EATON — The Preble County Continuum of Care (COC), along with its supporting agencies, will be hosting a Homeless Health and Information Fair on Tuesday, Jan. 24 from 6-8 p.m.
According to Deron Newman, Homeless Services Manager for the HIT Foundation, the event is being held to “inform and assist those who are homeless or at risk of homelessness, as well as members of the community.”
The event will be held at the Eaton United Church of Christ, 113 W. Decatur Street, Eaton. It will include information and representatives from agencies including Preble County Job and Family Services, Preble County Health District, Preble County Mental Health and Recovery Board, Community Action Partnership, and HIT Foundation.
Information regarding programs designed to assist homeless or at-risk persons in the county will be available. The event will also include health screenings; dinner; prize drawings; coats, hats and gloves; and use of shower facilities, according to Newman.
The fair is being held in conjunction with the annual Point-In-Time Count and Housing Inventory Count, conducted by the regions of the Balance of State COC each year.
The Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio states:
“The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) requires counts of sheltered and unsheltered homeless persons for those communities receiving federal funding from the Continuum of Care (CoC) and Emergency Solutions Grant Programs. These are called Point-in-Time Counts (PIT), as they occur during one day, the last ten days of January.
HUD also requires the annual completion of a Housing Inventory Count (HIC), which provides an overview of a community’s homeless program inventory. The HIC must be completed on the same day as the PIT Count.
Collecting data on the numbers and characteristics of homeless individuals and families as well as homeless services capacity can serve additional purposes over and beyond meeting HUD requirements. Accurate counts offer several benefits including:
•Providing support for local planning efforts by identifying unmet needs and trends in size and characteristics of homeless populations
•Supplying guidance for development of more effective programming and services
•Raising awareness of homelessness
•Enhancing local homeless programs’ volunteer base
•Assisting with allocation of resources around local priorities
•Targeting interventions for certain homeless sub-populations
•Opportunity to conduct community outreach, engagement, screening, and triage to identify people experiencing homelessness in need of services
•Identifying community goals
•Assisting in measuring progress toward homelessness reduction goals.”
