December 12, 2009

 

Good morning members of the Arlington County Board

 

My name is John Reeder, and I am here today on behalf of the Arlington Green Party to speak in favor of the petition presented to improve the situation of the homeless and the unemployed in Arlington.

 

In addition to Arlington Greens, this petition is supported by AFSCME Union Council 30, and by a number of Arlington faith-based groups that directly serve the hungry and homeless in Arlington.

 

The petition calls for a year-round homeless low-barrier shelter in Arlington from the current 5-month winter shelter.  The county currents support the 5-month per year winter shelter at a cost of about $180,000.  Extending the shelter to 12 months would mean an additional cost of about $252,000 annually.

 

With a year round shelter, we would like to see more direction of the homeless to that shelter rather than having them arrested for simply being homeless or having mental and addiction problems.  Studies across the U.S. indicate that local government actually save funds this way rather than having the criminal justice system involved.

 

The petition asks the county to seek federal funds to begin the first public jobs program in Virginia for unemployed and homeless residents to do community and Green projects to help our community.  We understand that Obama stimulus funds are or will shortly be available for this purpose.

County employees could directly administer these jobs programs for existing county programs such as cleaning up public streams and parks, repairing and improving county and Commonwealth property. Salaries of these county employees could be recouped from these federal funds so that these programs would benefit the county budget…

 

We Greens support the start of a Green jobs program.  We would like free home energy audits for residents for residents.  We believe that this would improve our environment and provide useful jobs for the unemployed.

 

During the past campaign, Mr. Fisette mentioned his desire to improve environmental programs in Arlington.  We Greens highly recommend a jobs program financed by federal funds as an important step to making Arlington a more environmentally sustainable community and at the same time giving employment to the over 6,000 unemployed or underemployed Arlington residents.