Using change to battle homelessness
- May 11, 2015
- / Mollye Barrows
- / government
As the Pensacola City Council prepares for a special workshop May 11, to discuss solutions to panhandling and homelessness, one gulf coast community is successfully addressing the same issues.
The City of Mobile has made some big changes when it comes to addressing the needs of the homeless. That city’s an anti-panhandling/public awareness campaign has seen a big drop in panhandling complaints and arrests. Lt. Billie Rowland spearheaded the effort, targeting downtown Mobile, in late 2013.
[caption id="attachment_22982" align="alignright" width="300"]
A sign with meter which is part of the Feed the Meter, Feed the Hungry campaign at Cathedral Squire in Mobile, Al. Monday, May 4, 2015. (Michael Spooneybarger/ Pensacola Today)[/caption]
It’s called “Give Change to Make a Change.”
“Before we started the program, downtown alone we arrested 629 vagrants,” said Rowland. “Some were repeat offenders, but there were actually 629 arrests. That’s unacceptable. You can’t arrest your way out of the problem.”
Arrests have since dropped by almost half, 313 fewer arrests, including those for panhandling.
Modeling the campaign after similar ones in Denver and Nashville, Rowland was intent on addressing the ongoing complaints of panhandling and public drunkenness in the downtown area.
“If you’re coming in to bring business to this community and you walk through the park and the first thing you are approached or panhandled or see a drunk passed out on the sidewalk, that doesn’t reflect well on the community,” said Rowland.
“We have to address it from that perspective as well as the fear of crime, which is more than actual crime, when people think, ‘Oh there’s nothing but bums downtown,’ when that’s not true.”
Effort coordinates business, residents, advocates
The Studer Community Institute will be talking to the city council about a similar campaign planned for the Pensacola area, called “A Better Way to Give.”
It will also discourage people from giving to panhandlers, encourage them to give to a homeless trust fund, and raise awareness about the difference between panhandlers and the different faces of homelessness.
[caption id="attachment_22983" align="alignright" width="300"]
A meter which is part of the Feed the Meter, Feed the Hungry campaign at Cathedral Squire in Mobile, Al. Monday, May 4, 2015. (Michael Spooneybarger/ Pensacola Today)[/caption]
In Mobile, the plan has the support of residents, business owners and homeless service providers alike. The campaign discourages people from giving their spare change to panhandlers and instead feeding it into three specially painted parking meters, where the money will be given to homeless service providers.
“It’s not making a lot of money, it’s made well over $1,000, but that’s three meters,” said Rowland. “If we get three more, what are we going to be able to provide? The thing that was really telling was the decrease in the number of panhandling complaints.”
Plans are in the works to add three more meters.
Elisie Poche, is a bar owner who lives and works in downtown Mobile. She works with police to support the panhandling prohibition campaign and asked local artists to paint the parking meters and help them stand out.
“In our business, at the bar, we see it a lot. Vagrants are coming by and customers are out enjoying their cocktail and somebody asks them for money,” Poche says. “This is a way they can feel good about giving.”
Poche, who is from Mobile, describes a eye-opening moment with a panhandler overseas that changed her view of charitable giving. She was in South Africa when a young woman approached her, frantically begging for 50 cents to catch a bus to a women’s shelter and escape an abusive boyfriend.
“How do you not help somebody like that?” Poche says. “So we dug in our pockets and gave her some money. And the next day I saw her strung out on glue and I said, ‘I paid for that.’ And I said, ‘that is the last time, I can’t.’ It’s not helping.”
[caption id="attachment_22980" align="alignleft" width="450"]
Lt. B.L. Rowland with the Mobile Police Department and Elise Poche with the latest meter to be placed downtown as part of their Feed the Meter, Feed the Hungry campaign at Cathedral Squire in Mobile, Al. Monday, May 4, 2015. (Michael Spooneybarger/ Pensacola Today)[/caption]
Making giving better
Eric Jefferson is the chief executive officer for Housing First, Inc., the lead agency coordinating homeless services in the Mobile area. He couldn’t be happier with the initiative.
“What it did for us, is it truly helped identify those individuals that were homeless, and those individuals who were just panhandling,” Jefferson says. “In most communities we see homeless as those folks who are asking for money, and that may or may not be the case.”
The effort helped identify people who were need and funnel them through a day center where they could get help.
Jefferson also credits the improvement to Mobile’s new coordinated assessment approach to homelessness. Now any homeless service provider, agency or program that helps the homeless is directed to one agency to better coordinate service. That agency is 15 Place, in downtown Mobile, the assessment center for Mobile’s Housing First Homeless Coalition.
