Outreach Program Expanded to Serve Miami Beach and Homeless Veterans
Last year, we reported that we had successfully implemented a specialized street outreach team trained to engage unsheltered persons with substance use disorders. We are very happy to report
that this project was an unmitigated success for New Hope and the community. In partnership with
the Miami‐Dade County Homeless Trust and the Department of Housing and Urban Development
(HUD), we were able to engage 567 individuals and transitioned 227 of these individuals, many with
children, to a positive housing destination (e.g., permanent housing, shelter, or treatment) throughout the course of their engagement with our outreach team.
Since then, we applied and were awarded additional funds to maintain our outreach team’s presence in the community over the next four years funded by the Miami‐Dade County Homeless
Trust and HUD. We have also contracted with additional entities, such as the City of Miami Beach and the United Way of Broward’s Support Services for Veterans and Families (SSVF) program in order to replicate the success achieved by our outreach team’s efforts in the previous year. The City of Miami Beach project is a newly conceived project, operating afterhours, in which New Hope outreach teams work alongside the Miami Beach Police Department to engage the significant homeless population living on Miami Beach and, hopefully, link these individuals to shelter or treatment. The UWB SSVF program is specifically designed to assist homeless veterans throughout Miami‐Dade County to transition from homelessness to a positive housing destination as the strategic push to house all veterans moves back to forefront post‐Pandemic.
These new and renewed partnerships represent a significant expansion, in both budget and scope, of our outreach program and we have many new staff members trained and ready to meet the challenge of reducing homelessness throughout the county.