Catholic san Francisco
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Serving San Francisco, Marin and the Peninsula
Pope John Paul II on the last day of his 12-day vacation in the northern Italian Alps. On July 17, he returned to his summer villa, Castel Gandolfo, south of Rome. The Pope leaves Aug. 14 -15 to visit the Shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes in France.
San Francisco changes it approach to focus on ‘chronic homeless’ By Jack Smith
A
diverse 33-member commission has proposed and Mayor Gavin Newsom has approved an ambitious ten-year plan to end chronic homelessness in San Francisco. The San Francisco Ten Year Planning Council was convened in March under the leadership of former Board of Supervisors President Angela Alioto as part of Newsom’s public campaign commitment to find innovative solutions to the most intransigent forms of homelessness in San Francisco. The council and its subcommittees representing the business community, social service providers, homeless advocates, religious leaders and political officials met 85 times in just under four months before presenting their plan June 30 to Mayor Newsom. In a letter to the Mayor, Alioto outlined the purpose and focus of the report. She said San Francisco has “some of the most incredible human beings who give so unselfishly of themselves to help the poor and yet we remain unable to take the poor off the streets and into housing.” Brian Cahill, director of Catholic Charities CYO, served on the Council and as a member of the prevention and discharge planning sub-committee. He was impressed with the dedication and seriousness of council
members and the leadership of Alioto. As a long time participant and observer in battles over homeless policy he said the diversity of the Council served an important role in getting people “facing each other that usually don’t.” The broad goal outlined in the Coucil’s report is to identify the most chronically homeless, remove them from the streets, and place them in permanent supportive housing, with the emphasis on “housing first.” The report says the “Housing First model is a radical departure” from the “continuum of care” model in force for nearly two decades in San Francisco. The former strategy of “separating the provision of services from the provision of housing – has not worked,” the report says. Of the $200 million spent in San Francisco each year on various direct and related services to 15,000 homeless people, 63 percent is spent on 3,000 individuals categorized as “chronic homeless.” These 3,000 derive little permanent benefit from the expense and disproportionately absorb scarce dollars available to addressing general homelessness problems, the report finds. It proposes by 2010 to remove the most chronic homeless from emergency shelters, transitional housing and the streets and place them in permanent housing with coordinated, welltracked and individualized support. The report defines a “chronically homeless per-
son as an unaccompanied disabled individual who has been sleeping in one or more places not meant for human habitation or in one or more emergency homeless shelters for over one year or who has had four or more periods of homelessness over three years.” Disabilities suffered by the chronic homeless are both physical and mental and are often exacerbated by a drug or alcohol abuse problem. Under the current system, the report finds, the emphasis has been to “stabilize the individual with a variety of services before permanent housing placement.” In practice, this has meant poor monitoring in the provision of services, duplication of services, non-coordination of services, and provision of inappropriate services leading to increased cost and ineffective care. In addition, with the lack of stable housing, county jail and emergency rooms become the effective and expensive housing for chronic homeless cycling in and out of services and crisis situations. The method of providing “housing first” followed by the provision of coordinated services has worked well in other cities, including New York and Atlanta, and has also been successfully demonstrated in San Francisco through the relatively small Department of Public HOMELESSNESS, page 19
INSIDE THIS WEEK’S EDITION Pope on Uganda, Sudan . . . 3 News-in-brief . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Families and immigration . . 8 Bay Area Catholicism. . 12-13 Editorial & columnists . 14-15 Archbishop’s Column . . . . . 17
Visit to All Hallows
Epiphany pastors
‘Door on the Floor’
Free trade issue . . . . . . . . . 18
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www.catholic-sf.org
July 30, 2004
FIFTY CENTS
VOLUME 6
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No. 24