Joining Charlie Schlenker for a round table discussion on issues affecting the homeless are Tricia Stiller, the Executive Director of the Downtown Bloomington Association, Jordan Collins, outreach coordinator of PATH, an agency that tries to match the homeless with services, and Matt Burgess, the Chief Operating Officer of Home Sweet Home Ministries which operates a shelter and provides meals on Oakland Street for adults and children.
Matt Burgess of Home Sweet Home Ministries talks about misconceptions about the homeless. There are relatively few chronically homeless people in the twin cities. But, there are also many homeless families, and some people who are intermittently homeless. Most homeless people also work, some more than one job, but are still not able to afford housing.
Tricia Stiller of the Downtown Bloomington Association said it will require a learning curve for businesses to be taught to call service providers instead of cops in most cases of friction with the homeless. But, all agree that's a more cost effective way of dealing with issues.
There are at least two approaches to homeless services. One, Home Sweet Home and Safe Harbor have been doing for decades, is called housing readiness. It offers services in life skills, job interviewing, household maintenance, spiritual support, sustaining a behavior, basic self-care, job search help and other services which lead to transitional housing and then housing assistance in solidifying that independent existence again.
The other began during the George W. Bush Administration and expanded under Barack Obama is called Housing First. The big national example is Utah and Salt Lake City which since 2005 has reduced its population of chronic homeless by 90%, and kept them off the streets. The logic is, it’s hard to do the things for housing readiness and to stay clean enough to look for a job, when you are cold and on the streets.
Local providers are moving to that model. Some are trying to write grants that appeal to that service. Others are championing the tiny house movement, though that will require more city involvement to change zoning rules to allow use of tiny houses.
The other thought behind Housing First is that it costs the taxpayers less than emergency medical and criminal justice expenses for those who remain homeless.
There are some cautions. Supporters contend this worked in Utah for several reasons: the Mormon church got behind this and pushed, Salt Lake City is fairly isolated geographically and the velocity of homeless in and out of town is not high, the overall population of chronic homeless is small compared to places like San Francisco, and the service providers networked and coordinated well before the effort began. They were able to assess who would be a good risk for housing, who plays nice with others in a group setting and who is not a good risk.
