tonight a deeper look at a troubling Trend across the state homelessness spiked by 24% over the last year Advocates with the nonprofit Monarch housing Associates counted 12,680 men women and children who were experiencing homelessness on the night of January 23rd and Essex County once again leads the state in the number of unsheltered residents 19% of all homeless individuals in New Jersey were counted in Essex County now Advocates say it makes clear we're in a critical point of the affordable housing crisis which has been worsened by Rising rent costs and shrinking vacancies Richard YC is the president of bridges Outreach a nonprofit that works to end homelessness and he's with me now in the studio to share insight about what's driving the increase and more importantly what's being done to help Richard I'm so glad to get a chance to talk to you um as you and I were talking just before we came on it's important to note this is a snapshot um and in fact as you say the numbers are actually quite worse what can you tell us there yes well so we we as service providers put everything into the hmis system the homeless management information system and there's a public dashboard that the New Jersey housing and mortgage Finance agency provides and if you look at that there are much much larger numbers Essex County is certainly in the lead but the total Statewide number through September is in excess of 230,000 people who have interacted with the homeless services and prevention ecosystem with prevention being a really important part of what we're seeing yeah so we talked a little bit about the driving factors at least from a state perspective is it the same on the local level I mean you're doing the street Outreach your organization uh is interacting with these folks on a daily basis are those the main factors contributing to what I would say is a pretty stunning rise whether it's 24% Statewide or perhaps even double that yeah those those really are important factors you know we're we're still seeing people being asked to leave a shared residents we're still seeing evictions and evictions are on the rise those are the top two causes of homelessness that we see across the state and it's important to note that because there's this pervasive view that it's mental illness and drug addiction and and while that's prevalent those are not causal right so what we see both in an Outreach perspective and in a case management setting are an awful lot of people who are looking to deal with their housing stability and and that is really so much more heavily weighted on people who are worried about their imminent homelessness so we we do do a lot of uh Street Outreach here in Newark and we also do a ton of homelessness prevention case management yeah I mean and we should know as well because there are resources in Newark in Essex County that tends to draw folks right I mean you're going to go someplace where you know you might might be able to get help what are some of the strategies at least so far that have shown some success sure so some of the biggest things that we can do is early awareness so you know in Newark and one of the things that you've seen as as the mayor aims to end chronic homelessness and establish an office of homeless services and you know Lewis Olio leading that effort they're bringing everybody together and trying to merge all the radar screens so if you understand where is someone going to appear if that family is facing imminent homeless where is that person going to appear if they're experiencing unsheltered homelessness how do we bring that together basically alert the entire community so that together we can react much more quickly and efficiently but when you're talking about preventative Services I mean are you sort of meeting people we like to use that term right meeting people where they're at bringing those those services to them uh to sort of get a step ahead I mean what does that look like on a ground level yeah so we think about you know somebody was saying to me earlier today rent eats first right so we talk with Partners who are food providers so if you're going to a food pantry you're probably housed based on the nature of that food but you might be unstably housed so we partner with that charitable Food Network Partners who are you know part of the Community Food Bank of New Jersey for example their member agencies to be able to say hey you're here for food are you also worried about your housing we can connect you to case management same thing with school districts um you know when it's folks who are homeless it's it's pretty obvious to partner with First Responders who are going to engage with those folks on the street but it's that that prevention it's it's housing authorities and schools and places where people let me get you on one more very quickly how much does the the scotus decision on Grants Pass that was in Oregon which criminalized homelessness we've seen several towns in New Jersey that have taken up their own ordinances how much does that affect your ability to do your job and folks being able to get on their feet again it makes it much much harder I mean you're talking about blood from a stone often you know if you're going to find somebody $500 for falling asleep on a bench I mean it's a biological imperative right and I think as Justice Soto mayor said it's a condition of homelessness and this biological imperative to sleep so what are we to do you find somebody for that they can't pay it now they have a bench warrant it's just harder and harder to get out of homelessness what we do is both try to fight that and try to make it easy to get the help you need Rich thanks so much for coming in uh bries Outreach great work thank you so much thank you really appreciate it [Music]