1. Coming up this Wednesday: Public Conversation #4 — Mental healthcare services delivery. The TYP will hold its next public conversation on 6pm Wednesday, July 21 at the Cansler YMCA.

2. Reminder: Neighborhood meeting about Flenniken Housing. The TYP will dialog with residents of the neighborhoods close to the Flenniken School about safety on Thursday, July 29 at the South Knoxville Community Center.

3. In the news: Transport of people who are homeless to Knox County. The TYP’s response.

The TYP will hold its next public conversation at 6pm Wednesday, July 21 at the Cansler YMCA. The topic will be mental healthcare services in the context of permanent supportive housing. Sheryl McCormick, Coordinator, Recovery Training Services at Peninsula, will present for the first half-hour with Q & A to follow.

Ms. McCormick, as a person who has experienced homelessness and who lives a full and active life with a psychiatric disorder, brings a unique and extremely well-informed perspective to this conversation. McCormick says that recovery would not have been possible for her if she’d been warehoused or otherwise segregated. Community integration, with housing built out in the community, is critical for the success of people with mental illness.

We encourage you to attend this important conversation and to invite people you know to attend with you. This is an excellent opportunity to gain a more complete understanding of how mental healthcare services are delivered in our community and why they are such a vital component of our own Ten-Year Plan’s strategy to end chronic homelessness.

2. Reminder: Neighborhood meeting about Flenniken Housing

The TYP will dialog with residents of the neighborhoods close to the Flenniken School about safety on Thursday, July 29 at the South Knoxville Community Center.

The last time we met was on June 21. At that meeting we discussed establishing a regular meeting concerning Flenniken Housing. Attendees agreed that a monthly meeting on Monday* evening would be appropriate, and that the meeting should continue to take place at the South Knoxville Community Center. Attendees also generated a list of potential topics for those meetings. It became apparent at that time that the most significant concerns shared by Flenniken’s neighbors are related to the over-arching issue of safety, and that is what the meeting on the 29^th will be about.

*Please note that this meeting had previously been scheduled for Monday, July 19. It was changed to Thursday, July 29 at the request of a City Councilmember whose schedule did not permit attendance on the previously-scheduled date.

Again, we encourage you to attend this meeting and to invite others to join you. Safety for residents of permanent supportive housing, as well as for their neighbors, is of vital concern no matter where it’s built.

3. In the news: Transport of people who are homeless to Knox County

We spoke this week with reporters for local television stations about the recent news that officials from some counties surrounding ours have been sending people who are homeless to Knox County. We sent them the following information:

• The TYP’s reaction to news that some surrounding counties send people who are homeless who get discharged from jail to Knox County so they can obtain shelter.
  • To keep this in perspective, Knoxville is a mid-sized city situated within an area that’s historically rural. We have all kinds of resources here. That’s true of any city like ours.
  • People come to Knoxville from surrounding counties for a lot of different reasons: healthcare, jobs, educational opportunities, and more.
  • Are people who are homeless from surrounding counties going to come to Knoxville to gain access to services here? Sure. I’d probably want to do the same thing if I had no family, friends and other resources available to me if I fell into homelessness nearby.
  • Contrary to an often-repeated myth, we are not a unique magnet for homeless people from all over the country. Over 60% of the people who experience homelessness in Knox County list an address in Knox County as their last permanent address, with just under 80% having their last permanent address in Knox or one of the counties that surround Knox.
  • Our situation is very similar to most other cities of our size in our part of the country.

• The TYP’s reaction to the Sheriff’s response to learning that KCSO employees were meeting their colleagues from other counties and bringing people discharged from jails to homeless shelters in Knox County.
  • Sheriff Jones was very responsive and acted fast to resolve the situation just as soon as it came to his attention.

1. Flenniken Housing: Parking variance request withdrawn. Southeastern Housing Foundation, the TYP’s nonprofit real estate development partner and developer of proposed permanent supportive housing at the old Flenniken School, has withdrawn its request for a zoning variance that would have permitted a smaller parking lot than what zoning requires. The project will go forward with a 58-space parking lot.

