Home for the holidays

The Times By Lisa Coryell

TRENTON — For the first time in years Gail Collins will be home for Christmas.

After years spent shuffling between shelters, transitional housing and abandoned buildings, feeding her drug addiction, the 39-year-old city resident is living in her own place thanks to a pilot program designed to provide long-term stability for the area’s most chronic homeless population.

Reunited with her family after years of estrangement, the newly sober Collins says she’ll be spending Christmas with her children and grandchildren.

“I couldn’t ask for a better holiday,” she said. “I got the tree up. I got the house decorated. I’m listening to Christmas music. I was even able to purchase Christmas gifts.”

Collins was among a half dozen success stories who attended a roundtable discussion to assess the progress of Housing First, a collaborative effort utilizing a unique approach to tackling the homeless issue.

The program uses a lottery system to select chronically homeless people - most of whom have physical or mental illnesses and drug and alcohol addictions - and provides them with their own apartments. In addition to getting medical, dental, and mental health care, tenants receive educational and vocational counseling and the support of counselors trained to help them make their own choices and chart their own futures.

Unlike many housing programs that operate from a model of “housing readiness” - that is, that an individual or household must address other issues that may have led to homelessness prior to entering housing - Housing First offers stable shelter with no strings attached.

The program operates under the theory that a homeless individual’s first and primary need is to obtain stable housing, and that other issues can be addressed after that.

The six Housing First tenants who attended yesterday’s discussion didn’t have to get sober or undergo counseling or attend job training to keep their apartments, but that’s what they wound up doing.

“Once you have the stress of not having a home resolved, and you get the support you need, the natural healing process in you will lead you to good steps,” said John Monahan, president of Greater Trenton Behavioral HealthCare, which oversees the program.

Glenn McMiller was one of the first to receive housing under the program. A truck driver for a private sanitation company before he’d gotten hooked on drugs and was fired, the city native said he’d been on the streets for five years when he was approached at the Salvation Army and learned he’d won the lottery for housing.

“I thought they wanted me for the police,” he said. Once in his own place, he began the slow path to recovery. He stays away from his drug-using buddies and volunteers time working with the elderly at a city apartment building.

“Getting a place to live healed me,” he said. “It makes you want to go up the ladder instead of going around in a circle. I’ll keep going up the mountain ‘cuz it looks nice up there.”

The program requires tenants to put 30 percent of their income toward their rent, which ranges from $800 to $925 for one-bedroom apartments scattered around Mercer County.

Of the nearly 50 tenants being served by the program most are not working but Monahan said the cost of providing housing and services to Housing First participants is still cheaper than what it cost to provide shelter and services to them on the street.

A preliminary report based on the original 15 participants in the program shows that Housing First spent $18,587 per tenant during the first year. According to that same report, prepared by a member of Tufts University’s Community Health Program, after factoring in the hospital overnights, mental health overnights and emergency room visits for that same population on the streets, Housing First is actually saving $9,429 a year per tenant.

That’s in keeping with other Housing First programs across the country, the report states.

“More than half of these tenants have been enrolled in Medicaid since their initial screening for Housing First,” the report states. “The degree of stabilization reflected … is consistent with the increased measures of connection with supportive services, community ability, community reintegration, quality of life and overall housing satisfaction demonstrated elsewhere in this report.”

Program participants say obtaining their own housing is crucial to their road to recovery. In a practical sense it allows them to stay away from group housing and shelters where the dangers of relapse are real and as tangible as a vile of crack cocaine.

“Oh man, getting chosen for this program has been a blessing,” said Ray Myrine, who has spent years in and out of jails and institutions and had never had a home of his own. “I knew things were happening in my life that were good.”

For some tenants, the apartments return control to lives missing it for years.

“When you got your own place you can close your door to the things you don’t want in your life,” said Cynthia Alford, a 48-year-old recovering addict who once worked as a counselor in a mental health facility. She’s now pursuing a Social Services degree at Mercer County Community College.

“My apartment was my foundation,” Alford said. “That’s where I started from. I had a sense of relief and then I started to get a sense of self respect. My dignity came back and I was able to hold my head up and walk with everyone else.”

Eric Williams, 43, said he’s been clean 16 months thanks to the program. Pursuing his GED, Williams looks forward to becoming a licensed addictions counselor.

He still marvels at the good fortune of having his own place to live.

“I come from jails and shelters and abandoned buildings,” he said. “I still get up in the morning and walk around and sit in every chair.”

For Mary Beth Hall Green, the program is helping her make Christmas special for her 5-year-old son.

In years past he worried that Santa would not be able to find him in the homeless shelters where the two stayed. “Now we’re home. Santa knows where we live,” she said.

Download the article that appeared in the Trenton Times on December 11th.