
Lafayette is running out of shelter space
Housing support agencies moved people into hotels around Lafayette using emergency federal and state government funds. Those funds have long since dried up.
Housing support agencies moved people into hotels around Lafayette using emergency federal and state government funds. Those funds have long since dried up.
Housing advocates have pushed for new shelter space since the pandemic. Lafayette lacks shelter beds and affordable housing.
Lafayette’s City Council may spend $1 million to help build a new shelter for people experiencing homelessness this month as the area’s unhoused population continues to grow. The Acadiana Regional Coalition on Homelessness and Housing is set to receive $1 million in federal stimulus money from the city if the City Council approves Councilman Glenn Lazard’s bid to do so at its next meeting on July 19.
Source: The Daily Advertiser
Catholic Charities has joined six other local housing organizations in asking Lafayette Consolidated Government for a more permanent solution to homelessness — $6.5 million to purchase an out-of-use hotel that would be retrofitted into a permanent, low-barrier, non-congregate shelter.
Despite new rules that would put the cost burden fully on the federal government, Louisiana’s hotel programs are ending, including the state’s largest in Acadiana.
Hotel rooms arranged by local housing advocates kept hundreds of people warm during last week’s crushing freeze. Donations poured in across the Acadiana region. But the makeup of people in need underscores rising housing insecurity in the area.
December’s booster shot of federal stimulus will send $7 million in rent and utility assistance to Lafayette Parish, a figure that dwarfs previous local allocations but that advocates say still falls short of projected need. LCG is working through how to get the money out quickly.
While coronavirus raged, hundreds found their way to hotels where case managers could connect them with food, doctors and income, often for the first time.
The gist: Identified as a place at “higher risk” for evictions, Lafayette will receive a second and larger round of federal stimulus dollars intended for housing aid during the pandemic. At just under $1.4 million, the block grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development nearly doubles the last allocation Lafayette received, one […]
LCG committed Tuesday to shift $100,000 out of emergency funds currently dedicated to its business relief program and repurpose another $300,000 in regular housing program money to rent relief.
State housing officials have asked regional partners to stop taking more into shelters, signaling that the program is likely to end soon, leaving many without anywhere else to go.
Housing advocates say avoiding a wave of housing instability in Louisiana will cost at least 10 times what the state has cobbled together.
Closing the shelter was in the works before the pandemic. But the loss nevertheless comes at a bad time.
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