A local church is funding a large portion of a new community partnership to combat homelessness and poverty on Madison’s southwest side.
Orchard Ridge United Church of Christ pledged a two-year, $130,000 grant Wednesday to support the new Southwest Housing Partnership dedicated to addressing the causes of homelessness.
“This effort builds on our longtime commitment as a congregation devoted to serving those in need wherever possible,” Orchard Ridge UCC Pastor Winton Boyd said in a statement.
The partnership combines five neighborhoods in southwest Madison past the West Beltline Highway.
The partnership chose to focus on these neighborhoods because of their “dense pockets of poverty and high percentage of residents who are periodically or chronically homeless,” Dane County Executive Joe Parisi said in a statement.
“What’s significant is that it’s bringing all the community partners together,” Parisi said. “No one entity can do this by themselves, and we have to come together.”
The Southwest Housing Partnership, which includes members from Common Wealth Development, Dane County’s Joining Forces for Families and Public Health Madison and Dane County, will enhance “housing assistance and work to address the root causes of homelessness,” Parisi said.
“Together, in partnership, we can address immediate housing needs while strengthening the community’s resources,” Common Wealth Development, Inc. Executive Director Marianne Morton said in a statement.
Neighbors complain about temporary homeless shelter
Residents near East Washington Avenue are not pleased with a new temporary daytime resource center and are concerned with activities of some shelter residents.
In response to the closing of the state Capitol basement and Madison Central Library, places where homeless people stayed warm in winter, Porchlight Inc. opened a temporary homeless shelter at 754 E. Washington Ave. in December.
Ald. Bridget Maniaci, District 2, said there have been complaints from neighbors who said they saw shelter residents being drunk, fighting and smoking in Reynolds Park.
The Daytime Resource Center will close March 15.
“There’s not more of an outcry because [the shelter] was promised as short-term,” Maniaci said. “I am not in support of extended duration.”
While Maniaci said there is a need for resource centers in the community, she said a commercial area would be better suited for a shelter than a residential community.