2. Recap: Compassion Coalition’s Salt & Light Luncheon. On Thursday, June 24, over 150 attendees at this luncheon learned about the Ten-Year Plan and how the faith-based community is engaging with its movement to help end chronic homelessness.

3. Recap: TYP Advisory Board Meeting. The TYP’s AB held its quarterly meeting on Friday, June 25, five days prior to the beginning of a new fiscal year. There was an update on housing placement numbers for the past two years (302 formerly chronically homeless people remain in housing), a discussion of next year’s goals, and a presentation by and dialog with Stephanie Matheny, a Knoxville resident with over a decade of experience developing affordable housing, including permanent supportive housing, in Seattle.

4. Preview: Public Conversation #4. The TYP will hold its next public conversation on 6pm Wednesday, July 21 at the Cansler YMCA.

Southeastern Housing Foundation, the TYP’s nonprofit real estate development partner and developer of proposed permanent supportive housing at the old Flenniken School, has withdrawn its request for a zoning variance that would have permitted a smaller parking lot than what zoning requires. The project will go forward with a 58-space parking lot.

Here’s the press release, dated June 29, 2010:

The Office of the Ten-Year Plan to End Chronic Homelessness announced today that Southeastern Housing Foundation, a non-profit affordable housing development organization, is withdrawing a request for a zoning variance for the old Flenniken School project following a public meeting with area residents. The public meeting was held June 21 at the South Knoxville Recreation Center. Residents clearly felt that there were parking issues with other developments in the area.

“We wanted to build fewer parking places because we believe they won’t be used and that the money to build them could be better spent. We also were concerned about unnecessary concrete which could be green space. However, the number of spaces is clearly an issue with the people who live nearby,” said David Arning of Southeastern Housing Foundation. “District Councilman Nick Pavlis also expressed his concerns. Therefore we are withdrawing the request for variance and will build all 58 parking places required by Codes.”

“We are committed to communicating more with the entire community and to listening to what they say,” said Jon Lawler, Director of the Ten-Year Plan. “If we can make adjustments based on what we hear, we will. That’s an important part of the process.”

The TYP has also committed to a monthly meeting with residents of the neighborhood close to Flenniken. The next one is scheduled for Thursday, July 29 at 6pm at the South Knoxville Community Center.

2. Recap: Compassion Coalition’s Salt & Light Luncheon

On Thursday, June 24, approximately 200 attendees at this luncheon learned about the Ten-Year Plan and how the faith-based community is engaging with its movement to help end chronic homelessness. Grant Standefer, Compassion Coalition’s Executive Director, pointed to some of the successes of the TYP.

• Knox County CAC’s Homeward Bound housed 255 homeless persons in 2009, 80% (202) of whom have remained in housing after one year. 99 of these were chronically homeless, and of those 77% (76) remain in housing after one year.
• Volunteer Ministry Center has housed over 250 previously chronically homeless in permanent supportive housing since July 1, 2007. 91.2% remain in housing.
• Prevention is a focus of the TYP. Four CAC case managers have worked with 263 residents of KCDC public housing units. None of these residents have been to the streets. Prior to CAC’s efforts in this area, an average of 67 per year were being evicted to the streets.

Jon Lawler described the TYP, the fact that it seeks to end homelessness by providing otherwise inaccessible resources to people who are chronically homeless (disabled individuals who have been homeless for a long time) mostly through the means of permanent supportive housing, and that the end goal is to empower people to integrate into the community. He underscored that this approach is demonstrated to be effective by research and also by our own local experience. He mentioned that the TYP is aligned with the federal government’s approach to the issue of homelessness.

Lawler encouraged members of the faith-based community to focus their attention on efforts that contribute to ending homelessness and helping formerly-homeless people to form healthy relationships (Circles of Support), to support those who are doing the work, and to attend public meetings and advocate for housing.

Jessica Bocángel shared three stories of Circles of Support teams. Circles of Support is a mentoring program sponsored by The Compassion Coalition. It pairs one resident of permanent supportive housing, a “neighbor,” with a team of five “mentors” who meet with their neighbor on a regular basis for an agreed-upon period to build friendships. It’s not always easy, but the program is successful. Circles of Support mentor teams are increasing in number, and are helping people who had spent years living on the streets to build healthy relationships and experience “wholeness, reconciliation, and reintegration into the community.”

