City
Finds Common Ground on Homelessness
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By Anita Varghese
Staff Writer
October 9 -- Successfully
tackling Santa Monica’s entrenched
homeless problem will take much will
power and perhaps eliminating the
tier of counseling required before
the chronically homeless are housed,
a renowned service provider told City
officials last week.
The presentation Friday by representatives from
Common Ground, a New York City-based homeless
services provider, touted the Street to Home “housing
first” model they say has helped their city
reduce street homelessness by 87 percent over
the past four years.
New York City, Common Ground officials said,
now requires all homeless service providers that
seek public grant funds to follow the agency’s
approach to finding housing for the chronic homeless
and setting a specific goal.
“We did not start under favorable circumstances,”
said Becky Kanis, the agency’s director
of innovations. “The only thing we had going
for us was that we knew there was a lot of people
sleeping on the streets.
“We pieced things together and since then,
more than 180 homeless people who did not want
shelter, social services or medical treatment
have moved directly from the streets into housing,”
said Kanis, a West Point graduate who spent nine
years in the U.S. Army, retiring with a captain’s
rank.
Kanis said she worked countless early morning
hours getting to know all chronic homeless persons
in Times Square and prioritizing their needs in
an effort to coax them into the application process
for stable housing.
Santa Monica officials, homeless service providers
and every officer from the Santa Monica Police
Department Homeless Liaison Program seemed captivated
by the presentation.
“This is an exciting program that actually
has measurable results in Times Square and those
of us in the business community like measurable
results,” said Kathleen Rawson, executive
director of the bayside District Corporation,
which runs the Downtown.
“I think this is a big departure from what
we have been struggling with all these years in
Santa Monica,” said Rawson, who invited
Common Ground to Santa Monica after hearing the
same presentation at last week’s International
Downtown Association conference in New York City.
Common Ground launched the program after its
executive director was impressed with England’s
efforts to reduce the street homelessness rate
by two-thirds and wanted to implement the same
goal in 2003 in Times Square and West Mid Town,
New York City’s worst homelessness problem
area at the time.
“If anyone has been to London, homeless
people are not on the streets anymore,”
Kanis said. “Starting in 1997 with (former
Prime Minister) Tony Blair and going from the
top down, they (local and national government
officials) said they would reduce the street homelessness
rate by two-thirds in three years.”
Louise Casey, former director of the Homelessness
Directorate, a division of the Office of the Deputy
Prime Minister, established forceful and proactive
approaches and accomplished a 75 percent reduction
in homelessness in London, Kanis said.
“The big secret of how you get an 87 percent
reduction in homelessness in Times Square is to
just decide you will do it,” she said. “Once
we decided we were going to reduce street homeless
by two-thirds and decided we were not going to
let go of that goal, everything started to come
together.”
The presentation comes nearly two years ago after
a contingent of government officials from Santa
Monica and Los Angeles County visited New York
City to study the Street to Home model and other
homelessness initiatives that seemed to be working.
A housing first approach is being tried in Santa
Monica.
Skeptics argue that the goal to reduce the street
homelessness rate by two-thirds can be achieved
in other cities, because London city officials
received a significant amount of support from
England’s national government and New York
City homeless service providers benefit from a
strong mayor government with a right to housing
enshrined in the New York Constitution.
Santa Monica is an extremely appealing destination
for the chronic homeless from across the region
who are drawn by favorable weather, a trendy beach
atmosphere, numerous well-funded homeless service
providers and friendly residents.
In its efforts to move the chronic homeless into
stable housing, Common Ground found success in
its strategy of bypassing a somewhat entrenched
“middleman system” of homeless service
providers that offer mental illness and substance
abuse counseling, among other social services.
Tenants living in housing units secured by Common
Ground are not required to first obtain sobriety
before utilizing housing assistance services,
an approach that Kanis said many homeless service
providers would hesitate to follow.
However, Common Ground tenants are required to
undergo a psychiatric evaluation and encouraged
to find out if they qualify for disability, military
or Social Security benefits, she said.
“It is a hodgepodge and everyone kind of
walked over each other,” Kanis said. “Some
organizations would say they just provide services
for the elderly and others would say they only
provide services for veterans or Eighth Avenue
homeless but not Ninth Avenue homeless.”
Kanis said final outcomes were not part of the
mission of the myriad of homeless service providers
in New York City before 2003, because the public
and private grant funds they received only required
them to make casual contacts with the homeless.
“In New York, we now focus all of our efforts
on people who have been on the streets the longest,”
Kanis said. “The three-phased strategy we
use is applicable and adaptable to other cities,
including Santa Monica.”
The three cornerstones of Common Ground’s
approach are to identify chronic homeless persons
and each person’s needs, relentlessly make
street outreach efforts to each chronic homeless
person based on those identified needs and create
a multifaceted process to secure stable housing.
Groups of the chronic homeless congregating in
any particular area create the illusion of safety,
street smarts and family among themselves and
homeless persons new to the area, Kanis said.
Research suggests that when chronic homeless
“anchors” leave an area or find stable
housing, more resources are available for a much
larger population of homeless persons who do not
use costly emergency services, are not substance
abusers or mentally ill, and may be able to return
to their families or find employment.
“The City has made a very significant investment
for a city our size in non-federal resources to
help provide housing vouchers,” said Julie
Rusk, Santa Monica’s human services manager.
“We created the vouchers that can house
the homeless, but we have to find the local housing
stock and the landlords who will take in the tenants,”
Rusk said.
In the four years since Santa Monica established
its Chronic Homeless Program, 78 of the 144 homeless
persons who had lived on local streets for at
least two years and were excessive users of local
police, paramedic and hospital resources were
placed in permanent or transitional housing, City
officials said.
Los Angeles County officials estimate that 2,500
housing units for the homeless are in the pipeline,
compared with 16,000 units soon to be available
in New York City, where Common Ground has a 93
percent retention rate among its formerly homeless
tenants, Rusk said.
“Everybody who is doing homelessness
work knows that housing is a major
issue,” Rusk said. “We
are also concerned about how we can
be more strategic with the limited
resources we have and how to provide
psychiatric services.”
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