County Plans for Surge In Funding To Address Homelessness

A homeless tent encampment on the edge of MacArthur Square. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.

The American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) directly supplied state and local governments with billions of dollars after its passage in 2021. It also began to feed new money into existing federal grant programs that support government services at the local level.

The legislation funneled $5 billion for homelessness services directly into the latest block grant program supporting affordable housing for low-income households in the U.S. The HOME Investment Partnerships Program, it’s called, provides flexible funding for communities to address issues of housing and homelessness.

The Milwaukee County Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) received approximately $4.5 million in this new HOME-ARP funding. The department will use these funds on new staff that will help people find affordable housing, direct rental assistance and homelessness prevention and housing rehabilitation.

“These funds come at a very good time for us,” said James Mathy, director of DHHS’ Housing Division, to the county board’s Committee on Community, Environment and Economic Development in January,

Milwaukee County has made progress in reducing the number of residents that are unsheltered or homeless, going by the annual “point-in-time count.” But Mathy said the street outreach teams have had to take on, not just doing the street work, but also housing navigation. That is, the work done to help a homeless individual find and secure housing.

“That’s extraordinarily difficult for that staff to do,” he said. “And it tends to slow down the housing process in our community.”

The division plans to use approximately $1.9 million to create four new “community intervention specialist” positions that will focus on housing navigation for unhoused people in Milwaukee. This funding will keep these positions open until 2029.

One thing the housing division is attempting to do more of is something called “master leasing,” Mathy said. This is where the housing division acts as the lessee for a particular apartment, instead of the actual tenant. This allows the division to more quickly move people off the street and into housing, Mathy said.

The division also plans to put $1 million into its ongoing rent assistance and homelessness prevention program. Mathy said the division’s outreach teams still regularly come in contact with people who have never been homeless before. Prevention and assistance funding are ways to combat this and keep those people sheltered, Mathy said.

The county is also planning to put approximately $860,000 into housing rehabilitation that will serve the homeless population or people at risk of becoming homeless. This could cover supportive housing, transitional housing or permanent supportive housing. But Mathy said housing officials do not yet have a specific project in mind for this funding.