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One Group Offers Solution To Flagstaff's Housing Crisis
Experts say affordable housing is in crisis in Flagstaff.
“My husband and I, we moved here and it took us eight weeks to find our house and we both had jobs,” said Ross Altenbaugh, director of Flagstaff Shelter Services.
“People down on their luck or people with mental health issues, those folks can’t find housing without the right support in places you can imagine. It’s not easy for anyone to do much less for people with housing barriers,” she said
For many years Flagstaff’s solution to the homeless problem was long-term emergency shelter.
Altenbaugh said the city should instead invest in finding people a permanent home as quickly as possible.
“The biggest barrier to housing is not having a house so let’s get you a house and then let’s focus on all those things that were keeping you out of a house,” Altenbaugh said.
Things like employment, mental health counseling and treatment.
The effort is called Housing First and Altenbaugh has seen it work in Richmond, Virginia. She went from running a transitional housing community with 19 families for $600,000 to housing 72 families for the same amount of money.
The program had an 85 percent success rate.
