By J. Graber
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The city of Scottsdale will continue a program to house the homeless in a local hotel.

The Scottsdale City Council voted 6-1 during its June 27 meeting to accept a $940,000 grant to house homeless in an undisclosed hotel near Pima and Indian Bend as an emergency shelter.

The money will go to rent 10 rooms — three of which must be occupied by people living around the Human Services Campus in downtown Phoenix in the area known as “the zone” — and provide wrap around services to get participants back on their feet as well as provide nutritional assistance.

“We do have a plan we set up with each one of these participants,” Scottsdale Human Services Director Greg Bestgen said. “You can’t just come in and be in the hotel. It’s case managed. We want you to follow a plan and the idea is within 30 days ... we’re going to get you transitioned into various types of housing whether it’s bridge housing, whether it’s permanent supportive housing, whether it’s an apartment. A lot of them we’ve gotten them rental assistance from Vista Del Camino to get them in with the first month’s rent and the security deposit and stuff. We’ve got kind of several prongs to support these kinds of programs, it’s not just a one and done.”

A similar program in the past has had an 84% success rate in getting people into more permanent housing within 30 days, according to Bestgen.

City Councilwoman Solange Whitehead also noted there has been increase in the number of landlords in Scottsdale that accept vouchers.
She said she was thrilled about the program.

“There’s a cost to taxpayers, besides the responsibility we have, there’s a cost to allowing people to be homeless,” Whitehead said. “It’s definitely worth it to invest in helping people, it saves money too.”

Only senior women, women with children and families will be accepted into the program.

City council member Barry Graham was the lone vote against accepting the grant.

He didn’t like the fact that people from the zone and migrants who entered the country legally would be utilizing the program as well as the fact there are no background searches conducted on program participants.

Graham reiterated what a McCormick Ranch resident told him, which was that the program is Scottsdale trying to fix Phoenix’s “mismanagement” problem with the zone.

“Scottsdale residents are very compassionate but there are better ways to do it,” Graham said after the meeting.

J. Graber can be reached at jgraber@iniusa.org. We invite our readers to submit their civil comments pro or con on this issue. Email AZOpinions@iniusa.org.