Public meeting to discuss housing draft plan for homeless, domestic violence survivors, veterans

BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) - Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome’s Office and community members will sit down to discuss housing for the most vulnerable.

This comes as the city received a proposed $5 million plan to provide housing for the homeless, those with a very low-income, domestic violence survivors, and veterans.

It’s happening Monday, March 20 at 6 p.m. at the library downtown.

Homelessness is a nationwide challenge and continues to be something leaders are working on in Baton Rouge. That’s why there’s dedicated funding from the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development.

We’re going to be encouraging people to come and join that conversation about our plan,” said Marlee Pittman, Interim Director of the Office of Community Development. “Give us feedback, questions, comments so that we can make sure it’s reflective of all the many great solutions, and ideas that our community has, for tackling the shared problem of housing.”

You can find a link to the draft action plan here.

The document states that after a 2022 survey, 814 people experienced homelessness who had not before in the Capital Region.

The action plan has three important parts of information. It starts with a basic overview of what the money is and what the officials can spend it on. Then it goes into data on how many people are experiencing homelessness and where they are coming from. It also reveals the unmet needs.

Pittman said they’re looking at spending a couple of million dollars on an affordable housing development. This could look like a tiny home community and affordable renting units. They’re also looking at adding a non-congregate shelter. She said this makes the transition from the streets to the shelter faster.

“There a lot of people that we may not have lived experience but are in and out of homelessness or are having real housing challenges due to covid, inflation, and rising housing prices,” said Pittman. A big chunk of the money will go to support services like health, mental health, rehabilitation financial literacy, and addiction prevention.

If you’re interested in applying for those funds, you can also talk about that at the meeting.

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