The city’s Chronic Homeless Program is impacting lives
COLORADO AVENUE — After spending more than half her life sleeping on concrete and carrying all of her possessions every step she took, Donna Mendez realized that, at her age,it was too difficult to continue living on the streets of Santa Monica.
In her late 40s, and sober for the first time in decades, Mendez no longer wanted to deal with the daily routine of packing up her three buggies filled with belongings and move them from one corner of the city to the next in efforts to avoid police or predators hunting for their next victim — preferably an older, vulnerable woman like Mendez.
For 25 years, alcohol clouded her judgment and dulled the pain, enabling her to survive on the streets. Without it, the harsh realities of homelessness and aging hit hard.
“I got old,” said Mendez, her arms gently folded in her lap as she sat in an office at the OPCC Access Center, a place on Seventh Street and Colorado Avenue where the down-and-out can shower, eat a meal and receive counseling or access other social services. “I had gotten sober on the streets, and without the alcohol … I began to realize that my body was getting run down. In those few moments when I was sober and had some clarity, that’s when I realized how bad my body ached.”
Mendez, now 50, dressed in a tan Mickey Mouse sweatshirt and jeans, her long black hair combed closely to her face, rubbed her knee and wrists where bones were broken during drunken stumbles or confrontations with the abusive men she married.
“The laws are getting tougher now. The city is getting a lot stricter and you have signs going up everywhere telling you, ‘you can’t sleep here’ and ‘you can’t sleep there’,” she added.“It was just getting a lot harder to live on the street. It wasn’t like it was 25 years ago, and neither was my health.”
Today, Mendez said she has a new lease on life. Not only is she celebrating two years of sobriety, attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings religiously, Mendez also is living indoors, which is something she never would have thought possible as one of the city’s “chronically homeless,” a term used by government agencies for someone who, despite intervention, has spent several years living on the streets or in shelters.
With her one-bedroom apartment on Sixth Street and Santa Monica Boulevard, Mendez said she can finally put the past behind her and start fresh. Her rent is $1,204 a month, of which Mendez pays $320. The remainder is covered by the federal and local governments.
“I’m looking to extend my life and make it a little better each day,” she said.“The program has been wonderful. I don’t know where I would be without it, maybe dead, but definitely still on the streets.”
Following several rejections by the federal government, Mendez was declared disabled last year due to her arthritis. She receives slightly more than $1,000 a month in government aid. “There’s just no way I could have saved enough money for an apartment by myself. No way.”
Mendez owes her newfound good fortune to a woman she calls her guardian angel, Suzie de la Rosa, a caseworker at OPCC. It was de la Rosa who first approached Mendez at Reed Park in late 2004 and offered her a chance to live indoors through City Hall’s Chronic Homeless Program, a relatively new venture which brings the city’s five homeless services providers together to focus on the most severe cases of homelessness.
SEALING CRACKS IN THE SYSTEM Under pressure from residents and business owners to dramatically reduce the number of homeless in Santa Monica, the City Council in 2004 created the Chronic Homeless Program, which is essentially designed to be a more efficient and effective way to organize the distribution of homeless services.
Before the program, providers such as OPCC, Step Up On Second, the St. Joseph Center and the CLARE Foundation were working almost entirely independent of one another, as were the police and fire departments. Those agencies would often deal with the same chronically homeless individuals daily, but rarely communicated with each other to better coordinate care. That meant homeless people were slipping through the cracks, receiving meals at one location, but not the drug counseling or medical care necessary to get back on track.
Many community members criticized the system, saying it enabled the homeless to remain on the streets and did nothing to ensure they were moving towards more stability and an eventual return to society.
“There was a call from the community to do something different and the council has been very supportive in trying new things. That is what this initiative has been all about,” said Mona Miyasato, City Hall’s interim human services manager, who has overseen implementation of the program. “Councilmembers also wanted to ensure we were improving on the existing system and showing some results. We’re confident we can do both.”
Since its creation, 85 people have been enrolled in the program, with 21 being placed in permanent housing and 27 in temporary or transitional housing. Its success has been praised by The Los Angeles Times and is considered by New York City homeless officials as being an effective model to enhance the continuum of care. New York City has a similar program called Community Collaboratives, in which police and fire departments work directly with service providers, the religious community and residents to identify chronically homeless individuals and assist in their recovery.
A PROGRAM WITH SUBSTANCE The City Council in March approved an expansion of the Chronic Homeless Program, pumping an additional $178,560 into rental subsidies. Another $256,554 was allocated for services such as social workers and rental deposits. City Hall also applied for and received a grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in the amount of $948,000 to provide the bulk of the rental subsidies.
That money is in addition to what City Hall spends annually on homeless services, which is 2 percent of the general fund. Last year, that amounted to $3.7 million. Homeless service providers do not receive extra funding under the program, instead their caseworkers have put in extra hours to work inside the program’s parameters, said officials at OPCC and St. Joseph.
Before the program’s expansion, the City Council had dedicated $20,000 a year for two years to hire a social worker to help coordinate the effort, Miyasato said.
As a comparison, one chronically homeless individual cost City Hall more than $8,500 a year over a three-year period, much of which was the result of 62 arrests and 48 paramedic calls. That doesn’t include visits to the emergency room, Miyasato said. City officials tracked one homeless individual in Santa Monica and measured the calls for service, his arrest record, the number of times he was jailed and was treated by paramedics.
“I believe that with (the Chronic Homeless Program), if it becomes widespread, can really show terrific results,” said City Councilman Richard Bloom, a member of Bring LA Home, a coalition dedicated to ending homelessness in 10 years. “What this program does is it brings everybody involved together so that we can all be on the same page and present an unified message that resonates every time there is an opportunity to interact with someone who is homeless, and that message is ‘we are here to help.’”
As part of the program’s expansion, service providers will work with a three-person team of professionals who will focus on 30 homeless individuals at a time, helping them receive counseling, medical care and apply for federal aid such as Social Security. Once medical and legal issues are addressed and the client shows he or she is committed to succeeding in the program, he or she is paired with a caseworker who helps them look for an apartment, sign the lease and take care of the rent, which is subsidized by HUD and Santa Monica City Hall.
For clients like Mendez, the program has enabled her to likely receive government assistance for the rest of her life, as well as keep a roof over her head. Once she feels as though she can handle those responsibilities, the involvement of de la Rosa will taper off and she will focus on the next chronically homeless client.
The program is not without criticism. Of the 85 enrolled, 14 are still homeless, four are refusing service, six are in jail or hospitalized and the whereabouts of 12 remain unknown. One person has died, Miyasato said.
Those who are enrolled in the program, many of whom have had drug or alcohol addictions, are not tested to see if they are still using. And there is little incentive for them to pursue a higher level of income, because if a client earns more money than he or she is currently receiving in Social Security, general relief or disability payments, there’s a chance they will not qualify for as much rental assistance or could lose their housing voucher, putting some back on the streets.
As for the drug testing, Julie DeRose, director of homeless services for the St. Joseph Center, said clients who are abusing drugs or alcohol would not commit to the program because of the dedication it requires,and caseworkers would most likely not approach them because there is a higher risk of failure for someone under the influence.
“These are people who have been through quite a lot, and the last thing we would want to do is pressure them into a sit-
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on June 10, 2006. Read the original PDF.