What Clark County’s housing hotline says about area’s housing, homelessness crisis

As recently reported in The Columbian, a housing hotline provided by Council for the Homeless in Clark County gets on average 130 to 180 calls a day. A small team with lived experiences that include homelessness and housing insecurity answer callers’ requests for help seven days a week. They share resources such as shelters with available space for the night or the  locations of warming or cooling centers activated during extreme weather events. Some callers may also be facing eviction or homelessness for the first time or are trying to escape situations of domestic violence. 

According to supervisor Guy Hardy, the demand for the hotline’s services remains high amid the recent decline in federal housing assistance. President Trump’s budget request for the fiscal year starting on Oct. 1 slashes the Housing and Urban Development agency’s budget  by more than 40%. In addition to cuts to rental assistance, it seeks to replace money allocated for housing vouchers with state block grants and impose two-year limits for people in public housing. 

Hardy and Sunny Wonder, chief operating officer at Council for the Homeless, join us to talk about the housing hotline and what its calls reveal about the housing and homelessness crisis in Clark County and the region.