Now is the time, this is the place. The city gets federal money to deal with homelessness but the decisions about how it gets spent are often done in private meetings by service providers, without public input. Many people ask what we can do about homelessness. To me, what we can do, is start looking at how we spend our money. Don’t worry about knowing all the ins and outs of the this process or of the document linked below. If you have ideas about what the city should be doing, just speak up. Let the committee members and elected officials figure out how to address the community’s concerns.
The Community Development Committee will be discussing a Request for Proposals at its April 5th meeting, 5:00 pm, 215 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd, Rm 260. The activity described in the draft RFP is for Homeless Prevention and Rapid Re-housing activities – preventing homelessness for persons who are facing eviction and moving homeless persons from shelter into permanent housing. If you are interested in providing any input to the Committee, you can either attend the meeting or provide written comments; written comments should be sent to cdbg@cityofmadison.com.
The draft RFP can be seen at the following link:
http://www.cityofmadison.com/cdbg/documents/2012RFP.pdf
April 10th the council will also discuss or listen to ideas about Occupy Madison. Which housed 25-40 ppl a night. Many who are out of time in the shelter system, still have a limited income and can not afford housing. A tent works. Fine. We just have run out of donations for the porta pottys a necessary luxury for the tent city.