Eugene weekly., June 27, 2019, Page 13, Image 13

‘What we saw in it was kind of a “both and.” The big idea is that it is giving people a job. It involves labor and
work and the belief that everyone should contribute to society.’ — PAUL ATKINS, LITTLE ROCK ARKANSAS
The city spends $365,000 a year to run the program,
funded in part through its solid waste management
department.
The program went off without a hitch, more or less.
“The first problem was there was no bathrooms,”
Armijo says. But beyond that, he says, “We had no major
issues or problems.”
After more than three years, the program can
count its successes — paying people to clean up 317
city blocks and haul away 109,101 tons of waste in 2016.
Now the program has 2,076 unduplicated workers and
has helped 100 find permanent jobs, 429 get access to
mental health services and another 26 land permanent
housing, according to data collected by the city of
Albuquerque.
By contrast, Eugene’s Community Court didn’t keep
track of specifics on who were housed, found jobs or
accessed mental health services. Overall, Community
Court had more than 1,800 people use its services
without being charged with a crime.
“It’s not a lot,” Armijo says of those the Albuquerque
program has helped. “It’s a slow process.”
Now, other cities have started their own similar
versions of There’s a Better Way.
Paul Atkins oversees a program in Little Rock,
Arkansas, that started in March. Atkins says the city
saw potential in this program because it would fulfill
different perspectives on solving homelessness.
“What we saw in it was kind of a ‘both and.’ The big
idea is that it is giving people a job,” he says. “It involves
labor and work and the belief that everyone should
contribute to society.”
The program does have its limitations. In
Albuquerque, Armijo says, the city put a cap on how
many times individuals can take part in the program
each month.
For the program in Little Rock, Atkins says, it has
been difficult convincing panhandlers to sign up for
work. If they don’t sign up for work, they are less likely
to be connected with service providers.
“We haven’t had very many yeses from those who
panhandle,” Atkins says. “They are less likely to get
connected with services.”
Armijo says the results have shown the program can
make a tangible difference in the short run as well as
over time.
“The long term,” Armijo says, “is how do we give
people dignity, work for the day and get them into the
services they need?”
Housing First
O R L A N D O, F LO R I DA
The home of the Magic Kingdom draws 52 million
visitors each year, but this central Florida city also
is home to an estimated 2,073 people who have no
permanent shelter.
In 2014, Orlando, Florida, implemented Housing
First, a program operating on a simple premise: People
in crisis can’t be helped effectively until they first get a
place to live.
Initiated by the Central Florida Commission on
Homelessness (CFCH) — a nonprofit organization
that works with other service providers to help end
homelessness in Central Florida — and the mayor’s
office, this took shape based on best practices from
similar programs around the country.
Many people who are homeless struggle to meet the
conditions set by landlords — mainly they don’t have
a steady income to pay rent on time. The Commission
on Homelessness identifies individuals who were most
likely to die on the streets and placed them into homes
— without conditions.
“In the big world, if I am renting you an apartment,
I don’t put conditions on you if you drink or do drugs,”
says Shelley Lauten, the commission’s CEO. “The goal
of Housing First is give people dignity.”
Part of the idea behind Housing First, Lauten says,
is that the biggest issue at hand is being homeless. If a
home is provided, an individual can better get help for
any other issues they might have.
“We would never look at the root cause which was not
having a home,” Lauten says. “The best way to correct
homelessness is stabilizing them in a home.”
Once someone is placed in housing, they are provided
with services based on other needs or issues. Housing
First currently has a staff of 20 to help the homeless get
services for substance abuse or mental health support.
The program started off with a donation of $3 million
from Advent Health Hospital in Orlando. Since then, the
program has received additional funding from Orange
County and the city of Orlando.
Housing First had a goal of finding housing for 100
people by 2017. At that point, the CFHC hired an outside
consultant to see how effective the program was.
By July 2018, the program had housed 339, and
virtually all have remained in their housing.
“It’s effectively eliminating homelessness,” says Lisa
Portelli, senior advisor to the mayor for Homelessness
and Social Services.
Another reason why this program is working: a
coordinated system of care.
“In Central Florida there are over 100 different
nonprofits,” Lauten says. “That’s not very efficient if a
100 different services are providing help a 100 different
ways. The single most important thing about Housing
First is to create a coordinated system of care.”
