Effort to house veterans highlights broader need, associated costs

Austin Mayor Lee Leffingwell issued a challenge Oct. 15 to end veteran homelessness in the city by the end of 2015.

There are 176 homeless veterans in Austin, according to Leffingwell. The challenge comes after a call from President Barack Obama encouraging U.S. cities to house all veterans.

"As a veteran myself and as an American, I believe we owe a debt to those brave men and women, frankly a debt that can never be repaid, and we must address this issue," Leffingwell said.

The goal can best be accomplished by partnering with and helping Austin nonprofit organizations that are already working to achieve the feat, Leffingwell said.

The veteran population has changed greatly in the past few years, said Christa Noland, executive director of Green Doors, a nonprofit that creates housing for the homeless with a focus on helping veterans.

"There are so many young guys coming out of recent service and a drastic increase in female veterans," Noland said.

The effort sheds light on Austin's overall homeless population, approximately 1,987 individuals, according to the last count conducted by Ending Community Homeless Coalition, or ECHO.

From housing to homeless

Coping with a stressful and unexpected situation and the inability to deal with that pressure causes many people to go from stable housing to homelessness, said Kay Klotz, communications and development director for nonprofit Front Steps, which tries to help homeless individuals settle in stable housing. Front Steps is also the parent organization for Austin Resource Center for the Homeless, or ARCH, a downtown shelter on the corner of East Seventh and Neches streets.

"We have a lot of people [at ARCH] that work full-time, but they can't afford housing," Klotz said. "Everyone here is a person, and something has happened they weren't planning on."

Stable housing is difficult to achieve in Austin when working 40 hours a week at the federal minimum wage of $7.25, said Richard Troxell with local advocacy group House the Homeless. Many workers are not even receiving full-time hours because, if they did, their employer would be required to provide full health care benefits, he said.

Obstacles for the homeless

"Once you become homeless, you're in such a traumatized, stressful state that it's hard to think logically and make rational plans," said Susan Kirby, a grant writer who helps find money to fund initiatives at Front Steps. "Most people I don't think are aware of the fact that homeless people are really stressed and can't deal with an addiction or getting a job until they have somewhere stable and safe to live."

Finding a job and gathering enough money to find new housing proves to be a huge hurdle for the homeless, Troxell said.

"Half of the [homeless] people are so disabled they can't work, and the other half are able to work," he said. "They have no opportunity to work because employers want someone more stable, and the homeless will always be at the end of the line."

Homeless people are also more vulnerable to building a criminal history because of city ordinances that discourage homeless loitering, such as not being allowed to lay on a sidewalk or sit on a curb—regular activities for someone living on the street, said Jo Kathryn Quinn, executive director of nonprofit Caritas of Austin. Caritas provides services to homeless people with the ultimate goal of getting them in stable housing.

"Getting a homeless person back into housing is hard because the market is driving this environment where if you have any kind of blemish on your record, any kind of credit blemish or criminal history at all, then you go to the bottom of a landlord's list," Quinn said. "You may not even be on a landlord's list."

The Austin Police Department also deals with repeat offenses by homeless individuals such as soliciting, public urination, public alcohol consumption, and smoking in prohibited areas, Cpl. Chris Carlisle said. In Austin it is also illegal to ask for anything of value between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m., Carlisle said.

"[People] shouldn't feel threatened just by walking by a homeless person," Carlisle said. "That's the wrong thought pattern to go by. Just because a person is homeless doesn't make them a threat. It would depend on other circumstances; if they're being loud or boisterous or threatening or looking at somebody odd, then someone would have the right to feel unsafe."

Someone with a less-than-perfect past can still be a responsible tenant should he or she gain access to stable housing, Quinn said.

"Housing someone with a criminal history is not a risk," she said. "I rarely see these tenants fail to work out. Our experience at Caritas has been once someone gets stable housing and the support services to maintain stable housing, they're able to [be a good tenant]. We have an 85 percent success rate, actually."

Cost of homelessness

Homeless individuals who have had run-ins with law are the ones that need stable housing the most, Quinn said.

"Do you want them to be stable, or do you want them roaming the streets? What is in our public safety interest? Of course it's for the person to be stable, and yet our system is set up in such a way that that person has a very, very hard time becoming stable because of the barriers we keep in front of them," she said.

Taxpayer money is used to fund homeless individuals' hospital visits and courtroom proceedings instead of finding them a home, Quinn said.

"They're costing us because they're interacting with the police, they're going to jail, they're going to a mental hospital when they have a breakdown, they're riding in an ambulance and they're going to an emergency room," she said. "Those are all very, very expensive things. We pay for that."

During the course of a year, a homeless person consumes about $40,000 in taxpayer dollars through shelter stays, emergency room visits, attending legal proceedings or through trouble with the law, according to the city's Department of Housing and Urban Development. For Caritas to house a chronically homeless person and provide supportive services, it would cost about $14,000 to $20,000 per homeless person per year, Quinn said.

How you can help

Seeing a panhandler with a cardboard sign that reads, "Anything helps" is a typical sight in Austin. Instead of handing that person change or a few dollars, Quinn said it is better to give donations to a nonprofit that helps the homeless.

"It's more effective to give it to an organization, and that's not to be disrespectful to the person; it's just to say that we can leverage that $5 [one might give to a homeless individual] in a way that the individual can't," Quinn said. "There's no way for you to know the person is going to spend that $5 in a responsible way. Often you're enabling someone to continue a habit that actually keeps them on the streets, a substance abuse disease that they have."

For instance, giving a panhandler $5 could get him or her $5 worth of food, but donating to an organization such as Caritas helps give that person $15 worth of food from its food pantry, Quinn said.

Seventy-four percent of participants in a 2008 panhandling study conducted by The University of Texas reported making $50 or less on a "good day" from asking for money on the side of a road. Working an eight-hour day on minimum wage would earn $58, the study found.

Even though holding such signs is against the solicitation law when done between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m., many still panhandle because there are not enough law enforcement personnel to stop it, Carlisle said.

"A lot of the people you see flying the signs are chemically dependent or have mental health issues, and it's not just that they're homeless; there are things that have led to the homelessness," Carlisle said.

Most people who are actually homeless, Noland said, do not typically panhandle.

"Most of the people that come to our programs would never hold a sign," she said. "We're serving more of the homeless people that you don't usually see a lot of them when they finally hit the door they're so humbled or ashamed or embarrassed to be in the situation they're in. They've been so beat down they don't even feel worthy of the help."

Those seeking help at Caritas, Front Steps, Green Doors and many other area nonprofit organizations are ready to leave behind their vices that may keep them in a homeless state, Quinn said.

"We're all at a different place in our journey, and the person is ready to do things differently for themselves," Quinn said. "Someone that you encounter on the street may not be ready to do things differently."