The City of McMinnville will explore the possibility of setting up a transitional home to help recovered addicts get back on their feet.
UCDD Director Mark Farley told McMinnville Aldermen Tuesday night people in recovery are struggling to find options. Farley said transitional homes are not treatment facilities, rather they are somewhere to rebuild safely.
“Hopefully by putting like minded people together and having some support around them, they’re less tempted to fall back into that previous life,” Farley said. “And we also allow them to build up some money. You know, we have structured it. They still pay towards the rent and the cost of living there.”
Farley said transitional house residents have help with budgeting and money while at the facility. Farley said the homes could hold eight or nine people each, and the goal is for residents to live independently within a year or two.
Farley said the existing houses in Smithville and South Carthage were purchased with grant funding. Farley said residents pay rent every month, which covers operating expenses.
Farley said these houses were purchased in part because of their location.
“We try and locate properties that make sense. So in Smithville, we were able to find a location that adjoined their public housing,” Farley said. “So that worked really well in town, easily accessible to all resources, just like public housing is. In South Carthage, we were able to locate next to a very large church that can lend support as well.”
Farley said there is not any funding available right now, but he thinks it might become available soon. Farley said he wanted to get to work on an application as soon as one opened.
“What we would like to do is do a lot of prep work ahead of time, get that ready to go in case that grant opening grant application opens and we don’t have to be scrambling at that time,” Farley said. “It will also allow us the opportunity to be systematic about how we approach this so we can look through the communities, we can get some ideals of where maybe to locate that.”
The McMinnville Board of Mayor and Aldermen were set to have their second reading of the proposed budget at Tuesday’s meeting, but a pending amendment led the Board to differ it to the meeting on June 24.
In other business, the city adopted a new policy based on new state legislation requiring meeting agendas to be made public at least 48 hours before the meeting. Mayor Ryle Chastain said the city was already in compliance, but the language is to be officially changed.
