Helping the Homeless in the Face of GOP's Brutal Funding Cuts
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/searching_out_the_homeless_in_the_face_o
f_brutal_cuts_in_aid_20150917/
Posted on Sep 17, 2015
By Bill Boyarsky
A homeless woman sits under an umbrella in downtown Los Angeles. (Jae C.
Hong / AP)
This is the final installment in a three-part series on homelessness by
Truthdig columnist Bill Boyarsky.
READ:
Part 1: Why Ending Homelessness Is Political Poison
Part 2: Go Directly to Jail: Punishing the Homeless for Being Homeless
Logan Siler was driving near Interstate 210 when he spotted the man, who was
slender, perhaps in his late 40s and wearing shorts and a blue sweatshirt.
His hair was cut short. He was standing alone.
Siler, 31, an outreach worker for Union Station Homeless Services, pulled
his van over to the curb. Something about the man indicated homelessness.
Siler picked up a bag lunch and a clipboard with a long questionnaire, and
he and I walked over toward the man. Siler then motioned to me to step far
to the side. He thought the presence of a reporter might scare the man off.
Also, Siler didn't want me to compromise the confidentiality of the
conversation he hoped to have.
The man accepted the bag lunch, and-won over by Siler's friendly, unassuming
manner-crossed the street with him. Siler knew what he was doing;
previously, he had worked with the youths of San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury
district.
I watched from several feet away, partly concealed by a fence. They sat down
on the sidewalk, in the shade of the freeway overpass. Siler talked to the
man and filled out the 19-page questionnaire. The man was talkative. The two
of them got along well. After a half-hour, they got up, and Siler shook his
hand and said goodbye. We went back to the van and drove away. Siler didn't
know how things would work out. The man had seemed a bit unsettled mentally.
Later, Rabbi Marvin Gross, Union Station's CEO, told me that the goal is to
put him and others like him into permanent housing.
The task is labor-intensive, beginning with interviewing one person at a
time, and it requires perseverance, patience and a willingness to work
against all odds.
Outreach workers from other agencies throughout Los Angeles County use the
same questionnaire that Siler used. The workers ask dozens of questions
about illness, addiction, arrests, years on the street, education, family
status and other highly personal topics. I asked Siler why people would
answer such questions. "They're actually a conversation opener," he said,
adding that people on the street often appreciate the attention.
When Siler returned to his office, he entered the information into a
countywide database. On a 1-to-10 scale, the homeless are rated on the
seriousness of their conditions. Those most at risk for death or serious
illness have a better chance of getting housing. As is the case with almost
everything these days, data rules.
There are also several kinds of housing. John Maceri of Lamp Community, a
longtime Skid Row housing and treatment provider, said his organization
maintains laundry and shower facilities and 161 dormitory-style beds on Skid
Row as temporary housing. In addition, it has a 38-bed recuperative center
and permanent housing, including apartments, elsewhere.
The most popular program of its kind in the Los Angeles area is called
Housing First, popularized by Zev Yaroslavsky and others when Yaroslavsky
was a Los Angeles County supervisor. It's based on a theory that if you put
homeless people, even ones who are disturbed, in apartments of their own,
they will take command of their lives with the help of counselors and
medical people from the social service agency sponsoring them. Proponents of
the system say the success rate is high.
How do homeless assistance groups find people who need help?
"On the street," Maceri said, and "in public spaces." People will also come
into the Lamp office asking to have a shower or use the bathroom, he added.
But for every homeless person saved, the Republican-controlled Congress
consigns many more to the streets by reducing federal aid for low-rent
housing and other services.
Housing for the homeless, either in apartments or group homes, is financed
by a bewildering number of federal programs, most of which are losing
funding. One crucial federal program, HOME, had been cut by Congress from
$1.2 billion to $900 million and then again to $66 million. The homeless
languish on waiting lists for months, sometimes years, before getting an
apartment paid for by a federal voucher.
"In recent years, Congress has made deep cuts to many programs," the Center
on Budget Priorities and Policy, a progressive Washington research
organization, says on its website. "The federal government spends 2.8 times
as much on tax subsidies for homeownership-more than half of which benefits
households with incomes above $100,000-as on rental assistance."
In addition, it's tough to find landlords who will accept federal vouchers
or who will agree to take in homeless, troubled tenants in high-rent cities
like Los Angeles. With Washington's abdication of responsibility, the job is
left to creative local social service agencies and government officials.
Mollie Lowery, a consultant and former director at Housing Works, said she
and her colleagues must persuade landlords that homeless clients would be
good tenants. "We have to depend on our relationship with landlords and
developers. . We tell them our tenants may be more complicated but we will
be with them 24/7" offering psychological and medical help.
