Fairfax County officials are weighing whether to cut nine caseworkers who aid hundreds of the county’s homeless, while creating an agency to combat homelessness with a director salaried at $125,000.
The nine positions, all but two of them mental health therapists, are among the hundreds of jobs eliminated under County Executive Anthony Griffin’s proposed budget, which seeks to close a $648 million shortfall for the coming fiscal year.
The cuts would result in fewer on-site visits to 468 homeless people in shelters, according to budget documents, and would save the county $673,819. The Board of Supervisors may scale back that reduction before it adopts the budget later this month.
Meanwhile, in a rare expansion amid the belt-tightening, county leaders have established the Office to Prevent and End Homelessness, consisting of former Freddie Mac Foundation manager Dean Klein and a small staff, with a goal of helping carry out the board’s mission of ending the problem by 2016. Fairfax’s homeless population tends to hover around 2,000.
The office’s creation drew the rancor of Republican supervisors in February, and the proposed elimination of caseworkers has fanned that anger.
“Staffing up a half-a-million-dollar office that provides no direct services to the homeless at the same time you’re cutting people that interact with the actual homeless is insanity,” said Springfield District Supervisor Pat Herrity.
The office was given a $500,000 budget for the current fiscal year and a $309,000 budget for the year beginning in July, according to documents.
The nine caseworkers, part of a team of 16, work within the Fairfax-Falls Church Community Services Board, which handles mental health, mental retardation and substance abuse services for the county.
Four of the positions could be restored should additional revenue become available, CSB Executive Director George Braunstein said.
The caseworkers provide homeless people, many of whom have mental health and substance abuse problems, with counseling and assessments, and ensure that they receive available services, Braunstein said. They will receive help under the cuts, just not “as adequate as it could be.”
He also took issue with the GOP objections to creating the anti-homelessness agency.
“The fact of the matter is if you were to eliminate the homelessness office as it’s currently configured, you’re going to have an immediate savings, but then you’re going to end up in a static position in the long run,” he said.
