 Sanford Health of Bemidji is partnering with Park Place Apartments to provide some new services to tenants. Our own Sheryl Moore has the details on the relationship. Sanford Health of Bemidji is taking a stab at homelessness in the city by partnering with Park Place Apartments. Park Place provides safe housing to those who are homeless or are suffering from addiction. This project is for for three years so we want to see what we accomplished within three years and then we see we can do a new one or shift it, the focus whatsoever. The new project was made possible by a grant from the Minnesota Health and Human Services. It was awarded last August. The grant itself is is considered a hasami grant so housing support for adults with serious mental illness that's what the hasami part stands for through through the state and so there's a whole evidence-based practice behind this housing first model and the idea that before anyone can focus on changing really anything in their life their basic needs need to be met and housing is one of those basic needs. Sheryl was brought in to help the residents of Park Place in November. His main goals will be case management, outreach and identifying where more people can live to help alleviate the homelessness problem in Bemidji. The only thing that I did in this program is to develop a crisis plan so if we put these people in in an apartment what is the crisis plan just in case of crisis what can we do what would we can call would we can reach out to we are focusing on giving those who are homeless a permanent place to live and most especially those who are homeless and then addictive. We reached out to Park Place to get their thoughts on the partnership. Lori Riley the regional housing director of the Center City Housing Corp which manages Park Place says the community has been extremely supportive of the Park Place project from day one. Park Place's partner would Sanford to provide case management, behavior health support and nursing as an additional help to tenants living in the building. It's been a great partnership. We look forward to continuing and that thank you to the community transferred on through a message from Sanford Health. We have a lot of need in Bemidji and it's a community that makes something like this possible. It's the different providers that wrote letters of support to say hey I think Park Place and Sanford could really do a great job partnering together. Reporting in Bemidji, Sheryl Moore, Lakeland News. If anyone knows someone who needs services provided by Park Place you can find information for how to contact the right people at our website at lptv.org. If you enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland PBS.