“The condition of where the building was to where it is today is symbolic of where the plan ends,” said 10 Year Plan Director Jon Lawler. “We started in the beginning and everyone thought, ‘How could this ever come together?’ And it is coming together.”

The News Sentinel anticipates publishing a feature-length piece in tomorrow’s paper.

Minvilla’s official ribbon cutting happens tomorrow, October 30, at 11am.

Click here to learn more about Minvilla Manor.

On Friday, Pam Strickland’s op-ed column addressed the issue of excluding possession and consumption of alcohol from permanent supportive housing facilities. The KNS editorial board addressed the same issue in its Sunday editorial. This issue surfaced in a Knox County Commission work session a week ago, in which Mayor Tim Burchett discussed withdrawing County support from the TYP if alcohol is allowed on the premises of supportive housing developments connected with the TYP.

The KNS also published on Sunday a report on a roundtable discussion about the TYP. The discussion took place several weeks ago and covered a lot of territory that will be familiar to people who’ve followed the TYP.

Permanent supportive housing remains the most effective strategy in combating homelessness, and communities around the country have found ways to locate housing developments in scattered neighborhoods. These developments have a record of success for both the residents and the neighborhoods.

The TYP can point to success in our own community, and Lyons and Martin underscore some of it:

Jon and his team have done a very good job of working with agencies to align their services to avoid redundancy and more effectively move folks toward getting the help they need. They are working effectively with faith-based organizations to make sure that assistance for the homeless leads folks to a path toward personal responsibility rather than enabling a culture of dependency.

Stephanie Matheny, of Citizens for the Ten-Year Plan, adds in the comments below the op-ed, that

In addition to the successes mentioned in the editorial, there are approximately 300 people who were chronically homeless who now have an apartment and a case manager because of the TYP. There are an additional nearly 300 people who were at-risk of becoming homeless, but who were able to remain in housing through the TYP’s homelessness prevention efforts. These quiet successes are easy to overlook.

Credit for these “quiet successes” rightly belongs to the people who do the work on the ground. Partners like Volunteer Ministry Center, Knoxville-Knox County Community Action Committee, The Salvation Army, Knox Area Rescue Ministries, Catholic Charities, to name a few, provide the housing and case management support that helps people move off the streets and into housing, keep their housing, and begin to rebuild their lives in the community.

We’re grateful for the support, and and for the support given by so many of Knoxville’s people to the organizations that make it possible for people who’ve been trapped in homelessness to make such significant changes.

It did contain some information that elicited a correction from Stacia West, Research Associate with Knox HMIS (Homeless Management Information System). Ms. West’s letter to the editor was published in the subsequent edition of MetroPulse. Here’s the conclusion:

Data from KnoxHMIS indicates a decrease in the number of people entering chronic homelessness coupled with a significant increase in the number of individuals who are already experiencing chronic homelessness who are now accessing the necessary services to emerge from chronic homelessness. We consider that to be a positive outcome of the coordinated efforts of the Ten-Year Plan to End Chronic Homelessness and the many homeless service providers in the area.

Keeping track of people who are homeless in our community is extremely challenging, but with the help of vital partners like Knox HMIS, we’re gaining a better understanding of the population we’re serving. Our thanks to Knox HMIS, and also to the dozen agencies that are using HMIS as a normal part of their practice. Working together, we’re making a positive impact on chronic homelessness in our community.

The difficulty of addressing homelessness is that it is not one problem. It is many problems. The primary cause may be a house fire or a bad economy or a mental health diagnosis or an addiction or low wages or a health care crisis or – the list could go on and on, which is precisely why we need a good, comprehensive, long-range plan. The Ten Year Plan is our best hope, a product of conscientious, thoughtful and compassionate leadership.

Rev. Buice points out that many, many members of our community are active contributors to our efforts to help people who experience homelessness here, but “…that caring needs a structure.” And that structure is the TYP.

Our community’s TYP is not just about placing people in supportive housing. It’s quite comprehensive and has been all along. Strategy #3 in the TYP is Increase Coordination and Effectiveness of Service. There are eight strategies in addition to this one that make up our TYP’s approach, but it is still important to recognize that the TYP exists within the context of a caring and compassionate community whose people have proven their hearts by their actions.

Frank N. Carlson wrote the story. It’s very well-crafted, thorough, and fair. We encourage you to take the time to read it and pass it on to others. Carlson’s piece focuses attention on some of the controversy surrounding the TYP, but it also serves as a good introduction to the TYP.

We appreciate MetroPulse’s timely and thorough engagement with the issue of homelessness. Wherever its readers are in their thinking about the TYP, this piece will be very informative.