Standefer encouraged the faith community to respond to the TYP by keeping communication respectful, honest, and open. He encouraged patience as the TYP seeks to implement a “complex, complicated process.” He also offered a handout with several specific ways to for faith communities to connect and get involved in the work.

In addition, Stephanie Matheny announced that she is working to form a pro-TYP group called Citizens for the Ten-Year Plan. They plan to be the citizen voice in support of the plan, and against the referenda if they end up on the ballot. The group was founded by Bill Snyder, Sheryl McCormick, Ray Abbas, and Stephanie Matheny.

Matheny is in the process of collecting a list of names of people who support the TYP.  She plans to put the list on a website — only names and zip codes, not their other information. Citizens for the Ten-Year Plan will also use the emails to form a listserve to announce meetings, ask people to write to council members, etc. She said, “This is not a “petition” – it is not directly related to the referenda and has no legal significance. We just want to be able to demonstrate that there are many of us who would like to see the TYP succeed.”

Ms. Matheny got about 60 signatures at the Compassion Coalition event (as of July 6, 115 people have signed up) and she would like to get several hundred before the website goes live.

3. Recap: TYP Advisory Board Meeting

The TYP’s AB held its quarterly meeting on Friday, June 25, five days prior to the beginning of Year 5 of the TYP’s implementation. There was an update on housing placement numbers for the past two years (over 300 formerly chronically homeless people remain in housing), a discussion of next year’s goals, and a presentation by and dialog with Stephanie Matheny, a Knoxville resident with over a decade of experience developing affordable housing, including permanent supportive housing, in Seattle.

Three over-arching goals for Year 5 were discussed.

1. All stakeholders in the plan will be effectively engaged regarding the plan’s ongoing implementation.
2. The original version of the TYP will be updated to reflect the specific systemic improvements resulting from the TYP’s work with Brad Greene (the conceptual design will be developed into a specific working document via the involvement of all the stakeholders).
3. Increase the housing options available to the entire homeless population.

There was a brief discussion of how these goals would be shaped with Advisory Board input (see item 1 above) and of other stakeholders who should be invited into the discussion. Advisory Board members pointed out that this goes beyond an “update” to the TYP. We’re at a natural halfway point, a great deal of progress has been made, especially in the area of interagency communication and cooperation, and this is a good time to open up the discussion to a lot of input from the public. There was also strong agreement among Advisory Board members about their desire to increase the level of discussion, reflection, and input from the Advisory Board.

The Advisory Board requested a weekly update from the TYP office. (An update will also be prepared for City Council, County Commission, and for the Homeless Coalition. It will be published on the Ten-Year Plan’s website, too.)

Stephanie Matheny addressed the Advisory Board of her eleven years’ experience developing affordable housing, most of it serving the homeless, in and around Seattle/King County, Washington.

• King County’s efforts to address the need for supportive housing began in 1992, when their health department realized that the same people were cycling over and over through detox.
• There was housing available at the time, but all of it required sobriety and was not effective, and they came to realize that they could house people and at the same time reduce public cost and public inebriation.
• When Matheny’s group began planning the Wintonia Apartments in King County, they held dozens of public meetings which were invariably painful and difficult.
• They made changes to their plan along the way, with public input, began operation in 1994, and has achieved great acceptance by its neighbors, which include a private school.
• Residents still drink, but far less than when they were homeless, and costs to the public have been reduced significantly.
• Case management to client ratio was approximately 1:25 in the beginning.
• Seattle has voted a housing levy to make more local funding available for affordable housing development.
• Seattle developed and still uses a detailed public notification process for affordable housing developers.

Three top lessons from Seattle about supportive housing development:

1. Expect opposition to any proposed supportive housing development. It will be significant at the outset, and some folks will never come around.
2. Mistakes will happen. The development process is extremely difficult.
3. You can’t give up just because people in the community are not happy about it.

