Plan tackles Porter County homelessness

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Updated: March 1, 2012 8:16AM

VALPARAISO — A 10-year plan to end homelessness in Porter County will be unveiled to the community Monday night.

“No Place Like Home,” developed by the Social IMPACT Research Center with input from community service providers, will be presented from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. in the Ivy Tech Auditorium, 3100 Ivy Tech Drive.

The complete plan will be available online by Tuesday from the Porter County Community Foundation, www.portercountyfoundation.org, and the United Way of Porter County, www.unitedwaypc.org.

“We’re just really asking people to come out and hear about it,” said Caroline Shook, executive director of Housing Opportunities, which oversees Spring Valley homeless shelter in Valparaiso and transitional housing in the area.

The county has had a coalition for affordable housing for the past five or six years, which included several service providers, but the agencies all had a different picture of homelessness in the county, said Sharon Kish, president of the United Way, which, with the community foundation, helped fund development of the plan.

The plan is meant to assess what services are available, where the gaps are in those services and how to move forward.

“It’s not just housing. It’s jobs, it’s transportation, it’s health care that enter into that homeless picture,” Kish said, adding the county also is looking at best practices in communities of similar sizes.

The plan will include demographics on the homeless population as well, “so we really can start to develop services around that,” Kish said. “As a funder, we want services that have the most impact.”