Posted on August 16, 2011
This blog was written by VSH’s summer PR intern, James Denison
At one point during Richmond Registry Week, I was walking down Chamberlayne Road with a flashlight and a clipboard at the ungodly hour of 4:30 in the morning. Actually, that phrase “ungodly hour” seems ironic to me. It’s as if nothing good happens at that time, as if the only people out and about then are drug dealers, or gang members, or witches. But my team and I were out trying to locate homeless individuals before the sun rose, because they tend to be on the move early too.
We were out as part of the 1000 Homes for 1000 Virginians campaign, seeking to identify the most vulnerable homeless folks in Richmond, and looking for individuals sleeping on the ground or under bridges was a pretty good place to start. So the first thing I learned this week was how early homeless people have to get up. By 6:30 at the latest, they are generally awake and starting their days.
You’d think that folks would be grumpy or hostile about being woken up by a pack of strangers shining lights and asking questions, right? Well, a couple of people did want to go back to sleep. But for the most part, the individuals we met were perfectly willing to complete the vulnerability surveys, which took about 15 minutes. And to thank them for their cooperation, we made sure they knew where their next meal was coming from by giving out McDonald’s gift cards.
All in all, we surveyed more than 150 folks in three mornings, and about half of them fit the criteria for vulnerability, which was based on a combination of age, repeated homelessness, and chronic physical and mental health problems. Personally, I got to interview one man (I’ll call him Jerry) who was living under a bridge and had previously been involuntarily committed to a mental hospital. This means that at one time, he must have done something destructive enough to be classified as an imminent danger to himself or to others.
Previously, I wrote a blog about how overcrowded conditions in mental health facilities had led to hundreds of patients being turned away, which led to many of them becoming homeless. At the time, I thought I understood the issue; I thought I cared about getting these individuals off the streets. And I did. But as I watched Jerry mumble to himself and tell me about spirits and spells, the weight of his situation and the necessity of getting him into supportive housing was made real for me.
As a society, we simply cannot allow individuals like Jerry to be left out on the streets to fend for themselves. Jerry may be mentally ill and homeless, but his life is not worthless. With Richmond Registry Week and many other efforts, VSH is committed to standing alongside folks like Jerry in their hard times. The dream is that one day, Jerry and people like him will be able to spend their ungodly hours in the security of their own homes.
You can help make that dream a reality. To find out how, click here.
Posted on July 21, 2011
This week’s blog was condensed from a sermon delivered at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church on July 17 by The Rev. Deacon Barbara Ambrose.
My husband John and I often enjoy visiting Washington DC during the Christmas holidays to see all the decorations, visit museums and try out a new restaurant or two. It is not unusual for us to stroll downtown in the evenings when homeless people are emerging to set up sleeping areas in the doorways and niches of buildings closed for the night. It is surreal to be sharing the sidewalk with expensively dressed people heading to warm environments and nourishing meals and then look down and see another human being in deep sleep under blankets and plastic sheeting surrounded by all that they possess. Responding to these situations is difficult – I have felt powerless to do anything other than pray for the homeless person as I pass and wonder how human beings can live in such desperate conditions in the midst of so much wealth, power, and beauty.
Of course one need not travel as far as Washington to experience the reality of homelessness. For decades Richmond’s population has included people who make their home on the streets. Many suffer with mental and physical illnesses that impede their ability to make a living or different choices. Numerous groups work tirelessly to assist these most vulnerable members of society, but there is also a tacit effort to keep “the homeless” in designated areas. In recent months great controversy erupted as plans to improve Monroe Park included vanquishing the homeless individuals living there, removing them along with debris and pushing them ever further toward the margins of society.
Maybe it is our human nature to establish artificial constructs of “good” and “bad” and then to separate out the bad. As children, the criteria for separation may be the way someone dresses or the color of their hair. Disabilities can also render children the target of scorn and estrangement from their classmates. As we get older the lines of demarcation are just as arbitrary – athletic prowess, intellect, or career path. And disability, mental illness or chronic medical conditions often remain as lines of separation.