The city of Knoxville, Knox County, service providers, neighborhood activists and others developed the Ten Year Plan in 2005 to address the chronically homeless. Defined as those who have been homeless longer than a year or who have had a series of homelessness episodes, the chronically homeless consume local tax dollars through incarceration and medical expenses at a higher rate than other subgroups of the overall homeless population.

The Ten Year Plan calls for stabilizing the chronically homeless by getting them into housing first, then addressing whatever underlying issues have led to their plight through coordinated social services. Many are mentally ill, substance abusers or both.

That’s a good summary, but as anyone who’s been paying attention will tell you, chronic homelessness and the context in which it exists is extremely complex. Implementing the TYP is anything but simple. The comments after the editorial, in which Scott Barker, Editorial Page/Community Voices Coordinator, plays an active and evenhanded role, underscore the challenge of communicating about the plan.

Now, halfway through the plan’s projected life, is a good time to have a community-wide discussion about this community-wide problem.

We agree and are making strides to help that conversation along. Our monthly public conversations are off to a good start. They’ve been very informative and well-attended. The fifth one is scheduled for 6pm Wednesday, August 25 at the Cansler YMCA. We’ll be discussing addiction treatment. Please plan to attend.

Knoxville City Council will hold a workshop on the TYP, focused mainly on communication, at 5pm Thursday, September 30 in the main assembly room of the City County building.

The first story ran on Friday, and you can watch it here.

Click here to watch the second story.

The idea behind this series is to give viewers a window into PSH, which is such a critical part of our community’s strategy to end chronic homelessness.

What keeps a person living on the streets for years? How big a factor is mental illness? Addiction? What difference does it make to have a safe, secure place of one’s own? What about the role of case managers? How does housing with support change the life of a person who’s been on the street for long time?

Stay tuned. This series should touch on all of those questions, and more. We appreciate WBIR’s interest, and Ms. Morrow’s excellent work.

Lowe’s piece is focused on Marjorie Lopes, a woman who used to be chronically homeless and who now resides at Guy B. Love Towers, a KCDC property that houses several people who have left chronic homelessness behind and who are now succeeding in permanent housing with case management support. Marjorie’s story is moving, and Lowe tells it well.

The piece doesn’t mention Jessica Bocángel, the Mentoring Program Coordinator for the Compassion Coalition. Jessica played a key role in creating Circles of Support and helping to grow the program to its present scale. We believe this program is unique in some significant ways, and that it has the potential to move members of the faith based community in a new direction as it engages the issue of homelessness.

Circles of Support gives faith based communities (churches, synagogues, mosques, temples, etc.) a new way to get involved in ending homelessness. Each faith based community assembles a team of five mentors who are trained, and who commit to maintaining a relationship with one neighbor in permanent supportive housing for one year. Two members of the mentor team will get together to visit their neighbor each week for a specified time period. Mentor teams are trained not to proselytize, but if their neighbor wants to join them for event in their faith community, that’s certainly okay.

The emphasis in Circles of Support is on relationships instead of transactions. Relationships like the one Marjorie has with members of her mentor team have really transformed her life, as she will tell you.

Rita and I share a special love. I have changed a lot because of her and the group, and for the better. After all the hell I went through for 12-13 years, it means a lot to have somebody now.

The TYP is focused on ending homelessness. We’ve said since the beginning that homelessness is a community issue that the whole community needs to address ending it. We all acknowledge that the purpose of ending homelessness goes beyond just helping people get off the streets. It also means giving them the opportunity to build the kind of life they desire in our community. This story exemplifies that.  As Mike Dunthorn points out,

Marjorie has proven that, with a little help, someone who has spent considerable time lost out on the streets can successfully live in permanent housing. Even better, when a few everyday people offered her a welcoming embrace of friendship, her housing actually became a home. This is what ending chronic homelessness looks like.

So thanks, Jessica. And thanks to Rita and your team. And Marjorie, thank you for sharing your story.

Mental illness in jail

This piece cracks open the issue of mental illness among people who have run-ins with the law. The Knox County jail is the largest provider of mental healthcare in the County. A lot of  people in jail are mentally ill. A lot of them are homeless. Many are chronically homeless. Sheriff JJ Jones is an advocate of permanent supportive housing.

Providing the chronically homeless with supportive housing that ensures they receive consistent health care would end up saving lots of money in the long run, [Sheriff Jones] said, and would also allow society to stop treating people with health problems as criminals.

Some people believe that the Ten-Year Plan advocates for building more “homeless shelters.” Others believe that we want to simply place disabled homeless people in apartments somewhere, house them “on their own” with inadequate supervision and support. Sheriff Jones knows what we’re trying to do. Permanent housing with supportive services. That’s what we advocate. Because it works. Because it actually ends homelessness.

