FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — The City of Fayetteville could soon have an official plan for affordable housing—last week the council heard two presentations from 7Hills Homeless Center and a Fayetteville-based consulting firm.
Wrapping up around 1 a.m. Wednesday morning, the city council approved 7hill's proposal for a collaborative project to address housing instability.
The City of Fayetteville had a remaining balance of about $1.68 million dollars in ARPA funding, which had to be used or the money would be returned back to the federal government.
7hills CEO Becci Sisson spoke about how the organization plans to provide a collective approach to address housing needs in Fayetteville.
“We can't do it alone, right? It’s a large problem, and so coming together in that collaborative group, we have the Salvation Army, we have the Continuum of Care, DiVA and DuDE, 7Hills Homeless Center, and New Beginnings,” Sisson said.
She said she plans to collaborate with the organizations in Fayetteville to execute immediate change.
"The concept is, is that anytime someone comes into crisis, you can possibly divert them, and if we can divert them that will hopefully limit the time that they're spent in crisis, or even prevent homelessness," Sisson said.
The biggest addition she says though, is the 64 beds 7Hills will provide for people without a place to sleep. "And the New Beginnings portion of the proposal was to allow for them to actually build permanent housing," Sisson said. "And so the whole idea is kind of an A to Z approach, getting people into the system as soon as possible, making sure that the time that they're in crisis or homeless is limited and minimal."
With the city vote for the 7Hills proposal, those organizations will work toward expanding their transitional housing.
"We, at 7Hills will immediately start converting that Walker site into immediate shelter. That means it will start working with our case managers, our leadership team, our board, and other partner agencies to see what that process looks like to get immediate shelter started,” Sisson explained.
The city said though that this is just step one as many concerns were brought up during the meeting. The city explained that the funding wouldn't be immediately available but through a reimbursement basis. Sisson said they're prepared for that.
"7hills has received ARPA funding and been a successful agent of that also with ESG funding and have been compliant. And our board is prepared to do reimbursement. We've met with our board, we've talked about what that's going to look like, we have some money in reserves that we can use for that, they've looked at a line of credit," she said.
Another concern brought up was the use of funds towards landscaping may not fit regulations, meaning the organizations may have to appropriate the funds for other uses. Also, all funds used between the groups in this collaborative approach will have to go through federal procurement, meaning a lot more work for the city.
The city has until the end of the year to use the remaining ARPA funds, so if negotiations fall through, members can reevaluate other proposals.
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