Throughout the Gospels, Jesus makes it quite clear that the job of judging our fellow human beings will fall to the angels and not to us. As Matthew’s Parable of the Weeds (Matthew 13:24) demonstrates, it is not our job to determine which plants should remain in the field and which should be removed. But I do believe that we are expected to tend the field – keep it watered and nurtured so that it remains a fertile ground for the plants to flourish and mature.
The Oregon Hill Neighborhood [where St. Andrews is located] is one such field, and we have long been aware that our community includes homeless people. While many within this congregation have longed for the ability to confront the challenge of homelessness in a meaningful and loving way, the path has seemed ambiguous and daunting. Fortunately an opportunity to participate in a city-wide initiative has emerged, and there has been some exciting planning underway to participate in 1000 Homes for 1000 Virginians – Richmond campaign. This project’s goal is to systematically locate and interview every chronically homeless person in Richmond and include them in a registry that will be used to provide housing to those in the most need as it becomes available. Virginia Supportive Housing and Homeward are the two agencies leading this initiative, along with the Virginia Coalition to End Homelessness. The advantage of partnering with them is that they have the resources and expertise to develop and facilitate a comprehensive program that can make a substantive impact in lives of chronically homeless individuals. With their guidance we can engage in specific tasks that will contribute to this very ambitious undertaking.
After training on July 31, a group from our parish will go out into our neighborhood on three consecutive mornings to locate and interview our homeless brothers and sisters so they can be included in the registry. Volunteers are also needed to compile the information gathered by teams throughout the city, help manage the central command center, and support everyone involved with this project.
While registry week is the focus of this initial “mission trip at home” it is only a beginning. This is an opportunity to cross that elusive line that has challenged our engagement with homeless people residing in our community. Each of us can discern how we might be called to follow that path to tend our field and ensure that every plant growing here has a chance to flourish. Hopefully our efforts will enable some who live on the streets of our community to eventually move to their own homes, and as we grow in relationship with them we can help facilitate those transitions, all the while celebrating our shared humanity as children of the kingdom.
Posted on June 14, 2011
This week’s blog was written by Dr. Jeannette Schoonmaker, a psychiatrist with Virginia Supportive Housing’s program A Place To Start.
I’ve worked in many places. I have a good deal of experience with mental health services in many different forms. So my coming to A Place To Start was because I saw it as being more efficient, more comprehensive, and a better program than others. The major difference we have is the piece where we provide housing at the outset of the program.
Providing housing up-front as quickly as we can brings us the opportunity to have people where we can find them, hopefully day after day. We can start to access what their needs are and start to build a relationship with them. If you don’t have housing, so many obstacles pop up. For instance, if you’re trying to make an appointment with social services, odds are they’re going to ask for your address, and you’re not going to have one. So you need a place to get mail, and transportation too. It’s amazing, the basic needs that can’t be met without an address, an ID card, and a birth certificate. If you don’t have a birth certificate, you can’t get an ID card. If you don’t have an ID card, you might not be able to go to the Daily Planet and get clothes or a shower. So many basic services rely on these three essentials, plus transportation. We come in at the ground level and start with basics. Once we’ve got those established, we focus on the things clients have not been able to access or may need, like medical or psychiatric services.
Bad luck is an equal-opportunity handicap. And if you talk to our clients, they’ve had bad luck at every different stage of their lives. But nobody chooses to be homeless. If you’re in a shelter, you’re out at 5 or 6 walking around all day and trying not to be noticed. It’s a long day to walk around and try to be invisible. Homeless people try not to be noticed because other people are often not comfortable around them, and often policemen will arrest them for “trespassing”. When you’re on the street you’re not safe. And you certainly aren’t feeling secure when you’re wandering trying to stay out of everyone’s way all day long and hoping you can find somewhere to sleep.
In this program, it takes a lot of contact with clients. We need to convince them, for one thing, that this program isn’t like all the others, where you get dropped for missing one appointment, or when you give your info and they say, “We’ll call you”. What homeless person has a phone with minutes on it? That’s one of the advantages of our program, we have enough manpower to truly take care of and service people’s needs. We can stay with them, make things happen for them, and build that sense of trust, that trust that there is something better to be had.
