Manhattan Nonprofit’s Supportive Housing Model Faces Federal Budget Uncertainty

Inside a restored 1897 townhouse in Chelsea, Manhattan, residents greet one another by name. Some play Chinese Checkers at a table, and others stop at the nurse’s office for morning medication. The people living there have schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or other serious illnesses, and before arriving they spent years without homes. Some had cycled through homeless shelters or jails.

At St. Francis Friends of the Poor, residents have their own room, medical care and a permanent address. Unlike a shelter, they do not leave each morning and look for a new bed by nightfall. Unlike a jail, no one is locked inside. The organization has operated for nearly 50 years as one of America’s earliest examples of what is now called permanent supportive housing. The model offers a private room alongside on-site psychiatric and medical care, and it is intended to help vulnerable people remain more stable and out of jails and psychiatric institutions.

The reporting describes this approach as an attempt to address what some view as one of the nation’s major public policy failures: chronic homelessness and repeated jailing among people with severe mental illness. According to the Vera Institute of Justice, unhoused people in the United States are 11 times more likely to be arrested than someone with a home. The reporting also states that supportive housing is significantly cheaper than incarceration and, in some people’s view, more effective. It gives the cost of locking someone up for a year in a New York City jail as $556,539, compared with $33,000 to house someone for a year at St. Francis.

The program faces new uncertainty. Congress is considering cuts to federal housing programs and Medicaid, both of which help cover living expenses for people in such programs. The reporting states that President Donald Trump requested a $3.8 billion cut from the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s affordable housing, homelessness and community development programs. The National Low Income Housing Coalition, an advocacy group, describes those programs as vital. As cities and towns struggle with overcrowded jails, chronic homelessness and untreated mental illness, places like St. Francis are increasingly viewed as an alternative to mass incarceration. John Betts, deputy executive director of programs at St. Francis, told Straight Arrow that budget cuts “would be devastating if all of these changes go through, not just to the supportive housing sector, but in general.”

Will Hayes, after receiving care at Elmhurst, a public hospital in Queens, had no place to go when he was released. He said he had recently moved to New York City and had a disagreement with his uncle, with whom he had been staying. A caseworker’s mother happened to be a psychiatrist at St. Francis. The day after he left the hospital, Hayes and his uncle visited a St. Francis residence in Chelsea, where he remembered employees and residents as warm and welcoming. He moved in the following day. He was shown a private bedroom with a twin bed, nightstand, desk, chair, closet and window. “I’ve been here ever since,” he said. “It feels very familiar here, like a warm, welcoming home.”

Residents live on about $17 a day from disability benefits, according to the reporting. St. Francis staff help create a budget for each resident. Camilla Broderick, a program manager at St. Francis, explained the process to Straight Arrow: “They get a check at the beginning of the month and we deduct rent, any money for bills they may have, like phone bill, cable, et cetera, and then calculate their daily amount out of the remainder.”

Source: Read the original report