Path Forward is an organization paving the way from homelessness to a home by fostering dignity and stability through transformative services and housing solutions.
Q: Review 2025 – What were the challenges and successes?
Frantz: First the successes. It was a really, really exciting year. We expanded exponentially to add another homeless shelter, the Residential Program Center (RPC) with 42 beds on Columbia Pike. Now we have two shelters as the only provider for male and female adults in the County. But a shelter is no permanent place to live. Our main goal is to help the clients in the shelters to get housed, and we currently have formerly homeless living in 200 scattered apartments.
We went from an $8 million program to $12.6 million overnight with the signing of the new contract with Arlington County for the new shelter, and the County also gave us an additional contract to expand the medical services we offer to the homeless to Doorways and Bridges to Independence. We go to each of these organizations once a week to offer flu and COVID vaccines and general medical services.
In addition to the five respite beds in the Homeless Services Center, (HSC) we continue to operate our mobile medical outreach van to reach the homeless on the street. We go at 3:45 am because that’s when people are all in one place. We take the homeless meals, try to encourage them to come inside and take a nurse to help with their medical care. We do a lot of foot and wound care. Imagine what it would be like to be outside on a night like last night at 21 degrees. But 41 people stayed outside.
But our goal has always been to move the homeless in our shelters into permanent housing. Housing first and that’s at risk.
The challenge is how to cope with the changes we expect in our housing programs funded by HUD. We expect the $4 million in funding we receive for our HUD-funded housing programs to be cut by 70 percent. $3.2 million is at risk. It could literally go away. This will be incredibly challenging.
In addition, President Trump has issued an Executive order that will prohibit the residents in our HUD-funded housing from being gay, transgender or undocumented and requires them to be male or female. When we originally applied for the funding, diversity was one of the criteria. Now that’s being totally reversed. We were told in advance it was coming and thought it would happen in November but the government shutdown delayed the change until 2026.
Q: Looking Ahead at 2026 — What are the challenges and goals?
Frantz: We have to prepare for the notice we know is looming and get people in different programs who can no longer stay in the HUD-funded housing at Culpepper. We have a working group and are engaged with the County and other organizations.
Our second goal will be to integrate the best practices that we currently use in our HSC into the new RPC, to be sure the rules are followed and enforce them. Our full time staff went from 60 to 85. We’ll be working on infrastructure really.