ITHACA, N.Y. — City administrators will begin accepting applications in the coming week to fill the part-time role of homeless outreach coordinator, a long-awaited addition to an overwhelmed city staff. Members of the Common Council voted unanimously to approve legislation establishing the role at a special meeting Aug. 14, allowing the city’s administrative team to move forward in the hiring process.City Manager Deb Mohlenhoff met with the city’s internal encampment coordination team Aug. 26 to finalize the job posting which, in an email to The Ithaca Voice, Mohlenhoff said will be available “in the next week or so.” “I hope to have someone in place by the end of 2024,” Mohlenhoff said.The part-time coordinator will be tasked with managing the near constant lines of communication between the web of agencies and organizations working together to rehouse residents at “the Jungle,” a triangular strip of city-owned land that has long been home to various encampments set up by the local homeless population. Mohlenhoff has assumed that responsibility over the last few months, with help from department heads at City Hall, who have also been working overtime to fulfill the duties the previous council intended for the part-time employee.Council members voted to table the legislation in July, despite repeated requests from Mohlenhoff to follow through with establishing the role that was created and accepted by the previous council members in 2023. The position was funded in the city’s 2023 and 2024 budgets for $37,000. The role was created to ensure there would be an employee dedicated to coordinating encampment initiatives that were outlined in the city’s then-new pilot policy on unsanctioned encampments on city property that council members voted to accept in December 2023. Previous council members and city staff widely accepted that achieving the goals outlined in the pilot would require extensive organization and consistent communication, at which time no employee was responsible for. At a Common Council meeting in April, Mohlenhoff told council members that there was “no way” city workers could successfully carry out the plan without a “formal coordinator” to facilitate communications between the people on the ground making it happen. Mohlenhoff likened the situation to a game of “hot potato” where city staff “keep tossing” the responsibilities from “person to person.” At the same council meeting in April, “This is incredibly intensive work,” Mohlenhoff said. “We need someone to sit in the middle of an incredibly complicated web of support services, none of which the city manages, to make sure we have clear communication.” While work to achieve the goals in the pilot has been ongoing, the staffing gap became increasingly difficult to manage in April, when the Tompkins County Environmental Health Division designated the encampment as a public health hazard and ordered the city to submit a plan to clean it up.A month later, city workers began clearing tons of debris from the area. At the request of city officials and advocates, many encampment residents willingly relocated to an outdoor space designated by council members in December 2023 under the pilot policy to avoid interactions with police. When residents began to relocate, advocates at local nonprofits including Second Wind Cottages, OAR and REACH felt pressured to speed up their rehousing efforts. They worked directly with the Ithaca Police Department, city employees and other entities to successfully rehouse 40 individuals in the city’s new affordable housing units at Asteri at the former Green Street Garage site. Alderperson Patrick Kuehl spoke against creating the part-time position, citing conversations with staff at REACH, one of the local nonprofits active in responding to the unhoused community. Kuehl said he and Alderperson David Shapiro spoke with staff at other organizations as well, who “largely felt” the position was “incredibly redundant” and said “the work was already being done on the ground.” Shapiro and Kuehl both voted in favor at last week’s meeting. The post City hiring part-time homeless outreach coordinator to manage encampment efforts appeared first on The Ithaca Voice.First published by The Ithaca Voice.