City of Columbus comes together working on homelessness
COLUMBUS, Miss. (WCBI) – Homelessness is a problem everywhere, even here in North Mississippi.
In Columbus, shelter options for people experiencing homelessness are extremely limited.
The Golden Triangle Homeless Coalition has been working for years towards a more permanent solution.
That is why they are asking for ideas and help from others in the community.
The Golden Triangle Regional Homeless Coalition and City Leaders have decided to come together to find housing solutions for people experiencing homelessness.
Rev. Sandra Depriest said she is looking to bring others in to help.
“We’ve been in partnerships before and looking forward we’d like to find some ways to partner and we want the community involved as well and ideas invested in this issue we can’t do it alone and we need to know the community is on board with us,” said Depriest.
The City of Columbus recognizes the issue, and even though there are temporary shelter options during weather extremes, Mayor Keith Gaskin would like to see a more permanent arrangement.
“We have an issue with having a consistent location for a warming or cooling station within the city for the homeless and I think many times many people in the community don’t know how many people are suffering from homelessness at any point in time in the city, so what we are hoping tonight will do to kind of bring everybody up to speed on where the homeless coalition will try to work with the city in the past why some of those issues didn’t work, some of the locations they looked at and then also look at some more locations in the city that could potentially work,” said Mayor Gaskin.
Depriest said there are many reasons for homelessness but she wants to assure others that they are there to address the problem and that’s why they are reaching out to people in the community for suggestions and help.
“Homelessness impacts so many issues in our community not only the individual’s personal and physical health but their mental health and drug usage and it’s either a response or a precursor to drug usage and we want to clean that up and police this community and we aren’t talking about turning folks a loose but we going to have onsite residential assistance and close to the police station so we can monitor it,” said Depriest.
Depriest and Gaskin are excited about the steps they are taking toward a better and safer city, and they’re anxious to hear input from others..
“We’ve struck out several times and we are ready to make our efforts count for something. They’ve been working on this for quite some time. Years we are talking years,” said Depriest.
While WCBI does not know the outcome of the meeting, we will give you updates here as more is available.
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