Some of the people we see have been not treated effectively, and we have to try to get in there and make that better. And if they’re reluctant to take their medication, we’ll go to their apartments and help them take it there. We all become family pretty quickly. A lot of these patients, they do not have a lot of family support left, so we tend to fill in and help them learn to use community resources. So there’s a lot of educating, a lot of walking with people to help them find resources.
One thing that’s different about our program, again, is that we stay with the person, we don’t give up. We are very persistent and very sincere in saying we will not give up, we will stay here with you. Everyone makes mistakes, everyone has bad luck, everyone makes poor choices, and there are consequences. But we’ll be with you through that. We don’t walk away when things get tough. And I think that constancy of availability of someone to be with you and listen and try to be helpful is crucially important. And that’s something I’ve seen more in VSH than in other places I’ve worked.
It’s probably because we have that access at the housing level to get them set up, with furniture, with groceries, with medication. So it becomes more comprehensive and more effective. Case managers are out every day picking up clients, bringing them here and to social services, to the food bank, wherever. Whatever it takes. A while back, one of our clients became interested in computers. So our clinician spent a day with him going to Best Buy, picking out a computer, and helping set it up. And that’s the ultimate goal, that we can get them out there, teach them, and watch them fly off. After 3 years, we’ve got 2-3 in school, probably 6 working part time, and others who are volunteering and want to work. Folks just want to get back in the mainstream.
The thing that makes my day, is when I’ve seen people come into the program who are really desperately depressed, hopeless, and don’t know where to turn. And in a few months, I can ask them how they’re doing, and they say, “I’m happy. Life is good.” That’s flat-out amazing.
APTS is a good program, and it works, and I hope we can have more and more people come into it. Hopefully, there will be more and more people in the area not having to look forward to another day on the park bench, wondering where they’re going to be tomorrow.
To learn more about how A Place To Start helps its clients and its community, click here
Posted on January 26, 2011
This week’s blog was written by VSH’s Executive Director, Alice Tousignant.
Five years ago, we were all scratching our heads trying to figure out what to do with a certain segment of the homeless population who weren’t getting helped. These were individuals who were chronically homeless with serious mental illness, many of whom also had a co-occurring substance abuse issue. Truthfully, many of us had gotten to the point of saying that this specific population chose to be homeless— that was our excuse. The thing is, no one bothered to ask them what they wanted and if they really did want to be homeless. The bottom line was that the community, including Virginia Supportive Housing, didn’t know how to help them and we had almost given up trying.
But then two things happened: we starting hearing stories from around the nation about how chronically homeless people were costing the community money—in other words, even though chronically homeless people comprise a relatively small percentage (about 15%) of the overall population of people experiencing homelessness, they were using a disproportionately high amount of the resources in the community. We also started hearing about some best practice programs that were successfully housing this population, and these programs were gradually spreading around the nation.
One of these programs was Pathways to Housing, a program that began in New York almost 10 years ago. After hearing about this program, I must admit I was very skeptical. Not only did I not really believe it could work, it also seemed very costly. Then PBS did a special on a gentleman called “Footie” who they followed as he entered the Pathways program. One of the things I vividly remember from the Pathways video was that they talked to individuals who had been living on the streets for years and asked them what they wanted most. And, guess what they said? They wanted housing. They didn’t say they wanted to remain homeless. That video turned my skepticism to amazement and optimism. I remember thinking, “We can do this here in Richmond.”
Working with many partners in the community, including Homeward, the Daily Planet, the Community Services Boards of Richmond, Chesterfield and Henrico and the Virginia Housing Development Authority, A Place to Start (APTS) became our Pathways to Housing in Greater Richmond. The program was launched in late 2007 and began taking individuals off the street shortly thereafter.
APTS places individuals with an extensive history of homelessness and a serious mental illness into permanent housing and wraps intensive services around them. APTS has a dedicated service team of professionals, including a psychiatrist, nurse, social worker, peer counselor, substance abuse counselor and employment specialist who provide services 24/7. APTS also has a housing specialist who works with landlords to broker leases, get clients into permanent housing, and ensure that program participants and landlords are getting what they need.
