Nonprofit To Provide Homeless Outreach In Fairfax County, DC

Vienna VA

27 January, 2022

1:10 PM

Description

FAIRFAX COUNTY, VA — The nonprofit Pathway Homes will use a grant to hire staff to help connect homeless residents with services in Fairfax County and DC. Pathway Homes is a nonprofit based in Fairfax that seeks to provide housing and support services to people with mental health illness. The nonprofit received a $65,000 grant from Kaiser Permanente to start a program to get homeless people in Fairfax County and DC into permanent supportive housing. With this grant, Pathway Homes will hire an outreach specialist to locate homeless residents in Fairfax County and Washington, DC and help them into permanent supportive housing. With the first year of the grant, the nonprofit anticipates it can get 75 homeless people into supportive housing. "People living in the woods and streets tend to be challenged with serious mental illnesses and other medical conditions," said Pathway Homes CEO Sylisa Lambert-Woodard in a statement. "If we can gain their trust, we can help more people get housing and the services they need to reclaim their lives. In partnership with DC and Fairfax, our new outreach effort will boost the existing processes for helping people get off the streets." Advocates for homeless residents see supportive housing as a way to get homeless people into housing while continuing to provide the support services they need. Pathway's outreach program will coordinate between the entry processes to match homeless people with housing in DC and Fairfax County, ensuring available housing gets used by qualified residents. Fairfax County's entry process is coordinated by the Office to Prevent and End Homelessness, and DC's is coordinated by the Community Partnership for the Prevention of Homelessness. The Pathway Homes outreach specialist will go to where homeless residents are living to help them sign up for the Homeless Management Information System and ensure they added to the centralized permanent supportive housing referral pool. Pathway Homes will also utilize its licensed clinicians to complete assessments and diagnoses to speed up the documentation process required for entry into housing. The nonprofit says eligibility documentation is a barrier for chronically homeless individuals, as they don't have a fixed address or regular way to be contacted. Pathway Homes has helped people with serious mental illnesses and disabilities in Northern Virginia to get housing and other services for more than 40 years. The nonprofit owns 123 units for supportive housing and leases apartments, townhouses and single-family homes from the property owners. Other agencies contract with Pathway Homes, which provides day-to-day services such as case management and supportive services to residents in the agency-owned homes. For more information, visit www.pathwayhomes.org.