This post was originally published last January,
but I think it is worth a repost!

This is a debate that will go on and on and on because homelessness may never TOTALLY end.  But, as I was reading a blog post on Chang.org’s Poverty in America section, I noticed a good analogy on how we could go about starting to end homelessness.

This blog author, Eric Sheptock, is speaking about ending homelessness in Washington, D.C., and brings up the point that “[Mayor] Fenty focused on housing only the most vulnerable homeless – those who might die if not housed soon. As noble and necessary as this might seem to be, it meant that the more capable homeless who needed the least help in order to become self-sufficient were being ignored and allowed to stagnate in the shelter system.” His analogy to go along with this is that of a leaky pipe.  The first thing you do is not mop the floor or try to fill the crack.  The first thing you do is shut off the water!

When put in perspective with homelessness prevention and ending homelessness, the right way to stop the leak is to help house the more capable homeless.  Housing, first, the homeless who may just need a temporary but stable place to live in order clean up and get a new job.  Or, focusing on the increasing number of homeless families which has become a large part of the homeless population.

There are many tools that can help to stop the leak of capable people becoming homeless.  Tools such as employment training, affordable housing, and case management are a few of the things that HealthNet’s Homeless Initiative Program provides.

You can help support our program by spreading awareness about the need for these options to be sustained or by making a simple $25 donation to HIP and helping us reach our goal of $10K by March 10.

Blanket Indy with Care - help support HIP, one of the largest comprehensive service providers for Indiana's homeless population.

This quote ties in well with a story written in a blog post on New York’s Coalition for the Homeless website.  The blog post is written by a woman, Sarah Murphy, who was homeless but helped herself out and found a place to stay at PATH (Prevention Assistance Transitional Housing).  The process when entering PATH is that you stay in a place during an “investigative” period to see if you are able to be housed.  They let you know in a certain period of time whether you are eligible or not.

Consider this – you are homeless.  You are homeless, with a dependent son.  When you are homeless AND have a dependent, the main thing you may need is income. What do you do to gain income? Work!

You can read the entire post above; however, long story short, Ms. Murphy was ruled ineligible and a note was slid under her apartment door while she was at work.  The note said to be at the PATH office no later than 4:35 p.m. to discuss the reason why she was found ineligible.

Ms. Murphy was on the brink of being homeless, with a dependent son, the main thing that she needs is income and must work to do so. Nevertheless, she misses the appointment because she doesn’t get the note until she gets home from work.  Has to take an entire day off work

the next day to be informed that the reason she was ineligible was because they were not able to get a hold of one reference on her application.

For as advanced as we are today, it only takes a slight perfect storm of events for an individual to suddenly not have a place to live. And with our current economy, it’s happening MUCH MORE frequently.

It is easy to find these stories everywhere because people RECOGNIZE bad customer service.  More recognition for GOOD customer service is needed.  Throughout February, we have been posting on our Facebook page, Twitter feed, and website about our Blanket Indy with Care campaign.  Aimed at raising $25,000 for our Homeless Initiative Program (HIP), we want to recognize the GOOD customer service done by HIP staff who are able to help homeless persons find shelter, employment, and support services when needed.  They help the Sarah Murphy’s of Indianapolis, who may need to work during the day to gain income.  Please consider a $5 gift toward our campaign, you can do so by clicking here.  Send this along to your friends and family to help us reach our goal.

Good customer service needs to be recognized just as often as bad customer service.

I get caught thinking this way constantly.  It is hard to wrap your head around what it could be like to have to be on the street or jumping from couch to couch from relative to relative or spending your day finding the shelter that will have a place for you.  I start thinking that all we need to do is to get homeless people back into a home!  Which is the correct step, I have spoken about the housing first approach in earlier posts.  However, it is not the WHOLE staircase.

“The second night I ended up on the floor with a pillow. I hadn’t slept in a bed for 20 years.”

This quote came from an article in The Vancouver Sun, and it tells the story of a homeless man who had lived on the streets for 22 years.  Later on in the article it states that he even went back to the bush to sleep outside because he was so restless at night.

If you read the entire article you will get the point I am trying to convey.  The point is that we need to raise more awareness about the importance of having support services ALONG with affordable housing.  Being homeless is more than just being without a home, people who are homeless for extended periods of time can lose touch with society.  Once they are put back under a roof, like the man in the article, they may still not know what resources are out there to help them keep moving forward.

