Local impacts of the 32-day government shutdown continue to pop up, with a program for chronically homeless Tulsans now feeling the pinch.
Mental Health Association Oklahoma's supportive housing program is short $61,000. That's the amount of a monthly draw MHAOK receives from a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development grant.
"There’s no one there at HUD because they’re not at work to sign off on it. So, we can’t draw the money, and so we have to figure out how to float that out of our operations right now," said MHAOK Executive Director Mike Brose.
The program helps around 200 people who were homeless for a year or more.
"People that are not on the street anymore. They’re in housing. They’re beginning to get their lives back together, being able to be rewoven back into the fabric of the community," Brose said.
This HUD grant is the biggest to be affected, but other grant draws are coming up. MHAOK may shuffle funding or tap a line of credit to pay rents and social service providers.
"It’s really important for our leadership to know in Washington it’s affecting people all the way down to the street, to our formerly chronically homeless individuals — people affected by serious mental illness, many of them veterans," Brose said.
MHAOK will be able to access the funding after the partial government shutdown ends. The Senate will vote Thursday on competing spending bills.
