It’s easy to feel a sense of impatience with people who appear to be homeless due largely to substance abuse or mental health issues. If only they would accept the help offered by social service agencies and pull themselves up by their bootstraps. How hard can that be?
Harder than it looks, apparently.
Each case is different. Some are more complicated than others. Unless you have been there yourself or work closely with the homeless, there’s no way of knowing. And it seems the longer a homeless person grapples with difficult problems like drugs and mental illness, the harder it becomes to leave the streets or even accept a helping hand.
That’s why last week’s placement of the first of 30 chronically homeless people in a public housing project — the latest wave entering the city’s ongoing Housing First effort — should be considered a success, even though it took an outsized effort by social workers and agencies. Among those receiving help are individuals who have been living on Oahu streets for two and three decades. Each will have a voucher covering 70 percent of their rent.
Honolulu has been spending about $2 million annually on Housing First, and it’s clear that the project will not be an inexpensive quick fix. More effort will be needed to improve the project’s
efficiency over time.
But it offers a potentially effective solution: getting people into permanent homes as quickly as possible, without demanding sobriety or other conditions before placement, and then providing supportive services as needed.
When Housing First began permanent supportive housing placements in November 2014, proponents pointed to the strategy’s success in other cities such as Denver, where chronic homelessness was reduced by 36 percent over a two-year period. Honolulu’s progress is slower, as our challenges are compounded by a severe affordable housing shortage and year-round comfortable temperatures that do little to discourage living on the streets.
During its first year, the city’s Housing First program placed 176 people in permanent housing. Figures have yet to be released for the second year.
In October, city officials announced a partnership with the United States Veterans Initiative, through which Honolulu will spend an additional $2.2 million on the program and U.S. VETS will kick in $600,000.
The partnership with U.S VETS aims to help up to 150 people and is open to everyone, not just veterans. Together, those figures add up to a get-off-the-streets opportunity for nearly 5 percent of the 7,921 homeless people counted in the latest statewide tally.
Considering the allocated funding, the gains may appear relatively small. But advocates maintain that the program’s cost-benefit efficiency will grow each year, and success also will be measured in a reduction of homelessness-related trips to emergency rooms, hospitalization and court system tangles.
Scott Morishige, the state’s homeless coordinator, said the state is now receiving technical assistance from the New York-based Corporation for Supportive Housing to expand Medicaid coverage for the chronically homeless, so that Medicaid can offset the cost of case management for the city and state Housing First programs. This move could create overall cost savings, thereby allowing additional clients to be housed, he said.
Both the city and state are embracing the Housing First ethic, as it includes chronically homeless people who had been unable to comply with traditional shelter sobriety and conduct requirements because of addictions or mental illness.
Last week, Jodi Jennette Inks, who said she had been living on the streets for at least a decade, moved into a room in a city housing project. But accepting the Housing First rental voucher did not come easy for the recovering “ice” addict who has been diagnosed with schizophrenia and depression. The repeated efforts of one dozen or so social workers and several social service agencies helped persuade her to abandon her encampment on the slopes of Diamond Head.
Sympathy for Inks’ case (and those of 29 other homeless people making the move to permanent supportive housing) is likely lower than that for homeless military veterans or families with no permanent place to live.
But everyone who winds up homeless needs a viable shot at changing their lives and staying off the streets. Housing First represents a long-term investment that will take some time, and patience, to pay off.
