Upstate get $3.8 million to help homeless

Seventeen agencies that work with the homeless in the Upstate will share $3.8 million in grants from U.S. Housing and Urban Development, the agency announced Tuesday.

That is a 5 percent reduction in overall HUD funding for the year, said Mike Chesser, the executive director of United Housing Connections.

Asked how the organizations will make up the shortfall, Chesser said, "We find some other way to do it. Maybe we don't get pay raises or we don't help a teen with an extracurricular activity."

The Upstate earned the largest amount of money among the three other regions of the state.

In all, the money will go to provide about 325 units of housing across the 13-county Upstate. Chesser said the reason the Upstate ended up with such a large chunk of the $9.2 million granted to South Carolina agencies is because organizations have been strategic in managing the grant requests.

"We take advantage of the rules," he said.

The largest recipient in the Upstate is We Care, a program run by SHARE to provide 40 units of housing. The agency received almost $700,000, which is $35,000 less than last year.

Transitions 2000, a program sponsored by United Housing Connections, received just over $600,000.

The program provides 38 units of transitional housing and case management for as long as two years to chronically homeless people who have not used drugs or alcohol for 90 days.

By federal definition, chronically homeless means an individual has been homeless for at least a year or has been homeless four times in the previous three years.

Other organizations that received money work with homeless people who are mentally ill, have HIV or who need rental assistance.

HUD also pays about $160,000 for the database maintained by United Housing Connections for all organizations in the Upstate that work with homeless people.

"This is for one year," Chesser said. "We don't know what the future holds in terms of funding, and every one of these programs is full."