Albany homeless benefit from Project Homeless Connect

ALBANY — The 2016 Project Homeless Connect event was held Tuesday at the Albany Civic Center to help homeless or precariously housed individuals and families within the community.

The Albany Dougherty Homeless Coalition in collaboration with the city of Albany Department of Community and Economic Development organized the event to provide items and services including food, clothing, housing assistance, employment assistance, medical exams, haircuts, legal assistance, eye care and much more for citizens in need.

“This is our fifth annual Project Homeless Connect Event to end homelessness,” Community Development Manager Ciceli Brown said. “Our target population for this event are those who are homeless or precariously housed in our community. We use a one-stop-shop model where individuals can come into the room today and receive as many resources and services as possible without having to navigate the system outside of the arena.”

According to Brown, through partnerships with service providers, businesses, citizens and faith congregations, multiple resources are brought together once a year in a central location, where struggling members of the Albany community can access the services they need to better their lives.

“All of the items and services are donated with virtually no cost to the city,” said Brown. “Today we have free medical exams, including breast exams, HIV testing, dental screenings, cholesterol screenings and blood pressure screenings. We have the VA (Veterans Affairs) here, and they are offering a host of services. A lot of their program services are here as well as surplus items for individuals who are living on the streets, in tents or in places not meant for human habitation. They are providing them with sleeping bags, tents and boots, preparing them for the colder weather.”

Housing assistance resources were also available at the event, according to Brown.

“We have a slew of resources here for income-based housing, our shelter providers are here and our emergency housing providers are here,” she said.

Project Homeless Connect, which began in 2012 as a small charitable event at the Salvation Army, has grown into a program which now attempts to service the entire community.

“We started really small at the Salvation Army,” said Brown. “We used their little community center, which we were stuffed to capacity. So, after that we asked the civic center if we could use their premises. They let us use the meeting rooms, and the second year we were over in those rooms, but that became so large with people, nonprofits and churches asking to participate, that we ended up in the arena three years ago. We have been here every year since.”

A line of people had formed at the entrance to the arena floor, where a local barber provided haircuts, and beyond the curtain partition lay multiple rows of tables and booths along with the vendors offering help and sustenance to anyone in need. All were gathered together to combat homelessness, hopelessness and poverty, according to Brown.

“We have the staff set up a week in advance,” she said. “We have Albany State students here to do our intake for us and collect our data for the day so we know who we are servicing and what that population consists of. Everything is categorized by the services provided. The first row is food items and clothes. The second row is hygiene, insurance providers, educational resources, legal programs and employment assistance. All the booths in the back are medical providers. This year we even have the Cancer Society.”

According to Brown, many of the homeless serviced by outreach programs like Project Homeless Connect suffer from mental illnesses or simply become overwhelmed while trying to navigate societal systems and give up.

“Not understanding how to navigate the system can be very overwhelming and intimidating,” she said. “A lot of them don’t have the documentation they need: They don’t have IDs, they don’t have social security cards or birth certificates. So we have vendors here to help them. You know you need a permanent address just to get an ID, and many of the people we see suffer from a mental illness.”

Brown said that the latest numbers showed a slight decrease in Albany’s homeless population, but the number of precariously housed individuals and families had actually risen.

“This year we are expecting around 500 people to participate in and benefit from this program,” said Brown.