At least half a million American teens — estimates range between 550,000 and 2.8 million youth — experience homelessness each year, advocates estimate. Lacking resources to find housing on their own, they’re continually at high risk of experiencing a night on the street.
An unexpected factor that unites the group? At least one in five identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender, but the demographic could make up as much as 43 percent of the homeless youth population, according to a national survey of 350 agencies. Instead of waiting to move out before they drop the news about their sexual identity, these teens are coming out of the closet earlier. It’s a sign of society’s increasing acceptance, but their youthful independence often comes with consequences. If they face abuse at home or are kicked to the curb, teens are forced to seek shelter at emergency drop-in centers, in abandoned buildings or with friends. Already unsure of their identity, some are wary of receiving assistance from shelters (possibly religious) or social workers (possibly unsympathetic), leaving LGBT homeless teens in danger of physical violence, prostitution, substance abuse and suicide.
Connect 4 Life, a new pilot project launching in Washington, D.C., believes there’s one simple thing these kids need to stay safe from harm: a cell phone.
“Overwhelmingly, youth said that is their lifeline,” says Christopher Wood, executive director of the LGBT Technology Partnership. “It makes a lot of sense. We use our cell phones every day,” Wood adds. “Why would it be any different? Why wouldn’t it be even more crucial for someone that doesn’t have a home to have a phone? That’s why we started this project.”
Wood co-founded the organization, which lobbies on behalf of LGBT groups for greater access to technology, just three years ago, so they’re starting small, distributing 25 phones throughout the capital.
“Making sure they have consistent contact or the ability to connect to the internet greatly improves their outcomes,” Wood says, explaining that the mobile device helps determine whether the teens are able to return to school, find work or establish a stable place to stay. A phone is “their lifeline not just to supportive services, but just the ability to call a friend and say, ‘I need a place to sleep.’”
Connect 4 Life is leaving it to the service providers who interact with homeless teens on a daily basis to determine how the phones are distributed. One program is giving their share of the phones to the kids who seem at the greatest risk, so they have an instant connection to their case manager; another is using it as a kind of reward, offering their mobile devices to those with the greatest motivation to succeed. The phones come with free minutes, texting and data for 10 months. The only catch? LGBT Tech Partnership asks the teens to respond to regular survey questions. If they don’t, the phones aren’t taken away; if they do, they get to keep the devices and free plan for an extra two months.
Wood knows from personal experience how valuable those midnight calls can be. Senior year in high school, he found himself simultaneously outed and thrown out of his home.
Raised in a military family in northern Virginia, Wood was the commander of his high school’s JROTC (Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps). “When I was 17, I was a really good kid. I didn’t do drugs, I didn’t get into trouble,” he recalls. But he guarded the secret of his sexuality and a private love for his boyfriend. One night Wood invited his boyfriend over and fell asleep in his arms on the couch. He woke up early in the morning to find his father bellowing at him. His parents “didn’t understand, they were afraid,” he remembers. “Later that morning, I was being kicked out of my house.” Carrying a hastily packed bag of clothes, Wood didn’t know where to go next. His basic cell phone proved the “crucial” element to finding spare bedrooms and fold-out couches with friends until things smoothed out at home, he says.
“I could text and call people on it. My ability to use a cell phone meant finding a warm place to sleep after that morning. It meant putting myself back together to go to school,” he says. “That changed my entire life trajectory.”
In our increasingly connected world, these phones are proving essential to helping a wary and highly mobile group of at-risk teens safely navigate their way back to safety. It’s a low-cost answer that shelter staff has recognized for years — they’ve often paid for the plans out of their own pocket — and that’s a strategy that’s being adopted nationwide. Google has donated the devices to homeless individuals in the Bay Area, and Ohio’s state government recently asked Wood about bringing the pilot west — ensuring help is only a text message away.
[ph]
Tag: Homeless
A Big-Hearted Man and His Calling to Build Tiny Houses for Oakland’s Homeless
“Homeless people,” says Gregory Kloehn, an artist, plumber and construction contractor based in Oakland, Calif., “they’re not really seen… I don’t want to say as human but almost. I mean, they’re definitely [viewed] lower than second class citizens.”
To Kloehn, it’s odd that our society finds it acceptable to ignore the plight of those living on the street.
Several years ago, when Kloehn got an iPhone, he began taking pictures of the structures erected by the homeless of West Oakland, compiling the photos in the book “Homeless Architecture.” Through this work, he came to know his homeless neighbors as the unique people that they are.
But Kloehn’s fascination didn’t stop there. Inspired by the ingenuity of his homeless neighbors, he put his construction and artistic skills towards making homes with the materials they were sourcing, mostly illegally dumped items found on the streets of West Oakland. Mostly famously, he created a house out of a dumpster that garnered a lot of media attention.
“I really just ripped a page out of the homeless peoples’ book, their own game plan,” says Kloehn.
The first home — complete with wheels for mobility and a lock for safety — and a bottle of celebratory Champagne was given to a homeless couple Kloehn had come to know while taking photos. As he saw them wheel it down the street and live in it, he came to understood the value that a safe, dry place has to people who have fallen on hard times.
