Southeastern has just learned that their 2008 initial application for 9% Low-Income Housing Tax Credits did not score high enough to secure a reservation of tax credits to turn the old Flenniken Elementary School into 48 units of permanent supportive housing for people who are chronically homeless.

These tax credits are awarded by the Tennessee Housing Development Agency for projects that increase the supply of affordable housing. Competition for them is fierce.

Disappointing? Yes. It delays our efforts to better address the needs of some of our most vulnerable neighbors. Defeating? No way. Chronic homelessness is a big problem. There’s still plenty of work to do.

Meanwhile, dragonboaters have raised $77,000 for KARM. You can read about that here.

Hmmm. Maybe the TYP needs its own fundraiser. Perhaps an MSA-wide scavenger hunt…

Dr. Roger Nooe is the leading expert on homelessness in our area. Every two years he and a team made up of homeless services providers, students, government types, and others who are just interested conduct extensive field research on people who are homeless in our community. Dr. Nooe authors a biennial study based on that research. The last one telescoped back to 1986, providing a detailed examination of homelessness here for the past twenty years. Click here to download your own .pdf copy.

When it opens its doors, Minvilla Manor will house up to 57 people who had been chronically homeless. Minvilla’s residents will be people who have chosen to seek help to get off the streets. Permanently. If you’d like to know more about them, and why permanent supportive housing is what they need, click here to walk through our FAQs.

As Stambaugh’s piece points out, the costs for this project have increased. Here’s a little more detail as to why.

• The overall economy affects Minvilla just like it does everything else. Construction costs have gone up, driven in large part by increases in fuel costs.
• In the two to three years since original projections were made, materials costs have gone up. That shouldn’t surprise anyone. Too, we now know more much more about the structure and its material condition than we did when this project started.
• Using Historic Tax Credits requires that builders adhere to architectural standards that can increase costs. On the other hand, the increase in costs generates more tax credit equity that can be sold to investors.
• BUT, the tax credit market is soft right now. Investors who typically purchase tax credits don’t have the earnings, hence the tax liability, to use the tax credits. That means demand for tax credits is lower now than it was just a year ago. Prices offered by investors for tax credits is lower, and that lowers the availability of tax credit equity to the project.

Is Minvilla an expensive project? Well, yes. It will cost more to do this project as a renovation of an historic property than it would to build new. But keep in mind that the funding for this project originates almost entirely outside of the local community. It’s federal dollars that are designated for this kind of project; almost all of it flows through HUD. It’s going to be spent in some community. Best that it be ours.

Will this permanent supportive housing project help to end chronic homelessness? We have every reason to believe that it will, and that’s the bottom line.

Isabella Towers, Cagle Terrace, Guy B. Love Towers and Northgate Terrace have been identified as residential facilities which would benefit significantly from enhanced case management services in order to prevent evictions of residents due to noncompliance with lease terms.

The case management services sought will be geared to prevent evictions and subsequent homelessness of at-risk residents.

Specific information is available in the RFP document below.

Case Management Services: RFP (download pdf)

Proposals responding to the RFP will be due in the Ten Year Plan Office no later than 3 p.m., June 20, 2008.

Last night the TYP was the main event at a meeting in Vestal. Joe Hultquist, City Councilman for the First District, hosted the meeting, which was almost entirely concerned with the TYP’s proposed plan to renovate the old Flenniken School to make it available for permanent supportive housing for people who are chronically homeless. Jon Lawler, Director of the Ten-Year Plan, gave a presentation and then fielded questions.

Hayes Hickman covered the story in this morning’s News-Sentinel. Click here if you’d like to read it.

We distributed at that meeting a little Q & A sheet to give attendees a brief overview of our proposal to create Flenniken Housing. It’s posted below. It doesn’t cover every aspect of the project, but if you’re interested, it’s a good start. We’ll be posting more information here as the project moves along.

Knoxville’s Ten-Year Plan (TYP) seeks to stabilize people who are chronically homeless by placing them in permanent
supportive housing, and then helping them to reintegrate into society. This approach is proven to cut costs and to maximize benefit, both to the community and to homeless people. The following Q & A will help you gain a basic understanding of the TYP and how that relates to the old Flenniken Elementary School Building.