We knew the program worked because it was evidenced based, but we needed to prove it worked here in Richmond. So, we undertook an evaluation funded through the Greater Richmond Chamber Foundation and conducted by the Central VA Health Planning Agency. The research looked at hospital and incarceration data on 50 clients enrolled in the program and measured costs and incidents 20 months prior to program entry and 20 months after. The research is complete and the report was released today.
While we knew the program would work, we didn’t know how well it would work. APTS has taken 58 people off the streets in three years with a 98% success rate in keeping people stably housed! Only one person has returned to homelessness.
And APTS is saving the community precious resources. The research shows that the program has saved the community over $320,000 in the first 20 months in hospital and incarceration costs alone. This does not even include other costs, such as ambulance costs, judiciary costs, and the costs to the homeless services system.
Has this program made a difference in the community? Yes! In addition to cost savings, it is making a big difference in the community. We’re taking people off the streets. Most of the folks in the program were unsheltered prior to entering the program and were counted as such in the community’s twice yearly count of individuals experiencing homelessness. In July 2008, there were 148 people who were counted as “unsheltered homeless.” In July 2010, that number had gone down to 119, which is a 19% reduction in two years! Some of this reduction is due to APTS.
What about peoples’ lives? Just ask Jerome who has been in the program for over two years. He had been homeless for eight years, living in alleys, dumpsters, and under cars and bushes in Richmond. He suffered frostbite in both feet. “I struggled like a dog.” He said that he would have died if he had lived on the street one more year.
And, there are many more stories like Jerome’s. Despite all that we have accomplished through VSH and APTS, there is still plenty of work that needs to be done. There are still people living on the streets who need to get into housing and get the help they need, and we can’t do that without the community’s support. To support A Place To Start and the work of VSH to provide proven permanent solutions to homelessness, click here. Thank you!
Posted on January 18, 2011
Ours is a culture of quick fixes. Learn a language in five minutes a day. Lose 14 pounds in 14 days. Become a millionaire by scratching a lottery ticket. We expect problems that have resulted from years of bad luck and bad habits to disappear overnight, and when one quick-fix doesn’t work, we quickly lose patience and move on to the next “sure thing.”
It was no surprise, then, that when Ted Williams burst into the headlines just after the new year, people expected a quick turnaround. Despite a very complicated history that included a decade of homelessness, incarceration, substance abuse, and estrangement from family, the expectation was that he “take advantage” of all the opportunities that were flowing his way and “be good.” “Listen to your mom!” is what The Today Show’s Matt Lauer advised him.
It would have been enough to make anyone’s head spin. This individual went from living on the street and panhandling at traffic lights to having a new house and a lucrative broadcasting contract within a week. He went from invisible nobody to special guest on The Jimmy Fallon Show, Entertainment Tonight, and Dr. Phil in the blink of an eye. With so much invested in his success, people needed to believe that a “fairytale ending” was possible. Disappointment was not an option.
Did we really believe it was going to be that simple?
Less than ten days after skyrocketing to fame, Ted Williams was arrested for disorderly conduct and voluntarily admitted into rehab soon after. Of course, public reactions ran the gamut. “It is truly amazing that Americans always get sucked in by people like Williams. The man is a drunk and almost beyond hope.” “I grew up with one of the best BS artists on the planet…Ted is about one of the best I’ve ever seen.”
Others seemed to feel more compassion. “I am very happy that this homeless person is getting another chance in life: most homeless are more likely to win the [lottery] than to be given such a good chance. I wish him well.”
Regardless of whatever opinions and feelings we may have on the subject, one thing is certainly true. Chronic homelessness is not a quick fix. The spiral into homelessness is often exacerbated by a number of complicating factors, and it can take years. It only stands to reason that true recovery would also take years, and some people struggle with it for the remainder of their lives. Three decades of research tells us that people like Ted Williams can’t even begin to heal without the support and stability that permanent supportive housing offers.
So let’s not kid ourselves. The path is long and the issues are complex. If we are going to insist that people turn their lives around, it only makes sense that we invest our hopes and resources in the strategy that offers them the best chance of succeeding. With permanent supportive housing, we might not get that “fairytale ending” that we crave so much, but we can get something even better: an end to homelessness.