To date, Kloehn has built 35 miniature homes for the homeless in Oakland and San Francisco. All construction materials (except for the wheels and a few other odds and ends), are sourced from garbage. He also runs workshops and give lectures, teaching other artists and handypeople the tricks of the trade. Following his lead, other builders have made homes for their neighbors in Los Angeles, Tucson, Arizona, and even abroad.
“It’s really put me in tune with the homeless,” says Kloehn. “Now, I see them as people. I know their name, I know their story, I know where they come from, I feel comfortable going up, chatting with them, just hanging out as a person.”
Are there 570,000 Homeless or 1.2 Million? Depends Who You Ask
On a recent evening, Denis McDonough, President Obama’s chief of staff, walked in the dark calling out, “Male, over 25; female, 18 to 24.”
Homeless people rarely have the privilege of having an audience with the president’s right-hand man — much less, one on their own turf. But that’s exactly what happened on a recent evening when McDonough and a crew consisting of Secret Service agents, White House staffers and San Francisco’s Mayor Ed Lee took part in the point-in-time count of homeless people living across America. (Within 90 minutes, the team counted 144 people in eight square blocks around San Francisco’s city hall.) The participation of a high-ranking Cabinet official drew attention to this little-known tool that provides essential direction for governments and service providers. It also brings focus to a population that’s often hidden out of sight, forgotten on vacant doorsteps, under freeway overpasses and in emergency shelters.
“What I see here, what we just walked through, this is a problem. But this is the same sort of challenge we face all over the country,” McDonough says. “The numbers tell the story. And that’s why this count is so important.”
WHAT ARE POINT-IN-TIME SURVEYS?
Here’s the formula: Sometime during the last 10 days of January (with a few exceptions), thousands of volunteers fan out across towns and cities across the U.S. to take a census of unsheltered street people. Equipped with clipboards and flashlights, they’re often assigned a small geographic area to avoid duplicates. The counts began in 1983 in 60 municipalities, as an increasingly visible population became homeless due to poverty, drug use and the closure of state-run mental institutions. Standardized methods for the counts were firmed up in 2005 and have since been refined. Along with figures from homeless shelters and transitional housing, numbers from the point-in-time count are submitted to the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). From there, the data gives a local and national snapshot of the homeless population that guides service providers, Congress, HUD and other agencies.
HOW OFTEN ARE THEY CONDUCTED?
HUD requires shelters to submit their data every year, but point-in-time surveys only happen biennially, usually in the odd-numbered years. Many large cities, however, choose to complete the census annually to keep abreast of the latest trends. “When we get an accurate count, the numbers tell us what to do,” Mayor Lee tells the San Francisco Chronicle. “Data drives action. That’s what this night is all about.”
[ph]
IS THERE MORE TO THE SURVEYS THAN JUST COUNTING PEOPLE ON THE STREETS?
Since the federal government introduced its long-term plan to end chronic and veteran homelessness by 2015, as well as youth and family homelessness by 2020, HUD has requested detailed data on those subpopulations. Some surveys require nothing more than approximate age and gender, but others, like Los Angeles’s survey, consists of a seven-page questionnaire asking things like, “Where have you been spending most of your nights?” “Do you have ongoing health problems or medical conditions?” and “How many times have you been housed and homeless?”
In Connecticut, for the first time, volunteers will ask the homeless about their specific housing, medical and employment needs to add to a registry. “In the past, each program kept its own waitlist for housing and other important services…Under that old system, providers and public officials had no way to gain a global view of the total needs to end homelessness in their community,” Lisa Tepper Bates, executive director of the Connecticut Coalition to End Homelessness, writes in an op-ed. A “community-wide by-name registry,” she adds, allows nonprofits “to target the right kind of assistance to the right person.”
[ph]
HOW DO VOLUNTEERS FIND THE HOMELESS?
It’s not easy. Organizers target known homeless encampments, but there’s always the chance of missing some. Because of its huge area, Los Angeles has been one of the leaders in improving its methodology. To supplement a count that takes place over multiple nights — from the posh neighborhoods along the ocean (some of which had their first count this year) to deep into the San Gabriel Valley — the city also conducts a random telephone survey of the “hidden homeless,” which added an additional 18,000 to the 36,000 people already counted on the street or in shelters.
Even if volunteers are able to locate people they suspect to be homeless, answers are not always forthcoming. (“None of your goddamn business” is how someone rebuffed two women who work for the Department of Veteran Affairs in D.C. when they asked him.) Many cities equip volunteers with gift bags and resource lists, small incentives that may prod someone to answer a few questions.
WHAT DO OFFICIALS EXPECT FROM THIS YEAR’S RESULTS?
A year ago, HUD reported that 578,434 people were homeless on a given night, a 2 percent decline from 2013. Exact figures from last month’s count won’t be known until municipalities release them later this year, but so far, experts aren’t optimistic about another decrease. (Already-released figures in Seattle show an alarming 21 percent jump from last year.) Why? Gentrification is driving up rent and decreasing the number of vacant apartments up and down the West Coast, says Katy Miller, regional coordinator for the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness. Add to that lingering poverty and unemployment from the recession, a dearth of affordable housing and limited mental health care infrastructure, and it’s suddenly clear why so many are losing their homes.