You can help us change that! Help cover a lot of need in Indianapolis.  HealthNet’s Homeless Initiative Program not only provides housing services, but also employment training, health care, outreach, intensive case management, and rental assistance. BLANKET INDY WITH CARE this February, and help the homeless in our community receive more than just the FIRST step to ending homelessness.

• Pallets of cereal
• Whole wheat pasta and sauce
• Organic canned vegetables and soup
• Several other household items

The Threshold Project is a Shelter Plus Care permanent supportive housing program that was initiated in 2004. It combines supportive housing services with comprehensive case management and job training support. The Threshold Project is a sponsor-based rental assistance program that serves 42 chronically homeless individuals with a disabling condition including serious mental illness, chronic addiction, or a co-occuring disorder.  All 42 individual apartment units are leased at a single site, the Gladstone Building, a property owned and operated by Partners in Housing, a not-for-profit developer.

The Ralph Dowe Legacy Housing Project provides on-going case management and resource coordination for formerly chronically homeless persons transitioning from homelessness to permanent housing and self-sufficiency. Currently, HIP provides services to 16 chronically homeless individuals housed in one-bedroom units in the North Oaks of Broad Ripple apartment community. Using a housing first approach, Dowe clients are moved directly from the streets or emergency shelter into permanent housing. Once they are housed, HIP staff works with them to address the underlying issues of their chronic homelessness.

The donation from Whole Foods Market’s Bag Hunger campaign provided much needed food to those housed in one of our programs. Educating our clients on maintaining a healthy lifestyle is essential to helping them “get back on their feet.” By providing them the opportunity to take part in eating healthy, furthers their success for the future.

You can also help directly by donating to HIP online or raising awareness about resources for the homeless within our community!
Comment below if YOU have an idea on how to BAG HUNGER for those in Indy who need it or know of other resources for the homeless.

In an article from the Detroit Free Press, it was noted that the average stay in a homeless shelter has dramatically declined.

“[A]verage stays dropped from four months to 28 days since summer,” Executive Director [of South Oakland Shelter], Ryan Hertz, said.

In an earlier post, I touched on the importance of the ‘housing first’ approach.  Getting someone housed takes a weight off of their shoulders and allows them to focus on utilizing support services they may need to overcome addiction or mental illness.  “In Detroit, Southwest Counseling Solutions used the approach to find permanent housing for more than 600 mentally ill clients in the last five years, Executive Director Joseph Tardella said.”

People with mental illness or addiction can not simply be asked to stay in a shelter and be expected to recover or suddenly act responsibly.  Only in rare cases can people recover by themselves under these circumstances.  Indiana took initiative in 2003 and came up with the Blueprint to End Homelessness focusing on housing first and housing plus (affordable housing plus support services).

What do you think the pros and cons are for the housing first approach? Comment below.

This blog author, Eric Sheptock, is speaking about ending homelessness in Washington, D.C., and brings up the point that “[Mayor] Fenty focused on housing only the most vulnerable homeless – those who might die if not housed soon. As noble and necessary as this might seem to be, it meant that the more capable homeless who needed the least help in order to become self-sufficient were being ignored and allowed to stagnate in the shelter system.” His analogy to go along with this is that of a leaky pipe.  The first thing you do is not mop the floor or try to fill the crack.  The first thing you do is shut off the water!

When put in perspective with homelessness prevention and ending homelessness, the right way to stop the leak is to help house the more capable homeless.  Housing, first, the homeless who may just need a temporary but stable place to live in order clean up and get a new job.  Or, focusing on the increasing number of homeless families which has become a large part of the homeless population.

There are many tools that can help to stop the leak of capable people becoming homeless.  Tools such as employment training, affordable housing, and case management are a few of the things that HealthNet’s Homeless Initiative Program provides.  Help support our program by spreading awareness about the need for these options to be sustained or by making a simple $25 donation to HIP.

What if you said you couldn’t help someone get rid of their headache because you didn’t have any aspirin? You feel bad for a little bit because you couldn’t help someone in need, but it is just a headache.  They’ll survive.

What if you said you couldn’t shelter someone from the rain or the snow or a thunderstorm because there was no place for them to go?

Cindy Maple, the Executive Director of Hospitality House in Western Nevada,  wrote an article in The Union expressing these exact sentiments.