Neighborhood fear

We’ve said, since 2005, when the Ten-Year Plan document was first published, that we know we’ll need to build new facilities in our community to serve as permanent supportive housing.

This piece addresses some of the neighborhood response to that need. We have and will continue to open up avenues for dialogue with neighborhood representatives. Two of them have, as of December 2008, sat on our Advisory Board, and we’ve begun to develop good relationships with others. We’ll continue to do that, and our promise is to continue to develop an open and candid way of communicating with the public.

Collaboration, not competition

This article takes a look at what we consider to be one of the most important strategies for ending homelessness: agencies working together towards that common goal.

For the first time, the many local nonprofit agencies who serve the homeless are working together. Gone are the days when they competed with one another for funding and offered the same basic services to the same people, a strategy that was good at keeping the homeless alive but failed miserably when it came to giving them the kind of long-term help they needed to get on their feet. Each agency now has a designated function under the 10-Year Plan, which enables each of them to specialize in certain areas.

KNS also covered, back in November of 2008, a new program at KARM that brings agencies together in one place. That article focused on the Crossroads Welcome Center, which brings agencies together in one physical space to help people who are experiencing homelessness gain access to services and ultimately to housing.

A homeless person’s perspective: Seeking a normal life

Willie Earl Walker is the subject of this article. He’s 59, been in and out of prison, and is working to overcome his past, which has been influenced by his issues with addiction. He’s involved in programs offered at VMC’s day room. Lisa Wells, who manages the day room, gives Walker credit for being a good influence on younger people there, and she is hopeful for his future.

“With the proper case management, anybody can live anywhere,” said Wells, who encourages anyone to visit VMC and leave with a greater perspective. “People are people, no matter what situation they’re in. Nothing’s a guarantee. But as long as we have the proper people, and people willing to work with our clients, why not? Why not try to make an impact?”

What happened to the mental institution?

Dr. Clif Tennison is the main subject of this piece. Dr. Tennison says, “We closed down the hospitals and (the patients) ended up in the jails.”

Many people, when they learn that many people who are chronically homeless are mentally ill, ask why we don’t “reopen” Lakeshore. Dr. Tennison answers that question.

The policy initiative that led to the current crisis — called de-institutionalization — began in the 1960s as a response to endemic problems in mental hospitals, Tennison explained. Officials were working under the incorrect assumption that then-new drugs would cure psychoses, and they also were dealing with both skyrocketing costs and allegations of inhumane treatment. Their response was to all but shut down the system of mental asylums that housed the country’s mentally ill, a mistake that’s been compounded by subsequent budget cuts for public mental health care. In Knoxville, for instance, Lakeshore Hospital went from being a 2,000-bed asylum to a facility that today has less than 200 beds, he said.

That means we have neighbors now who suffer from mental illness. They often end up homeless. You can understand how that would happen. As Dr. Tennison points out, “You’re not wrong, you’re not evil because you’re uncomfortable around mentally ill homeless,” he said. “So are we. It’s horribly uncomfortable, and sometimes it’s scary. The only thing that’s wrong is making them feel hopeless.”

So, now what?

Bottom line: we need to change the way we think about homelessness. It’s a degrading, demeaning, destructive social ill, and what we do with it now, with the best of intentions, sometimes inadvertently serves to prolong it. We need to end homelessness as we know it, and to do that, we need to build more permanent supportive housing. We need to operate it with excellence, in appropriate locations throughout our community.

What Tennison wants is to see the joint city-county 10-Year Plan to End Chronic Homelessness implemented. If that happens, he said, the existence of hundreds of supportive housing units will give many of the most seriously ill people a chance at resuming something close to a normal life through aggressive community treatment programs. “It’s not perfect, but it’s a bigger chunk of people that you’re going to help,” he said. “We know exactly what to do. We now know how to treat them.”

That means that some disabled people who are leaving homelessness will be somebody’s neighbors. If we were into sugarcoating tough realities, we’d say that ending homelessness will be easy, and that it’s guaranteed to work every time. We’re not saying that. This is a problem that belongs to our whole community, and we’ll have to work hard to solve it.

We’re not going to sugarcoat anything about that. Here’s the straightup: most of these folks will be very good neighbors. That’s what they will be committed to being. They’ll have the support they need to help them make it happen. That’s the way it works for the majority of permanent supportive housing. Everywhere it’s done.

Thanks.

We appreciate the coverage the Sentinel is giving to issues that surround the meta-issue of homelessness. We hope you’ll take advantage of their work to bring these things into the light, that you’ll take the opportunity to understand better what’s going on and how some change could do our community a lot of good.

Mostly, we hope you’ll choose to be part of the solution, that you’ll embrace our neighbors who have chosen to leave the streets, get the help they need to become stabilized and deal responsibly with their issues, and participate as fully as they can in our community.