'Housing First' approach for homeless called successMonday, October 25, 2010
Last updated: Monday October 25, 2010, 4:25 PM
BY HARVY LIPMAN
The Record
Staff Writer
Mary Sunden has no illusions about the difficulty of working with Bergen County's homeless population.
She knows, after six years of effort, that relocating people to any sort of permanent housing from the streets usually involves dealing with their alcoholism, drug abuse, mental illness or physical disability - and frequently a combination of those problems. Even if you help them get an apartment, they may be just one relapse from trashing the place and being evicted.
But finding housing for the homeless is Sunden's No. 1 priority as executive director of the Christ Church Community Development Corp., which staffs the homeless shelter at the year-old Bergen County Housing, Health and Human Services Center in Hackensack under a contract with the county Housing Authority, the center's operator.
And that's just what her agency and other non-profits at the center have done. Since its start as a pilot program in March 2009 (the center's building opened last October), they've helped 102 homeless people move into their own apartments. Two more have moved into residential care facilities. Six have obtained government vouchers to help pay for housing and are preparing to move.
Not one is back on the street.
"There have been some rough spots," Sunden acknowledged. "But they're all still in their apartments. I'm really amazed."
The center's operating philosophy is a national model known as "Housing First."That entails moving people into apartments as quickly as possible under the theory that it's impossible even to begin solving other problems before people their other problems before they have a place to live. At the same time, |the center houses a range of agencies that provide services from case management to job referrals. Some clients |get follow-up care once they move |from Comprehensive Behavioral Health Care, a Lyndhurst mental health program.
"The primary goal for everyone is to get a home," said the Rev. William Parnell of Christ Church. "Every step is geared toward getting somebody out of there."
Christ Church Community Development Corp. operated the Peter's Place homeless shelter in Hackensack before moving its operation into the center.
While the center is owned by the county, most people working there are employed by non-profits. Only $165,000 of the facility's $2.8 million operating budget goes to county employees - all of them security guards.
Dennis Culhane, a professor of social policy at the University of Pennsylvania professor of social policy who has published numerous studies on homelessness and the Housing First approach, said what Bergen County the county has set up "sounds like a model program, based on what we know works and what's most cost-efficient."
Culhane noted that while |the services seem expensive, academic studies show that housing the homeless actually saves taxpayer money, because the chronically homeless frequently are treated in emergency rooms and admitted to hospitals for health problems caused by being on the streets, or are arrested and jailed. Even shelter care is expensive, he said.
Bergen officials say their system is being studied by other counties. Many have no government-owned shelters. Passaic County, for example, relies on shelters owned and operated mainly by religious groups, such as Eva's Village in Paterson.
The idea for the Bergen County center grew out of the county's Ten-Year Plan to End Homelessness, which was spurred at least in part by the county's desire to become eligible for U.S. Housing and Urban Development funds.
Clark LaMendola, a former CEO of Bergen County's United Way who was the county's consultant on the project, said adopting the Housing First approach triggered about $5 million in federal housing vouchers.
LaMendola thought that creating a "One-Stop Shopping Center," where the homeless individuals could have access to various services without having to travel from one government office to another, was critical. But getting all those non-profit providers to work together wasn't an easytask.
"We all had our own methodologies," said Peter Scerbo, executive director of Comprehensive Behavioral Health Care. That included strict rules about not sharing confidential information, for example. But to work together with the same clients, those restrictions had to be overcome. Scerbo credited Julia Orlando, the center's director, with facilitating that.
"She needed to sift through who would do what," he said. "There was a lot of upfront sparring around who was to determine what everybody does. But it's been worked through now, and it functions pretty well."
To be sure, the center hasn't completely solved the county's homelessness problem, and it has its critics. Kathleen Salvo, owner of the Hackensack Pastry Shop and an activist with the 1st Ward neighborhood block watch association, dismisses the center as an expensive "big facade." She complained that the homeless wander around her neighborhood, which surrounds the center.
Robin Reilly, executive director of the FAITH Foundation - which used to run a drop-in center for the homeless until it was shut down by Hackensack city officials - said that she worries about the homeless still living on the streets who won't take advantage of the center. But, she added, "It's really an excellent facility. They've gotten a lot of housing for people, and I say thank God for it."
Orlando noted that, according to the county's most recent survey in which volunteers go out looking for the homeless, "70 percent of the chronically homeless are being served through the shelter."
"Have we eliminated every single homeless person? Have we eliminated every single vagrant on the street? No," said Orlando, who was director for residential services at The Bridge mental health center in New York before being hired to run the county facility. "We cannot force people into recovery. We cannot force people into apartments. All we can do is engage with people, and we do a very good job of that."
E-mail: lipman@northjersey.com
