FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — A Fayetteville pastor says that in the past, his church has been able to provide assistance to people in need of housing, but now, they’re seeing fewer resources to help.
Pastor Clint Schnekloth with Good Shepherd Lutheran Church says when an unhoused person approaches the church for support, they have to refer them to a program they could join to obtain supportive housing.
Schnekloth says his experience has been that now, many of those programs are completely full.
“All of those funds are exhausted, even the websites that you go to with the City of Fayetteville that are supposed to be housing resources, sometimes say that even the waitlists are closed,” Schnekloth said. “That’s where we often feel kind of stuck, like what else can we do?”
The Hearth Program is a federally funded program offered through the City of Fayetteville to help those experiencing homelessness.
Community Resources Director Yolanda Fields says that when people apply for the program, they’re placed on a by-name list.
“That’s a listing of individuals that are unsheltered, and they are given a vulnerability score,” Fields said. “So of course, the higher the scores mean that they're more vulnerable and need to be housed quickly.”
Fields says there are several reasons why that list is not cycling quickly.
“What is taking our folks longer to find housing is the fact that a lot —not all, but a lot— of the complexes or landlords do background checks,” Fields said. “And our clients, our participants have challenges with background checks, whether it be with rental history, with credit history, or with criminal records.”
Fields says another issue is funding.
“The units have to be there, then we have to get the folks qualified to rent, and there has to be funding to provide all of the assistance necessary, because we're talking permanent supportive housing,” Fields said.
Pastor Schnekloth says he’s calling on city leadership to make the necessary funding a priority.
“My biggest frustration is if you look at what the city is doing, they're not putting housing first,” Schnekloth said. “We find ways to spend millions of dollars on all kinds of other things … If you go downtown, there's all this infrastructure investment in parking. There's really amazing investment in parks ... So where's our investment in making sure that people have housing, if that's really actually a priority for us?”
In the meantime, Schnekloth says his church is actively working to help where they can.
“We already have experienced housing people here. We've been a sanctuary church for years,” Schnekloth said. “I think each church could have a conversation about what part of the housing crisis or homelessness they might be able to address.”
Fields emphasized that there are many moving parts that all need to work together to address the issue.
“There are things that happen to individuals, and it can happen to any one of us, that causes us to end up in a situation where we have no income and where the end result is we end up being homeless,” Fields said. “So as a community we need to come up with a system to assist individuals when that happens.”
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