By Grace Bellinghausen, Reporter
Recently, homeless encampment sweeps have been taking place around Omaha, which creates challenges for shelters to ensure housing as winter nears.
In Omaha there are around 1,500 people without housing. With a lack of affordable housing, many people see themselves back in emergency shelters multiple times before finding permanent housing, including Richard Thomas Jr. who says he’s been at the Sienna Francis homeless shelter for the past year.
“It seems like the ones that get assistance don’t need it because they are able to get assistance because they are competent.” says Thomas. “The ones who need assistance, they are incompetent and have mental problems like schizophrenia and they’re left here [Sienna Francis house] to sit.”
According to the U.S. department of housing and urban development, in 2020 unsheltered homelessness increased 30 percent in Omaha, which brought new challenges for local shelters like Open Door Mission.
Many shelters are having to take a new approach to keep their facilities from bursting at the seams. Senior Program Director of Open Door Mission Steve Frazee says they’re finding alternate ways that they can deal with the shelter reaching capacity.
“Last year we reduced the volume of people in shelters so we had a hotel so people would have individual rooms so we wouldn’t have the congregate living problem,” said Frazee. “We are in the process of developing those plans in case we need it again this year.”
Fixing this issue is difficult due to lack of resources. Due to the pandemic, there’s been an influx of people struggling to get back on their feet.
Without proper resources from the community nonprofits and shelters, police tearing down homeless encampments is just moving the problem somewhere else.
Another contributing factor to homelessness is lack of housing; more Omaha developers are focused on apartment complexes that are geared toward higher income levels rather than low income housing.
