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just incrementally go up, they skyrocket. Shelters are not enough. Albert will never be on the <br /> street anymore, and he is in a house and going through alcohol rehabilitation.None of that would <br /> be possible with the old system. <br /> Mr. Rebman proceeded, The third and final step is the funding. This problem is thrown onto the <br /> governments, and I don't think they are the ones primarily responsible. Faith-based organizations <br /> are the key ones responsible and are best positioned to help. It can be solved, once we shift the <br /> mentality in the community to what our real issue is within our community. Once we let them <br /> know the success rates in the other communities and they see it, it's a very powerful thing. The <br /> federal government is responsible, along with the state and county governments, for providing <br /> enough affordable housing. But the real responsibility to helping people is a social service <br /> problem and the government's responsibility for that, in my eyes, is to provide the leadership and <br /> framework to do that.Not to spend millions of dollars on new shelters and what not. Assuming <br /> everyone is marching to the right tune and collaborating,we must use things that have <br /> measurable outcomes. Any time anybody wants to do anything with homelessness,the first <br /> question should be `Where did it work?' The big problem we have is we've been throwing <br /> money at homelessness for years and years making people comfortable in a bad situation, as <br /> opposed to fixing the situation. This is why housing is so important because once we get <br /> somebody housed, you don't see them on the street anymore. They aren't panhandling for their <br /> next beer,they are in their apartment or home. They are no longer going to cost us the amount of <br /> money it costs to have somebody homeless in the City of South Bend. In Orlando,there was a <br /> very intensive study done and what we found is doing absolutely nothing, it costs $33,000 per <br /> homeless person. These costs come from arrests,jail and booking costs, emergency room visits, <br /> all of those types of cost. It adds up in the long run. The library is a defacto day shelter for many <br /> of these folks and I could go on and on about the costs. The fact is it's roughly $33,000 per <br /> homeless person without doing anything about it. It could be $11,000 per person to case-manage <br /> them, in their own home. With a little bit of an upfront investment from the community, we <br /> could spend a third of what we're spending already, and house people. The big key is <br /> engagement. It is collaboration. <br /> Mr. Rebman explained, Stanford University did a study and they went around the nation to each <br /> city that had solved social problems well and they tried to find a common thread between the <br /> cities. It is called the `collective impact model' now. It means if everyone is moving in the same <br /> direction, together, more is accomplished. We can continue looking at this problem the way we <br /> have, but it will cost more money and more time in the long run. There are only about one <br /> hundred and twenty-five (125) chronically homeless people that need to be housed. That is a <br /> very solvable problem. There are a lot of things needed to get there. But, all of those things are <br /> here in the community already. There are people that are just as or more knowledgeable than I <br /> am. The trick is aligning the right people with the right resources. There isn't one person I have <br /> interacted with in South Bend that doesn't want to see a solution to this problem of <br /> homelessness. <br /> Councilmember Regina Williams-Preston asked, I keep hearing that in South Bend, a lot of the <br /> homeless people are actually not from around here. Is that true? Then also we were worried that <br /> if we pride ourselves on first-class homelessness care, more will come. Can you touch upon <br /> those issues? <br /> 4 <br />