Former homeless services employees, community advocates and Dane County residents wrote an open letter urging immediate action from city and county officials to implement more effective long-term solutions at The Beacon homeless shelter and resource center.
The open letter was distributed by former Community Liaison at The Beacon, Lindberg Chambliss.
The Beacon, a multi-service daytime resource center located on Madison’s east side, aims to provide community solutions to people experiencing homelessness in Dane County, according to its website.
As Dane County’s primary day shelter and resource center, an average of 250 guests or more visit The Beacon each day — nearing or exceeding its capacity — and Chambliss said the shelter faces severe inadequacies in terms of specialized staffing and resources available to accommodate this number.
“[The Beacon] has no case workers staffed or contracted to provide stabilization services,” Chambliss said. “They need people to help them navigate these complex systems in order to stabilize, and so you see the numbers rising because The Beacon doesn’t hire caseworkers.”
Chambliss said the open letter is designed to put pressure on city and county officials to provide The Beacon with screening specialists and case managers who can help provide its guests with more long-term solutions.
These staff members would help put guests with critical needs such as mental health, disability, aging and addiction support into long-term care programs that will allow them to live independently and at a higher quality of life, Chambliss said.
“There are hundreds of guests at any given time who are struggling with severe health conditions,” Chambliss said. “If they’re enrolled in long-term care programs … they’ll have someone help them schedule their appointments, get them their meds, get them into assisted living … If we do that, they’re moving on to stability.”
Chambliss said his next steps are getting homeless services and hospital systems organizations to sign onto the open letter and continue putting pressure on local officials to address their demands.
Distributing the open letter is partly an effort to get answers from the government on why there are insufficient resources available to connect guests with long-term solutions, Chambliss said.
The letter also acts as a way to pressure officials into reallocating resources toward the shelter that can address the current substandard staffing arrangements, Chambliss said.
“The goal of the letter is to try to get the county to restructure the way The Beacon operates in order for it to support patrons of [the shelter] more effectively and efficiently,” Chambliss said.
