Please, I ask of you, to do everything you can to ensure GRACE can continue to provide street outreach and 100 shelter beds. Street outreach saves lives by providing condoms to sex workers, needles to folks experiencing addiction, medications for elders, and bus tickets to help people who are stranded in Gainesville to get back to their communities. They give out cold water on hot days and warm food on cold ones. They have unprecedented success by giving people what they need to survive. We should all follow this example.

As it stands now, GRACE has no funding to continue the street outreach program and they've had to eliminate 10 shelter beds due to reduced funding. Cutting outreach would "save" $350,000, but our community would lose so much - including the very real deaths of beloved community members. We will lose the heart of this city - to help people, to be in community with one another. We've already lost so much of this to unnecessary development that has taken down centuries old trees and razed forests (like the one on 23rd Ave and 43rd St). 

This team at GRACE, in two years, has housed 248 people directly off the streets. Homelessness is continually going up. I would love for the city and the county to take action to ensure we house and support our wonderful community members by ensuring GRACE gets their full funding. 

I appreciate all the work y'all do to keep our city and county running smoothly. So, I ask this of you - please reinstate GRACE's funding so we can all continue to serve our community. Remember the value of human lives - no cost-savings benefit analysis can remind you of that. Thank you once again for your time and for reading this message. I'm hopeful that you will understand why this funding means so much to the city of Gainesville.

Bri Moye
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