This month for the web, Jasmine Gallup wrote about Raleigh’s homelessness crisis, especially following the closure of the Quality Inn hotel on New Bern Avenue, and how the city and county’s main resource for people experiencing homelessness—the Raleigh-Wake Partnership to End Homelessness—is overwhelmed with hundreds of local residents seeking assistance.
Reader Martha Brock had this to say:
[Thank you] for your story on the local homelessness crisis. Just today I contacted The Salvation Army on Capital Blvd to talk with them. The call went to voice mail, and that vm box was full. This is frequently true at Alliance Health, too. Is this all the result of Covid absences? Hard to say.
I am focusing on the City of Raleigh’s budget priorities including over $276 million for parks compared to approximately $88 million to care for the homeless and those at risk of homelessness.
I hope to learn more about Raleigh spending.
And reader Joe Daly, the director of marketing for Durham’s Urban Ministries, reached out to us with the following idea of a way to address Durham’s housing crisis:
Urban Ministries of Durham (UMD) has teamed with award-winning ad agency McKinney to create Let’s House Durham. This fundraising and community engagement campaign launches today … and dispels the idea that solving homelessness is too costly. The price tag is actually $15.76.
If each resident of Durham County gave $15.76, every homeless individual in our community could be housed for one year. This is based on the National Low Income Housing Coalition’s estimate of average affordable monthly rent in Durham for those living at 30% of the area median income ($648), current community estimates for the number of homeless (670), and the most recent census population estimate for Durham County (330,506).
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