With no fanfare and barely a mention in the local news, the Hillsborough County Commission gave its blessing and a tidy sum of cash last month to a pilot project that could actually do something to solve the growing problem of homelessness. There’s every reason to think it will work because similar plans are already working in cities across the country. Commissioner Sandra Murman and her task force have been quietly working behind the scenes with a coalition of public and private groups for the last year and a half on a plan to get the county’s hard-core homeless off the streets — and not by simply banning panhandling.
The pilot phase of the project aims to get 24 chronically homeless individuals into permanent housing before addressing factors like mental illness and substance abuse that may have had a hand in putting them on the streets. If all goes according to schedule, the first group could be in their own apartments as early as this fall.
Murman says the “housing first” model that the task force has chosen to use reduced chronic homelessness by 12 percent in Chicago, 25 percent in Norfolk, Virginia, 50 percent in Quincy, MA and Wichita, Kansas and a whopping 77 percent in Denver, Colorado. The long-term goal of the initiative, Murman says, is to house 500 homeless in five years.
The partnership includes businessmen Tampa Bay Lightning CEO Tod Leiweke, M.E. Wilson Company president Guy King and Tampa Tank chief Calvin Reed, among others. Their job, Leiweke says, will be to convince the private sector that solving the homeless problem is not only the right thing to do but also good for business. He told a recent Commission meeting that his office at the corner of Platt and Plant has seen “significant problems,” and added, “It’s a quality-of-life issue for everybody who’s going to work and doing all the things that make us productive citizens.”
His group plans to launch a capital campaign as soon as the pilot phase is operational. Leiweke’s target is $1 million a year, notably less than the $100 million he helped raise as leader of the 2008 United Way campaign during his tenure as Seattle Seahawks CEO. Leiweke told CL you have to “inspire, not browbeat” community leaders into joining the effort to end homelessness. To this end he says the plan is to document each step of the project and then invite business leaders to the ribbon-cutting to let them see the results for themselves.
The project collaborator with the most daunting task is the private non-profit Mental Health Care, Inc. (MHC), which will be providing critical services to the homeless clients to help get them back on their feet and re-integrated into society. Task force members have placed their confidence in MHC’s Director of Outpatient Services, Jenine LaCoe, who has worked with the chronically homeless for almost two decades.
HUD defines the chronically homeless as “unaccompanied disabled individuals who have been continuously homeless for over one year.” In Hillsborough County they account for less than 5 percent of the homeless population. According to the last census done by the Homeless Coalition of Hillsborough County, approximately 680 of the more than 17,000 homeless are considered chronic. Murman acknowledges that this may not be a large group, but it is definitely a costly one; between “psychiatric hospitalization if they are Baker Acted,” jail time, ER visits and shelter costs, they consume the majority of funding for the homeless.
MHC’s LaCoe agrees with that assessment. Citing statistics from Philip Mangano, housing czar under President Bush and briefly under Obama, LaCoe says the average person with a mental illness can cost between $40,000 and $100,000 living on the street, but says that cost can be reduced to about $35,000 — and in some cases to as little as $15,000 — if we house them. She adds, “It may be only 24 people to start with, but it could add up to a way that we know will work and that we can continue in our community and be very proud of.”
LaCoe also points out that there is no “quick fix” when it comes to recovery, saying “research has shown that it can take anywhere from three to five years.” She says individuals are more likely to engage in treatment once they feel safe and challenges the myth that a certain percentage of homeless are living on the streets because they want to. She has met people who refused treatment initially, but believes they do it out of a sense of “mistrust of the system and the paranoia that often accompanies mental illness.” She adds that in her 17 years of working with the homeless she’s never met anyone who “truly wants to be sleeping somewhere there are bugs, where there’s no public restroom, where they may not get their next meal or where they feel unsafe.”
The pilot project draws from two pools of money: HUD-sponsored Community Development Block Grants and Neighborhood Stabilization Program dollars. The initial $2.1 million award will be used to purchase and renovate Villa Seville, a 24-unit apartment complex on 15th St. near the USF campus, an area known to many as “Suitcase City.”
