RES 97089 - Laserfiche WebLink

Chapter 6: Housing and Shelter The activities to prevent additional homelessness should include: _ • Efforts that increase the capacity of existing services to prevent homelessness in the _ County, focusing on two aspects: - ways in which information about prevention services is readily and effectively accessible to people facing a housing crisis; and ` - ways in which information about prevention services is readily and effectively accessible to other agencies active in case management along the continuum. • Advocacy at other levels of government to increase the availability of homelessness prevention services in California; and • Maximum available investment of financial resources in the prevention of homelessness by providing short-term rental and utility assistance. Short-term rental assistance activities should use flexible approaches to providing assistance to those at risk of eviction for demonstrably economic reasons. They should target the financial assistance to a variety of special needs populations. For those hardest to house, assistance -~ should be linked either with training in independent living skills or arranged through a payee service so that even people who are hard to house can at least avoid eviction due to nonpayment of rent. -- • Expand homelessness prevention efforts. Action Stens Maintain and expand existing programs providing at -risk people with short-term rental assistance, rental guarantee, move-in costs, and "housing scholarships" which provide a break on rent for a specified period of time while __ participants go to school or get job training. Consider the creation of a revolving Homeless Prevention and Housing Placement Fund to provide grants/loans to prevent displacement and to assist displaced households to move -_ into housing. Maintain and expand eviction-related legal services such as eviction defense and mediation cases. -- Maintain, expand, and support and enhance existing efforts to counsel and educate tenants and landlords about available rental assistance, rights and responsibilities, and fair housing laws. -- Train staff to monitor people coming out of institutions, such as jails, mental institutions, hospitals, juvenile detention, and foster care, and refer them to housing, services, and sources of income. ` Alameda County-Wide Homeless Continuum of Care Plan: April 1997 78