I talked to Steve Clare, the executive director of the Venice Community
Housing Corp., at his office across Rose Avenue from a sizable Whole Foods,
a sign of the gentrification that is driving up housing prices in the beach
community. He told me that nonprofit organizations like his often have to be
entrepreneurial.
For example, when Clare found a property in Venice big enough for an
apartment house, he had to obtain a $1 million grant from the nonprofit
Corporation for Supportive Housing, which is supported by the Conrad N.
Hilton Foundation. A housing corporation board member lent an additional
$850,000, and he then persuaded Los Angeles County and city officials to
chip in $2 million. Finally, tax credits from the state made it profitable
for a private developer to build the apartment house and charge rent within
housing voucher limits.
To help ease the situation, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti is preparing a
proposal that will utilize outreach workers like Siler and build apartments
as Clare and others have done. In addition, he wants more tax subsidies to
persuade developers to build apartment houses.
"We first have to start with outreach workers," Garcetti told me. "We have
eight teams, 16 people for the entire county of Los Angeles. In the budget,
I doubled this. The city has never done this before. I'll put another 10
teams or 20 people out. If we are going to be serious about housing about
10,000 people a year, we probably need 500 outreach workers over the next
two or three years."
He then said he would hire additional case managers, "literally in the
hundreds," to arrange for housing and care, because "you need ... the actual
people who find the housing and do the referrals . for homeless folks, even
if you have an outreach worker."
"Here's the problem with that," I replied. "The number of housing vouchers
has been sharply reduced by the Republican House of Representatives."
Garcetti said, "And if you have a voucher, you can't necessarily find
housing." He said a homeless man who visited him two days earlier complained
that he couldn't find an apartment that would accept his voucher.
The mayor told me he was working with California state Assembly Speaker Toni
Atkins to pass legislation that would expand the program of giving tax
credits to developers who build low-rent apartments. Those credits would
stimulate $3 billion to $4 billion in construction, he estimated.
That would help. Unfortunately, the complex problem of homelessness has not
received a mention on the presidential campaign. The congressional aid cuts
are all but unnoticed, and while the country has looked away, homelessness
has become a great national tragedy.
http://www.truthdig.com/ http://www.truthdig.com/
Helping the Homeless in the Face of GOP's Brutal Funding Cuts
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/searching_out_the_homeless_in_the_face_o
f_brutal_cuts_in_aid_20150917/
Posted on Sep 17, 2015
By Bill Boyarsky
A homeless woman sits under an umbrella in downtown Los Angeles. (Jae C.
Hong / AP)
This is the final installment in a three-part series on homelessness by
Truthdig columnist Bill Boyarsky.
READ:
Part 1: Why Ending Homelessness Is Political Poison
Part 2: Go Directly to Jail: Punishing the Homeless for Being Homeless
Logan Siler was driving near Interstate 210 when he spotted the man, who was
slender, perhaps in his late 40s and wearing shorts and a blue sweatshirt.
His hair was cut short. He was standing alone.
Siler, 31, an outreach worker for Union Station Homeless Services, pulled
his van over to the curb. Something about the man indicated homelessness.
Siler picked up a bag lunch and a clipboard with a long questionnaire, and
he and I walked over toward the man. Siler then motioned to me to step far
to the side. He thought the presence of a reporter might scare the man off.
Also, Siler didn't want me to compromise the confidentiality of the
conversation he hoped to have.
The man accepted the bag lunch, and-won over by Siler's friendly, unassuming
manner-crossed the street with him. Siler knew what he was doing;
previously, he had worked with the youths of San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury
district.
I watched from several feet away, partly concealed by a fence. They sat down
on the sidewalk, in the shade of the freeway overpass. Siler talked to the
man and filled out the 19-page questionnaire. The man was talkative. The two
of them got along well. After a half-hour, they got up, and Siler shook his
hand and said goodbye. We went back to the van and drove away. Siler didn't
know how things would work out. The man had seemed a bit unsettled mentally.
Later, Rabbi Marvin Gross, Union Station's CEO, told me that the goal is to
put him and others like him into permanent housing.
The task is labor-intensive, beginning with interviewing one person at a
time, and it requires perseverance, patience and a willingness to work
against all odds.
Outreach workers from other agencies throughout Los Angeles County use the
same questionnaire that Siler used. The workers ask dozens of questions
about illness, addiction, arrests, years on the street, education, family
status and other highly personal topics. I asked Siler why people would
answer such questions. "They're actually a conversation opener," he said,
adding that people on the street often appreciate the attention.
