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HomeMy WebLinkAbout04-10-17 Health and Public Safety (AM) SpU T8 U C 1865 OFFICE OF THE CITY CLERK KAREEMAH FOWLER,CITY CLERK HEALTH &PUBLIC SAFETY APRIL 10, 2017 6:35 A.M. Committee Members Present: Jo M. Broden, John Voorde, Karen White Committee Members Absent: Oliver Davis Other Council Present: Regina Williams-Preston Other Council Absent: Tim Scott, Dr. David Varner, Gavin Ferlic, Randy Kelly Others Present: Kareemah Fowler, Suzanna Fritzberg, Tom Rebman Agenda: An informational session by homelessness solutions expert, Tom Rebman. Tom has developed a unique approach by combining Stanford's Collective Impact Model with the Measures of Success from the US Interagency Council for Homelessness. He will expand awareness of the problem and offer proven solutions. ' Committee Chair Jo M. Broden called the Health and Public Safety Committee meeting to order at 6:35 a.m. She introduced members of the Committee and Council, and also gave an opportunity to members of the public in attendance to introduce themselves. She then turned the floor to the presenter. Tom Rebman introduced himself and proceeded to share his presentation. He stated, I am a twenty-three (23)year Navy Officer and went into the service when I was seventeen(17). I retired in 2001. After that, I did a couple of jobs. I was the CEO of a sports-memorabilia company and Vice President of an arena football team. I then decided to find something I would enjoy doing for the rest of my life. So I decided to go back to college and get a degree in Elementary Education and a Master's Degree in Teaching and Reading because I knew that's what I wanted to do is teach reading to impoverished children. I had been doing that for about five (5) years and I came up with a bright idea. We have a problem in education. We try to keep our children reading over the summer because if they don't, they experience what's called the `summer slide.' They lose a lot of the things they've been taught. So this bright idea was to become homeless for a month in Orlando. I put all of my experiences up on Facebook for all of my students to follow. Prior to that, I hadn't had any interaction with homeless folks or any social service training whatsoever. At the time, it created a perfect storm in Orlando. What I mean by that is, we had a$12 million shelter that was opening. It was state-of-the-art. At the 455 County-City Building•227 W.Jefferson Boulevard•South Bend,Indiana 46601 Phone 574-235-9221 •Fax 574-235-9173•TDD 574-235-5567•www.SouthBendIN.gov JENNIFER M.COFFMAN ALKEYNA M.ALDRIDGE JOSEPH MOLNAR CHIEF DEPUTY/DIRECTOR OF DEPUTY/DIRECTOR OF POLICY ORDINANCE VIOLATION CLERK OPERATIONS same time we had a gentleman by the name of Andrae Bailey, who is the CEO of the Central Florida Commission on Homelessness. He came out with a very intense awareness campaign for the City of Orlando. All of these things fell into place accidentally at the same time. So we had an intense awareness campaign, lots of media in town because of the new shelter, and then a teacher who was living homeless on the streets. The media thought it was very interesting and for the last sixteen(16) or seventeen(17) days of my thirty (3 0) days on the street, it was on the news every night. It really changed the game. Not specifically my campaign, but with these three (3) issues happening all at once, I watched my community change. It used to be that people thought the Mayor of Orlando hated the homeless. Since then, I have lived homeless in thirteen (13) different cities across the United States,voluntarily. What I found was a hole in homeless services. Mr. Rebman continued, There isn't a lot of good guidance out there, business wise. What I mean by that is you have the United States Interagency Council, which is the federal authority that is giving guidance, and then each state takes that guidance and tailors it to themselves. They all have the same rules,but they all operate under different means. What I saw was a disconnect. For example if we took someone from Hope Ministries or any other service providers we have here today, what executive director there, or city or county councilperson has the time to go review everything that everyone has done nation-wide to find out what works and what doesn't work?I don't think any of the non-profit executive directors have the time to do that. So that's why I did what I did. Since then, I have been studying homelessness throughout the nation. I visited with literally every continuative caregiver in Florida. I am data-driven and have done all of the research and there is a big hole between continuums that want to improve,to improve. To get them all of the knowledge through both research and best practices is critical. Mr. Rebman went on,Now, I'll share with you how I got to South Bend. When I was living homeless,there were over 1 million people at one (1)point or another, following my posts. Social media helped introduce me to some of the services and the leaders in the South Bend community. Mr. Kevin Smith is who I started talking with initially last November. What I saw here is a community that is absolutely poised to be a national model. I go all over the country and I'm not going to say that anywhere else. I don't want you to think this is a sales pitch, it's not. South Bend has the best chance for success than any other city I've been in. In every other community I go to,my biggest goal is to get engagement from the people that are needed to fix this problem because it is a very complex problem. There is a medical aspect of it, there is a law enforcement aspect of it, and the list can go on with the people needing to be engaged.No one has the engagement that South Bend does. People are trying to work toward that engagement. Everyone in South Bend is truly excited for coming up with a solution in South Bend. Though it is a complex problem,this is a very solvable problem. A lot of people