But it’s not all bad news. Expect some bright spots in the declining numbers of homeless veterans, which has already dropped one-third from 2010 to 2014, thanks in part to First Lady Michelle Obama. Mayors across the country responded to her call to end veteran homelessness this year — a goal that’s well within reach, as New Orleans has demonstrated. The chronically homeless population should also decrease as well, continuing the 21 percent decline from 2010 to 2014. As Salt Lake City has shown, putting the homeless into housing can bring these numbers close to zero. Look for the common-sense solution of “Housing First” to once again prove its effectiveness when totals debut.
HOW ACCURATE ARE THE FINDINGS?
Many in the field believe the counts far underestimate the actual number of people experiencing homelessness. For one, the count occurs during the bitter freeze of late January, when many homeless aren’t living on the street. The calendar assumption seems to be that the homeless will be more likely to enter the shelter when it’s cold outside and thus be counted, but they could also take refuge in a vehicle or seek protection in a church basement. The head counts are “hit or miss,” says Paul Boden, director of the Western Regional Advocacy Project, a homeless rights group. “Those whom they could see, they counted,” he writes in an op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle. “Point-in-time counts are a minimum number, always. They undercount hidden homeless populations because homeless persons are doubling up with the housed or cannot be identified by sight as homeless.” A quick look at other studies support Boden’s claim, including data released by the U.S. Department of Education, which reports that the number of homeless students has nearly doubled since the 2006-07 school year, to 1.2 million.
[ph]
WHICH GROUPS ARE OFTEN MOST EXCLUDED FROM THE CENSUS?
Point-in-time surveys do provide a snapshot taken at roughly the same time, a HUD official notes, which can “benchmark progress” with some confidence every two years — assuming that the face of homelessness is not changing. Some advocates fear that the largest new population of homeless — families who’ve lost their homes in the recession and are bouncing between couches, cheap motels and other temporary residences— are not being identified since they don’t “look homeless” to survey volunteers.
In addition to families, youth are most often among the undercounted, Boden says. Unaccompanied homeless youth are referred to as an “invisible population” because they’re particularly difficult to count. Studies attempting to estimate the total range from 22,700 to 1.7 million, a huge disparity. To improve count accuracy, HUD has partnered with a number of other agencies for a program called “Youth Count!” Since 2013, these groups have tried to attract youth homeless into shelters for the one-night counts with free meals and activities. They also approach homeless youth earlier in the day, when they’re likely easier to find at hotspots for young people like malls or recreation centers, LGBT-focused agencies and schools.
Unfortunately, while this system counts those down-and-out on the streets, it does little to track those who are grappling with housing insecurity — the very people which may be counted among this country’s homeless during the next point-in-time survey.
[ph]
This Common Sense Program Could Be the Future of Mental Health Care Nationwide
What would you do if your teenage son or daughter began expressing paranoid thoughts? Jumbling their sentences? Exhibiting bizarre behavior? Few parents know the warning signs of psychosis, but one joint effort in Connecticut is aiming to change that.
The state’s Department of Mental Health & Addiction Services and Yale University are pioneering MindMap, an outreach program designed to catch the early signs of a young person experiencing a psychotic episode, lessening the chance of self-harm or endangerment to others.
Mindmap’s creation is the result of university psychiatrists discovering that patients who received early treatment at community clinics reduced their risks of future psychotic breaks. Their findings also show that those who get help early on remain employed or in school 92 percent of time, compared to just 67 percent when receiving standard treatment. Even better? Three out of four avoided hospitalizations in the first year (as opposed to half), saving taxpayer dollars.
[ph]
Patients receiving treatment at Yale’s Specialized Treatment Early in Psychosis (STEP) clinic are set up with a team of caseworkers, which coordinates medication, counseling and social skills training for the patient and education for their family, whose guilt or frustration at the disease can often exacerbate symptoms. (The lack of vital long-term care has been identified as the reason why our mental health system has largely failed after state-run institutions shuttered in the 1960s.)
“Traditionally, people show up to psychiatric care after many years of suffering and poor functioning. Maybe they got psychiatrically committed in a hospital against their will, maybe they were picked up by the police or became homeless,” says STEP clinical director Jessica Pollard. “We try to catch people as soon as they have noticeable symptoms, whether it is full-blown and diagnosable psychosis or signs of something to come.”
Hallucinations, delusions, disorganized speech or excessive motor activity can be caused by, say, stress or substance abuse, but they can also be symptoms of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or severe depression. And while diagnoses have improved, mental health centers still struggle with the stigmas associated with psychosis.
“People don’t tend to show up on their own for care,” Pollard says. “They’re really embarrassed. They don’t want anyone to know.”
As many as one in every 29 people will experience some form of psychosis — generally defined as losing contact with reality — within their lifetime, according to one study. Psychiatrists know that most people have their first psychotic episode in their late teens or early twenties and reaching people at this early age is key, Yale’s psychiatrists say. It’s when the risk of relapse into psychotic episodes is highest and when two-thirds of suicides triggered by the disease occur.
