The Dutchess County Housing First Petition

[Note-- please contact the Dutchess County Legislature at 486-2100 or [email protected] on this...Joel Tyner, County Legislator (Clinton/Rhinebeck)-- [email protected] (876-2488).]

Dutchess County should delay no longer in instituting a cost-saving yet more effective "housing-first" approach pioneered by Pathways to Housing in Westchester, New York City, San Francisco, and elsewhere for the chronically mentally ill drug addicts and alcoholics that have been cycling in and out of our jails, mental hospitals, hospitals-- those people need apartments now-- with the wrap-around support services to make sure they succeed (see PathwaystoHousing.org).

Westchester County instituted this approach and literally cut their homeless population in half (see "Homelessness, Halved" by David Scharfenberg NY Times 2/26/06). Rockland County has wisely chosen to invest $10 million into housing for its residents-- from volunteer fire/rescue squad folks to low-income individuals; Dutchess County, with about the same population, should follow this example.

According to our county's Department of Planning, as reported on
the front page of the Poughkeepsie Journal on May 25th last year, Dutchess County had:

-- 240 chronically homeless individuals here in our county, including:
-- 132 with serious mental illness
-- 167 substance abusers
-- 75 victims of domestic violence
-- 26 veterans
-- 50 under the age of 18

Jacki Brownstein, Executive Director of the Mental Health Association, stated at the May 19th "Everyone Deserves a Key" rally last year that, "44\% of homeless people are employed. The average cost for a
one-bedroom apartment is over $900 a month-- increasing at 8\%
annually. With 40\% of your income going to rent, you need an annual
income of $27,000 to afford that-- a full-time job at $13 an hour
working 40 hours a week. The Living Room served 700 different
individuals last year who were homeless/at risk of homelessness.
Hudson River Housing, Mental Health Association, & Grace Smith House provided temporary shelter/support to more than 3200 people who didn't have homes in 2004."

"In March alone there were 1,197 individuals competing for 372 beds,"
according to a letter to the editor last year from Barbara Prete,
Chairwoman Steering Committee for the Dutchess County Coalition for
the Homeless-- "The homeless shelter run by Hudson River Housing has a capacity of 12 beds, and yet many more individuals appeared at the screening site each evening. In March alone there were 1,197 individuals competing for 372 beds."

It's better to be penny-wise than pound-foolish; because so many of
our county's homeless have been turned away from shelter, taxpayers
are now at risk of having to pay for the county/state to defend
itself from lawsuits stemming from cases like the death of John
Fraser Clark described below; Article XVII, Section 1 of New York
State's Constitution states unequivocably that, "the aid, care and
support of the needy are public concerns."
[state.ny.us/nyscon/nyscon.html]

This happened right here in Dutchess County just a few years ago: "A
homeless man from Poughkeepsie was found crushed to death at a
Newburgh recycling plant early this week after he apparently sought
shelter for the night in a dumpster that was inadvertently picked up
by a truck for disposal. John Fraser Clark, 62, was found dead on
Tuesday, Oct. 22, by employees of Hudson Baylor Corp. who were
sifting recyclables when they made the grim discovery, according to
City of Newburgh Detective Sergeant Arnold Amthor...
[from "Homeless Man Dies in Dumpster" by Jessica Beasimer:
weeklybeat.net/10-25-02/homelessman.html ]

It's been proven over and over again that making sure human beings
have shelter saves tax dollars-- they don't end up in our hospitals,
mental hospitals, and jail; see these three studies:
http://documents.csh.org/documents/ke/csh_lewin2004.PDF ;
http://www.fanniemaefoundation.org/programs/hpd/pdf/hpd_1301_culhane.pd ;
http://www.csh.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=Page.viewPage&pageId=345&nodeID=81 .

