Homeless Coalition to redo homeless count

The Northern Marianas Homeless Coalition was not able to submit a grant application as they had planned earlier this year resulting in the do over of the islands’ homeless count.

Back in April of this year, the Homeless Coalition conducted a homeless count that netted 672 homeless individuals because it was a prerequisite to apply for the continuum of care grant, a grant that the coalition intended to use in order to carry out projects to assist the island’s homeless.

Unfortunately, despite meeting the prerequisite, the coalition was not able to submit a grant application that was due last September resulting the coalition’s initial plan dying out.

Although the coalition was not successful in its first attempt at the application process, the coalition’s chair Vivian Sablan said during an interview that the group would come together and revive what they had started. “It kind of died out but we plan to revive it,” said Sablan.

Sablan said in an interview that she plans to reunite the coalition as a start. “First things first we need to get back together and meet as a coalition,” Sablan said.

According to Sablan, despite missing the submission date for the grant, they will move past it and redo the count alongside all the other areas in the United States that have annually conducted this count for many years.

“… We did not have a chance to submit an application for the grant we said we were going to do but we are still moving on with the plan which is to do the count alongside everybody else in January,” said Sablan.

This year, the coalition had started their count late due to the group’s late formation. “We did it late because it was the first time and we were still in the planning phase,” she said.

Sablan will be taking on the reins of the coalition’s plans again just months after returning from a leave of absence due to medical reasons.