CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – Charlottesville City Council appropriated up to $4 million in funding to open the property at Holiday Dr. as a temporary homeless shelter, and announced partnerships with two outside agencies to staff and run the facility.

City Manager Sam Sanders said, during Monday night’s Council meeting, the funds would come from the Capital Improvement Plan (CIP).

The city had previously announced plans to have the large homeless encampment at Free Bridge cleared on or around Sept. 1.

Central Arizona Shelter Services (CASS) will operate the facility, the city officially announced Tuesday.

In addition, Sanders said Washington, DC-based Clutch Consulting will aid in the transition from the encampments to the shelter, providing “direct-to-housing services.”

A third outside organization, Community Solutions, will continue gathering data on the needs of the city’s unhoused population.

“These three partner organizations are working with the city and the continuum of care to broaden our efforts and to fill present gaps to ensure a better opportunity to make homelessness rare, brief, and non-occurring because that is the goal for all of us,” Sanders said.

Sanders said negotiations with the three groups are still ongoing, but the city hope to be able to finalize arrangements over the next 30 days. He said CASS’s estimated cost is $3 million to serve 120 people over a 12-month period. Sanders said he did not anticipate needing all $4 million that Council allotted.

The encampments house anywhere from 70-115 homeless people, according to city officials, at least 30 of whom have been in contact with the city about accepting services.

Also Monday, Sanders announced that work on the permanent low-barrier shelter at that location may not be delayed by the opening of the temporary, emergency shelter.

“We anticipate a transition from emergency to permanent without ever closing the doors once they open,” Sanders told City Council. “That was something we did not know that we would be able to do and now we see there’s a chance we’ll be able to do that.”

Sanders said the size of the two-story building – a 27,000-square foot former office building – affords the city the opportunity to keep the facility open in certain sections while renovations are going on in other parts.

City Councilor Jen Fleisher, who has been working on outreach to encampment individuals, said they’ve identified a handful they want to get right into available housing.

She said UVA Health is also working with the city researching options pertaining to clinical, mental, and physical health.

“We’re waiting to hear back on how that might expand our offering beyond the robust case management that CAST brings to the shelter, so that there would be mental health support in particular on site,” Fleisher said.

Assistant City Manager Samuel Roman in the homeless service update report in the afternoon meeting indicated the city’s internal communications team “has solidified a communications and engagement plan for businesses near Holiday Drive”.

“I will offer that today we also went down to Holiday Drive, the business community down there, myself along with the police chief, local providers, as well as a few other individuals from economic development just to have another touch point with our business in that area,” said Roman. “We spent about an-hour-and-a-half in the area just talking with the different businesses and really just filling in some of the gaps as we know them now, some of the informational gaps that existed.”

“We’ll continue to do that as CPD is also scheduling another community walk, one of their weekly community walks, in the area as well,” Roman said. “So we’ll go back out and answer questions and update accordingly with any new information.”

The city is also working on a webpage that is live now to keep the community informed of the whole process.

“This will have all of the information and contacts where folks can contact us and ask questions, and it will have all of the information like frequently asked questions and things like that to keep our community informed,” said Roman.

As for safety and security at the encampment as it exists now, Roman said CPD and CFD remain with a dedicated presence there, and CPD has increased patrols and presence, especially overnight, in light of the recent incident that occurred there.

That was a July 9 sexual assault for which police made an arrest.

“On-site camera systems continue to enhance safety and situational awareness,” Roman said.

City Councilor Michael Payne, along with Roman, talked about a fear of the unknown as the city executes this venture, but expressed confidence “it will all work out”.

“I look at the history of PACEM and their model of being a low-barrier shelter, again, with some level of rules and structure and there haven’t really been any problems or incidents in terms of where that’s been located, and many of the churches are directly in neighborhoods,” Payne said. “I know anything we would do at Holiday Drive would be very structured and intentional with case management and 24-7 staffing, and I think some of the emails that I’ve received show some people not seeing that yet.”

“They have the impression of just telling people to go into the structure, and there would be no staffing or plan, and obviously that’s something that we would never do,” Payne said.