The Community Planning & Advocacy Council

Cooper River Square
6981 N. Park Drive
East Building, 3rd Fl.
Pennsauken, NJ 08109
p: 856.663.3998
f: 856.663.7182

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Camden County Housing First Conference
October 9th, 2007

Homelessness remains one of our community's most challenging problems. According to the 2007 Point in Time Count of the Homeless, on any given night in Camden County, nearly 800 households are homeless. While the human cost of homelessness for a family are immeasurable, homelessness enacts a high cost on our infrastructure and our mainstream resources as well:

  • It costs $192 per day to house one person in the state prison system
  • It costs $239 per day to house one person in a group home
  • It costs $329 per day to house one person in a state psychiatric hospital

 
This conference was the next phase of our County’s efforts to move towards implementing our plan to end homelessness in 10 years.  The Camden County Homeless Network Planning Committee has been working diligently to formulate our plan and to begin to address homelessness in the County.  The work has not gone unnoticed.  Camden County was recently recognized by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development as one of the top 14 continuums of care in the country in terms of our Homeless Management Information System (HMIS) data reporting.  Last year’s Homeless Summit had over 140 homeless advocates, providers and residents gather to learn about homelessness in Camden County.

 



At this year’s conference we discussed an exciting alternative to these high-cost, ineffective means of managing homelessness. Housing First is an innovative solution to homelessness, housing individuals and family as quickly as possible in permanent supportive housing, and then providing them the services and support to remain in their housing. Mark Kinzly and Kevin Irwin, researchers from Yale University, presented research on Housing First that has demonstrated Housing First's effectiveness in helping homeless people to gain and sustain their housing.  Housing First not only saves lives, it saves money.

If you would like more information or to participate in the Camden County Housing First Collaborative, please email Joanne Locke or call at 8565.663.3998

Click here to read facts about homelessness in Camden.