Plan Calls to End Homelessness

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Web resources:

• NH Interagency Council on Homelessness Draft Report (PDF)

Drafters of the plan to end homelessness know the whole idea sounds a little....ambitious.

One estimate says over 20 thousand New Hampshire residents don't have their own places to live.

Peter Kelleher, who is chairing the effort, accepts that when the public hears about a 10 year plan to end the problem the first reaction will be something like, 'yeah right.'

He insists this plan is different.

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12:03 what's new is that we have a body of research that has been completed in many places across the country that makes recommendations...we now know what we need to do to improve how we care for people who are h.

This new body of research stems from a New York City study completed in 2002.

It found that 10% of the homeless population is what is called chronically homeless.

Those are the people who have been continuously homeless for a year or more or someone who has been homeless 4 times in the past three years.

That's the formal definition.

Miles Pendry, a member of the Governor's Council on Homelessness, says when he thinks of the chronically homeless he, says he just thinks of Lillian.

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........ Everyone knew her, everyone saw her, but no one really did anything for her. I am sure anyone in Nashua would remember her, b/c she was a permanent fixture.

10:09 she was an elderly woman, who spent most of her time out in front of Dunkin' Donuts yelling at passersby...Could swear like a truck driver... toenails two inches long, open sores on her feet from untreated diabetes. Body lice. Skin like leather b/c it had been exposed to winter conditions, summer conditions year round. Wearing whatever clothing she could find out of dumpsters...with blankets wrapped around her. Eating food she had scavenged out of dumpsters. I remember people trying to buy her sandwiches and she would throw them away b/c she would think they were poisoned or someone had slipped medication in them for her....a wonderful person actually.

Wonderful or not, the New York study suggests people like Lillian are an expensive drain on communities.

Since that report was released, Philip Mangano says states and cities across the country have tracked the costs of the chronically homeless.

Mangano is President Bush's point person on the issue.

25:10 my favorite...story is two Reno, NV officers are so tired of arresting and re-arresting the same two gentlemen over and over again...they decide on their own to do a cost benefit analysis.

The two police officers calculated how many times the two guys were arrested, treated in the Emergency Room and went to court.

...when they added up all the costs, those two gentlemen- one of them cost $100,000, the other gentleman cost $120,000 in one year. And when they looked further into the one who cost $120,000 a year, they determined he had been on the streets for 7 years and what they determined was he was the million dollar man. That is one million dollars had been expended on him over 8 years. Yet the result of all that expenditure this gentleman was still on the street.

John Goodrow could have been one of those two men.

But as part of its ten year plan, Nashua provided him with an apartment and some social services.

If it weren't for that assistance, he guesses he'd probably be on a psych ward right now.

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4:45 my schizophrenia is in remission now. So I am more clearheaded and I can focus on working as much as I can physically and mentally handle. And be handicapped and not ill. For me, I don't believe a mental illness ever goes away. I don't have full blown schizophrenia but I sense with my feelings, the fear outside myself, even though it doesn't control me.
The Bush Administration's Mangano says nationally, people like Goodrow ring up about 40 thousand dollars of various services a year because they don't take their meds, and are hospitalized on psych wards.

But the New York study showed giving Goodrow a place to live and the necessary services to remain stable costs only $24,000 a year.

That's a $16,000 savings per person.

The cornerstone of the report from the New Hampshire Governor's Council on Homelessness- like many other state and city plans- is to reduce the state's chronically homeless population.

And that reduction of the costliest 10% of the homeless population frees up large amounts of cash to help the other 90%.

The report calls for the creation of 4-600 units of permanent housing with social services.

That would cost an estimated 15 million dollars over ten years.

But Council member Keith Keening doesn't want people to gag on the price tag.

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1:11 the state already spends that money to help the h. if you are sitting in your house or your car and you are hearing these numbers...we are not asking for new money. The state is already spending tens of millions of dollars a year to help the homeless.

The Council is trying to drum up political backing for its plan.
A tough sell in New Hampshire.

The first thing Deputy Speaker Ken Weyler asked after getting a brief description was whether people would cheat the system so they could have a free place to live.

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2:30 a lot of these programs sound great on paper, the difficulty comes in the execution and finding the program can be set up the way you want and follow through and see a real change.

Nashua did begin its own 10-year plan to end homelessness last year.

There is a decrease in the number of chronically homeless, but no studies have been conducted to find out if the city has saved any money.

Over the coming months the Bush Administration's Mangano says drafters must work hard to garner the necessary political will.

But as long as New Hampshire uses the emerging national model, he remains confident.

He says anything that President Bush and liberal San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsome can agree on must have something to it.

For NHPR News, I'm DG.