on susan chapman city commissioner welcome to this episode of commissioners corner i have with me today gas they all orlando and david sutton dale would you tell me a little bit about yourself sure susan thank you for inviting me here today to talk with david and with you about housing first and about some of the initiatives that we're looking forward to here in perhaps implementing here in sarasota i have a  personal feeling about this because i am a resident of gillespie park i am also a community psychologist by training and therefore i've been taking a good look at all the literature and a lot of the studies and want to come here to talk with you a little bit more about housing first and david sutton would you please introduce yourself i'm david sutton i'm the director social services at the salvation army and we are in the middle of downtown tenth and central and we provide eighty five percent of the services that are provided to the homeless currently in the city and that we have a variety of programs and of course we have partnered with the neighborhoods glaspie park and rosemary  the various places around that so that we're we're active in the middle of it and today's episode is about the concept of housing first and i would ask each of you if you could tell me what you think the concept of housing first is ok well i can start with that housing first is actually an approach to helping those that are chronically homeless to break the cycle that probably would not otherwise those people that are best qualified browsing are people that are maybe the mentally the mentally challenge those that are senior citizens that have aged out of the job market that really don't have other options and some are even those with addictions that they're probably not going to get sober we have we have some that have been on the same corner for fifteen years so the idea is that we provide housing allow them to get into housing and then wrap services around them continue to provide support of services to help them break the housing first come up as one of the best practices absolutely it was it was kind of at the top of the list in a lot of communities and so this is this is the study that was done by a group from harvard the idea was that they wanted to get a cross section not just in sarasota but what it looked like best practices nationally and then how would that apply to our current community situation and they found the housing first model would be really beneficial it's not for every person that's out there but there a lot of folks that will never come off the streets without providing them housing access initially and then trying to help them with some of the other challenges now dale is it fair to say that you started studying housing for says an alternative to a come  shelter and yes i mean i started studying housing first to be honest susan i searched saying housing first because you growed up at several commission meetings and nobody want to listen to you including dr moore but so i thought oh well this there must be something going on here so i began looking at the housing first initiatives and with my own background in mental health and substance abuse work and trying to work with people who are from domestic violence situations and  whole a plethora of services that i have both consulted to as well as provided or created organizations to meet people's needs including health care during the early aids epidemic i simply began thinking that there must be other approaches besides yet another shelter salvation army is wonderful and they are my neighbor i'm right on one thing goodrich right around the corner but the fact of the matter is that we have a lot of people on the streets and when i began researching what seemed to be really working across the country it looked to me like housing first was a more cost effective more appropriate for some of these folks and means rather than sheltering it's not to say sheltering isn't valuable it's to say sheltering really is part of a continuous continuum of care services of a very traditional service system that seeks to whatever they are doing whether it's mental health substance abuse seeks to do their own thing on to these folks and the housing first initiative basically was saying look you don't have to be a person with a child to deserve to have a roof over your head you know what we need to do is we need to do housing first make that the emphasis and we don't have to make people be worthy of housing they don't have to prove themselves if they're a single or a couple that they're  worthy somehow of being able to be out of the heat of the cold what they really need to do is to be the most vulnerable we should be concentrating on taking our most vulnerable citizens are mentally ill are people with substance abuse issues for years and putting them into housing first because in the long run what we're going to do is reduce the costs of care these people have so many care issues that are so exacerbated by being out on the streets the health care issues the criminal justice issues it goes on and on they are very very costly folks and in housing first what they found from several studies including one in december that did not take self reports it went back to fall of one hundred fifty people for two years before the housing first program and two years afterwards and what they found was that on average per person even if you factored in the cost of the housing even if you factored in the cost of the port services that you were wrapping around this housing was still four thousand seven hundred fifty dollars less per person than all of the health mental health criminal justice in every other cost that it was to have people out on the streets now david did the salvation army and its study find similar cost saving far as the actual dollar amounts i think that the cost reduction across the board no matter what city the study was done in across the board the cost reduction here in sarasota the amount of money that would be saved is is phenomenal that's think one of the