"In 1997, the University of California at San Diego Hospital followed
15 chronically homeless residents for 18 months and tallied 417
emergency room visits between them, at a cost of more than $1
million."
[from "Life on the Inside" by Douglas McGray (Mother Jones 1-2/05):
http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2005/01/01_405.html ]

"The math is borne out in national studies showing that housing with
counseling services on site -- called supportive housing -- costs
about $1, 000 a month to maintain, while hospital beds cost about
$30,000 a month, and jail cells cost more than $3,000 a month."
["More than a shelter, home: The homeless respond to good
quarters, comfort, says architect"
by Kevin Fagan San Francisco Chronicle 2/21/05
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/02/21/BAGBTBEKKL1.DTL&type=printable ]

Last year the American Psychiatric Association gave out only two Gold Awards for community-based programs across the country-- and one was to Pathways to Housing. "Pathways to Housing Inc. in New York City won the Gold Award in the category of community-based programs. The award was accepted by Sam Tsemberis, Ph.D., and Alexa Whoriskey, M.D. Pathways to Housing was selected for the 'exemplary success of [its] housing first program in the provision of permanent housing and treatment services for adults with severe mental illness and co-occurring substance use disorders.'"
[ http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/40/22/16 ]

"Each Pathways to Housing tenant costs $22,500 a year to support.
More conventional supportive housing for mentally ill homeless people
in New York costs between $40,000 and $65,000 a year, according to city records, and a mental services bed in a state hospital costs $175,000."
[from "Success in the Big Apple: NYC Finds Path for Mentally Ill:
Housing Homeless Before Treatment Bucks Conventional Wisdom")
by Kevin Fagan/San Francisco Chronicle 6/14/04):
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/06/14/MNGRS75HEE1.DTL ]

This particular article from the San Francisco Chronicle describes exactly how the innovative "housing-first" approach of Pathways to Housing works:

"Traditionally, social programs only give the homeless places to live once they've gotten clean of drugs and alcohol, been analyzed by counselors and put on mental health medications if they need them -- in other words, made "housing ready."

Once inside, the homeless traditionally are grouped together in building complexes for support and easy access to social workers.

Not at Pathways.

For 12 years, the program has been pioneering what is called the "housing first" strategy of whisking the homeless into permanent residences with no in- between steps of counseling or transitional shelters required. Even more unusual is the practice of placing them by themselves -- not in buildings full of other homeless people, but in apartment complexes of regular tenants who often have no idea who just moved in next door. It takes them even if they're still shooting dope, still drinking, still barely able to distinguish fantasy from reality.

And the amazing thing is that Pathways works -- mostly because it swarms its homeless tenants with continual counseling and programs to help them get their lives stable after they move indoors. The program is so successful that researchers and leaders from former President Bill Clinton to the homeless czar for Clinton's ideological opposite, President Bush, say it is setting a new standard in America on how to coax the hardest of the hard core of the homeless up off the sidewalk and into healthier lives.

All of Pathways' residents are mentally ill, and 90 percent are drug addicts or alcoholics -- yet 84 percent of those who move into Pathways stay housed. More conventional programs in New York that emphasize medical treatment, halfway houses or hospitalization for similarly mentally ill homeless people have only a 23 percent success rate, according to a recent study conducted by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

In another age, many of Pathways' tenants would have been locked into mental institutions; and indeed, many have spent time in jail for indigence before, only to be put right back out on the street again. But because of the intensive counseling and individual empowerment method at Pathways, they don't just stay housed -- they live productive lives, going to college, holding jobs, and helping other homeless people get stable.

The achievement has had echoes all the way out to San Francisco, where homeless program planners in recent years have gingerly tried some of its methods.

Parts of Pathways' "housing first" strategy already can be found in the city's groundbreaking Direct Access to Housing program, which clusters hard core homeless people in rehabbed hotels and, like Pathways, takes them in whether or not they are drug-addicted or mentally stable. And its technique of dispersing clients in the general population -- called "scattered site housing" -- is a core value of Larkin Street Youth Services' equally groundbreaking program for homeless foster kids.

-------------------------------------

"Program developed in NYC seems to be working"
by Larry Fisher-Hertz [Poughkeepsie Journal 5/25/05]

For nearly two decades, Sam Tsemberis was a New York City social
worker trying - and largely failing - to help the homeless.

He said he watched the men and women he worked with go in and out of
drug treatment centers. He helped them enroll in other well-meaning
and often costly programs - and then watched them drop out.

"I'm embarrassed to say, it took me years to figure out what the
homeless needed," Tsemberis said recently.
"They needed a place to live."