Matheny also offered these suggestions:

• Help people understand that there’s a big difference between site control and a finalized purchase. Site control does not equal “done deal.” Contingencies are wide open before purchase.
• Do as much due diligence as possible before announcing site control—there is no sense in arousing concern before developer knows he’s interested in moving forward with the site.
• Outreach to the community must happen before closing the purchase, but not before obtaining site control.
• Tout the successes of the TYP. The interagency coordination achieved is a huge success.
• Try to figure out a way to de-stigmatize residents of supportive housing. They are not homeless anymore, after all.

There was some interaction between Advisory Board members and Ms. Matheny, and the next two Advisory Board quarterly meeting dates were announced.

4. Preview: Public Conversation #4

The TYP will hold its next public conversation at  6pm Wednesday, July 21 at the Cansler YMCA. The topic will be mental healthcare services in the context of permanent supportive housing. Sheryl McCormick, Coordinator, Recovery Training Services at Peninsula, will present for the first half-hour with Q & A to follow.

We’re thinking ahead about potential topics for these public conversations, which have been quite well-attended. We are considering addressing the subject of substance addiction treatment at the next one, which will happen in August. As always, we value your input on this. Please let us know what you think.

MPC staff had recommended approval of  the Flenniken Housing proposal because it conforms to local zoning ordinances and adopted plans. The appeal is filed on the grounds that MPC’s decision was inconsistent with City of Knoxville zoning ordinances and adopted plans and was contrary to staff’s recommendation for approval.

The TYP office anticipates that at its July 14 meeting, City Council will vote to hear Flenniken’s use on review appeal at the  August 25 City Council meeting at 7pm in the Large Assembly Room at the City County Building.  Click here to go to the City website’s City Council meeting schedule page.

• Date: Thursday, February 5, 2009
• Time: 6:00 – 7:00pm
• Place: South Knoxville Community Center gym, 522 Maryville Pike, Knoxville.

This project at Flenniken was to have been permanent supportive housing for people who are chronically homeless, one small part of addressing another part of a huge complex of issues.

Our focus is on one fraction of people who are homeless. The people that permanent supportive housing will help are people who have been homeless for a long time due to serious disabilities.

Disability does NOT mean they’re just bums, or that they just lack gumption or drive or people skills or that they’re simply lazy. These are people who struggle with various kinds of mental illness and substance abuse, much of the latter being due to their attempts to self-medicate for their mental illness.

These are also people who who have decided to leave homelessness. They need help. They know they need help. A lot of help.

And we should give it to them. Why?

Simple economics, for one thing. It costs less money to give them this help than it does to keep on doing what we’re doing now. It costs less to place these folks in a safe, secure, permanent environment and supply them with social services than it costs to leave them on the street where they’ll cycle through jail, rehab, the emergency room, and the streets on a perpetual, costly treadmill.

Those of you who are talking about your tax dollars being wasted are right. The way we do things right now is a waste of your tax dollars. You’re spending about $40,000 per year, right now, to keep a chronically homeless person on the street. Jail is no place to house people who are mentally ill, but that’s what it’s become, and you’re paying for it. Emergency rooms are no place to go for primary care at an average of around a thousand bucks a pop, but that’s where chronically homeless people go. You’re paying for that too. The list goes on, and it doesn’t do anything to end homelessness.

That’s the status quo: your tax dollars at work. Who wants to keep doing things that way?

Permanent supportive housing changes things for chronically homeless people. It ends their homelessness. It’s being done in other cities on a large scale, and it’s demonstrated by ample evidence to be cost effective. It also, not surprisingly at all, reduces the number of people you see hanging out in the streets in those cities.

Our office is not going to solve all the ills of the streets. We’re here to help this community tackle the issue of chronic homelessness, and that’s enough of a challenge all by itself. If we can meet it, we’ll end up saving public funds because chronically homeless people on the streets consume so many resources. We’ll make our city a better place to live. And we’ll give some of our most vulnerable neighbors their best opportunity to become healthy members of our community.

I said these things because, as you can see for yourself, some of the comments on this story got a little bit away from what we were actually trying to accomplish at Flenniken. I wanted to make at least an attempt to bring them back to the issue of what we’re actually trying to do: end chronic homelessness.

One commenter said

If they where from here, then we should help. Most are from other states (95%).

To which I replied

This statement is false.