other component to that is providing providing this piece back that the only way that you help homeless people is to begin to restore their dignity so we place them in housing and it allows them again what that restoration of dignity allows them now to begin to trust allows them to begin to embrace services that they wouldn't otherwise embrace the idea of housing for you will be contingent on whether you get sober well you probably never going to get sober so the housing really should be a reward for good so it should be part of the equation that allows them to get sober we'll put you into housing it will help you address your issues and all of this housing first really is one of the strong components to housing first is removing the barriers that keep people from actually accessing the services that are standing right in front of them so we want you to come in our shelter but we need you to be sober for the protection of the other people in the shelter well if the guy's not sober is not sober doesn't mean that he doesn't need housing so we have really reconfigured and retooled r r d n r thinking based on this this emerged community solutions study because it really amplifies the needs are not for another shelter necessarily i mean there's there's a place for all of this but the really the need is for housing the answer to homelessness is having a house and a whole lot of the barriers to getting into a house getting into a place are just never going to go away so we put them into a house and then we begin to work on the barriers at work it's just a better model and in terms of this model some people will say well they don't these people are chronic homeless people and they don't deserve housing first and i'm i've heard some people talk about this is actually a community harm reduction model in which gathering homelessness and providing is really to help people restore some of their dignity another factor that we that we have to consider here is that along with perhaps never getting sober but but in fact many people do is what are all of two and ninety three those programs started so this is been a long time of the federal government apt associates everybody else studying this a number of come combinations and coalitions of federal agencies that have gotten together to study these this is not something new this is something that over the past thirty thirty five years has evolved in many communities across the united states and what is really happening is that it's a working you know people are able to even if they don't totally give up their substances they are certainly able to with the house or with being housed somewhere or certainly able to access the services the crime rates drop the use of our health care system services drops and so as a community we then become healthier and that's what i'm interested in is a community psychologist is really somebody who looks at what is the best way that we can possibly make our environments change so that people within them are healthier and are mentally healthier you have a if you have a garbage strike in new york city for three weeks nobody's going to be healthy or happy you know so it's the same sort of concept if we can change our environment and change our thinking about what our environment should look like in terms of helping folks then we're going to end up with a happier community altogether and you brought up an interesting question how do we pay for it how do we pay for it david but i think the idea of when we look at the cost savings we have to we have to shift funds and the where do you begin to shift funds and how does that actually look well the idea is that we need to look at policies that say this is a good idea let's start on a small scale and one of the one of the initiatives that we have currently going is we're doing a similar project with families rapid reentry into families well the idea is we want to get you in housing as quickly as we can because the cost saving to us running you keeping you in a shelter is astronomical compared to what it's going to cost of what you want to house we're doing the same thing with our hope and progress program where we're actually working with people coming off the streets and we're not it's not an emphasis on addictions it's not a deficit it's come as you are we will help you what are your needs let's build something where you begin to make any kind of progress this is shifting funds from what we traditionally do into something that we haven't done before taken some of those funds in applying them as we begin to do that we're seeing an amazing success also most excuse me but most most people that are entering into housing first programs are also contributing a third of their income whatever that might be i mean there is no reason if somebody making twelve hundred dollars a month from the federal government or from a disability or from a pension or a combination of those why that person can that be housed for roughly a third of their income i mean it just simply doesn't make sense to have people have a lot of excess capital that they can get into a lot of trouble with rather then helping people to learn to become good consumers like the rest of us having to pay having to pay attention to the landlord having to do those things  and in terms of the federal government the veterans administration and the u s department of housing and urban development is helping to fund these programs up nationally yes along with coalitions of the the  various whether it's department of justice and through some of their department of mental health department public health initiatives are also funding these because some of them are run by community health centers some of them are run by other places that already have federal funding we're running short on time and i want to thank both of you for coming it's been very informative joining us again for commissioners corner this commissioner's corner has been on the housing first program and we're i'm very happy to have david sutton and dale orlando to explain it to us better