Huntington City Council has signed off on a four-year, $12 million federal initiative aimed at people caught between addiction, mental illness and life on the street. It isn't a building program, but housing sits at the center of the plan.
Council voted unanimously Tuesday, Oct. 13, to approve the federal grant behind the effort, WV MetroNews reported. The local program is called HARBOR, short for Housing, Access, Recovery, Behavioral health, Outreach and Re-engagement. MetroNews reported that the city will receive an initial $3 million, followed by $3 million installments in each of the following three years.
Where the money comes from
The funding comes through a new federal program. On Oct. 2, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced the eight communities selected for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's new Safety Through Recovery, Engagement, and Evidence-based Treatment and Support program, known as STREETS.
According to the federal announcement, STREETS will provide $96 million over four years to help communities build coordinated systems of care for people who are homeless and have serious mental illness, substance use disorders or both. Each community gets $3 million a year for four years. The City of Huntington is the only West Virginia grantee on the list. Others include Detroit, Houston, Miami-Dade County and the Cherokee Nation.
HHS said grantees will bring together local government, behavioral health and health care providers, housing partners, law enforcement, courts, first responders and other community organizations. The federal description repeatedly ties treatment to "recovery supports, housing, and other community services."
Huntington's partners
Mayor Patrick Farrell described HARBOR as a multi-agency effort. Partners include the Marshall Health Network, the Division of Addiction Sciences, Valley Health, Harmony House, the West Virginia Health Information Network and the REACH initiative.
"The purpose of this new initiative is to reduce unsheltered homelessness and improve behavioral health stability among adults with serious mental illness, substance use disorder, and co-occurring disorders," Farrell said. "This will be accomplished by aligning and expanding partnerships into a fully integrated coordination system."
He added, "HARBOR will assist in capturing individuals that fall through the cracks, especially people who cycle between the justice system, the healthcare system, and the streets."
"I think that this has the potential to be a gamechanger," Councilwoman Sarah Walling said. Walling said it's great to see such collaboration. "Harmony House is grateful to be included and to be a part of the work group and the solution," she said. "This is big news."
Council Chairman Mike Shockley said the money could tie together work that's been happening separately. "We've had a lot of agencies, a lot of things working, nonprofits, but where we're going to have some money and start tying these things in, and a grant that's going to be the glue to put it all together, is amazing," he said.
Neither the city's comments nor the federal announcement described construction, renovation or new housing units paid for by the grant. Based on what's been made public, HARBOR funds coordination, outreach, treatment and recovery support. Any building work would have to come from other funding sources.
Why it matters for Contractors
So why should a builder care about a services grant? Because programs like HARBOR create demand that eventually has to be housed. When a city gets serious about moving people from the street into treatment and stability, it often runs into the same problem: a shortage of places for people to live once they're ready to leave the street or finish treatment. That means recovery residences, transitional units, permanent supportive housing and the renovation of older buildings to serve them.
Huntington already has a network of recovery and housing nonprofits, several of them named as HARBOR partners. As that network grows with four years of steady federal money, those groups may look for space, renovations and repairs. They'll pay for that work with other grants, settlement dollars and fundraising, not necessarily with HARBOR funds.
For Tri-State contractors who do small commercial renovations, multifamily rehab or accessible-unit work, the partner organizations named in HARBOR are worth getting to know. Contractors who understand how nonprofits and grant-funded owners operate, including documentation requirements, board approvals and tight budgets, will be ready when those groups start looking for builders.