“I was working in a job where I was supposed to help people and I had nothing I could offer.” -Cindy Maple

The lack of resources for the homeless is present throughout the entire nation.  There are many organizations that work to help the homeless, but it is hard to get anywhere because the amount of affordable housing is stagnant and is becoming less available with the increasing amount of homeless persons we have seen.

Indianapolis’ Blueprint to End Homelessness has gotten our community on the right track.  The amount of affordable housing has increased in the past 5 years. HOWEVER, the amount of supportive housing has increased at a much, much lower level.  Supportive housing is affordable housing plus services that help those who need health care, mental health care, employment training, and more.

You can help provide more resources to the homeless organizations right here in Indianapolis.  Help by raising awareness about the lack of resources, or directly GIVE A CARE by donating to HealthNet’s Homeless Initiative Program.

Affordable housing is not easy to come by, and the possibility of being evicted and becoming homeless may be enough for a domestic violence victim to feel trapped.  The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced, at the end of October 2010, an advancement in its Violence against Women Act that will help protect domestic abuse victims from being evicted from their affordable housing units.  The advancement, seen here, makes it so that housing managers and owners must exhaust all possibilities of protecting victims before evicting them.

HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan stated that, “[t]his rule recognizes the need to protect victims of domestic abuse from being evicted just because they were victimized.”

The announcement dropped at a perfect time being at the end of National Domestic Violence Awareness Month, and advocates were thrilled to hear this because it is not every day that you see a direct effect of raising awareness.   Hearing a victory for advocacy is always a bright side because it gives hope to all organizations and all causes – if people work hard enough for something, then it is possible to see change!

Advocacy for homeless prevention and domestic abuse is seen everyday through HealthNet’s Better Indy Babies, Healthy Families, and Homeless Initiative Programs.  You, too, can be an advocate simply by learning more or donating.  Even a generous $25 to any of these programs will open many doors.

A lack of resources has always been an issue when talking about serving or housing the homeless, and it can not be easy to tell someone who just needs a warm place to say that there is nowhere for them to go!  And it is even harder to watch capable human beings, such as veterans who are coming home, become chronically homeless because of the lack of support services present to help them land on their feet.  Services that are needed to help those who are on the brink of becoming homeless or the recent homeless are case managers and employment training groups.  All it takes is some education to get a person back to where they need to be.

Veterans gave the ultimate sacrifice by giving their lives and time to protect those of us living in freedom in America.  The least we could do is help support them as they ease their way back into civilian life.  HealthNet’s Homeless Initiative Program has a Homeless Veterans Reintegration Program (HVRP) that provides a variety of support services for the VA.  Support services that include a Guided Job-Search workshop to help those in need find a job that fit them best.

Find out how you can help by learning more about HealthNet’s Homeless Initiative Program and the HVRP, or help directly by donating at HealthNet’s website.

Housing First is an approach that kind of flip flops the logical way of thinking.  Many of us think that in order to obtain a home, one should 1) be sober, 2) have a steady paying job, and 3) be in a stable state of mental health.  However, in order to serve the homeless who suffer from the lack of one or multiple things listed above, caregivers need to have a place to find these people and offer a sense of stability.

In 2003, the Coalition for Homelessness Intervention and Prevention (CHIP) rolled out the Blueprint to End Homelessness,  a ten year strategy to “ increase supportive housing, expand prevention services, and move the focus from emergency responses to lasting solutions.”  This strategy takes the right steps in focusing on getting the homeless housed FIRST and then providing the services as a complement.

From the CHIP website -

“[Housing First]  promotes the idea, supported by leading researchers, that housing is essential for people experiencing homelessness to attain stability and should not be used as a reward for achieving stability.”

Indianapolis has been meeting the Blueprint’s goals in terms of affordable housing; however, in terms of supportive housing, we are lacking.  Supportive housing, according to the Blueprint, includes “case management and a variety of temporary or ongoing social and other services to ensure that people residing in those units live as independently as possible and can sustain their housing.”

HealthNet’s Homeless Initiative Program (HIP) works closely with homeless persons to find affordable housing.  Our program also offers case management, employment classes and workshops, and health care.  SUPPORTIVE HOUSING is possible.  And with your help, it can have a greater impact on our community.

• Spread the word about homelessness prevention.
• Donate here because  $25 can provide a homeless citizen bus fare to get to and from work until they receive their first paycheck.