when they think homelessness for some reason think it's a big complex enigma that can't be fixed. Well the truth is, we have great model throughout the country of people that are doing things right. The guidance is out there,the funding is there, so it is a very solvable problem. All that is truly needed to solve this is community and political will. Mr. Rebman explained, There are three (3)things that exist within every city that has had success. The first thing every community had was a point person, a face. Let me be clear, this is not somebody that is knowledgeable about homelessness. What they do is they are a 2 collaboration person, they are a point person. In Orlando,they opened a non-profit and called it the Central Florida Commission of Homelessness,their CEO was Andrae Bailey and he was the point person. He worked very closely with the Mayor. Although he has no authority over the non-profits and he has no funding, the reason he had so much success is because he was an excellent collaborator. So the community changed in Orlando from being known nationally, in print, to hate the homeless, to being a model of success. It works best if that point person doesn't work directly for the City. The second important part is an intense awareness campaign. There are two (2) camps. In the old days, we used a punitive style approach to help people in need. What that did was it created a lot of barriers to where people can't get off the streets, it's literally impossible. One time we were doing a veteran search in the City of Orlando. All of us were out there trying to find all the veterans on the streets. Mr. Rebman digressed, There was a gentleman named Albert. He had been homeless for twenty- five (25) years and was living under a bridge. The police were getting ready to arrest Albert again so they called up Mr. Bailey, and Mr. Bailey had arranged that instead of getting arrested this time, he contacted the VA and got Albert set up with a non-profit provider. When Albert got there, they kicked him out three (3)minutes later. The reason they kicked him out is because they gave him a Breathalyzer Test and he didn't pass. Now, I am not in any way condoning alcohol use but I will say this: If we're a society that, because somebody has had alcohol, immediately judges them, we need to look inside ourselves because I submit to you there are a lot more alcoholics that have homes than are homeless. There are a lot more drug addicts that have homes than that are homeless. We don't know what came first: homelessness, or substance abuse. A lot of times it can be substance abuse, but a lot of times it's people just trying to self- medicate on the streets. Mr. Rebman continued, Here's the thing, Albert was all set up to get into a program and the VA was going to house him but because he had a beer five (5)hours before, he called Mr. Bailey and said `I wish you had left me under the bridge so I would at least die with dignity.' I don't know how you feel about that but for a gentleman that has been homeless twenty-five (25) years to have these barriers is not smart. For instance, CEO's of major corporations with the best inpatient care and family support only beat substances six-to-eight percent(6%-8%)of the time. What's the chance of a homeless guy to quit drinking to get services? We've created barriers that make it almost impossible for homeless people to get the help they deserve. So we put Albert in a hotel that night and two (2) weeks later, Albert quit drinking on his own. I'm not saying that is going to last,but he was that motivated. Help and hope go a long way.No way can anybody work themselves out of holes. The reason I know that is because I applied for one hundred and fifty-eight(15 8)jobs in thirty(3 0) days, with my Master's degree, in the City of Orlando while I was homeless. My resume was all the same, the only thing was different was in the address block it said `homeless.' I didn't get a single interview. So if a guy that has a Master's degree, a couple of Bachelor's degrees and is a US Military Veteran can't get a job, how can somebody with anything less than that work themselves out of their hole? So back to the three (3)things needed, we know there needs to be a point person and we know there needs to be an intense awareness campaign. Getting housing is the first most basic level of stability, and you won't believe the affect it has on all other categories. These people aren't just getting a free house,there is a lot of personal responsibility and work that goes into it, but every success rate goes up. Job training success rates go up, employment goes up, substance abuse success rates go up. These rates don't 3 just incrementally go up, they skyrocket. Shelters are not enough. Albert will never be on the street anymore, and he is in a house and going through alcohol rehabilitation.None of that would be possible with the old system. Mr. Rebman proceeded, The third and final step is the funding. This problem is thrown onto the governments, and I don't think they are the ones primarily responsible. Faith-based organizations are the key ones responsible and are best positioned to help. It can be solved, once we shift the mentality in the community to what our real issue is within our community. Once we let them know the success rates in the other communities and they see it, it's a very powerful thing. The federal government is responsible, along with the state and county governments, for providing enough affordable housing. But the real responsibility to helping people is a social service problem and the government's responsibility for that, in my eyes, is to provide the leadership and framework to do that.Not to spend millions of dollars on new shelters and what not. Assuming everyone is marching to the right tune and collaborating,we must use things that have measurable outcomes. Any time anybody wants to do anything with homelessness,the first question should be `Where did