Adviser's simple solution: Get homeless into homes

NYC program: Utah looks at the housing-first idea that is gaining favor in U.S.

By Kirsten Stewart

Want to end homelessness?  Provide people with housing.

It seems an overly simplistic fix to a complex social problem, but it is the driving philosophy behind a New York City program called Pathways to Housing that is changing the nation's view on solving homelessness.  And, by all accounts, it works.

Founder Sam Tsemberis was in Utah on Tuesday to share his success story with a broad cross-section of people representing state agencies, local governments, charities, businesses, housing authorities, schools and law enforcement - all of which have a stake in the growing homeless problem. 

Pathways is being promoted by the Bush administration as the gold standard for getting the hardest-to-reach chronically homeless, most of them mentally ill, out of shelters and off streets and into productive lives. 

Utah's Homeless Coordinating Committee also wants to adopt the "housing first" approach as it works toward its 10-year goal of ending chronic homeless in the state. 

The chronic homeless - those who don't have a home for more than a year or find themselves homeless four times over three years - represent about 10 percent of the nation's homeless population but consumer 50 percent of all resources.  Most struggle with substance abuse or are mentally ill.

Tsemberis was working with this population as a psychiatric outreach worker in New York City in the late 1980's when he was struck with the idea for Pathways.  The system was failing his clients, who were drifting in and out of shelters, treatment centers and jobs and seemed incapable of getting their lives on track, he said. 

Then, as now in Utah and elsewhere, the homeless needed to spend time in transitional shelters, getting mentally stable and drug- and alcohol-free, before they were admitted to permanent housing.  And when they were admitted, it was to a group home or other communal-living situation apart from the rest of society.

But without a safe place to sleep and call their own, tackling other problems proved too tall an order, said Tsemberis, who decided to turn convention on its head and start with housing first. 

"We were saying, 'We built this housing for substance abusers and the mentally ill, but to get in you have to demonstrate that you're not addicted to drugs or mentally ill,'" Tsemberis said Tuesday at a luncheon in West Valley City.  "There's something almost discriminatory about [that]."

Pathways, a private nonprofit organization launched in 1992, plucks homeless people off New York City's streets and gets them directly into their own apartments.  Residents contribute one-third of their income toward the cost of rent and Pathways picks up the rest.

The residents are surrounded by counselors and other experts who visit them at least once a week and help them get behaviorial treatment and jobs.  Such services, however, are offered only if the client asks for them. 

Even when people make self destructive choices, "we have to let go so they can learn from their mistakes," said Tsemberis, noting that in 12 years, only a handful of residents have been kicked out of the program. 

Today, Pathways serves about 500 of New York's 38,000 homeless.  About 84 percent of his clients stay housed, compared to the 23 percent success rate of other programs in New York.

kstewart@sltrib.com