To get people off the streets, Housing First strips strings
Advocates say removing prerequisites, rules on substance abuse puts sense of stability within reach for homeless
When things came down hard, as Jeanelle Moore puts it, they came down so hard she lost control.
In quick succession, a neighbor shot and killed her dog; she couldn’t maintain her dog grooming business; and, unable to cope, she eventually lost her house.
She said she’s been combating mental illness, including schizophrenia, all her life. Once, she suddenly jumped out of her boyfriend’s truck for no reason as he was driving. She was a woman looking for a safe place to land without knowing whether there was anyone out there to catch her.
But with the help of The Life Link of Santa Fe and the Housing First initiative, Moore found a place to live — moving up from a fleabag motel with no lock on the door to a midtown apartment complex.
Housing First is a homeless assistance approach that prioritizes providing permanent housing to people experiencing homelessness, according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness. The model is simple: Find housing for homeless people, no matter
if they are grappling with mental and behavioral health issues or hooked on alcohol or drugs. There are no prerequisites.
That approach helped Moore start to turn her life around.
“Housing is something we need to have first,” said Moore, who is in her mid-50s. “You have to feel safe and secure before you can make change. I can’t make change when I’m not secure.
“When you are homeless, it’s like you are hanging onto a cord and you want me to make decisions,” she added. “I don’t even have anywhere to put my feet. So how am I supposed to think about anything I need to do until I put my feet on the ground?”
Her story is not unique. Nationwide, there are an estimated 567,000 people who are homeless, according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, which is a nonprofit advocacy group located in Washington, D.C. In New Mexico, there are about 3,240 homeless people on any given night, the group says.
Advocates, pointing to a number of national studies on the Housing First model that indicate it is successful in providing permanent housing, say it’s the way to go as the nation continues to wrestle with how to deal with its homeless population.
“If people have the stability of a home, they can do so much better with that support service assistance than they can if they are living in a shelter,” said Nan Roman, executive director of the National Alliance to End Homelessness.
“You shouldn’t have to say [to] people, ‘You have to behave like this,’ to provide housing,” she said. “Housing is a basic human need.”
In Santa Fe, more than 500 previously homeless people now live in sites procured under the Housing First model. The sites are primarily — but not entirely — financed by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Statewide, that number is close to 3,150, said Hank Hughes, executive director of the New Mexico Coalition to End Homelessness. He said the model is gaining momentum as more community organizations adopt it.
Roman, Hughes and other advocates say the program doesn’t work for everyone and doesn’t always result in people overcoming personal challenges. And people who gain residence through the Housing First model have rules to follow. While they might still drink or use drugs behind their own closed doors, if they are prone to violence, host loud or large gatherings, deal drugs or break other laws, they get evicted by the organization using the model.
Edward Archuleta, executive director for St. Elizabeth Shelter, said that happens sometimes — but not very often, based on his experience with the program.
Archuleta acknowledged he did not have a lot of faith in the program when the shelter began adopting it to help its residents find permanent housing several years ago. St. Elizabeth Shelter is known for its “sober” environment — temporary residents cannot drink or do drugs.
Now, he said, he finds most people with substance abuse problems “actually slow down usage once they have a place to live. Some quit altogether. Some say the only reason they were using is because they were on the streets, afraid, self-medicating.”
While he said some critics might think Housing First “enables” people, he believes the initiative is working. He said federal HUD guidelines for Housing First initiatives prohibit agencies like his from forcing treatment on residents. But the program funds caseworkers and counselors who can make weekly checks on residents to see how they are faring and if they want a connection to social services, he said.
Lara Yoder, housing program manager for The Life Link — which provides housing and services to homeless families and individuals — said one of the benefits of the program is that case managers, social workers and others can easily find their clients at home.
Otherwise, they might be on the move, on the streets.
“We know where they are; they know where we are,” she said. “You start building that relationship.”
Kyra Ochoa, the city’s director of community services, touted the benefits of the program during a recent virtual Drug Policy Alliance-New Mexico conference, saying it meets homeless people “where they are and not the other way around.”
She said it’s difficult to address the issues that plague those who are homeless without first providing them a home.
“You’ll hear a common phrase bandied about: ‘That person doesn’t want to be housed,’ ” Ochoa said in a phone interview. “But if you really look at unpacking that, it’s problematic. Because while their behaviors may not be managed yet, believe me, if any of us had to live out on the streets for 12 months or more, we might have some behavioral problems, too.”
Anna Cale, project administrator for the city’s Community Services Department, said Housing First initiatives can save communities money because calls to police for aid and the need for other social service providers go down when they’re successful.
Beyond the financial bottom line, she said, is a humanitarian imperative. The problem of homelessness, she said, is “a real human cost that we all suffer when we don’t house people. There’s the suffering happening on our streets and in shelters every day — people are dying. There is the humanity we lose every day when we live in a world where so many in our community are not safe, they are not stable.”
Local advocates point to national statistics.
A University of North Carolina study released last month on the effects of a Housing First program in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg County area said that of the 1,000 people it placed in housing, three quarters of those residents stayed housed and off the streets. The average number of county police and health officer calls to shelters dropped significantly as a result.
The report found a savings of $2.50 for every $10 spent on Housing First in terms of such calls and responses. (It also noted food insecurity remained an issue among Housing First clients, in that they either did not have transportation or access to a grocery store to buy food.)
Ochoa said the city’s success in leveraging $2 million in federal coronavirus relief funds to help finance the purchase of the 122-unit Santa Fe Suites hotel on South St. Francis Drive will help the Housing First initiative.
The New York-based nonprofit Community Solutions, which works to end homelessness, will set up a local limited liability corporation to manage the property, said Alexandra Ladd, the city’s director of affordable housing.
Ladd said about a third of those units will be dedicated to Housing First clients. The plan is to close the deal by Wednesday.
“This could be a really lovely tiding,” Ladd said, referring to Christmas. “So many people celebrate the holidays. But forget about having fancy food and presents to go with it — some people don’t even have a place to sleep.”
Ladd, Ochoa and Cale said access to affordable housing sites is one barrier to expanding the Housing First initiative. The New Mexico Coalition to End Homelessness estimates the city is short of affordable housing by 5,000 units. Based on city data, only 77 of 1,128 units now under construction will qualify as affordable, meaning they will be offered at below-market rates.
While city officials look for ways to address that shortage, another obstacle to the Housing First model is a “not-in-my-backyard” mentality among neighbors, homeless advocates said.
Moore said she has felt it in her apartment complex, where at least one neighbor has voiced concerns about tenants coming in from The Life Link’s various housing programs. “People do judge,” Moore said. Ochoa said that while it may take time to win people over to the Housing First idea, she thinks more are beginning to understand the welfare of the homeless community can affect the health of the overall community.
“We have a big backyard here in Santa Fe,” she said. “I think the pandemic has shown that we are all connected.”
During the Drug Policy Alliance conference, she said what is needed is an approach that saves money and lives and is “more compassionate.”
“You ask people what they need, and then you believe them,” she said.
Moore, who paints license plates as a freelance gig, agrees. She said a caseworker checks up on her regularly and she talks with a therapist once a week.
“Just having a roof over your head and knowing you have support makes it easier to get back on your feet,” she said. “And a lot of us need to get back on our feet.”