GRCoC Commends City of Richmond for Expanding Shelter Services
On behalf of Homeward, we want to thank Mayor Levar Stoney, City Council President Michael Jones, Committee Chair and Councilmember Stephanie Lynch, all of the members of Richmond’s City Council, and the truly dedicated members of the City administration for making this significant and compassionate expansion of homeless assistance available. For 25 years, our community has come together across organizational and jurisdictional differences with a shared goal of reducing the crisis of homelessness.
The Greater Richmond Continuum of Care is a coordinated and compassionate network of homeless service providers in our region supporting our neighbors pushed into homelessness. More than 34 mission-oriented agencies participate in the Greater Richmond Continuum of Care. This collaboration starts with listening to the community. We talk with and listen to our neighbors pushed into homelessness and then work together to overcome obstacles to finding permanent, stable housing in our region. Our local homeless service agencies develop and deliver trauma-informed programming and tackle the complex challenges of securing funding and navigating large service networks in order to meet the needs shared with us by our neighbors. Homeless service providers use what we learn from our neighbors to say yes to helping as many people as possible, but the reality remains that we can’t give someone what we don’t have.
When we expand resources like we are seeing in action today, we can get more people on the pathway to a permanent home.
Today represents a significant step forward on this pathway and we are pleased to support this effort and to be a part of such a compassionate community working to make it possible for all of our neighbors to have a safe place to call home. Here is a link to the remarks made at today’s event by Annette Cousins, the Chair of the Greater Richmond Continuum of Care board. Here’s a link to the letter of support we shared in September and we are looking forward to having additional resources now to continue to our fight against homelessness: https://bit.ly/47U4zlH.
Again, we thank the City Administration and City Council for their strategic and compassionate partnership and collaboration on this important and difficult issue. We’ve seen that additional investments in proven solutions to homelessness result in more people receiving the help they need. We believe that everyone deserves a safe place to call home and commend City leaders for your continued commitment to support our most vulnerable neighbors.
To learn more about how to join us in these efforts as we approach winter, please visit: https://www.homewardva.org/help.
