Connecting neighbors to resources.

That's the purpose of the Pulaski County Homelessness Conference in Somerset.

Last week, community organizers came together to talk about issues regarding housing, share information and resources to those in need.

We live in an area that has about 20% poverty here in this county, so we want to look out for all of our neighbors, not just after they've slipped into homelessness, but before.

So what we want to do is try to connect them to resources they may need for things like rental assistance, utility assistance.

We do a lot of shelter placements.

We do shuttles for shelters, showering.

We have a food bank, a little food pantry that we have in our office, community showers, just all kinds of things we do.

Employment assistance, educational assistance, free Wi-Fi, basically anything we can do to help the community.

We also act as a cooling center and a warming center for our county for the daytime.

Discussions at this conference have included things like a need for transportation resources.

We now have more of those.

The first conference, we decided we needed a way for people to get to sheltering.

There wasn't a lot of transport for people that wanted to get off the streets, so we started shelter shuttle.

We needed more showering in the community, so we actually started showering at our office.

But we've identified a lot of needs and moved forward in a lot of ways.

And that's from not only you're helping resources, but the private sector also, you know, has has provided some opportunities like more transitional housing has popped up, like I said, more transportation opportunities.

So those things are really valuable when you're looking at people that are needing employment and and trying to get ahead.

I mean, Kentucky is in, you know, by and large, a rural state.

And so our transportation options are very vehicle dependent.

And so this is something that comes up when communities are trying to solve for homelessness, making sure that a we're building housing where, you know, our roads are and that people do have vehicles to to get around.

We try and.

Overcome some of the barriers that are out there like housing.

We try and get people educated about what their rights are.

Help in the community, trying to get some trust built where we can actually sit down and have conversations that actually get somewhere, put some action behind it.

Applications and job hunting.

A lot of people, everything has gone to online and there's a lot of scams out there.

So it's kind of a filter process to get hired somewhere.

Resources for places to get with internet access.

Transportation to huge one to like I said, and just being work ready, having resumes ready places to go that are willing to be second chance employers, that's a challenge.

There's a lot of stigma surrounding homelessness.

I know that a lot of people are familiar with people struggling with addiction.

You know, may end up in homelessness or our neighbors that are struggling with mental illness, you know, may also struggle with homelessness.

But there's also a lot of other people that are struggling right now besides those two categories of neighbors.

There are elderly neighbors.

We have high school seniors in the county that reach out to us, our veterans in the community.

There are a whole lot of people that are experiencing homelessness.

It's not just a few select groups of people that this is happening to.

You are not alone.

Things are tough.

We are all feeling the pressure of rising from the existence of of this conference, and the number of people attending really shows just how important this work is, and how there is a collective will to do something different.

According to a presentation at the conference, the Kentucky Housing Supply Gap Analysis projects that more than 3300 housing units will be needed in Pulaski County by 2029.

In 2024, it was a little more than 2500 housing units.