Advocates for the homeless in Ohio are upset with a provision in the state Senate's newly proposed two year state budget that would cut funding for a key agency in half.
Ohio Public Radio’s Jo Ingles reports.
The Ohio Housing Trust Fund was created by voters back in 1991 when they approved a constitutional amendment making housing a public purpose. Since that time, it has distributed money to help house low income Ohioans. But homeless advocate Bill Faith is concerned because the Senate budget takes half of the money the trust fund gets and would give it to local communities.
“It’s 88 new housing bureaucracies that would get created to administer something which is efficiently run now with a lot of oversight by the Developmental Service Agency, with an advisory board overseeing it. So it’s a very bad idea,” Faith says.
Faith also says the funds in that program are leveraged for federal and public monies so that every dollar actually becomes ten. He says this move would have a negative effect on that and could mean millions of dollars less for housing for the homeless in local communities.
