HUNTINGTON, W.Va. — Mayor Patrick Farrell is hopeful that a federal grant will help those experiencing homelessness in the city find a place to stay.
A veteran himself, Farrell said he’s always been committed to helping veterans in the city. He said no one who has served the country “should ever have to sleep on the streets.” He said his administration got to work during his first year in ofifce.
“We started Mission Zero, which is our pilot project to try to identify every veteran experiencing homelessness in Huntington and connect them to housing or services,” Farrell said on MetroNews “Midday” recently. “We think we did that effectively last year that we were able to find every veteran in town and make sure that they’ve been offered housing within 30 days of connecting with them.”
Now, the city has received $600,000 in American Rescue Plan funding to expand their services beyond veterans on the streets. Farrell said it’s truly been a collaborative effort to help veterans, using partnerships with Veterans Affairs (VA) and now with another organization.
“We took that and tried to expand it so that we could make it a wider model for other folks that weren’t necessarily just veterans,” Farrell explained. “The Huntington Housing Authority is a piece of that. They are the recipient of these funds, and they’re going to use it to renovate 14 apartments that will then not just provide a place for people to live, but also provide case management, which is the support services that some people need to be able to long-term stay stably housed.”
Farrell said the national estimates are that 30,000 veterans live on the street. He said there were more than a dozen in his city last year.
“We found between 15 and 20 people that have prior military service that are living on the streets,” Farrell said. “We want to find them and then say, ‘hey, what do you need? What can we do to help?’ Truthfully, not all of them want to come inside, and that’s OK.”
“But as long as we find them, we identify them and we say, ‘here’s an option that we can get you into emergency shelter,’ transitional housing and hopefully long term housing, is an effort that’s worthwhile,” Farrell said.
Farrell said the VA regional centers, American Legion, VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars), and the Marine Corps League, and many auxiliaries are all committed to helping those who have served.
Farrell noted that it’s a tricky balance to strike between compassion for someone experiencing homelessness and those running businesses in the city. That’s why, he said, it’s important to help those individuals get the help they need.
“We live in cities in this social contract that people come here, they start their business, they invest in their property, they invest their careers, making sure it’s successful,” Farrell said. “If patrons are driven away because of a feeling of not being safe on the streets, it doesn’t work. I really believe that the way we do this is we make sure that everyone has a bed.”
Farrell said the needs of individuals vary, depending on circumstances. Above all, he said, this grant will connect people with resources.
“For some people, that’s an emergency shelter bed,” Farrell said. “Some people, that’s a mental health bed. Some people, it’s a hospital bed. For some people, quite frankly, that’s a jail bed, because we know that there are criminals that are also living on the streets and making people unsafe that are either homeless or in the communities. So we think it’s imperative to make sure that the streets are safe for everybody.”