MONTICELLO – In his monthly report during the meeting of the Legislature on Thursday, December 14, Health and Human Services Commissioner John Liddle reported a pretty substantial increase in the homeless census over the last three months. Liddle said that the homeless census was at 216, up 45 since August, before going even higher to 225 since the December census report was completed. 

The commissioner said that the main reason behind the increase in homelessness is due to evictions caused by changes in ownership, inability to pay rent or the property being condemned. Several people have sought assistance from the Department of Social Services (DSS) due to the ongoing housing crisis, with cold weather only heightening the need. 

“We are looking at possible changes to make in order to adapt,” Liddle said.

Liddle reported that 36 families have received vouchers for housing and the DSS is now seeking rentals for those families. He said that they have been able to assist four families so far and moved them into housing through the use of their vouchers.

“We want to recruit more people who are interested in developing affordable housing,” said Liddle. “We are doing our best to continue getting folks in shelters and not turning any residents away. It’s tight, but we are working hard to keep it going. We have 22 vacant positions in social services.” 

New Request Form

Liddle also announced that the Health and Human Services Division now has a new assistance request form on the DSS page of the county website. 

“What that does,” Liddle said, “is it gives folks the opportunity to submit requests for assistance directly to us. That is via the county’s website which goes into our Unite Us network system and gives us the power to refer their questions and needs of assistance out to, as of today, 23 different local agencies and over 100 statewide.”

Liddle said that as requests for assistance come in, members of his team will review them before putting them into the network. The requests are then referred to the services that are rendered necessary for that specific case. 

“If DSS can provide the services ourselves, they’ll go out directly to ATI [Action Towards Independence], Catholic Charities and many other service providers around the county that are involved,” he said. 

Liddle talked about a success story with the referral system, which occurred following one of the first referrals that they had. He said that someone came to DSS in need of emergency food assistance and within an hour of a referral being put in the system, SALT [Sullivan Agencies Leading Together] and Cornell Community Cover were able to answer the call. 

Liddle said that something such as that situation won’t be able to happen all the time, as referrals usually take a couple of days to go all the way through the system. 

“But it’s definitely something we’re excited about because something that people can access from the convenience of their home via the phone, and they don’t have to make visits when they have multiple needs,” Liddle said. “They don’t have to make business necessarily to multiple agencies as they can get connected to all of them with a point and a click. So it’s a pretty exciting capability.”

Liddle said that they, as of Thursday, December 14, have 125 cases in the system and have resolved 52 of them completely. 

The commissioner also said that through this new assistance form, the department has started to get good data that tells them what the needs of the community are and what needs they are able and not able to meet. 

“That’s going to give all of us,” Liddle said, “whether on the government side or the community/non-profit side, the ability to go back to state partners, philanthropic organizations and other groups like that, and say here’s a service that we know our community needs but it’s not delivering. And we’d like to be able to deliver it.”

A focus on mental health

Additionally, Liddle hit on during his report was that Astor Services will be bringing their clinical capabilities on mental health to the campuses around Sullivan County. Astor is a community based, non-profit organization that provides children’s mental health services, child welfare services and early childhood development programs, according to their website. They serve children and families in the Mid-Hudson Valley region and the Bronx.

“Astor has finally gotten through the last of the bureaucratic red tape with the State Office of Mental Health, so they are bringing their clinical capability to our campus,” Liddle said. “That also means that they are going to be bringing clinicians into at least three area school districts, with plans to serve all [county school districts], but based out of the three.”

Liddle said that the purpose of bringing Astor to the county schools will be to provide pediatric mental health to students, which is something that they lost the ability to do during the pandemic.