“The model is a pragmatic, effective and economically feasible,” Vinod Srihari, professor of psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine, says in a statement. “The message is simple,” he adds. “The earlier, the better.”
[ph]
One Man, His T-Shirts and an Honorable Mission to House Homeless Veterans
They had our backs. Let’s keep the shirts on theirs.
That’s the message inscribed on every piece of clothing made by Rags of Honor, a Chicago-based apparel company that employs homeless and unemployed veterans. In the time since Mark Doyle, head of a consulting firm and high school football coach, founded the business in September 2012, Rags of Honor has doubled the size of its silkscreen printing to 2,000 square feet and hired 18 employees — 15 of whom experienced homelessness. With a few large deals signed, particularly from Big Ten conference schools like New Jersey’s Rutgers University, the business printed and shipped 15,000 items last year, a number Doyle plans to increase by taking the brand national.
“My first stage is triage. Someone comes to me or I get a call that someone is in trouble or in the shelter. I hire them that day,” Doyle says. Having a job “change[s] the arcs of their lives.”
Witnessing firsthand the grisly day-to-day experience of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan while serving on a yearlong anti-corruption panel in 2010 prompted Doyle to help recent vets. “I watched billions spent building that country, while our veterans were living under bridges, in their cars and in shelters,” Doyle explains. That experience combined with his knowledge that both political campaigns and sporting events have a continual need for custom clothing made Doyle spring into action. “Driving home in my car one night, I said, ‘I’m gonna do something. I’m going to make a difference.’ I had absolutely no plan: no business plan, no marketing plan, no sales plan,” Doyle recounts. “The next morning, Rags of Honor was born.”
He went to a homeless shelter and hired his first four employees. A Marine Corps veteran helped train the crew on the machines, and a couple of willing restaurants gave them their first few orders. Registered as a low-profit L3C company, Rags of Honor produces T-shirts, long-sleeve shirts, hoodies, baseball hats and knit caps. You can purchase custom designs or the company logos repping the Second City (“Sweet Home Chicago“) or the Armed Forces (“Wear it like a badge“). All of its revenue goes to employees’ paychecks or is reinvested in the business, Doyle says.
[ph]
During a worker’s first few weeks of employment, Doyle pays for a bus card to and from the homeless shelter, but he vows to have each employee housed within three months. An associated nonprofit helps connects vets with beds, bath towels and other furniture they need for their new home — the first step in starting over. Workers also receive support from their coworkers, with whom they develop strong bonds through their shared experience as military veterans who are transitioning out of their own personal tragedies.
Tamika Holyfield, the company’s director of customer service, was a Navy gunner who spent two years in Afghanistan as a small arms weapons instructor. Back in the Windy City after being deployed, she struggled to cope with debilitating panic attacks while still raising her three boys. Unable to manage, she dropped her children off with relatives and lived in her car for seven months. “I would have the kids on the weekend and tell them we were going camping, because I had nowhere to go,” she says. Holyfield found Rags of Honor through an employment agency; Doyle hired her on the spot. “I am so happy,” she says of life, which includes living with her boys again. “Even my panic attacks are under control.”
Across the country, stories like Holyfield’s are all too familiar. The last annual survey counted nearly 50,000 homeless veterans, and many more are at risk of losing their homes. The struggle to readapt to civilian life caused unemployment rates among young veterans to peak at 29 percent in 2011. On the shores of Chicago’s Lake Michigan, as many as 1,000 vets experience homeless on any given night, according to Volunteers of America’s Illinois chapter. Last year’s point-in-time survey identified 721 homeless veterans on a single January night, a little over one-tenth of the total homeless population. One-third of the veterans — 256 homeless — had no place to sleep except outside on the streets.
Doyle says he still has little business experience in the competitive garment industry, but he has the strength of guiding principles to keep him from falling astray. “Give them a chance, and they can do everything,” he says of his employees. “I’ve hired the ones that probably no one is going to find, folks who’ve been out of work, gone through their savings and ended up in the shelter. They don’t have the means to get too many interviews or don’t have resumes, but I really believe in them.”
Doyle adds, “Two of the most profound words you can say to anybody are ‘You’re hired.’”
[ph]
Far From Finished: Utah’s 5-Step Plan to Continue Helping the Homeless
Utah is entering the final stretch of its 10-year plan to end homelessness, but that doesn’t mean the state’s work is over.
The number of chronically homeless individuals has dropped from 1,932 in 2005 to 539 last year. If numbers continue to decline this year, the state will reach what’s known as a “functional zero,” meaning that Utah will have housed all the chronically homeless who will accept it and have the capacity to shelter the rest. Just like the “functional zero” economists use to calculate unemployment doesn’t include the baseline of people switching jobs, Utah won’t include in their data the minority who refuse housing, says Lloyd Pendleton, the state’s homelessness czar. “We can’t force them into housing. That’s called jail,” he notes.
Despite the Beehive State’s success, a larger population always teeters precariously on the brink. Utah’s total homeless population has grown 12.5 percent — from 11,275 to 12,685 — over the last decade. These individuals will need somewhere to stay when a landlord evicts them, when parents scream that they’re not wanted or when an abusive spouse makes them fear for their safety. So achieving functional zero doesn’t mean that Utah’s homeless shelters can close up shop tomorrow.
