The Gainesville City Commission voted to fully fund GRACE Marketplace at $1.9 million for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1, with the possibility of increasing the funding by $100,000 next week.
The city funds come one year after failing to fully fund the emergency homeless shelter and its outreach team. Alachua County filled the gap with $500,000.
The original contract between GRACE Marketplace and the city of Gainesville had a five-year term. Thursday’s vote will extend the contract by one year. The contract allocates $1.6 million for emergency shelter services from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) with another $350,000 from the Gainesville Community Reinvestment Area for supplemental emergency shelter.
The supplemental shelter is an additional 20 beds that GRACE Marketplace is in the middle of building. The funds will cover day services provided by GRACE. The city also sent $700,000 to help with the material cost of building the new shelter and beds.
The GRACE Marketplace financing came after an item that updated the commissioners on a series of housing projects, including Woodland Park Phase II, the community land trust and ConnectFree.
A motion on Thursday allocated $1.5 million in the general budget for affordable housing. Commissioners said they’d like to see another $100,000 go to GRACE, perhaps from that affordable housing bucket, in order to pay for day services at the shelter.
The city has additional funds for affordable housing after pulling out of the $1.7 million Oakview Apartment project.
Is this the place people are talking about where women are getting assaulted? And why is so much money supporting the problem with homeless, we just keep opening the fort to bring more here.
It is also the place that does not do any checks for violent criminal records before letting people move in. We citizens who are forking over lots of tax money would be better served to build more jails instead of dumping funds into this crime ridden hole.
Related: the County needs a new jail, and Taccachale has lost 90% of its residents over the years. The following idea involves the city, county and state politics.
Why not use Taccachale for just the civil offenders, including the repeat homeless campers who resist living in housing? Whether for mental illness, addiction or chronic personal economic decisions, the voluntary homeless could be confined to the Taccachale campus, using its outdoors there as they like, but confined to the fenced campus, their SSI taken as rental costs, and dining on the food there. Maybe doing minor jobs for upkeep.
Meanwhile the Jail demand would be less, for other reasons too (stop releasing repeat offenders).