Tsemberis quit his New York City job in 1992 and founded Pathways to
Housing, a program that places the chronically homeless in apartments
first, then enrolls them in programs to treat their drug addiction or
mental illness.

Almost immediately, the program worked. People who had not had a
place to live for years were dealing with their problems and staying
in their apartments. Studies consistently showed a retention rate of
more than 80 percent - compared with 20 percent success rates for
more traditional programs Tsemberis and other social workers in New
York had tried.

Success helps growth

Pathways to Housing was so successful Tsemberis launched a similar program in Washington and agencies in other cities - including San Francisco, Phoenix, Chattanooga, Tenn., and Fort Lauderdale, Fla. - have replicated Tsemberis' model with comparable results.

"I realized we had a successful program from year one," Tsemberis
said. "This was people demonstrating that just because they were
mentally ill didn't mean they didn't know how to put their lives back
together, if you gave them the chance."

In 2002, news of Pathways success attracted the attention of one of
the Bush administration's top housing officials.

Philip Mangano, executive director of the United States Interagency
Council on Homelessness, said he had seen the success rates being
reported for Pathways.

He didn't believe them.

"In this field, you learn to be a little cynical," Mangano said this
month. "But I spent a couple days analyzing the data and asking hard
questions about [Pathways'] outcomes. Then I visited the people in
their apartments.

"It was clear they weren't putting the highest functioning people in
the program to generate artificially good numbers for fund-raising
purposes," he said. "What I discovered was Pathways works for the
most disabled and the most vulnerable people on our streets."
Having seen the results first-hand, Mangano said he has lobbied
successfully for more federal money for programs like Pathways.
"In next year's budget, the president has proposed an 8.5 percent
increase in money to combat homelessness, including $200 million
targeted to house folks who have been on the streets and long-term
shelters," Mangano said.

He said all studies he had seen had shown programs such as Pathways not only keep the homeless off the streets, they do it for less money than any other approach.

"The cost is about $20,000 a year [per person]. That's less than a
shelter bed or a cell at Rikers Island, where many mentally ill
homeless have been sent in recent years," he said.

Mangano characterized the Pathways method as having "the genius of
any successful enterprise" - giving people what they want.

"Sam paid attention to the wants of the consumer - in this case, the
homeless," he said. "What the homeless want is a home."

-------------------------------------

Recall this front-page article from the Poughkeepsie Journal April 14th:

[excerpted here below]

"Many Can't Afford Rent: Some Are Forced to Live in Cars, Others in Shelters"
by Larry Fisher-Hertz
http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060414/NEWS01/604140340

A growing number of our clients are people who have jobs," said
Michael Cole, an employee of Hudson River Housing, Inc., a
Poughkeepsie-based, not-for-profit agency that runs the county's two
homeless shelters.

Anyone who wonders why the working poor are having a hard time paying the rent need only do the math. Those holding down minimum-wage jobs earn about $1,100 a month - or about $13,200 a year. And according to a 2004 survey conducted by the Dutchess County Department of Planning and Development:

* The average rent for a studio apartment in Dutchess County is $620
per month; for a one-bedroom apartment, it's $882, and for a
two-bedroom apartment, $1,054.

* The income required for families in Dutchess to rent apartments -
assuming they spend 30 percent of their wages for rent - is $27,880
for studio apartments, $35,280 for one-bedroom units and $42,160 for
two-bedroom units.

* Waiting lists for subsidized housing, such as the federal Section 8
program, were not calculated because they were so long, most agencies were no longer accepting applications.

* The vacancy rate for apartments in Dutchess was 2.8 percent. A
"healthy" rate that allows for reasonable profits for landlords and
reasonable availability for tenants, is estimated at 5 percent.

* Agencies that provide services to the homeless - including Hudson
River Housing, Inc. and Grace Smith House, a shelter for victims of
domestic violence - served a total of 3,489 individuals for at least
one night in 2004. This represents an increase of 174 percent over
2002. Hudson River Housing officials said about 18 percent of the
homeless clients they served during the first three months of 2006
were employed.

Officials at the county planning department said housing costs did
not change significantly in 2005, and they are remaining relatively
steady through the first few months of 2006. But those who have been
studying the problem for the last several years said they have no
reason to believe the situation will get better before it gets worse.