“We’ve demonstrated [Housing First] works. We have achieved remarkable results. Now we’ve really got to amplify and fortify our existing service delivery,” says Matt Minkevitch, executive director of The Road Home, Salt Lake City’s emergency shelter.
What steps will the state’s task force take to address the broader issues surrounding homelessness?
[ph][ph][ph][ph][ph][ph][ph]
READ MORE:
Part 1: Utah Set the Ambitious Goal to End Homelessness in 2015. It’s Closer Than Ever
Part 2: 13 Images of Resilient Utah Residents Who Survived Being Homeless
Part 3: The Compassionate Utah Official Who Believes in Housing First, Asking Questions Later
[ph]
Meet the Courageous Man Who Has Housed 1,393 Chronically Homeless Individuals in Utah
Lloyd Pendleton is the most efficient man in Utah. By the hour, he ticks off small achievements in a pocket planner, marking progress toward long-term goals. His mind routinely calculates volumes and outputs; he thinks in returns on investments. When Pendleton speaks, you begin to suspect he’s just sifted through a file cabinet’s worth of data. But then, he tosses in one of his signature colorful aphorisms, and you realize, nope, that’s just Lloyd.
After retiring from high-ranking positions at Ford Motors and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Pendleton began a second career in Utah’s Department of Workforce Services, a seemingly unglamorous government job in Salt Lake City. “I retired on a Friday and went to work with the state on Monday,” he says. As a pet project of sorts, Pendleton set an ambitious goal: To functionally eliminate chronic homelessness across Utah within 10 years. Nine years later, as Utah’s homelessness czar, he’s on track to reach that milestone by year’s end.
“He gets things done” is how his colleague Liz Buehler, Salt Lake City’s homelessness coordinator, describes her state counterpart.
Raised on a ranch at the far western edge of Utah, Pendleton’s early experience working the land gave him a dogged work ethic and a quiet-the-bells directness. He admits he once thought street people panhandled because they were lazy. “I used to tell the homeless to get a job, because that’s all I thought they needed,” he recalls.
But later, through the Mormon Church, he was tasked with restructuring struggling food pantries, emergency shelters and other charities across the country. After working directly with the homeless, including a year on-site at Utah’s largest shelter The Road Home (then known as the Travelers Aid Society), Pendleton had a “major paradigm shift.” Viewing the homeless as his brothers and sisters, he realized that when they suffered, so did the entire community. “We’re all connected,” he now says.
Pendleton’s years of bolstering charities earned him credibility from many nonprofit executive directors. When they knew he was considering retirement, several service providers and then-Gov. Jon Huntsman began lobbying the L.D.S. Church to “loan” Pendleton out to head up the state’s nascent homelessness task force. The church agreed, and Pendleton did the job part-time for two years before committing to being its full-time director in 2006. “We got Lloyd involved before he realized,” one executive director says.
Described by one Salt Lake City social worker as a “voracious reader and researcher,” Pendleton started by signing up for conferences on the latest strategies. While at one in Chicago in 2003, he learned about the 10-year plans to end homelessness taking shape around the country, and he heard the buzz about an innovative idea called “Housing First.” Two years later, after a conference in Las Vegas, Pendleton started chatting up a fellow passenger on the airport shuttle: Sam Tsemberis, considered the originator of the “Housing First” model.
Tsemberis explained how Pathways to Housing (the organization he founded in New York City in 1992) threw out drug tests and waiting lists — the old trappings of getting someone “housing ready.” Instead, the homeless were moved into apartments in Manhattan and Westchester County, N.Y., within two weeks. “You’re curing the housing problem first. You cure the person later,” Tsemberis explained. After its first five years, 88 percent of tenants had stayed in the program’s housing — double the rate for the city’s step-by-step rehab programs. “Recovery starts when you have something you care about, a place where you can go,” he added. Pendleton took an instant liking to Tsemberis and together, they convinced Utah lawmakers and foundations to take a chance on “Housing First.”
Just because it worked in New York City, however, didn’t mean the program would be a fit for Utah. During one tense early meeting, a contractor worried about his reputation almost backed out of building 100 units. As Pendleton listened, a thought came to him: why not test a small pilot program consisting of 25 of the toughest, most distressed people? The idea partially came from a truism he learned on the ranch while chopping kindling for their wood-burning stove: “Chop the big end of the log first.” In other words, if you can house the most chronically homeless, you can house anybody.
The task force gathered the best case managers, convinced landlords across the city to participate and handed over keys to 17 people. “I felt the sweat on my forehead, and I know others did too,” recalls Matt Minkevitch, the executive director of The Road Home, a Salt Lake City shelter. “You’d give each other a casual smile and say, ‘We’ll work through it, okay?’ But they couldn’t hear your stomach growling, hear you praying under your breath,… and just hoping, hoping that you don’t hurt people and damage all these important programs.”
