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City plans rent help
Officials plan to use HUD simulus money
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Published: July 11, 2009
Updated: 07/10/2009 11:40 pm
The city of Winston-Salem is accepting proposals from local nonprofit agencies to spend $748,097 in stimulus money that it will receive from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to prevent homelessness.
HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan announced on Thursday that his agency will distribute $1.2 billion to more than 500 cities, counties and communities that will be used to pay rents, moving expenses and other costs to prevent homelessness. It will also help homeless people get back into homes.
"This program serves as a bridge to long-term stability for those who, without assistance, would be homeless," Donovan said.
In Winston-Salem, the money will be used to help people pay their rents to prevent evictions, said Tim West, the city's program supervisor for the Housing/Neighborhood Development Department. The city would hire four or five people to administer the program and serve its clients.
Federal housing officials require that the money be spent within three years, and it cannot be used to pay mortgages, according to its guidelines.
On a typical night in Winston-Salem, there are about 500 homeless people, West said. Most stay at shelters. During a year, 1,800 to 2,000 people in Forsyth County will become homeless for a short period.
"Fortunately, most of those people are not under the bridge," West said.
Throughout the state, 12,745 people are homeless, according to the N.C. Coalition to End Homelessness of Raleigh.
The city's program will focus on people who need temporary help, especially those who have lost jobs amid the recession, he said.
"They are not chronically homeless," West said. "They got to the point where they couldn't pay their rent and they went to a shelter."
Forsyth County had an unemployment rate of 10 percent in May, representing 17,464 people, according to state statistics.
The money also will establish a housing-location service to work with landlords to put people into homes, West said.
The 10-Year Plan Commission to End Homeless and the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Council on Services for the Homeless will review the proposals that the city receives, he said. The proposals that the city provides money for will help deal with the needs of those agencies.
West and Christian Stearns, the director of the HUD's field office in Greensboro, said that money that Winston-Salem is receiving will not end homelessness in the city.
"What this money will do is to prevent homelessness and to re-house those people who have become homeless," West said.
The program is scheduled to begin Oct. 1.
■ John Hinton can be reached at 727-7299 or at jhinton@wsjournal.com.
■ The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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