Address homelessness as a community matter: Deep community engagement is the first necessary step to resolve the unhoused situation in Johnson City.
Homelessness cannot be solved through policing alone. Johnson City should strengthen coordination among housing providers, nonprofits, healthcare organizations, outreach programs, and government agencies while expanding pathways into stable housing. That includes housing rehabilitation, shelter and housing development, fair housing outreach, stronger support for the professionals already doing this work, accountability for behavior in public spaces, and the replication of programs that are already working in other municipalities.
Here’s what I propose:
- Build a real shelter system, not an emergency patchwork. Invest at least $1 million locally to expand year-round emergency shelter capacity for individuals and families beyond inclement-weather overflow and one-time responses. Use that commitment to leverage additional federal, state, philanthropic, healthcare, and nonprofit funding.
- Create a year-round day center. Partner with community providers to establish a professionally operated day shelter where people can access basic necessities and connect with case management, healthcare, benefits, employment assistance, and pathways to housing. This would replace reliance on individual volunteers with a scalable, coordinated system.
- Invest directly in effective local providers. Establish a transparent, competitive local funding program for shelter, housing, prevention, outreach, and evidence-based services, open to qualified nonprofit, faith-based, and secular providers. Federal Emergency Solutions Grant (ESG) funding should complement meaningful community investment rather than substitute for it.
- Prevent homelessness before it happens. Strengthen housing rehabilitation, eviction prevention, emergency rental assistance, rapid rehousing, and affordable-housing development, with particular attention to older adults on fixed incomes and families struggling with housing and childcare costs. Addressing the gap between incomes and housing costs must be part of any serious homelessness strategy.
- Connect housing with healthcare and recovery. Build stronger partnerships among housing providers, healthcare systems, behavioral-health providers, recovery organizations, and government agencies. Support evidence-based approaches such as medical respite and supportive housing for people whose health, disability, or substance-use challenges make exiting homelessness more difficult.
- Measure and publish to reinforce evidence-based strategies. Improve local data on who is experiencing homelessness, where they lived before becoming homeless, how long they have been unhoused, the barriers they face, and which interventions lead to stable housing. Augment the “homelessness dashboard” and publish an annual community report so investments can follow evidence and outcomes.
Johnson City already has dedicated outreach workers, nonprofits, housing providers, healthcare professionals, volunteers, and faith communities doing difficult work every day. We need to connect those efforts into a scalable community system that prevents homelessness when possible, provides safe shelter when necessary, and moves people toward stable housing as quickly as possible, while keeping public spaces safe and accessible for everyone.