The first night, Pendleton recounts, one man placed all his belongings on the bed and curled up on the floor to sleep. The following few nights, he dozed outside, near a dumpster. Finally, after several days, he moved in and slept on the bed. Housing isn’t “rehabilitation,” Pendleton noted, “because so many of them were never habilitated to begin with. You are creating new lives for them.” With the exception of one person who died, all the tenants remained in housing 21 months later.
Pendleton isn’t striving for prestige or fame in solving an ill that blights much of urban America. He just likes ideas that work, and he wants to see them take root, regardless of who sows the first seed. “Housing First” isn’t unique to the Beehive State, but Pendleton’s precise methods are a primary reason why Utah’s rates of chronic homelessness are so low. The fingerprints of his orderly approach can be spotted all over the 10-year plan: its clear articulation of vision, its far-reaching collaboration and its experimental pilot projects.
According to Pendleton, every action must answer this question: Does this help the homeless into housing or not? “If you don’t have a crystal-clear vision about the homeless situation, then you just muddle along. You get poor results. You’re not getting people housed,” he says.
For Utah to solve such an intractable social problem, it also had to find support beyond the traditional partnerships. Pendleton’s résumé helped win the involvement of the business community and the L.D.S. Church, one of the most influential forces in the region. Their monetary contributions and participation in programs like job placement meant even “more and more people carrying the load with the county, city and state,” Pendleton tells the Deseret News. And once the strategy had been distilled, all those agencies focused their individual expertise on a specific aspect of the problem.
Despite playing different instruments, “We have been pretty much on the same sheet of music in the symphony,” Pendleton says of the collaboration.
To meet the goal Pendleton first dreamed of a decade ago, Utah still needs to house approximately 539 chronically homeless and 200 homeless veterans, according to the latest comprehensive report — far fewer than the 1,932 chronically homeless on the streets when he first started.
Pretty good for an “encore career,” don’t you think?
READ MORE:
Part 1: Utah Set the Ambitious Goal to End Homelessness in 2015. It’s Closer Than Ever
Part 2: 13 Images of Resilient Utah Residents Who Survived Being Homeless
Part 4: Far From Finished: Utah’s 5-Step Plan to Continue Helping the Homeless
Utah Set the Ambitious Goal to End Homelessness in 2015. It’s Closer Than Ever
Crystal Spencer desperately needed a home for her three little girls. A single mother in her thirties, Spencer had lost her job at a Utah gas station and, in the twilight of the Great Recession, couldn’t find work elsewhere. Notices stacked up from her landlord, utility companies and bank.
“It was overwhelming. I just couldn’t keep up,” Spencer recalls. “I moved out because I knew I couldn’t do it.” She loaded her daughters — just babies at the time — into the back of her Dodge Durango and went to The Road Home, an emergency shelter just west of downtown Salt Lake City. As Utah’s largest shelter, its interior consists of a stripped-down dormitory. Plastic-covered mattresses on bunk beds can sleep more than 200 men each night, and its bathroom stalls, as a safety measure, don’t have doors. Spencer’s family had the small privilege of staying in a room closed off from the main beds, but she said it was “very uncomfortable” not having any privacy. Fearful of who was coming in and out the shelter, she never let her girls wander from her side.
In any number of American cities, Spencer would be required to jump through bureaucratic hoops — prove you’re sober, get a job, never miss a meeting — before her family would receive assistance. But in Utah, “Housing First,” an initiative to place the homeless into supportive housing without any prerequisites, now prevails. Because of it, Spencer quickly moved to a two-bedroom apartment at Palmer Court, an old hotel renovated into 200 units and opened by The Road Home in 2009. In the 13 months since, she’s caught up on all her debts and is on a waiting list for a Section 8 housing voucher. She decorated the apartment with framed pictures of her daughters — Sandra, 4, a nimble athlete fond of doing handstands on the living room recliner; Sierra, 2, a gregarious dancer and singer; and Phoenix, 1, a quiet observer — and the paintings they made at the on-site Head Start classroom.
“It was very difficult being homeless…[My kids] didn’t really understand what was going on. They still don’t,” Spencer says. “Right now, I am trying to go forward with my life, so I can move out and get a place of my own. The only thing I see myself doing is taking care of my kids. Hopefully, in my own house.”
Utah’s initiative isn’t just for hardworking moms like Spencer: it’s helping veterans haunted by war, the mentally ill, alcoholics and drug addicts. “Homelessness itself turns out to be a big barrier to all kinds of things, whether it is trying to get a job or trying to get an education or stop a drug addiction,” Steve Berg, vice president for programs and policy at The National Alliance To End Homelessness, tells Mic.
As the decade-long plan initiated by then-Gov. Jon Huntsman wraps up this year, the Beehive State’s “Housing First” program has already reduced chronic homelessness (those with deeper disabling conditions, like substance abuse or schizophrenia, who had been on the streets for a year or longer or four times within three years) by 72 percent and is on track to end it altogether by this time next year.
Media coverage ranging from The New Yorker to The Daily Show has pointed out that “Housing First” is a no-brainer. In reality, however, it’s been a herculean task 10 years in the making.