Q: What is chronic homelessness?
A: The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) defines a chronically homeless individual as “an unaccompanied disabled individual who has been continuously homeless for over one year or who has had at least four episodes of homelessness in the past three years.” HUD estimates that 10-15% of homeless people in the USA are chronically homeless. That percentage might be higher in Knoxville.

Q: What is permanent supportive housing?
A: It’s nothing like a homeless shelter. All residents sign a lease, pay rent, and have an ongoing relationship with a case manager. The TYP commits us to permanently housing homeless people as rapidly as possible while providing those now-housed people with customized supportive social services to ensure that the greatest possible number of them stays successfully housed and moves towards independence.

Q: What will you do to the Flenniken School to renovate it?
A: Our plan is to acquire and renovate Flenniken into 48 efficiency apartments with abundant community space and some offices. Rehabilitation will be comprehensive and high-quality. From the outside, it will look essentially as the architects intended when they designed the building back in the early 20th century. Each apartment will be fully independent, with its own kitchen and bath and other amenities. All environmental concerns will be appropriately addressed by qualified contractors.

Q: How will Flenniken Housing be any different from a homeless shelter or a halfway house?
A: Most importantly, residents of Flenniken housing will no longer be homeless. They’ll be rent-paying members of the community. The proposed renovation at the Flenniken school will not create emergency or transitional housing. It is permanent housing (apartment living) that requires the resident to have a verifiable source of income, sign a lease and pay rent. In signing the lease the resident agrees to be a good neighbor. Failure to be a good neighbor will have consequences that can and sometimes will lead to eviction.

Q: What measures will you take to address the issue of safety? Will Flenniken residents be a danger to the community?
A: Safety and security are essential for everyone. Every resident agrees to be in a case management relationship to ensure and maintain a healthy environment conducive to change for the individual. Case management will maintain offices in the building during the day and evening hours. For the overnight hours, a case-manager aide will be present. Given that rent will be subsidized, and the commitment to a safe, secure environment, persons convicted of violent felonies and/or sexual offenses will not be considered for residency.

Q: Will Flenniken Housing residents be able to roam around at night?
A: Flenniken will not be a lock-down facility. Residents will be able to come and go from their apartments as they please. But they will be held accountable, to the point of eviction, for their actions. And consider this: when people have a place of their own, a place of safety and security, they are not likely to continue to act as though they are rootless.

Q: Why are you doing this in South Knoxville? Why not build this kind of housing in some other part of the city?
A: Our office is looking for appropriate property in every sector of Knoxville, and our plan is to spread permanent supportive housing throughout the community, rather than concentrating it in one or two spots. Right now, we are investigating three properties of interest east and west of downtown, and will continue to search out others.

Q: Why does the Ten-Year Plan focus on chronically homeless people? Why not work to end all homelessness?
A: Chronic homelessness is the starting point. Although the people in this category make up only a small proportion of the homeless people in the United States, they consume about 50% of all resources utilized by all homeless people. Chronic homelessness is the most destructive, devastating and injurious form of homelessness; it is very difficult for a person to overcome chronic homelessness without a supportive environment. Addressing chronic homelessness with the strategies of the TYP changes lives, and it maximizes all community resources dedicated to responding to such needs.

Q: What does our community spend each year to support a chronically homeless person?
A: Dr. Roger Nooe, Professor Emeritus in the University of Tennessee College of Social Work, and Knoxville’s leading expert on the study of homelessness, recently tracked 25 chronically homeless people over the course of approximately one year. Dr. Nooe’s study concluded that these 25 people, cycling repeatedly through jail, alcohol & drug treatment, and hospitals would incur costs of approximately $929,000. That’s an average of approximately $37,000 each.

Q: Why is permanent supportive housing particularly cost effective?
A: Permanent supportive housing reduces the amount of money a community spends to serve homeless people. Studies demonstrate that people in permanent supportive housing dramatically reduce their need for, and consumption of, psychiatric inpatient services, and other emergency services, such as emergency rooms, jails, and emergency shelters. In communities in which the model has been applied, the cost of permanent supportive housing is offset by savings in emergency services, jails, and law enforcement.

Q: What are the supportive services that chronically homeless people need?
A: Case managers are the point of connection between the client and all of the other services available to help keep him or her stabilized and housed: mental health services, primary medical care, drug and alcohol treatment programs, etc.

