8. How long can people stay in shelters and hotels?
  • The maximum length of stay in the shelter is six months or 180 days.  However, the goal of the housing-focused program at the Samuel L. Jones Hall Homeless Shelter is to move participants into housing as quickly as possible consistent with Housing First protocols.  The best practice is to limit the time a family or individual spends homeless to 30 days or less.  However, the shelter, along with our overall homeless system of care is in the process of transitioning to Housing First, so it will take some time before we achieve that benchmark.  The need for a hotel voucher and length of stay are evaluated on a case-by-case basis.  

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1. 1. What is the Homeless Encampment Cleanup Pilot Program?
2. 2. What is an encampment - how do you define it?
3. 3. Why is the encampment at the 6th Street underpass being prioritized over other encampments?
4. 4. What are you doing to inform the occupants of the encampment about the Pilot Program?
5. 5. The Pilot Program includes activation of an additional 50 beds at the Samuel L. Jones Hall Homeless Shelter. Are these the same 50 beds from the winter shelter?
6. 6. Is the Housing First protocol part of this?
7. 7. What about people living in the encampment that have pets?
8. 8. How long can people stay in shelters and hotels?
9. 9. Are there statistics from other communities using the same approach?
10. 10. Is there a way to access the budget for this project?
11. 11. How is the City going to measure success?
12. 12. Do you track the people you have contact with?
13. 13. Has data shown that people are staying in housing?
14. 14. How are you going to keep people from coming back to the encampment site? What happens if someone sets up camp after the cleanup takes place?
15. 15. Do you anticipate any challenges when implementing the Pilot Program? How will you make sure the occupants don't end up in other areas of the city such as parks or the downtown area?