When the plan rolled out in 2005, Utah counted 1,932 chronically homeless adults. These individuals composed only 14 percent of the state’s total homeless population, but they were consuming the majority of agencies’ scarce resources. For instance, The Road Home found that the small group of chronically homeless used 60 percent of the shelter’s beds, according to executive director Matt Minkevitch. “Once we saw that, we really wanted to move forward.”
In Utah, a homeless person relying on shelters and soup kitchens costs the community $19,200, while the expenses of permanent housing and case management run just $7,800. For some, the price of law enforcement and medical expenses is astounding: One chronically homeless individual in Salt Lake City, for example, racked up $563,000 in emergency room charges in 2010; another had hospital bills that almost topped $1 million over three years.
Liz Buehler, Salt Lake City’s homeless services coordinator since 2013, says the state jumped into action when service providers realized they couldn’t rely on “diminishing resources” from the federal government. “If you put someone in a house, it’s half the cost of that person receiving services in the shelter. So why not put them in housing?” Buehler asks. “It’s not only giving them security, you can also help more people.”
Housing First’s backers are quick to note that they’re not giving away apartments for free: the new tenants have to abide by lease agreements (a handful have been evicted) and contribute $50 or 30 percent of their income to rent each month (whichever amount is greater).
For every 10 chronically homeless people housed through the program, eight are still in rapid rehousing units and one has moved on to other stable housing.
Minkevitch, a former hotel manager who migrated to the nonprofit sector to help “the weariest of travelers” at The Road Home, says the state’s success has taken even the most experienced caseworkers by surprise. “I know people who have been in this field for years, in this line of work for like 20 years, and as they were talking about clients, their eyes would light up like at Christmas,” he says. “They’d just laugh like it was the funniest, most beautiful joke, sitting here right under our nose all this time: we’d always known if a person has a home, they’re not homeless.”
READ MORE:
Part 2: 13 Images of Resilient Utah Residents Who Survived Being Homeless
Part 3: The Compassionate Utah Official Who Believes in Housing First, Asking Questions Later
Part 4: Far From Finished: Utah’s 5-Step Plan to Continue Helping the Homeless
This City Thought It Would Take Five Years to House Homeless Vets. They Did It a Year Ahead of Schedule
Standing at a podium before New Orleans’s bigwigs was an unusual place for a homeless veteran — or as he corrected the presenter at the press conference, “a former homeless vet.” Now living in permanent housing, he thanked the audience “for possibly saving my life, cus I don’t know if I could have survived another night on the street. … On behalf of all homeless veterans, I want to thank you.”
This month, New Orleans succeeded in becoming one of the first major U.S. cities to house every single homeless veteran.
In a collaboration unprecedented in scope, government agencies and nonprofits united around one common goal of housing at least 193 veterans, the number of homeless in New Orleans that were counted at the last point-in-time survey. Together, almost a year ahead of schedule, they exceeded that goal, placing 227 veterans into apartments in 2014.
“Veteran homelessness is an important and challenging issue, and we are very proud of our accomplishment today in New Orleans,” Mayor Mitch Landrieu said at the city’s World War II Museum. “We owe our veterans our eternal gratitude for their service and sacrifice to this nation and making sure they have a place to call home is a small but powerful way we can show our appreciation.”
New Orleans’s undertaking began in 2011 with the creation of a 10-year plan to end chronic and family homelessness and a 5-year goal for ending veteran homelessness. (In May 2012, there were 570 veterans living on the streets.) The city was still reeling from Katrina’s destruction: nearly 11,600 people were living on the streets in 2007 and many neighborhoods had yet to rebuild. One of the key advances was the formation of an interagency council, a centralized effort that would unite all five-dozen partner agencies and service providers — from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development all the way down to Ozanam Inn, a local shelter — in what New Orleans refers to as a “continuum of care.” It also includes a committee of active duty military (a group that could quickly establish trust) who scoured the streets locating homeless vets and helping those in transition make the move into new housing.
This collaboration streamlined services for veterans, particularly after a referral center, which served as a day shelter and offered case management, opened up inside the V.A. hospital in 2013. Locating assistance in the hospital not only made it easily accessible for struggling vets, it also advertises its services for those who may one day need help. It’s still the only center of its type in the country.
“This initiative, which has addressed the immediate needs of our city’s homeless veterans while creating a structure for the future, is a testament to the strength of the partnerships that have been forged among government, nonprofit, and private entities as we work together to rebuild a stronger, more sustainable New Orleans,” says City Councilmember Susan Guidry.
In 2013, almost $5 million became available through HUD’s HOME program, which pays for the construction of affordable housing or rental assistance for low-income tenants, and the city earmarked much of that money to combat overall homelessness. Using those funds and vouchers provided through the Department of Veterans Affairs, New Orleans asked landlords to list affordable rentals in one online database. Veterans were given homes without any conditions since the city endorsed “Housing First” and “No Wrong Door,” which aligns caregivers with shared information to help them obtain any needed service, regardless of which door they show up at first.
Since then, New Orleans has pushed local businesses to prioritize hiring veterans and has set up a criminal court that can respond to their unique situation, among many other cutting–edge innovations.