[caption id="attachment_22985" align="aligncenter" width="850"]
A man checks the message board at 15 Place housing and homeless shelter in Mobile, Al. Monday, May 4, 2015. (Michael Spooneybarger/ Pensacola Today) Place housing and homeless shelter in Mobile, Al. Monday, May 4, 2015. (Michael Spooneybarger/ Pensacola Today)[/caption]
Before 15 Place, a homeless person who sought services was referred to multiple places, which meant using their limited resources to make multiple stops.
It was hugely inefficient for both the agencies providing services and the folks seeking them.
Taking his lead from the federal mandate that homeless service providers utilize grant money to get people off the street, Jefferson pushed providers to use the same web-based software and take a Housing First approach to services.
[sidebar]
Eric Jefferson of Housing First Inc. at 15 Place housing and homeless shelter in Mobile, Al. Monday, May 4, 2015. (Michael Spooneybarger/ Pensacola Today)[/caption]
Emily Head helps run 15 Place and works with the providers under the Housing First umbrella. The coordinated assessment approach also holds service providers accountable for the grant dollars they spend.
Since Housing First started using the coordinated assessment approach last August, nearly 1,400 people have come through intake. Jefferson says the data they’re collecting reveals “that 90 percent of those folks, if they had affordable housing or rapid rehousing, they wouldn’t need any other services.”
As a result, Mobile’s Housing First coalition is utilizing emergency grant money that has taken the city’s homeless veterans off the streets, as well as the chronically homeless, those individuals who have been homeless over a year or are in and out of homelessness.
Jefferson says the improved efficiency is also saving money.
“That cost comparative is that if we don’t house them and allow them to stay on the streets, we’re spending about $23 million when we multiply the cost per our 640 homeless individuals. If we house them, we spend $2.7 million,” Jefferson says.
Jefferson says the success of the coordinated assessment approach also contributes to the success of public awareness campaigns like Give Change to Make a Change.
“That helps tremendously with everybody becoming aware and saying, ‘if I feed the meter we’re helping these agencies do this work,’” said Jefferson.
A sign with meter which is part of the Feed the Meter, Feed the Hungry campaign at Cathedral Squire in Mobile, Al. Monday, May 4, 2015. (Michael Spooneybarger/ Pensacola Today)[/caption]
It’s called “Give Change to Make a Change.”
“Before we started the program, downtown alone we arrested 629 vagrants,” said Rowland. “Some were repeat offenders, but there were actually 629 arrests. That’s unacceptable. You can’t arrest your way out of the problem.”
Arrests have since dropped by almost half, 313 fewer arrests, including those for panhandling.
Modeling the campaign after similar ones in Denver and Nashville, Rowland was intent on addressing the ongoing complaints of panhandling and public drunkenness in the downtown area.
“If you’re coming in to bring business to this community and you walk through the park and the first thing you are approached or panhandled or see a drunk passed out on the sidewalk, that doesn’t reflect well on the community,” said Rowland.
“We have to address it from that perspective as well as the fear of crime, which is more than actual crime, when people think, ‘Oh there’s nothing but bums downtown,’ when that’s not true.”
Effort coordinates business, residents, advocates
The Studer Community Institute will be talking to the city council about a similar campaign planned for the Pensacola area, called “A Better Way to Give.”
It will also discourage people from giving to panhandlers, encourage them to give to a homeless trust fund, and raise awareness about the difference between panhandlers and the different faces of homelessness.
[caption id="attachment_22983" align="alignright" width="300"]
A meter which is part of the Feed the Meter, Feed the Hungry campaign at Cathedral Squire in Mobile, Al. Monday, May 4, 2015. (Michael Spooneybarger/ Pensacola Today)[/caption]
In Mobile, the plan has the support of residents, business owners and homeless service providers alike. The campaign discourages people from giving their spare change to panhandlers and instead feeding it into three specially painted parking meters, where the money will be given to homeless service providers.
“It’s not making a lot of money, it’s made well over $1,000, but that’s three meters,” said Rowland. “If we get three more, what are we going to be able to provide? The thing that was really telling was the decrease in the number of panhandling complaints.”
Plans are in the works to add three more meters.
Elisie Poche, is a bar owner who lives and works in downtown Mobile. She works with police to support the panhandling prohibition campaign and asked local artists to paint the parking meters and help them stand out.
“In our business, at the bar, we see it a lot. Vagrants are coming by and customers are out enjoying their cocktail and somebody asks them for money,” Poche says. “This is a way they can feel good about giving.”