A coordinated system of care creates consistency
between different service providers by having the same
approach in how care is provided.
Housing First also saves money. The CFCH found
that it was actually cheaper for the county to provide
permanent housing for individuals than to place them
in transitional or emergency housing, Portelli says.
Since 2014, the use of transitional housing has
decreased by 44 percent.
The ongoing challenge the Housing First program fac-
es is funding. Although the CFCH plans to continue hous-
ing people, they have wrestled with whether to cap the
number of people enrolled in the program, Portelli says.
As they look to secure more funding for the future,
they will continue to provide housing for those who
need it.
“They are neighbors in our community,” Lauten says.
“We have to work on building this trust and we have had
many successes like that in this program.”
Street Court
D E T R O I T, M I C H I G A N
Detroit has had its fair share of struggles, between
crime and homelessness. One way the city has dealt
with this is by creating a fine-forgiveness program
that has helped repeat offenders who struggle with
homelessness.
The program, called Street Court, seeks to forgive
fines of those who enter the program and complete the
requirements to pass or graduate.
Here is how Street Court works.
Individuals at homeless shelters around the Detroit
area set up a meeting with a service provider. Then the
service provider will determine if they are eligible by
seeing whether they have any outstanding tickets in the
city, and if they are homeless or high risk, says Charles
Hobbes, the director of legal services for homeless
veterans and an education policy worker.
Once someone who is eligible decides to enroll
in Street Court, they are given an action plan that
can include signing up for completing a GED,
résumé building and taking steps to secure housing.
The program includes a small community service
component.
After 30 days, the individual will meet with the
service provider and a judge to check in. If they are
showing progress, they will continue with the action
plan and set a court date.
“The 30 days is a way of them showing they are
committed to completing the action plan,” Hobbes says.
“There are very few who fall off after the 30-day plan.”
After the first check-in point, the person has an
additional 60 days to complete the rest of the action
plan. At the end, they attend a court hearing (which
takes place at a soup kitchen), where they are cleared of
their outstanding non-parking fines.
Moving forward, the court will check in at the six-
month and one-year mark.
Another component of Street Court is that the
program itself is unfunded. The service providers and
volunteers work pro bono, Hobbes says. (Eugene’s
Community Court received a large grant.)
Jonah Dart-McLean is the park maintenance
supervisor in Astoria, Oregon; he is in charge of a
committee that is helping Astoria come up with its own
fine-forgiveness program. Dart-McLean has looked at
Detroit’s program as a model.
“We haven’t completely determined what the need
is in our area,” Dart-McLean says. “We wanted to get a
sense on what other communities are doing. It definitely
seems like accessibility is a big piece.”
One of the drawbacks of a volunteer-based program
is that volunteers may get tired, and then the program
could fall apart, Dart-Mclean says.
“People have a lot of fervor to start a project, but that
may go out after some years,” he says.
However, after a few years, Detroit’s Street Court hired
an outside consultant to measure its effectiveness and
compare it to other alternative courts. From 2014 to 2015
alone, 243 people had gone through Street Court and
graduated from the program. Of that cohort, 94 percent
have no new non-traffic misdemeanors or felonies.
Six months after graduating, about 235 of those
individuals had stable housing and 221 have a stable
income, according to the report measuring the court’s
success.
As the program has been around for about eight
years, Hobbes says he hopes eventually they can expand
it moving forward, by integrating it into the court itself.
The 21 percent of individuals who didn’t graduate
Street Court committed crimes at nearly double
the rate of the graduates, compared to Eugene’s
Community Court, where graduates and non-graduates
are essentially committing crimes at the same rate.
“At the end of that day,” Hobbes says, “they get their
fines and fees waived and are closer to getting their lives
back.” ■
This story was developed as part of the Catalyst Journalism Project
at the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication.
Catalyst brings together investigative reporting and solutions
journalism to spark action and response to Oregon’s most perplexing
issues. To learn more visit journalism.uoregon.edu/catalyst or follow
the project on Twitter @UO_catalyst.
‘We would never look at the root cause, which was not having a home. The best way to correct homelessness
is stabilizing them in a home.’ — SHELLEY LAUTEN, CEO OF THE CENTRAL FLORIDA COMMISSION ON HOMELESSNESS
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