SPRINGFIELD, Mo. – The latest round of ARPA funds from the city of Springfield, approved by City Council on Monday are addressing homelessness in Springfield. 

“One of the initial things we did this conduct a public survey to see what are the priority areas.” Councilman Matthew Simpson said. “The top area was public safety, which was the focus of our first round of allocations. But one of the other top areas expressed by the public is housing and homeless, homeless services.” 

The Connecting Grounds, an organization receiving a share of the money will use it towards several projects. 

The total amount being given to groups totals $7 million. 

“We would be able to buy a second respite house, which will allow us to do respite care for women. And it will also allow us to fund the family shelter that we’ve already started, which will be really helpful.” Christie Love with The Connecting Grounds said. “It will allow us to do storage here at the outreach center so that we can do storage for up to 100 people.” 

Simpson says it takes more than just the city to help the homeless. 

“It takes nonprofits. It takes our faith, faith community. It takes the city and volunteers kind of all working together to help individuals in our community who are experiencing homelessness.” 

Love says one of the biggest projects with ARPA money will be a day center by the Community Partnership of the Ozarks. 

“A purpose-driven day shelter is going to make sure that we’ve got case management and make sure that we’ve got more access to resources and to really try to help people use those daytime hours to connect to resources and be able to move forward.” Love added. 

She says her group is eager to work with the city. 

“We actually sent an email to the city today asking on the timeline for funds being disbursed because we’re pretty much all of our projects are lined up and ready to go. ”