

The seven-part recommendation the boards backed includes: trust funding for two Family Promise case managers (two-year term); a request that county and municipalities match the case-manager funding; additional funding for community family resource centers for emergency rental assistance; a move to make local resource-center funding more flexible so case managers can target the most pressing needs of families; a referral to the Transportation Planning Organization for family-focused transit solutions; engagement with CareerSource and economic-development partners to ease barriers to employment and job training for families; and exploration of shelter options and underused public facilities to support family homelessness needs.

Several community speakers supported the recommendations and urged flexible, upstream funding and landlord incentives. Public commenters also raised longer-term questions about creating affordable units, homeowner assistance and rural access. After discussion, the commission voted in favor; the record shows the motion passed unanimously.

Next steps: staff will coordinate with Family Promise, the continuum of care and municipalities on matching requests, work with AHAC (Affordable Housing Advisory Committee) and the TPO on referrals, and report back to the boards on implementation and funding sources.