Affordable Housing Institute : US

 

Yesterday’s post introduced permanent supportive housing via a new study, The Costs of Rural Homelessness in Maine (text excerpted in dark green font), with presented eye-popping statistics showing that people who can go home to a permanent supportive housing apartment virtually eliminate their stays in jail or emergency shelters.

 

What changes when you move people into permanent supportive housing?

Nearly everything

 

Set aside from a moment how permanent supportive housing is created (hint: it’s expensive affordable housing and it comes from the Low Income Housing Tax Credit) and focus instead on what it costs.  According to the study’s cost charts, the average rent is about $760 per month.

$4,577 over 6 equals $763 per month

 

To afford such an apartment at 30% of income for rent, the resident (usually a single person) would need an annual income of $30,500 ($763 x 12 / 30%), more than $15 per hour, which is obviously far, far beyond their means.   Therefore, housing assistance becomes a critical piece:

All participants in this study received rental assistance.

 

Homelessness may arise from physical or mental disability that brings on poverty, but once someone becomes homeless, poverty and deprivation reinforce each other in a vicious circle. 

 

Where do we start?

 

As a physical housing structure compatible with housing a PSH resident is the first critical piece, the second critical piece is housing assistance:

 

This assistance took the form of:

 

[1] A tenant-based voucher
[2] A project-based voucher or

[3] A subsidized building placement

 

People who are chronically homeless are simply not going to be earning $15 per hour, nor should we expect them to if we are moving them from homeless shelters and jails – both of which taxpayers fund – into housing.  Hence means-tested and income-based housing assistance has to be part of the package.

 

If we simply warehouse the mentally disturbed, however, and make no effort to change them, we have substituted one form of dependency for another, and we have enabled the behaviors that got people where they are today.  Changing behavior through getting people to work must also be part of the strategy:

 

Even with subsidy to assist with housing costs all programs feel it is important for tenants to increase their income base while they work toward independence and self-sufficiency.

 

More than a century and a half ago, liberal democratic societies created workhouses as a tough-love sanctuary for those thrown (briefly, people thought) onto the streets.  

 

You’ll be fed, and you’ll work, and you’ll be here for years

 

The workhouse was premised on people’s fundamental stability, which may have been a reasonable supposition in the middle-nineteenth century, when lack of medical care meant that the severely disturbed would normally die in some unpleasant way.  Today we have the capacity, both medical and financial, to warehouse the mentally disturbed, but if we do that, and make no effort to change them, we merely substitute one form of dependency for another, and we enable the behaviors that got people where they are today.  Changing behavior through getting people to work must also be part of the strategy, and for this, the customers need consulting help:

 

Support service staff help people with disabilities navigate the complex eligibility rules surrounding benefit programs.

 

Ironic, isn’t it?  The programs we put in place to help the mentally disturbed require you to be mentally adept to access them.

 

There was only one catch, and that was Catch-22.

 

Many people with a long history of homelessness and disability have difficulty complying with these requirements without assistance from service providers.

 

Heck, many perfectly normal people have difficulty complying with government requirements!

 

It’ll still be there, undone, when you open your eyes

 

Permanent supportive housing placements provided tenants with staff assistance to engage mainstream income resources.

 

It’s no disgrace to take consulting help when you face a technical challenge that you will do once and your consultant does for a living.

 

Staff help tenants meet requirements to provide social security cards and other identity documentation to qualify for entitlement benefits and job training programs.

 

The permanent supportive housing provides an additional cost-effectiveness benefit: you bring the services to the customers, rather than the customers to the services, and because you know where the customers live, you can be assured of delivering the service.

 

Without place-basing, the disturbed homeless face barriers insurmountable to them:

 

Homeless person’s housing, Old Orchard Beach, Maine

 

·         Rural emergency shelters often lack bed capacity and may be located far from a person’s home community.

·         Centralized service and referral centers are not common in rural Maine. Often people with disabilities must interact with many different providers to access the few available resources.

·         Distance to service providers prohibits their utilization in some communities.

·         Transportation is not usually available unless there is a documented medical need.

·         The number of outreach workers has been decreased throughout Maine. This has left rurally homeless people with disabilities without a navigator for the complex service network.

 

What happens when people are placed in permanent supportive housing, and given access to job training and counseling services?  People get jobs!

 

Of 163 study participants, 135 or 83% had secured an income source after entry into housing.  Prior to living in permanent supportive housing only 96 or 59% of tenants reported having an income source.

 

The boost by virtue of having a fixed address and someone to help them navigate the maze is astonishing.

 

Want help finding your way in?

 

When the study began, 67 participants (163 – 96) had no job.  Six months later, 39 of the 67 (135 – 96) had found a job.  That’s nearly a 60% success rate for the chronically homeless, in only six months.  Remarkable, as shown in this chart:

 

That’s major movement

 

It also means a big boost in income:

 

This is big movement too

 

The result?  Lives change:

 

“My parents and I get along very well. Since I have had my apartment, it has made it easier to get into treatment, which strengthens my relationships” (Tenant quote from Quality of Life Survey)

 

Not just adults’ lives, their children’s too.

 

“Before we ate poorly, especially myself as I would give most of the food to my children. I usually ate once a day. Now we eat a relatively good diet and we all have enough to eat 3 meals a day plus.” (Tenant quote from Quality of Life Survey)

 

Previously we’ve seen that childhood poverty damages your mind and perpetuates an intergenerational cycle of poverty.  Permanent Supportive Housing is one of the very few paths out.

 

I’ll find my way out somehow

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