TEMPLE, Texas — The cities of Temple and Killeen are working together on a new homelessness and mental health program to reduce homelessness across Bell County, and they've hired a nationally recognized consultant to take point.
Dr. Robert G. Marbut Jr. is a former Director of U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, appointed by former President Donald Trump, and the founder of Haven for Hope, which is located in San Antonio.
Marbut told 6 News he has been studying homelessness for the last 20 years, and he was hired to study the issue in Bell County in May. His first order of business will be to collect data on the area's homeless populations.
"The very first thing you have to do is know exactly what your problem is, exactly what is going on. So that is the phase we are in now," Marbut said.
Marbut said he is currently studying five "cohorts" of homeless groups in Bell County. Those include homeless in encampments, males who are becoming homeless, females that are becoming homeless, homeless families, and individuals who are at risk of homelessness.
He has already started meeting with the Temple and Killeen police departments to find out what they are seeing as well as the many organizations serving homeless individuals across the county.
Marbut told 6 News a central piece of confronting homelessness will be to also confront mental health issues and drug addictions that leave people vulnerable. He is seeing some of those issues already.
"The biggest issue I am seeing in encampments is untreated mental illness combined with co-presenting substance abuse. That's probably 70-80 percent of the issue in encampments."
Marbut said their final plan will also explore other factors that lead to homelessness and look at ways to prevent people from becoming homeless.
Marbut told 6 News the goal of their plan, no mater what form it takes, will be to find ways to get people out of homelessness and steadily reduce the homeless population in the county. Marbut said several times he does not want Bell County to become a magnet for homeless individuals in the same way the Austin area has.
"We are near Austin and we don't want to become what Austin has become. You want to write a strategic plan that stops the growth of homelessness," Marbut said. "The very first thing we have to do is stop growing the homeless population in those cohorts."
Another important step in the plan will be to integrate services across Bell County so that organizations that serve the homeless will also be able to always refer people to mental health services or substance-abuse programs. Marbut want local organizations to already have resources in place and a specific procedure for accessing those resources.
"When a person starts to experience homelessness or arrives from out of town, you know exactly what to do and who will do what," Marbut said. "It's not a guess. You have that system already organized. You know where to go and you go. "
The City of Temple also discussed the Homelessness and Mental Health Program on Monday. Director Of Housing & Community Development Nancy Glover said she hopes the city will “provide dedicated personnel” to implement a homelessness strategic plan. The city of Temple also has $54,253 earmarked for the program.
Glover said city staff just ended a three-week-long survey process of homelessness in both Killeen and Temple, and Marbut would take the data from the survey and start combine it with data from focus group meetings to start tackling the cause of homelessness in the area.
Glover said the data gathering process should go through July, and they hoped to have a program to approve by October. She said it needed to be a program the entire county could get behind.
“It will have solutions that will benefit the entire county. Not just Temple and not just Killeen, but everybody sort of holistically,” Glover said. “If everybody in the county is going to get behind it, it’s got to be something that is tailored to us.”
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