Q: What happens to a person who’s housed? Do they just hang around? Do they get jobs?
A: The TYP sees every person as a unique individual, and we want to do everything we can to help each of them to reach his or her fullest potential as a functioning member of our community. Once a formerly-homeless person is stabilized in permanent supportive housing, that person is in a much better position to work towards becoming a contributing member of the society in which we all take part. The TYP sees stabilization and reintegration as two sides of the same coin.

Q: So, housing is the stabilization side of the TYP. What about reintegration?
A: Reintegration happens in employment and healthy community. No person can reach his potential until he starts to be a productive member of society. The TYP calls for one homeless service provider agency to take the lead in preparing formerly-homeless people for employment. Some of them will have a great deal of employment potential and others, especially those with mental illness, will not. But wherever people fall on that continuum of potential, we want to help them be the very best they can be. We are also developing a special program for area faith-based organizations. The goal of this program is to help churches embrace people who were homeless and bring them into the community of faith to build healthy relationships with their neighbors.

If you have questions, we’d like to hear them, so please ask. Call Robert at 215-3071 if you prefer to talk to a live person.

The Las Vegas Sun’s Timothy Pratt writes:

Now in its fifth month, Horizon Crest on Owens Avenue is an unusual blend of 66 low-rent apartments for the poor and 12 apartments for the chronically homeless, those who have been on the street the longest.

Click here to read the whole thing.

Haynes acknowledges that panhandlers and homeless people are not necessarily the same. That’s true. He also concludes that if you give money to panhandlers, then you’re keeping the institution of panhandling happy and growing. Which is not something anybody but panhandlers wants to see happening.

So. Is “Just say no!” an outmoded, oversimplified response? Not necessarily. People in our community seem to be pretty big-hearted, generous people. We do encourage you to think before you give. That doesn’t mean you need an elaborate plan, but if you are led to offer financial support to homeless service providers, by all means do so.

And when a panhandler approaches you, you really can say “no” to a request for money. You can point them towards Knox Area Rescue Ministries, for instance, in the knowledge that the person you’re talking to will be able to find essential help there.

But one barrier to housing homeless people is neighborhood opposition. Many people are not happy to hear that permanent supportive housing is going to be developed in their neighborhoods. They are concerned with the effect on crime, vagrancy, and property values, among other things. Many people think permanent supportive housing and homeless shelters are the same. They’re not.

As it turns out, permanent supportive housing might just have a positive impact on neighborhood property values. Check out Daniel Rubin’s article in The Philadelphia Inquirer.

We have every reason to believe that crime, vagrancy, and other negative issues will decline in areas where permanent supportive housing is developed. We know that cost declines. It’s good to see evidence that property values might increase when permanent supportive housing comes to a neighborhood.

The Parkway’s efficiency units were to have provided permanent supportive housing for formerly chronically homeless people. Every resident would have paid rent, and every resident would have been intensively case-managed. Most importantly, every resident would have been off the street and in their own homes.

Permanent supportive housing is demonstrated to save cost. Right now, it costs our community something in the neighborhood of $40,000 per year to maintain a chronically homeless person on the street. When those folks move into permanent supportive housing, the costs to the community fall dramatically. Increasing numbers of studies back that up. Here’s a link to one from Portland, Maine.

The Parkway, located at 3701 Chapman Highway, is very suitable for permanent supportive housing. Prior to its closing, it had historically been used as low-income housing; it’s located close to multiple, appropriate employment opportunities; and its proximity to service providers and bus lines makes its location excellent.

The Ten-Year Plan office was working with a nonprofit developer of low-income housing to pursue funding from the Tennessee Housing Development Agency and the Federal Home Loan Bank. No local funds were anticipated in the budget for this rehabilitation of the Parkway, but timing was critical. THDA’s application deadline for Low-Income Housing Tax Credits is March 19. The Parkway deal broke down at the acquisition stage.

Permanent supportive housing is provided in low-income rental housing and is an essential component of the Ten-Year Plan to End Chronic Homelessness. Knoxville faces a shortage of low-income rental housing. The Ten-Year Plan will continue to work hard to change that situation, so that we can move chronically homeless people off the streets and into homes of their own.