When Siler returned to his office, he entered the information into a
countywide database. On a 1-to-10 scale, the homeless are rated on the
seriousness of their conditions. Those most at risk for death or serious
illness have a better chance of getting housing. As is the case with almost
everything these days, data rules.
There are also several kinds of housing. John Maceri of Lamp Community, a
longtime Skid Row housing and treatment provider, said his organization
maintains laundry and shower facilities and 161 dormitory-style beds on Skid
Row as temporary housing. In addition, it has a 38-bed recuperative center
and permanent housing, including apartments, elsewhere.
The most popular program of its kind in the Los Angeles area is called
Housing First, popularized by Zev Yaroslavsky and others when Yaroslavsky
was a Los Angeles County supervisor. It's based on a theory that if you put
homeless people, even ones who are disturbed, in apartments of their own,
they will take command of their lives with the help of counselors and
medical people from the social service agency sponsoring them. Proponents of
the system say the success rate is high.
How do homeless assistance groups find people who need help?
"On the street," Maceri said, and "in public spaces." People will also come
into the Lamp office asking to have a shower or use the bathroom, he added.
But for every homeless person saved, the Republican-controlled Congress
consigns many more to the streets by reducing federal aid for low-rent
housing and other services.
Housing for the homeless, either in apartments or group homes, is financed
by a bewildering number of federal programs, most of which are losing
funding. One crucial federal program, HOME, had been cut by Congress from
$1.2 billion to $900 million and then again to $66 million. The homeless
languish on waiting lists for months, sometimes years, before getting an
apartment paid for by a federal voucher.
"In recent years, Congress has made deep cuts to many programs," the Center
on Budget Priorities and Policy, a progressive Washington research
organization, says on its website. "The federal government spends 2.8 times
as much on tax subsidies for homeownership-more than half of which benefits
households with incomes above $100,000-as on rental assistance."
In addition, it's tough to find landlords who will accept federal vouchers
or who will agree to take in homeless, troubled tenants in high-rent cities
like Los Angeles. With Washington's abdication of responsibility, the job is
left to creative local social service agencies and government officials.
Mollie Lowery, a consultant and former director at Housing Works, said she
and her colleagues must persuade landlords that homeless clients would be
good tenants. "We have to depend on our relationship with landlords and
developers. . We tell them our tenants may be more complicated but we will
be with them 24/7" offering psychological and medical help.
I talked to Steve Clare, the executive director of the Venice Community
Housing Corp., at his office across Rose Avenue from a sizable Whole Foods,
a sign of the gentrification that is driving up housing prices in the beach
community. He told me that nonprofit organizations like his often have to be
entrepreneurial.
For example, when Clare found a property in Venice big enough for an
apartment house, he had to obtain a $1 million grant from the nonprofit
Corporation for Supportive Housing, which is supported by the Conrad N.
Hilton Foundation. A housing corporation board member lent an additional
$850,000, and he then persuaded Los Angeles County and city officials to
chip in $2 million. Finally, tax credits from the state made it profitable
for a private developer to build the apartment house and charge rent within
housing voucher limits.
To help ease the situation, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti is preparing a
proposal that will utilize outreach workers like Siler and build apartments
as Clare and others have done. In addition, he wants more tax subsidies to
persuade developers to build apartment houses.
"We first have to start with outreach workers," Garcetti told me. "We have
eight teams, 16 people for the entire county of Los Angeles. In the budget,
I doubled this. The city has never done this before. I'll put another 10
teams or 20 people out. If we are going to be serious about housing about
10,000 people a year, we probably need 500 outreach workers over the next
two or three years."
He then said he would hire additional case managers, "literally in the
hundreds," to arrange for housing and care, because "you need ... the actual
people who find the housing and do the referrals . for homeless folks, even
if you have an outreach worker."
"Here's the problem with that," I replied. "The number of housing vouchers
has been sharply reduced by the Republican House of Representatives."
Garcetti said, "And if you have a voucher, you can't necessarily find
housing." He said a homeless man who visited him two days earlier complained
that he couldn't find an apartment that would accept his voucher.
The mayor told me he was working with California state Assembly Speaker Toni
Atkins to pass legislation that would expand the program of giving tax
credits to developers who build low-rent apartments. Those credits would
stimulate $3 billion to $4 billion in construction, he estimated.
That would help. Unfortunately, the complex problem of homelessness has not
received a mention on the presidential campaign. The congressional aid cuts
are all but unnoticed, and while the country has looked away, homelessness
has become a great national tragedy.
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