SCRANTON, LACKAWANNA CO. (WOLF) \u2014 Homelessness took center stage at Tuesday\u2019s Scranton City Council meeting, as residents and council members called for more direct outreach and stronger action to help people living on the streets. While some questioned whether enough is being done, the city does already have a task force and network of organizations working on the issue.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been homeless. I\u2019ve been staying down on Capouse Ave. Everybody likes to say stuff about Capouse Ave, but a lot of them are literally veterans that have not gotten any help down there. I don\u2019t see any help down there. Even people with drug problems they\u2019re hurt,” said Amanda of Scranton.<\/p>\n
Council members acknowledged the frustrations, while also discussing possible ways to connect services directly with people living on the streets.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s a very easy suggestion and made it a long way to meet people where they\u2019re at, the drug and alcohol screenings and mental health screenings at our Code Blues and maybe some other functions where people are located,” said Tom Schuster, Council President<\/p>\n
The city and county do already work with a large network of organizations through the Lackawanna County Unsheltered Plan Taskforce. The task force includes shelters, healthcare providers, veteran services, outreach groups and nonprofits working to connect people with housing, food, mental health care and addiction services.<\/p>\n
Councilman Mark McAndrew said updates from homelessness meetings have left him wanting to see more progress.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel sorry that you\u2019re not getting the help you need and deserve on behalf of our city. I agree, I\u2019ve heard some of the meetings and they have updates and they\u2019re never very promising,” said McAndrew.<\/p>\n
According to the task force\u2019s recent data, homelessness in Lackawanna County has increased in recent years, with rising rent prices and limited housing stock listed as major contributing factors.<\/p>\n
Councilman Patrick Flynn pushed for more direct outreach in areas known to have larger homeless populations.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat I\u2019ve always pushed for since the moment I came on council is a comprehensive suite of services for individuals and always meeting them where they\u2019re at Why can\u2019t homeless outreach actually be homeless outreach? Why can\u2019t we have boots on the ground in these areas where we know we have high concentrations of homeless individuals?\u201d asked Flynn.<\/p>\n
FOX56 did reach out to the city administration for comment, but because the meeting happened after business hours, we did not receive a response before airtime.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SCRANTON, LACKAWANNA CO. (WOLF) \u2014 Homelessness took center stage at Tuesday\u2019s Scranton City Council meeting, as residents and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":203141,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[178,180,179],"class_list":["post-203227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203227"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203227\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/203141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}