Last week’s announcement of a new rapid rehousing initiative in Sarasota County marks an important milestone in our community’s long-running effort to help chronically homeless adults.

The achievement demonstrates real partnership—among governments, among service providers. It also exemplifies the best of smart private philanthropy. Most importantly, it will provide new hope (and homes) for many of the most difficult-to-assist individuals who experience homelessness here in Sarasota.

As reported in SRQ and elsewhere, the new effort engages the Society of St. Vincent de Paul South Pinellas to bring its operational expertise to bear on a persistent need—the gap in housing and wraparound support to get chronically homeless individuals off our streets and out of emergency shelters. The Society will do everything from identifying and securing suitable housing units to managing custom menus of services so newly housed individuals can stay in their homes.

The Society’s approach to helping the homeless has been successful in other Florida communities. The organization is ready to scale and to meet our own community’s needs. This also will relieve pressure from some of our local nonprofit partners, who can fully focus on what they do best, whether that is complementary housing assistance or other critical services like substance-abuse counseling, mental-health care or job training. We are excited to welcome the Society of St. Vincent de Paul to our team.

This breakthrough is possible because of the hard-earned cooperation and collaboration of the City of Sarasota, Sarasota County Government and the Suncoast Partnership to End Homelessness, the regional entity that manages public funds for homeless assistance. These partners have worked tirelessly with Gulf Coast Community Foundation and others to implement a plan for effective homeless response commissioned from the Florida Housing Coalition. My colleague Jon Thaxton invited them all to the table over a year ago in the spirit of partnership and service to our community. Their willingness to stay there and forge a solution together is laudable and gratifying.

But this achievement would not have happened without the vision and will of the private philanthropists who are funding it. The $1-million, yearlong grant contract that Gulf Coast signed with Society of St. Vincent de Paul is fully funded through individual gifts of private philanthropy. These generous donors saw something wrong in our community that they wanted to right. But they also understood that just throwing door-keys at the problem wouldn’t help. They sought to invest in a solution that enabled people to move into homes and access every opportunity to remain there and thrive. That is what their philanthropy has delivered.

We are hopeful that our new safety net for the homeless will transform lives throughout our communities. And we thank all those who have made this achievement possible.

Dr. Mark S. Pritchett is president/CEO of Gulf Coast Community Foundation.