Agenda - 09-16-2014 - 6a - Laserfiche WebLink

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I Nancy Coston said OCIM has a relationship with DSS to screen emergency clients. She 2 said DSS staff verifies the client's low income status and makes the referrals to OCIM. She said 3 1 F does not require that clients have a DSS referral. 4 Commissioner McKee asked if any feedback has been received from tenants involved in 5 the landlord repair guarantee. 6 Nancy Coston said this I something that has been done elsewhere, but not in Orange 7 County. She said this is an item that Orange County may be interested in looking into. She 8 said there has been some feedback that this requires very little money, but the guarantee had 9 gotten more people to step up. 10 Commissioner McKee said he would like to see how this works. He said if it would 11 increase rental availability, it would really help people. 12 Commissioner Pelissier said she believes that Durham County has done some of this. 13 She said the Partnership for Homelessness is looking into a program that asks landlords to offer 14 a lower rent for individuals. She said this has not been done in Orange County, but the 15 Chamber of Commerce is interested in assisting with the effort of engaging the community in 16 this. 17 Commissioner Rich asked if DSS works with Durham Tech. 18 Sharron Hinton said yes. She said there is a new partnership with Durham Tech with 19 the Building Futures Program. 20 Chair Jacobs noted that he spoke with an elected official from Chapel Hill who did not 21 think the Skills Development Center was doing anything anymore. He said there needs to be a 22 way to communicate with the two municipality governments. He asked that tonight's 23 PowerPoint presentation be shared with the towns, even if it is just by email. 24 Nancy Coston said this can be done, and some of the new employment efforts can also 25 be shared. 26 Chair Jacobs asked about the impact of peoples' unemployment insurance running out. 27 Nancy Coston said this is not tracked, although these residents are coming in to apply 28 for Medicaid. She said an unemployment change does cause an increase in clients. She said 29 there are more jobs for some people, but there is another group that just lost what they were 30 living on. She said until you see food and nutrition services stabilizing, unemployment problems 31 still exist. 32 Commissioner Gordon asked Nancy Coston to highlight where the state changes have 33 impacted DSS the most. 34 Nancy Coston said the unemployment obviously affected them indirectly. She said more 35 Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) funding used to allow more adolescent 36 parenting programs and subsidized employment. She said shrinking these funds has caused 37 the County to pick those costs up, and not everything can be covered. She said budget cuts 38 caused financial counseling to be eliminated. She said when state money diminishes, the 39 County budget has to be re- prioritized. 40 Commissioner Rich noted that Commissioner Dorosin had spoken about the need for 41 out of the box ideas that the County is not already doing. She asked if there had been any 42 discussions about this. 43 Nancy Coston said Robert Gilmore is always pushing staff to do more creative things, 44 such as a job fair at their offices. She said the subsidized employment is already something 45 that the County is doing in a different way than other counties. She said one of the challenges 46 occurs when you already have programs that you feel are effective, and you don't have enough 47 resources to put into them. She said this makes it hard to want to come up with new ideas. 48 She said there are discussions about veterans and unemployment and the different 49 ways to integrate all of the employment programs.