David H. Lukenbill: Scatter homeless housing; don’t concentrate sites
By David H. Lukenbill - Special to The Bee
Published 12:00 am PDT Thursday, April 10, 2008
Most people in Sacramento are concerned about how best to help the homeless. All of us hope and pray that the unfortunate folks struggling without homes, and their associated problems, will someday be helped into being able to live a life of security and health.
We at American River Parkway Preservation Society are no exception to this concern, particularly how it impacts the American River Parkway and the adjacent communities.
Helping the homeless is often a devil's bargain, as those who work in the field know all too well, and we can generally divide the homeless into three groups.
First, those who are willing to work and just need some help in getting back on their feet, but have not yet developed the capacity to do so.
Second, those who are mentally ill, require long-term housing and treatment, and generally cannot do much about their situation without medical help.
Finally, those who are alcoholics, addicts (though some would include these in the second group) and petty criminals, who generally will not cooperate with programs offered to them.
Recently, our local government decided to become part of the national 10-year plan to reduce chronic homelessness – a combination of the second and third groups. A key part of the plan is the adoption of the "housing first" model.
Our organization is a supporter of the housing first approach to helping the chronic homeless.
Housing first is built on the common-sense concept that until homeless people are actually housed, they will not have the internal resources to devote toward rebuilding their life.
Housing first specifies two methods of implementation. One is housing and services concentrated in one area, and the other is housing scattered in individual units throughout the community with services delivered by treatment teams.
The concentrated method is particularly destructive of the communities it is housed in, and the examples in the various neighborhoods in our community bear that out.
A recent article in The Bee noted that a south Sacramento neighborhood is concerned about concentrated homeless housing moving into a converted 74-unit apartment complex. They are right to feel concern, as the complex will quite possibly degrade their neighborhood as the concentration of homeless services has degraded the 12th Street and Richards Boulevard area.
The impact of those concentrated services has been spilling over into illegal camping in the parkway, aggressive panhandlers on the K Street Mall and increased crime in both areas.
The other major benefit in the scattered-site approach is that the homeless, rather than being surrounded by other homeless who, in effect, help create and maintain the very same failure-oriented situation they are trying to escape from, are scattered into neighborhoods of regular folks whose influence is much more salutary.
