Mayor Eddie Sundquist hosted a meeting at First Covenant Church Wednesday with local nonprofits, pastors, leaders from the Chautauqua County Homeless Coalition and health care workers to discuss ways to alleviate the homelessness crisis in Jamestown.
P-J photo by Timothy Frudd
Homes are not the only thing Jamestown’s homeless population needs.
Mayor Eddie Sundquist convened a joint meeting Wednesday with local pastors, health care workers, nonprofits, community organizations and leaders from the Chautauqua County Homeless Coalition to determine how the city can provide shelter for those in need as winter approaches.
The joint meeting with various sectors of the community was held as First Covenant Church, located at 520 Spring St.
Sundquist thanked everyone in attendance for taking time to address the issue of homelessness and for being willing to take steps to alleviate the growing issue of homelessness in the community.
“We appreciate having you all here,” he said. “We really appreciate all of the work you do.”
Wednesday’s meeting was designed to bring together three major groups of community leaders to determine how the city can address the various needs of the homeless population in the area.
“This has come out of the conversations we’ve had with the County Homelessness Coalition, the meeting we had with our different churches and faith-based groups and then the third component that we’ve started to bring in with our medical providers,” Sundquist said.
The three groups represent different needs Sundquist believes need to be met in order to help the homeless population in the city.
“It’s not just a need for housing,” he said. “It’s a need for housing, for clothes, for transportation and for medical care.”
While Sundquist explained there is a need for a “longer discussion” on how to create a long-term solution for homelessness in the city, he continually emphasized the need to develop immediate temporary solutions.
With winter approaching, Sundquist said the homelessness crisis will become even more of an issue, as people seek different ways to find shelter and stay warm.
“We have winter coming right now,” he said. “That’s a problem, because we are now seeing individuals go into abandoned homes, which will soon not have electricity or a way to heat those homes. We’re also seeing some fires started in certain areas. We want to get everyone together to talk about what can we do to provide emergency sheltering right away for that population.”
Josiah Lamp, housing director at Chautauqua Opportunities and chairperson of the County’s Homeless Coalition, explained the homelessness situation has continued to increase throughout the county and particularly in Jamestown over the past year. Lamp said the increase in homelessness is due to a combination of “long-term trends” and challenges caused by the pandemic, the eviction moratorium and the subsequent lifting of the eviction moratorium.
According to the data, Lamp said there have been over 1,000 homeless people in Chautauqua County throughout the first nine months of the year.
“It’s a really large number,” he said. “That’s about the same number we had through all of last year. It has really challenged all of us service providers to continue to provide the level of service that we have been providing because of the sheer number and also the severity of the need of the people we are now working with. We know that there’s some gaps in the services that we haven’t been able to provide. We’re trying to fill those gaps.”
Despite the shelters provided by the United Christian Advocacy Network City Mission, the Salvation Army and the Safe House of Chautauqua County, Lamp said there is a large population of homeless people who do not have a shelter available or provided for them. Additionally, he said the availability of hotel and motel rooms continues to decrease, while the number of homeless people continues to increase.
“There’s a need for a new service,” he said. “A couple of us are working on building or developing new shelters with more beds. That is a long-term project that’s in the works, but it’s not going to be ready for this winter. For this winter, we need a short-term solution that will help to make sure people are not living on the streets and putting their lives at risk because of lack of housing.”
According to Lamp, the Homeless Coalition is focusing on efforts to provide a “warming center” that people can use temporarily throughout the winter months. While the coalition works to secure a location for a temporary emergency shelter, Sundquist asked churches to consider offering different locations as temporary shelters.
The mayor’s suggestion was met with some concern by different church leaders, as people voiced questions about staffing, security, coordination efforts and how services would be provided.
Crystal Surdyk, director of development said the city has received HUD funding that could potentially be used to cover staffing costs, supplies and additional expenses.
The overall consensus of the group was that different churches, organizations and community members are willing to contribute in different ways to help meet the needs of the city’s homeless population, including food, transportation, mental health services and medical aid. While some churches seem willing to offer temporary shelter, most of the attendees present at the meeting agreed that a centralized location should be used to allow service providers the best opportunity to help those in need.
Sundquist concluded the meeting by asking everyone to consider possible locations or churches that could be used temporarily until a more permanent solution is determined.
“The idea is once we have a location, we can start to bring people there to those locations and meet people where they’re at and cater to those needs, whether those are spiritual or those are medical or those are physical needs,” he said.
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