“To be able to give so many homeless veterans a forever home — most of them disabled and a quarter of them elderly — in such a short period of time was extremely challenging but incredibly exhilarating for all of the many partners in this effort,” says Martha Kegel, the executive director of UNITY of Greater New Orleans. “That so many veterans who have risked their lives to serve our country are left homeless, especially in their later years, shocks the conscience. To bring them home, once and for all, has been very rewarding.”
Although veterans may continue to experience homelessness because of poverty or disability, New Orleans has reached a “functional zero,” which means every known homeless veteran has been housed permanently or is on the way to a designated apartment.
Last summer, after First Lady Michelle Obama issued a challenge for cities to end veteran homelessness by 2015, all the New Orleans’s groups involved redoubled their efforts. While Binghamton, N.Y., (pop. 46,400) was technically the first, New Orleans’s feat has yet to be replicated in a major metropolis.
“Quite simply, the men and women who have defended our freedom deserve to return to the American Dream. Far too often we as a nation have failed them in that regard,” says Jared Brossett, another city councilmember. “The fact that New Orleans is on the leading edge of ending veteran homelessness is something of which we should all be proud.”
While Phoenix and Salt Lake City ended chronic homelessness last year after a friendly competition (spoiler: Phoenix won), both western cities are still working towards eradicating veteran homelessness altogether. Los Angeles, Chicago and Wichita, as well as 300 other mayors, six governors and some 70 county officials across the nation are all hoping to house all the homeless veterans in their towns by the year’s end.
Some observers have doubted whether New Orleans’s recent veterans housing push is a sustainable solution, stressing that preventive measures like counseling for post-traumatic stress disorder could keep them off the street in the first place. Those groups want to see a shuttered hospital reopened as a facility to treat mental illness.
Mayor Landrieu readily admits, “The work of ending veteran homelessness is never really done.”
But in response to the huge task, Landrieu announced a new “rapid response model” at the same time he celebrated his city’s hard-won success. This system will centralize “all available local, state and federal resources” and link veterans on the brink with active duty and former soldiers, essentially “utilizing veterans to help veterans.”
There’s also a structure now in place to ensure no vet will fall through the cracks: The mayor promised any veteran who loses his housing will be housed within an average of 30 days.
The city’s milestone has galvanized advocates across the country, far beyond this corner of southern Louisiana. As of the last count on a single January night last year, veteran homelessness nationwide has declined by one-third since 2010, but 49,933 vets still lacked safe and stable housing.
“This remarkable achievement is significant to the entire nation — to every state and community that has the will to end veteran homelessness before the end of 2015,” says Laura Green Zeilinger, the executive director of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness who’s coordinating policy among 19 federal agencies. “New Orleans, by answering the call that it must be done, proved to all of us that eliminating veteran homelessness can and will be done.” And after that? Let’s “build on this success to end homelessness for all Americans,” Zeilinger adds.
Rosa’s Fresh Pizza Has Given Away More Than 8,400 Slices to the Homeless
Rosa’s Fresh Pizza in Philadelphia has an unusual type of wallpaper: Neon Post-it notes.
Each sticky slip represents a customer who gave an extra dollar so that a homeless person could eat a slice.
The pay-it-forward menu began nine months ago, owner Mason Wartman tells NPR, when someone asked if he could buy something extra for the homeless. “I said ‘Sure.’ I took his dollar and ran out and got some Post-it notes and put one up to signify that a slice was purchased,” Wartman explains.
While lots of take-out restaurants have boxes near the register asking for loose change (a simple reminder of how many people are hungry), this pizzeria took it further, displaying the Post-its side-by-side with letters of thanks from grateful recipients — proving just how much an extra buck can impact someone in need of a meal.
Word of free cheesy, thin-crust pizza has spread, and about 30 to 40 homeless people drop by Rosa’s every day. Luckily, generous customers stop by in huge numbers, too. So far, the shop’s clientele has bought more than 8,400 slices for their neighbors living on the street.
“I just want to thank everyone that donated to Rosa’s,” one message taped on the wall says in bright red marker, “it gave me a place to eat everyday and the opportunity to get back on my feet. I start a new job tomorrow!”
On a paper plate, a homeless veteran writes, “God bless you. Because of you I ate off this plate, the only thing I ate all day.”
Wartman, 27, formerly worked as an equity research on Wall Street. After falling in love with $1-a-slice pizza in New York City, he brought the cheap and simple model back to his hometown and named Rosa’s Fresh Pizza (which he opened in December 2013) after his mother. Even with his knack for business, Wartman’s customers were buying so many free meals for the homeless that he had to abandon the Post-it system once it exceeded 500 slices. Now, he keeps tabs at the register.
Giving away food wasn’t enough for Wartman. Since last November, he’s been selling sweatshirts and donating one to a homeless person for each purchase. The fuzzy garment has his restaurant’s logo emblazoned on the outside and, inside, contains a schedule and a directory for local soup kitchens and homeless shelters. On “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” this week, he challenged national chains like Chipotle to follow suit.
Why do he and his customers do it? “They’re just really nice people, you know? Sometimes homeless people buy them for other homeless people,” Wartman says. “This is a super-easy way, a super-efficient way and a super-transparent way to help the homeless.”
This must be why they call Philadelphia the City of Brotherly Love.
[ph]