it work?' The big problem we have is we've been throwing money at homelessness for years and years making people comfortable in a bad situation, as opposed to fixing the situation. This is why housing is so important because once we get somebody housed, you don't see them on the street anymore. They aren't panhandling for their next beer,they are in their apartment or home. They are no longer going to cost us the amount of money it costs to have somebody homeless in the City of South Bend. In Orlando,there was a very intensive study done and what we found is doing absolutely nothing, it costs $33,000 per homeless person. These costs come from arrests,jail and booking costs, emergency room visits, all of those types of cost. It adds up in the long run. The library is a defacto day shelter for many of these folks and I could go on and on about the costs. The fact is it's roughly $33,000 per homeless person without doing anything about it. It could be $11,000 per person to case-manage them, in their own home. With a little bit of an upfront investment from the community, we could spend a third of what we're spending already, and house people. The big key is engagement. It is collaboration. Mr. Rebman explained, Stanford University did a study and they went around the nation to each city that had solved social problems well and they tried to find a common thread between the cities. It is called the `collective impact model' now. It means if everyone is moving in the same direction, together, more is accomplished. We can continue looking at this problem the way we have, but it will cost more money and more time in the long run. There are only about one hundred and twenty-five (125) chronically homeless people that need to be housed. That is a very solvable problem. There are a lot of things needed to get there. But, all of those things are here in the community already. There are people that are just as or more knowledgeable than I am. The trick is aligning the right people with the right resources. There isn't one person I have interacted with in South Bend that doesn't want to see a solution to this problem of homelessness. Councilmember Regina Williams-Preston asked, I keep hearing that in South Bend, a lot of the homeless people are actually not from around here. Is that true? Then also we were worried that if we pride ourselves on first-class homelessness care, more will come. Can you touch upon those issues? 4 Suzanna Fritzberg, Deputy Chief of Staff to the Mayor, stated, The best information we have from the service providers is in no way does it reflect their homeless population. By and large, the vast majority of these individuals are from South Bend that have been here for twenty(20) years. Every time you provide services there is a calibration level that is appropriate, but there's not a concern that by us providing services that we will attract more people. Mr. Rebman stated, People say that all the homeless people go to Florida during the winter because it's better weather—that's just not true. It's not true because we do a point and time count every year to find out where people are from. First of all, homeless people are not going to leave their current environment ever. They aren't going to leave their current environment because they know where to get food and that is where their friends are. They don't have the funds to just decide to take a bus somewhere. The only time I see homeless people going from community to community is usually a law enforcement situation. There is no evidence to support either of those claims. Committee Chair Broden asked, What is your experience in grant writing and proposals? Mr. Rebman replied, Emergency shelters are no longer being funded by the federal government because they are unsuccessful. Transitional housing funding is going away next and right now, all the money from the federal government that is currently in place is for housing first initiatives. Committee Chair Broden recessed the meeting for a brief period of time. The meeting reconvened at 7:32 a.m. Mr. Rebman continued, Shelters should be nothing more but a pathway to housing. We need a more permanent solution to housing. Giving people the stability and structure will help those decompress and make better life choices. People that have been homeless for a long time, you are never going to see them. If they are good at being homeless,they are going to be completely off your radar. The only place you will see them at are the feeding programs. The people you see the most are panhandling for other reasons. Most importantly, to one (1)thing I would like people to take away is that this problem is solvable. The only measure of success is whether or not these people are in a house. We want all the dollars to go to getting these individuals housed. And in a lot of communities, the continuum can usually only go so far without having issues. Sometimes a continuum cannot fight for dollars like an individual could. For example Mr. Bailey in Orlando could get up on a soap box and fight for things that were important, where the people in continuum can only do so much of that. There is the talent here in the community already to fix this. There is better collaboration in this community than any other community, even Orlando. South Bend could be a model for the nation. The first step is funding the lead position. The next step is getting an emergency shelter. The key is private dollars. This problem could be solved in eighteen(18)to twenty-four(24)months. Committeemember Karen White thanked Mr. Rebman for collaborating and sharing his ideas. 5 Mr. Rebman replied, Thank you, and I've made a commitment to your community until the end. Your community has the best chance for success than any other community I've been in. With no further business, Committee Chair Broden adjourned the Health and Public Safety Committee meeting at 8:02 a.m. Respectfully Submitted, J . Broden, Committee Chair 6