Brandy Baker watched the familiar tableau as other homeless people like herself lined up outside the Phoenix Key Campus downtown. A group huddled around a speaker as rap music blared. People walking down the sidewalk stepped over others using the cracked pavement as a bed.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Baker has been living on the corner outside the campus for two weeks. A pile of worn blankets and pillows creates shade for her service dog, Gemma, who jumps up to guard her from anyone who approaches.<\/p>\n
Baker has been living on the streets for 14 months. It wasn\u2019t her first time without a home. She hopes this is the last.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She prefers to call herself \u201chouseless\u201d because to her, the term homeless has an association with being unclean. Baker tries to keep herself and the area around her as tidy as possible. Street life has been hard, Baker said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s so difficult, trying not to go back to old habits because I am a recovering alcoholic, and I do have my own demons, and I fight not to go back,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s hard not to relapse, being on the streets.\u201d<\/p>\n
Over the past six years, the number of homeless people in Maricopa County has sharply increased from 6,614 in 2019 to 9,734 this January, according to the 2025\u00a0Point In Time Count.<\/p>\n
About half of these individuals stay in emergency shelters or transitional housing.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The rest are considered unsheltered, living in places not meant for habitation, like the streets. Most of those \u2014 3,761 people \u2014 live in Phoenix.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Rachel Milne, the director of the Phoenix Office of Homeless Solutions, said that the best solution to stop the rising homeless population is to focus on prevention and housing.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to decrease the inflow, slow down the number of people who do experience homelessness,\u201d Milne said. \u201cAnd once they do, help them with that response system, that crisis system, help them get back on their feet and exit to housing, whatever that might look like for those individuals.\u201d<\/p>\n
A large portion of the funding for the Office of Homeless Solutions comes\u00a0from the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. The $1.9 trillion stimulus package adopted during the COVID-19 pandemic included extra federal resources for homeless people.<\/p>\n
The City of Phoenix received approximately $396 million in American Recovery Funds \u201cState & Local Fiscal Recovery Funds\u201d in two lumps first in May of 2021, then a year later in 2022.<\/p>\n
City officials said that they will need to make up $22 million after the American Rescue Plan funds for homeless services expire. Since they are temporary the city needs to replace the gap to maintain current service levels. The city needs to spend the remaining funds by the end of the calendar year in 2026.<\/p>\n
The money supports resources such as the Safe Outdoor Space, Phoenix Navigation Campus and Key Campus. Phoenix City Councilmember Laura Pastor said the city strives to help Phoenix\u2019s homeless population, but decisions must accommodate a smaller budget.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt a certain point, we are going to get to a space where we\u2019re not going to be able to afford these homeless services, or we\u2019re going to have to sacrifice something for something else,\u201d Pastor said. \u201cI think that needs to be a really deep conversation with council and public to understand what we are doing.\u201d<\/p>\n
To avoid cutting any programs, Milne said the Office of Homeless Solutions is making a plan to replace as much of that money as possible.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been successful in grants from the state and from the county and from our federal partners,\u201d she said. \u201cWe also talked about the need to really engage philanthropic partners and have some more public-private partnerships in our community.\u201d<\/p>\n
Forming relationships with private businesses is a great way to get large donations that individuals couldn\u2019t afford. However, Amy Schwabenlender, CEO of Keys to Change, said that relying too heavily on donations could create problems since it is very difficult to raise the millions of dollars needed to replace the money from the American Rescue Plan Act.<\/p>\n
Keys to Change is a nonprofit that received grants through the American Rescue Plan Act. It operates Key Campus, a hub of brightly colored buildings that hosts organizations that allow homeless people to get food, shelter, medical services and mail. Schwabenlender said the Key Campus is facing major funding cuts and needs to find creative solutions to keep as many programs as possible.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we have to pick and choose those, it\u2019s like, what is super critical to maybe helping people stay off the streets and alive, versus what\u2019s more of a maybe nice to have, or we weren\u2019t doing it before,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s challenging. \u2026 And when we have to make tough decisions, it\u2019s a balancing act between impact and how easy is it to raise additional dollars.\u201d<\/p>\n
Local nonprofits are vital to ending homelessness, experts said. People experiencing homelessness need a variety of resources, some of which tend to be overlooked.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The nonprofit Women4Women Tempe focuses on providing period products for homeless or low-income women. President and co-founder Kay Wright hosts multiple events a week.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Earlier this month\u00a0at The Centers for Habilitation, pads, tampons and sanitary wipes were piled on top of long tables in a nondescript first-floor conference room. Volunteers formed a makeshift assembly line. The sound of the creasing of plastic and laughter filled the room as volunteers stuffed brown paper bags with hygiene products. When they were done packing, they sealed each bag with a sticker.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The kits go into trash bags. In an hour, the group can make enough kits to fill the trunk of Wright\u2019s SUV.<\/p>\n
Wright said she got the idea for Women4Women from a similar program in Dallas that addressed a need she\u2019d never considered.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve all started our period, and we weren\u2019t ready,\u201d she said. \u201cBut to think about doing that every month and not having any access or not having any money was just \u2014 it was real disturbing to me, just the realization that this was a real problem, that wasn\u2019t being addressed, wasn\u2019t being talked about, and so we did it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nonprofits like Keys for Change and Women4Women Tempe provide necessities that free people to focus on finding housing, she added.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Baker, hoping to get off the streets again as soon as she can, agreed. What would help her the most?<\/p>\n
\u201cThe funding to actually help us get a home to call our own and to lay our head on a pillow, a bed, not dirt, not a cot,\u201d she said. \u201cSomewhere with heating and cooling and running water.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brandy Baker watched the familiar tableau as other homeless people like herself lined up outside the Phoenix Key…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":366753,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5131],"tags":[5229,177353,89569,5643,1587,174000,177352,1589,174001,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-366752","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-phoenix","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-american-recovery-funds","10":"tag-american-rescue-plan-act","11":"tag-arizona","12":"tag-az","13":"tag-brandy-baker","14":"tag-office-of-homeless-solutions","15":"tag-phoenix","16":"tag-phoenix-key-campus","17":"tag-united-states","18":"tag-united-states-of-america","19":"tag-unitedstates","20":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","21":"tag-us","22":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=366752"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366752\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/366753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=366752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=366752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=366752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}