- Roughly 11 million dollars was awarded to Kern County, Bakersfield, and the Kern County Chamber of Commerce to combat homelessness.
- This money was awarded by the state and comes with new transparency measures that require the recipients to post monthly updates on how that money is being used.
BROADCAST TRANSCRIPT:
“This is a long time coming, it should’ve happened a long time ago,” said Carlos Baldovinous, Chair of the Bakersfield Kern Regional Homeless Collaborative.
The new transparency measures come with the roughly 11 million dollars in grant money the State of California awarded to the City of Bakersfield, Kern County and the Kern County Chamber of Commerce.
“I think it’s timely, cause a lot of resources have come in throughout the whole state. A lot of different municipalities have received millions upon millions of dollars and the state continues to invest these dollars. Now you have Prop 1 and SB43 coming online soon, so you have definitely an influx of dollars that have never been seen throughout the state before, especially to address homelessness and now mental health services.”
The monthly updates will be posted on the California Housing and Community website under their Homeless Housing, Assistance, and Prevention Program.
Baldavinous said that there have been concrete steps made to help the homeless population in Kern County, but with a lack of affordable housing, it’s an uphill battle.
“Over the last three or four years you’ve had different navigation centers being opened from the county and the city, [the] housing authority has entered into projects to address the growing need of the homeless population. Shelters have added more beds to their space. But you have the inflow of people coming into homelessness that you’ve never seen before. And you have less people leaving the homeless services because they have nowhere to land because you do not have enough affordable housing being built with the amount of people we’ve had in the shelters and other facilities.
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