Shelter Housing Corporation

With the assistance of a story county american rescue plan act grant, we purchased and renovated an 8-unit apartment building. Shortly after the end of the fiscal year, it opened to house eight households, including 13 individuals, in safe affordable housing. Next year you will be able to read about a new apartment building that we have built over the course of this fiscal year primarily with the help of the national housing trust fund and the federal home loan bank. This building will be used to provide an additional 18 units of very low income housing to story county iowa.

Since july of 2023, we have housed 816 individuals through our rapid rehousing and permanent supportive housing programs. This has allowed us to reduce total nights of shelter provided, because we were able to move households to housing 30% faster than our goal of 30 days. During their time in our programs, 41% of clients showed positive income progress.

With an increase in funding, we have been able to increase our outreach services. We had 519 encounters with individuals experiencing homelessness. These encoungers happened either during regular hours at public libraries or out in parks, along creeks or rivers, in wooded areas, or other places where people camp. We provided invitations to come into shelter, along with referrals to other services in our area. We also provided food, clothing, and equipment to help people stay safe during extremely hot or cold weather. We recognize that it is always a person's choice to accept or reject our assistance, but persistence does pay off. We had a client that had been banned from our shelter for threatening behavior come apologize, and re-establish a relationship with us, which led not only to the person being housed, but then serving as an outreach liaison to other people experiencing homelessness.