Actually, when the last survey was completed in 2006, over half were Tennesseans. That’s been very consistent as long as this issue’s been studied here.

You’re repeating a little urban myth that’s common everywhere there are people who are homeless.

We hear this kind of assertion all the time. Even if it were true, it seems to me that it’d be irrelevant. To paraphrase a famous and obviously successful campaign meme of relatively recent vintage, “It’s about the economics, stupid.”

It doesn’t really matter where people who are chronically homeless come from. If they wash up on our shores, and start camping on our beach, they’re still going to cost us forty-thousand bucks per person per year to maintain them the way we do it now. Although maybe they should, the jail and the emergency rooms and the rehab programs and the ambulances don’t give us a discount just because people who are homeless in our community are born inside the boundaries of Knox County.

Anyway, we’ve got some thinking to do about how we’re thinking. I get the sense that many people are so frustrated with the issues of homelessness and panhandling and perceived increases in crime and violence and the obviously negative impact these things make on the livability of some parts of our community that they lump all of these problems together into a big emotional ember they carry around in their bellies. It feels like “a problem” when really it’s a whole system malfunction.

We can change the ways we think about this system. It’s not a problem to be solved by one agency or another. It’s a complex system that must be addressed in a different way, a much more holistic way, by our whole community–private citizens, faith-based organizations, service providers, law enforcement and other government types alike.

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.

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. An updated version is 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 in permanent supportive housing, and help them reintegrate into the community. This approach is proven to cut costs and to maximize benefit, both to the community and to homeless people. This Q & A will help you better understand the TYP and how we want to utilize 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 person 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.

Q: What is permanent supportive housing?
A: It is permanent housing with support. It’s not a homeless shelter. All residents abide by an individual lease, pay rent, and have ongoing case management support. Residents remain in this housing as long as they choose to, and customized supportive social services ensure that the greatest possible number of them stay successfully housed and move towards independence to the best of their abilities.

Q: What will you do to the Flenniken School to renovate it?
A: Our plan is to acquire and renovate Flenniken into 48 or fewer 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. 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 can lead to eviction.

Q: What measures will you take to address the issue of safety?
A: It’s incorrect to assume that Flenniken residents are dangerous. Remember, people who choose permanent supportive housing are committed to changing their lives. They know that in order to
stabilize their lives and reintegrate with the community, they must be good neighbors, and they’ve chosen to live in a place that gives them the support they need to be successful. Case managers will maintain offices in the building during the day and evening hours, and a case-manager aide will be present overnight.

Q: Will Flenniken Housing residents be free to walk around in the neighborhood?
A: Like other neighborhood residents, Flenniken 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 being good neighbors. And consider this: when people have a place of their own, a place of safety and security, they are highly unlikely to continue to act as though they are homeless.

Q: Why South Knoxville? Why not build this kind of housing in some other part of the city?
A: The issue of homelessness belongs to our whole community, not just a few neighborhoods. The Ten-Year Plan is committed to looking for appropriate property in every sector of Knox County. We intend to distribute permanent supportive housing throughout the community, rather than concentrating it in just a few spots. Right now, we are seeking appropriate siting in West Knoxville/Knox County.

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 virtually impossible 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: Studies demonstrate that people in permanent supportive housing dramatically reduce their use of psychiatric inpatient services, hospital emergency rooms, jails, emergency shelters, detox centers and other such costly services. The costs associated with permanent supportive housing are offset by savings to organizations that deliver those services.

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 a job?
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 fullest potential until he starts to be a productive member of society.
The Salvation Army has taken 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 have less. But wherever people fall on that continuum of potential, we want to help them be the very best they can be.
Circles of Support is a special program of the Compassion Coalition. The goal of this program is to help churches build trained groups of mentors to people who were homeless and bring them into the community of faith to build healthy relationships with their neighbors.

The Ten-Year Plan seeks to transform the way our community addresses the issue of chronic homelessness. We need to end it, not simply manage it. Ending it means moving towards a relationship-based care model that seeks to stabilize disabled people and help them to reach their fullest potential. We should move beyond approaches that seek to make homelessness more tolerable while treating its symptoms in costly emergency and public safety settings.

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.