Poche, who is from Mobile, describes a eye-opening moment with a panhandler overseas that changed her view of charitable giving. She was in South Africa when a young woman approached her, frantically begging for 50 cents to catch a bus to a women’s shelter and escape an abusive boyfriend.
“How do you not help somebody like that?” Poche says. “So we dug in our pockets and gave her some money. And the next day I saw her strung out on glue and I said, ‘I paid for that.’ And I said, ‘that is the last time, I can’t.’ It’s not helping.”
[caption id="attachment_22980" align="alignleft" width="450"]
Lt. B.L. Rowland with the Mobile Police Department and Elise Poche with the latest meter to be placed downtown as part of their Feed the Meter, Feed the Hungry campaign at Cathedral Squire in Mobile, Al. Monday, May 4, 2015. (Michael Spooneybarger/ Pensacola Today)[/caption]
Making giving better
Eric Jefferson is the chief executive officer for Housing First, Inc., the lead agency coordinating homeless services in the Mobile area. He couldn’t be happier with the initiative.
“What it did for us, is it truly helped identify those individuals that were homeless, and those individuals who were just panhandling,” Jefferson says. “In most communities we see homeless as those folks who are asking for money, and that may or may not be the case.”
The effort helped identify people who were need and funnel them through a day center where they could get help.
Jefferson also credits the improvement to Mobile’s new coordinated assessment approach to homelessness. Now any homeless service provider, agency or program that helps the homeless is directed to one agency to better coordinate service. That agency is 15 Place, in downtown Mobile, the assessment center for Mobile’s Housing First Homeless Coalition.
[caption id="attachment_22985" align="aligncenter" width="850"]
A man checks the message board at 15 Place housing and homeless shelter in Mobile, Al. Monday, May 4, 2015. (Michael Spooneybarger/ Pensacola Today) Place housing and homeless shelter in Mobile, Al. Monday, May 4, 2015. (Michael Spooneybarger/ Pensacola Today)[/caption]
Before 15 Place, a homeless person who sought services was referred to multiple places, which meant using their limited resources to make multiple stops.
It was hugely inefficient for both the agencies providing services and the folks seeking them.
Taking his lead from the federal mandate that homeless service providers utilize grant money to get people off the street, Jefferson pushed providers to use the same web-based software and take a Housing First approach to services.
[sidebar]
Pensacola City Council workshop
— Pensacola City Hall, 222 W. Main St. Hagler Mason Conference Room, second floor.
— Meeting begins with agenda conference at 3:30 p.m. Monday, May 11.
[/sidebar]
If they didn’t, they would lose their federal HUD dollars, grant money Housing First distributed. “That has been the downfall of all of the homeless programs,” Jefferson says. “We all work independently and we’re all not working the same way to get this issue solved, because I believe it’s solvable. You’re going to always have some homeless, but the majority of the folks that we’re seeing, we can do something to help them.” Housing First’s success Housing First is an approach that offers housing as quickly as possible for individuals and families experiencing homelessness and then provides the supportive services to help people become more self-sufficient. It prioritizes the most vulnerable, from chronic homeless and veterans, to battered women, children, and those struggling to keep the homes they’re in. [caption id="attachment_22991" align="alignright" width="450"]
Eric Jefferson of Housing First Inc. at 15 Place housing and homeless shelter in Mobile, Al. Monday, May 4, 2015. (Michael Spooneybarger/ Pensacola Today)[/caption]
Emily Head helps run 15 Place and works with the providers under the Housing First umbrella. The coordinated assessment approach also holds service providers accountable for the grant dollars they spend.
Since Housing First started using the coordinated assessment approach last August, nearly 1,400 people have come through intake. Jefferson says the data they’re collecting reveals “that 90 percent of those folks, if they had affordable housing or rapid rehousing, they wouldn’t need any other services.”
As a result, Mobile’s Housing First coalition is utilizing emergency grant money that has taken the city’s homeless veterans off the streets, as well as the chronically homeless, those individuals who have been homeless over a year or are in and out of homelessness.
Jefferson says the improved efficiency is also saving money.
“That cost comparative is that if we don’t house them and allow them to stay on the streets, we’re spending about $23 million when we multiply the cost per our 640 homeless individuals. If we house them, we spend $2.7 million,” Jefferson says.
Jefferson says the success of the coordinated assessment approach also contributes to the success of public awareness campaigns like Give Change to Make a Change.
“That helps tremendously with everybody becoming aware and saying, ‘if I feed the meter we’re helping these agencies do this work,’” said Jefferson.
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