The Washtenaw County Board of Commissioners took up the issue of funding the organization Barrier Busters at Wednesday night's meeting. Barrier Busters is a group of more than 100 social service agencies. They provide emergency funding to Washtenaw County residents in need.
After much discussion, the board voted to give Barrier Busters $400,000 through the year 2023. The money is used to provide people in crisis who need to cover housing costs, utility bills, or make car repairs. This was one year less than was originally proposed.
District 5 commissioner Justin Hodge says this allows them to align the organization’s future need with the county’s quadrennial budget.
“It seems like meeting after meeting, we’re ending up allocating more funding to Barrier Busters because it’s a program that meets people where they’re at and gets them resources that they need. But we still need to do more work to make sure that we have a process in place for structurally funding it so that we don’t have to piecemealing funding together over time.”
Multiple members of the board also made comments that they would like to see more municipalities contribute to Barrier Busters funding.
Non-commercial, fact based reporting is made possible by your financial support. Make your donation to WEMU todayto keep your community NPR station thriving.
Like 89.1 WEMU on Facebook and follow us on Twitter
Contact WEMU News at734.487.3363 or email us at studio@wemu.org
