Clearly drug/alcohol treatment is far more effective and far less expensive(pdf) than incarceration. Countless studies and reports prove this beyond any shadow of doubt.
For years now, outreach workers, direct service agencies and advocates on all sides of the issues have been screaming for additional funding and resources to help break the cycle of chronic addiction while providing a place for the folks on the street to go.
Most of these pleas have fallen on deaf ears.
Since I've been here, we've added ZERO affordable housing units to the mix for homeless folks. Thank the Gods for Rusty Lawrence over at Urban Housing, who just finagled the purchase of 32 units of the old Drake hotel and is currently rehabbing them into SROs. But beyond that, nothing. We've fallen so short of the original housing goal in this city it's ridiculous to think we can catch up, or even meet half the number in the alloted timeframe.
We've ignored many of the Best Practices models in place around the nation, from Housing First (one "pilot" being run, again thanks to Urban Housing, but it's not following the model exactly, which is what Pathways, the creators of this groundbreaking program, admonish must be done in order for it to be successful), to simply having enough outreach workers on the streets.
While there are literally hundreds of effective plans and solutions available, we've spent much of our time talking about how we can't implement them and wringing our hands over lack the lack of available money. It seems that study after study, committee after committee, we're always searching for answers while they sit directly under our noses.
We've also failed to better fund those programs that are working.
Pardon me for tooting our own horn here, but there is no doubt whatsoever that Will Connelly's unbelievably effective SOAR Team has success rates in getting people with mental and physical disabilities approved for social security benefits that most high priced ssdi lawyers can only dream of achieving. Will's program has achieved an astounding 98 percent success rate on first time application approvals, and these approvals are achieved on average in less than 60 days from start to finish. His program by far delivers the biggest bang for the Homelessness Commission's buck; for every one dollar the Commission approves for the program, they receive approximately 9 dollars of worth in return.
NO other program can lay claim to numbers like these and yet, Will's budget has remained the same for two years now; and it's a bare-bones one, at that. We've had to raise our own money to add staff to our program, taking away precious time from serving those on the streets in the process. Nothing wrong with this approach, to be sure, and we're aggressively pursuing it, but one would think that the Homelessness Commission and city officials would certainly take note and assist with increasing the size of the most successful program in the city.
Here's another example. Plans to implement the Vulnerability Study(VS) that had such tremendous success on moving people from the street into housing on Skid Row and in Times Square were discussed at a recent meeting, but the response was tepid. Folks were interested, but so many challenges and obstacles were raised that the Homeless Services department at Park Center decided to go it alone simply to get the job done quickly. The citywide implementation is slated for Nov. 1 because we know that there are many who are on our streets in grave danger of dying within the next year. We strongly believe that if we aren't helping, we're hurting simply by a lack of action.
We rolled out an emergency implementation of the VS last week at Tent City, before we were able to push back the (and hopefully eliminate) the proposed closing date and already, the overall worth of the study has become visible just in more effective referral targeting.
As we begin triaging, targeting and serving those with life threatening illnesses, we believe the critical importance of the survey will become clear to everyone.
These approaches take time, money and person-power. There's no way around this. Yet, we've received no additional funding from anywhere and in fact, lost a significant portion of funding from MDHA this year (to be fair, this was not MDHA's fault).
Mental Health Court Judge Dan Eisenstein lamented the fact that combatting homelessness costs money he believes we don't have. While I have tremendous respect for the judge, I'm not sure that view is entirely accurate.
Frankly, none of us really has any idea what the total money coming into Nashville to assist homelessness amounts to, although Clifton Harris is working to correct that lack of knowledge as I write.
Money is available; it's accessing it that is often exceptionally difficult, especially when the overall tone of the community's leaders is one of hopelessness, despair and resignation.
I understand Eisenstein's frustration; hell, I'm out there every day and deal with as many, if not more, of these issues than he does and believe me, it is frustrating to see someone you know who desperately needs - and wants - drug and/or mental health treatment try repeatedly to access services, only to be turned away due to lack of funding, bed space or insurance.
The solutions are also available, there are plenty of them (a simple search of NAEH or NHCHC will provide hundreds), and there is no reason to think we cannot have a balanced, effective and humane approach to assisting those people experiencing homelessness.
