PORT ANGELES — Clallam County’s ambitious plan to end homelessness by 2015 may win it $1.75 million to help house people recently released from hospitals, prisons and jails.
If it gets the state grant, Clallam may be the only rural Washington county to do so.
Local public and private agencies that offer emergency or assisted housing banded together in 1989 to provide a “continuum of care” — buzzwords for supplying social support along with shelter — to homeless people.
Such networking put the groups far ahead of those in other counties when the state last year launched a 10-year effort to reduce across the state.
And it puts them at an advantage to get the new state funds to focus on preventing homelessness and on “discharge planning” for people leaving institutions.
Because such people often have drug addictions or brain disorders, the proposal could leverage projects funded by the county’s second major social service initiative, the Hargrove Bill to bolster mental health and substance abuse programs.
The Homelessness Task Force oversees about $100,000 yielded annually by a $10 surcharge on the county auditor’s fees for recording documents.
The Chemical Dependency/Mental Health Program Fund Advisory Board will underwrite programs with about $900,000 a year from a one-tenth of 1 percent sales tax that took effect July 1.
As for the latest state grant, its guidelines dovetail with priorities of the Homelessness Task Force.
Early applications
Preliminary applications for the money are due at the end of August.
From the 39 proposals — assuming each of Washington’s counties submits one — the state will name eight semi-finalists that will receive technical assistance to proceed to the next step.
Four counties — one urban, one midsize, one rural and one at large — will receive $1.75 million, two-year allocations.
“We have a high probability of being in the group of eight,” Kathy Wahto, director of Serenity House and a member of the task force, told commissioners Monday.