Gainesville commissioners voted Thursday to allocate $700,000 in funds to help curb the issue of homelessness in the city.
The topic of homelessness was added to the city meeting agenda amid concerns about a growing homeless encampment on Southeast Fourth Place that began to proliferate about a month ago after police cleared a similar camp across South Main Street at Haisley Lynch Park. Around 20 to 30 people are living at the encampment, according to Grace Marketplace Director Jon DeCarmine.
“It is incredibly hard for folks who are living on the street, nobody is discounting that in the tiniest bit, it’s incredibly hard for people who live and work next door to those folks,” said Mayor Harvey Ward. “If we don’t handle a problem that we see getting out of control, or already out of control, it gets worse. It doesn’t get better on its own.”
The $700,000 comes from American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds that were previously allocated to a housing development plan and city administrative services that were not used. At the meeting, commissioners also voted to reallocate $150,000 in ARPA funds from administrative services to gun violence prevention programming.