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:: Wednesday, January 19, 2005 ::
Housing First to Homeless on the Street
Posted by Mr. Cheng with (237) Comments
Some New York City homeless sent me Pathways To Housing link and told me this was exactly the help they needed to move out of street. And, recently, I also saw this link highly recommended byThe Homeless Guy's blog. The only problem is that it is only at NYC, and started in Washington DC, and the housing is for homeless with mental illness. According to my years of hands-on experience, I also feel that it is very effective to provide housing to homeless people on the street. Without a place to call home, it is very hard for homeless to try to move themselves out of street. Here is a recent communication with Social Welware Policy Professor at Univ of Penn, Dennis Culhane, and I think next step up would be sharing all the Homeless Solutions with ICH.
Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2005 13:37:58 -0500
From: culhane@mail.med.upenn.edu
To: "Mr. Cheng"
Subject: Re: Dear Prof Culhane, Nice to talk to you and here is my message ...
You are doing amazing things.
Do forward this to the Philip Mangano and Mary Ellen Hombs at the US
Interagency Council On Homelessness. I don't have their email addresses with
me, but they would be interested in hearing this incredible story.
Dennis
Quoting "Mr. Cheng" :
> Dear Professor Culhane,
>
> I just came across the following and thought about writing to you
> again...
>
> "Costs for housing the homeless aren't cheap, but Dennis Culhane,
> professor of social welfare policy at the University of Pennsylvania,
> found that such programs as Pathways actually save money.
>
> He determined that the cost to society for the average mentally ill
> person on the street was $40,500 per person annually in social and
> health services. Pathways' apartments and services, according to
> Tsemberis, cost only $22,000 per person each year."
>
> We have been providing the condo at Edison NJ that walk to train
> station to NYC to move homeless off homelessness, more or less the way
> Pathways have been doing, except that we target general homeless, not
> only mental ill homeless. We have treated the homeless as "friends
> visiting us" or "new immigrants", NOT homeless. In fact, we introduced
> them to neighbors as "our friends", NOT homeless, and we told them once
> they move in, they are no longer homeless.
>
> We provide some grocery, take them to buffet, bookstores and go out
> with our families trying to make them "our family friends". Once they
> moved in, they will be no difference from other tenants who renting the
> condos, except they do not pay rent nor utilities...etc.
>
> Their first goal would be just sleep, eat and recover. Normally,
> after weeks, they would be recovered and become energetic again like
> other normal people. Then, they will try to reconnect with their
> families and friends, and many of them would help them, after knowing a
> group of strangers willing to help them.
>
> Once they found some part time jobs, we find deposit and first month
> rent for them to move to their own place near their jobs, and continue
> to support till months later they pay their own rent fully and even
> found better full time job.
>
> We do not apply for any government grant nor do we have non profit
> organization. We use free Yahoo!Group to coordinate by creating a
> private support group for each homeless and invite dozens of friends,
> family members or colleagues to join and support.
>
> We also proactively renting out the condo to people don't have
> perfect credit from Harlem NY and not did credit check. Once they start
> paying rent late, we would be involved by helping them find a job or
> get a car ...etc to help them move up, instead of evicting them. We let
> them use deposit to pay rent and give them rent credit; some even owe
> rent for months and just pay whatever they can. The philosophy behind
> this is to keep the poor tenants with us and stay at the same condo as
> long as possible to prevent them from becoming homeless since,
> according to our experience, moving cost eats up poor people's saving.
> So, years later, they will become more financially independent since we
> never increase rent. Then, we help them to buy a townhouse as if we
> help our friends to, and they will finally move out.
>
> By doing so, we do not lose money as landlord because the condo is
> always 100% occupied, and no credit check cost, no annual realtor fee,
> no annual atterney fee, and maintenance is low since low turnaround
> required no painting, carpet replacing ...etc.
>
> Recently, we got DIRECT BUS set up from Edison NJ to NYC Chinatown,
> Midtown and Downtown, only $158 a month. This, to certain extend,
> realized my proposal to migrate NYC homeless to rural area like
> Hazleton PA with affordable DIRECT BUS connection in between. Edison is
> perfect base for my Homeless Solutions because it is populated with
> Chinese who believe buying home, and many has surplus rooms which rent
> out as low as $300 a month, this helps a lot to move homeless off
> homelessness.
>
> Cheng
:: Mr Cheng 4:55 PM [+] ::
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