The Knoxville News Sentinel published an excellent editorial yesterday about the TYP.
The city of Knoxville, Knox County, service providers, neighborhood activists and others developed the Ten Year Plan in 2005 to address the chronically homeless. Defined as those who have been homeless longer than a year or who have had a series of homelessness episodes, the chronically homeless consume local tax dollars through incarceration and medical expenses at a higher rate than other subgroups of the overall homeless population.
The Ten Year Plan calls for stabilizing the chronically homeless by getting them into housing first, then addressing whatever underlying issues have led to their plight through coordinated social services. Many are mentally ill, substance abusers or both.
That’s a good summary, but as anyone who’s been paying attention will tell you, chronic homelessness and the context in which it exists is extremely complex. Implementing the TYP is anything but simple. The comments after the editorial, in which Scott Barker, Editorial Page/Community Voices Coordinator, plays an active and evenhanded role, underscore the challenge of communicating about the plan.
Now, halfway through the plan’s projected life, is a good time to have a community-wide discussion about this community-wide problem.
We agree and are making strides to help that conversation along. Our monthly public conversations are off to a good start. They’ve been very informative and well-attended. The fifth one is scheduled for 6pm Wednesday, August 25 at the Cansler YMCA. We’ll be discussing addiction treatment. Please plan to attend.
Knoxville City Council will hold a workshop on the TYP, focused mainly on communication, at 5pm Thursday, September 30 in the main assembly room of the City County building.
There is more to come. We’re committed to engaging the community in an informative and good dialog about the issue of homelessness and the TYP’s proven solutions. We appreciate everyone who’s engaged in our effort to help the homeless wherever they stand on the issue, especially the many thousands of Knox area residents who support efforts to help the homeless every month through their words, through their actions and through their financial support.
We also appreciate the continued focus on the real issue–ending homelessness. People experiencing homelessness across our community are just that: people. Each is a person who has, due to circumstances that could occur in any of our lives, needs our help getting back on track. It is within our power to help those who will commit to the hard work of addressing their problem with homelessness to get off the streets and build the kinds of productive, self-supporting lives that all of us want for ourselves. Ultimately, the TYP is about helping them to make that happen, with our help.