Homelessness on rise, group calls for public action, more housing

Homelessness by some measures has become more common in Northwest Arkansas in the past year, a regional group working to address the problem reported this week, though comparing with past years is complicated.

Northwest Arkansas Continuum of Care, an umbrella group including shelters and other nonprofit organizations, counted around 2,400 people living in the streets or woods, doubled up with other families or in other temporary housing in Benton, Carroll, Madison and Washington counties during a 24-hour period in January.

The number gives a snapshot, a rough idea of homelessness's scale on a given day, meaning many more people would be affected over a year's time. A majority of those counted, almost 1,600, were school-aged children doubled up with others, based on data from schools in the four counties.

Around 400 people of all ages had no roof over their heads or were staying in transitional housing or emergency shelters such as the Salvation Army, meeting the federal government's more limited definition of homelessness. Nearly all were in Benton and Washington counties. That's twice as many people as a similar survey found in 2007 and 150 more than another in January 2017.

The survey gives a starting point for a Continuum of Care that aims to help all of those people, and all those who end up in similar situations after them, to get into and stay in more stable housing however possible. The group over the past year or so has intensified and revamped its work so its members work together more and can send clients to the right service providers to help with their particular needs.

"It's not just housing, we all know that," said Angela Belford, who chairs the Continuum's board. "It's transportation, it's health care, it's all of these things."

The Continuum of Care this week called on the general public to join its efforts. It held public meetings Thursday and Friday at GracePoint Church in Springdale to hear from national experts and explain its approach and progress to area mayors, advocates and anyone else who came in the door.

The key messages: Mayors and housing property managers must join the push to end homelessness. The region needs more housing that's affordable and accessible to people whose lives include substance abuse, domestic violence and other struggles. Most importantly, the problem is solvable in ways that benefit the whole region.

"You're way ahead of most communities in the U.S.," said Eddie Turner, an adviser with the New York-based consulting group Community Solutions who has been helping the Continuum's work for several months. "We want to build a system that ensures that everyone in Northwest Arkansas has a decent place to live when they need that help."

The Continuum is in touch with about three dozen veterans who need housing right now, Turner said. If Northwest Arkansas can manage to place them all in housing and quickly take care of future homeless veterans, it can say it has essentially ended veteran homelessness.

"You all are really, really close," he said.

Turner and others spent much of their time focusing on the concept of housing first, which typically means getting someone in need into an apartment as fast as possible, then hooking them up with help for health problems, meeting other basic needs and so on. This head-on approach meets federal guidelines and sidesteps any question about who deserves a home, Turner said.

It also works better than the old housing-last way, said Deborah Padgett, a professor of social work and public health at New York University and co-author of the book Housing First: Ending Homelessness, Transforming Systems, and Changing Lives.

That approach stairsteps people up from on the streets, then to a shelter, then to traditional housing, then finally to permanent housing, but only if they made no mistakes, no backslides with addiction or missed appointments.

"The problem is most of them fell off the staircase," Padgett said. She said Boston, for instance, found it spent almost $34,000 in direct social services per homeless person per year the old way and cut that to less than $10,000 a year with housing first.

Mobile, Ala., spent more than $20 million in police encounters, jail bookings, emergency room visits and other less visible costs stemming from homelessness before its Continuum of Care began its housing-first work, which cost about $3 million a year instead, the group's CEO said in 2016.

Northwest Arkansas's Continuum has already begun using the approach. The group recently finished a comprehensive list of about 400 people its knows are dealing with homelessness. Around 30 of them have since gotten into apartments through Bentonville's Havenwood shelter or Fayetteville's Hearth housing-support program, Belford said.

Padgett and Turner said they believe everyone should be housed regardless of the budgetary benefits, but the economic case can be persuasive, said Springdale Mayor Doug Sprouse, who attended one meeting Thursday. Rogers Mayor Greg Hines, Siloam Springs city administrator Phillip Patterson and Fayetteville community resources director Yolanda Fields were also there.

"It seems a little counter-intuitive, but if it's working, it sure merits some further investigation," Sprouse said. "I think it was good to hear that laid out."

Belford and others urged the mayors to spread the word, especially among property managers who often decide not to accept housing vouchers from the U.S. Department Housing and Urban Development that defray rent costs for low-income people. Many are also reluctant to take on tenants with criminal convictions or bad credit, common issues among people with no homes, they said.

Continuum member groups and others in attendance brainstormed ideas to help, such as a regional fund guaranteed to cover any property damage caused by formerly homeless tenants. That kind of problem is rare, Turner said, but the fund can put concerned landlords at ease. They also agreed the Continuum needs a paid director whose job is to deal with homelessness every day rather than relying only on volunteers with other jobs.

"We can do this," Belford said of solving homelessness. "We can all do this together."

January's homelessness survey differs from local counts before this year, which were organized by University of Arkansas professor Kevin Fitzpatrick.

Fitzpatrick's surveys included only Benton and Washington counties. They also added in estimates of a group he called invisible homeless, such as adults who were doubling up with others or the parents of children known by their schools to be doing the same. The group's inclusion pushed his total estimate of homeless people to near 3,000 last year.

The Continuum's survey didn't do include the invisible category, since people in it aren't counted as homeless by the federal government.

Fitzpatrick on Friday noted he didn't have all of the survey details and cautioned against comparing "apples to oranges." But he argued the invisible homeless are important to include to have a full picture of the homelessness and housing affordability issues.

He pointed to one specific finding: The number of survey respondents who had no shelter was 119, up from 87 in 2017. That rise didn't surprise him and is why he and his nonprofit, ServeNWA, hope to build a community of microshelters, basically permanent tents, for people in that situation near 7 Hills Homeless Shelter in Fayetteville.

NW News on 03/10/2018