Orange County board approves $3M for homelessness pilot program

Orange County supervisors Tuesday approved spending $3 million on a pilot program to help homeless families.

Half of the funding comes from federal American Rescue Plan Act funds to help local governments affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. The other half comes from the county’s general fund.

The aim of the program proposed by Orange County Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento is to focus on about 250 families, helping needy residents hang on to their housing. The program will provide case management to help the needy families receive a variety of county services such as job training, financial literacy education, food and other necessities.

The $1.5 million of ARPA funds to be spent on the program comes from the money allocated to Sarmiento’s district.

Board of Supervisors Vice Chairman Doug Chaffee said he looks forward to seeing how the program develops.

“This is a pilot program and like many pilot programs there are adjustments as you go, so there’s a lot of unknown, but I commend this effort,” Chaffee said. “We need to help people become economically stable so they can move forward and not need more assistance. … I want to see where this goes. Again, I support it.”

Supervisor Katrina Foley said, “What we’re talking about is a very targeted approach in order to gather some data to figure out what works and what doesn’t work.”

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