The grants come with strings attached. At least 70 percent of the money must be used for activities that benefit low- and moderate-income people and also help to “prevent or eliminate slums or blight.” Villa Seville was targeted for purchase because it’s located in one of Tampa’s most blighted areas. The building is close to many of the social service providers that the homeless rely on, as well as the (albeit limited) public transit the city has to offer.
David Thompson knows first-hand about life on the streets. He was chronically homeless for close to two years. The 48-year-old California native is currently a client of MHC’s “Safe Place,” a program that provides 25 homeless individuals diagnosed with mental illness a safe haven while they work toward transitioning back into the community. It is a prototype for the Hillsborough County initiative, which differs in that the Villa Seville housing will be permanent. (CL asked to speak with a potential client of the new project but was told by MHC staff that “people who are on the streets often don’t feel safe enough or are not lucid enough to discuss their situation.”)
Thompson, who says he “had skills, but no work,” came to Tampa four years ago after losing his job as a heavy equipment operator and then his apartment. He lived in his car for about a year until it was repossessed. After that he lived off the kindness and couches of friends, but eventually wound up on the streets. He quickly spiraled downward, becoming what he calls an “everything abuser” contemplating suicide. Thompson eventually suffered a breakdown and ended up in MHC’s adult Crisis Unit. That’s where he first learned about Safe Place. Thompson says when he realized he’d hit bottom, he “got clean” on his own, and has remained so for two years now.
Thompson was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and says there is a tremendous need for more facilities like Safe Place. He says when he was homeless he saw far too many people who wanted help and couldn’t get it. The few places that had programs were either full or had long waiting lists. Safe Place was no exception.
How long residents of Safe Place stay varies anywhere from 11 months to two years, depending on their treatment plans and how quickly they improve. Thompson has spent the last two years in a therapeutic support group sharing “experiences, anger and frustration.” The group has also given him hope, he says, as well as a forum to express his feelings but never “under pressure, always voluntary.”
Thompson is no longer mentally capable of operating heavy equipment or working a full-time job, he says. He finally qualified for Medicaid, but it took him a year to do it. He says it will help with some bills but not with rent. In the meantime, MHC has assured Thompson of “permanent supportive housing with no time limit of stay.”
One group conspicuously absent from the task force is the Tampa City Council, frustrating some members, including Yvonne Yolie Capin. Last September she asked city staff to research all available land and buildings that could possibly be used as homeless housing. She says it took Planning and Development Director Thom Snelling more than six months to respond to her request. When he did, it was only to report that there were no properties available and that the Council should stop concerning itself about the issue because “another group was already working on it.”
Capin told CL she learned about the task force by chance, from M.E. Wilson president Guy King, whom she was seated next to at a dinner function. The more she uncovered about the partnership, the more she questioned why Council had been shut out of the process. It spurred her to pen a letter to Commissioner Murman formally requesting that a representative from the Council be allowed to attend the task force meetings as an “observer.” Looking back, Capin admits it was like “locking the barn door after the horse is gone” because at that point the task force was well into its plans to purchase and renovate Villa Seville.
When CL asked Murman for her response to City Council’s criticism, she quickly countered, “No one has been excluded from the process.” She says she believes Mayor Buckhorn may have been “waiting to identify some property” before talking to the Council and said “city staff has been present at all the task force meetings.” Murman says it was the accelerated June deadline for using the federal grant money that got the county involved so quickly. “That put everything in motion really fast.”
Capin spoke with CL immediately following a private meeting with Commissioner Murman on May 22. Murman assured her that when the task force reconvenes to discuss the next phase of the homeless housing initiative (after the current pilot is up and running), City Council will have a seat at the table. Capin plans to relay that promise to Council during its June 7 meeting.
It is difficult to find any “housing first” projects that have not been successful. The one example this reporter found was a voucher program in Baltimore launched in 2010 as part of that city’s 10-year plan to end homelessness. The program yielded a 90 percent success rate but ran into problems after failing to secure a $10 million grant.
Tod Leiweke recently told the Hillsborough County Commission, “If we do this right, we can create future public/private partnerships, and that is really key. This is not the public sector’s issue alone; this is affecting all of us.”
This article appears in Jun 7-13, 2012.