Grant funding to boost Louisville organizations addressing family homelessness

Yahoo

6 days ago

Louisville organizations gather to announce grant funding addressing homelessness among families in late July. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Liam Niemeyer)
Louisville organizations plan to use $4.5 million in grant funding over the next four years to help families experiencing homelessness by reducing the waitlist for shelter space and providing transitional housing and rental assistance.
Natalie Harris, the executive director of Coalition for the Homeless, which represents 40 agencies in the Louisville area serving people experiencing homelessness, said in a Tuesday press conference the funding from the Bezos Day 1 Families Fund is 'allocated across the country each year specifically with the goal of making sure that no family with children sleeps outside.'
The Bezos Day 1 Fund, a $2 billion philanthropic effort launched by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in 2018, has provided annual grants to organizations addressing homelessness across the country.
'Our goal is that as soon as a family calls and says, 'I need a place to stay,' that they will immediately at that moment be able to get into a shelter,' Harris said. 'That allows us to more quickly get the services to those families that they need so that they can also more quickly move into housing.'
The grant recipients include the Salvation Army, Catholic Charities, Volunteers of America Mid-States, St. Vincent de Paul, Option to Success, Wayside Christian Mission, Mama to Mama, Uniting Partners for Women and Children, Louisville Outreach for the Unsheltered and the Louisville Metro Office of Social Services.
Harris said shelter space for families in Kentucky's largest city has remained at capacity for about a decade, and the long shelter wait list is exacerbated by challenges with moving families from shelters to more permanent housing. Families experiencing homelessness tend to have more debt and evictions compared to single individuals, she said.
'How do we break down those barriers so that they can get into housing and stay stable in housing?' Harris said. 'We really want to end that cycle and let people figure out how to be in a safe space.'
One of the grant recipients, Option to Success, which provides mental health support for teenage girls and families, will be using $300,000 in funding to launch 24 transitional housing units, a laundromat and a daycare center for families.
Kristy Flippins-Bartlett, Option to Success CEO and founder, said the campus is about providing stability to families and teenagers in vulnerable situations.
'With this funding, it does help us to be able to make renovations to our campus, actually pay for staff and to provide different funding that we need for the year,' Flippins-Bartlett said.
Harris said with the grant funding only lasting four years, the Louisville community will need to step up in the future and support the work being built by organizations receiving this funding.
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