AMARILLO, Texas (KFDA) - Coming Home Amarillo helps homeless individuals year-round, and today its clients are thankful.

Coming Home Amarillo started in 2018 and this year the program has helped 189 homeless individuals obtain long-term housing.

The program defines success as progress toward wellness, self-sufficiency, and realizing individual goals.

“We start with outreach. Meet people in the nooks and crannies of Amarillo. Our outreach team, will offroad and hike to find people that need help. And then we provide ongoing support that kind of creates that long-term success,” said Alvaro Hrgic, Program Coordinator of Coming Home Amarillo.

32 clients have successfully graduated from the program and become self-sufficient, integrated members of the Amarillo community.

We spoke to a client who says the program helped him get back on his feet and he’s thankful for where he is because of the program

“They’ve always been there for me. They’ve got my back. They advocate for me when I need things that are right there. It gave me some sense of being normal to where I’m just like anybody else,” says the client.

In the last fiscal year, Coming Home outreached to 295 individuals, provided ongoing outreach case management services for 140 individuals, moved 24 outreach clients into housing, and provided housing case management services for 114 formerly homeless individuals housed by our program. Coming Home employs a low-barrier, persistent and comprehensive outreach and Support Model that grants any individual willing to begin progression toward wellness and self-sufficiency an opportunity to do so.

“So many of our clients. You know, when we first meet them, they need a lot of help. They know where they want to be in life, but they just do not have the support to get there on their own maybe at that time,” said Hrgic.

While the rate of homelessness is declining in Amarillo, the most alarming trend affecting our community is the increase in unsheltered individuals who are residing in streets, encampments, and other areas of town not intended for human habitation.

“I was going down a bad road, and they saw something in me that I didn’t see. And so now I’m on the right one now is a blessing, you know, to be able to not be under that bridge or that tent or that you know, where I was at before,” said the client.

The increase in unsheltered individuals is highly correlated with an increase in barriers to securing shelter and resources.

“We meet a lot of individuals who are motivated to change their lives. And once they receive that support some of these individuals and they just run with it,” said Hrgic.

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