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Inside Houston’s successful strategy to reduce homelessness
A lot of bad luck led 62-year-old Army veteran Julie Blow to homelessness – a serious kidney issues, a fall that cost her the sight in one eye, two surgeries. Blow couldn’t work, and ran out of money.
And now? She has an apartment; brand-new furniture donated by a local retailer; and a TV. The 320-sq.-ft. studio is nothing fancy, but for Blow, it’s a luxury after the tent where she had been living. “I feel like a teenager, I am that happy!” she said. “You know, before all the stuff happens to you in life and you get jaded? I feel like a teenager!”
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For Houston, it’s one more piece of evidence that its strategy for solving its homelessness problem works. Kelly Young, who heads Houston’s Coalition for the Homeless, says it’s a model that the rest of the nation should look at and follow. “We were one of the worst in the nation to begin with, in 2011, 2012,” Young said. “And now, we’re considered one of the best.”
What happened? In 2012, the city went all-in on a concept called “Housing First.” Since then, homelessness is down 63% in the greater Houston area, and more than 30,000 people have been housed.
Housing First means spend money on getting the unhoused into their own apartments, subsidize their rent, then provide the services needed to stabilize their lives – not fix the person first; not just add more shelter beds.
“Our natural instinct when we see homelessness increasing is to hire more outreach workers and to build more shelter beds,” said Mandy Chapman Semple, the architect of Houston’s success story. She now advises other cities on how to replicate it, among them Dallas, New Orleans, and Oklahoma City. “The idea that if you have no permanent place to live, that you’re also going to be able to transform and tackle complex mental health issues, addiction issues, complex financial issues? It’s just unrealistic.”
In Houston, step one was convincing dozens of unconnected agencies, all trying to do everything, to join forces under a single umbrella organization: The Way Home, run by the Houston Coalition for the Homeless.
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So, for example, when outreach coordinators visit a homeless encampment, Jessalyn Dimonno is able to plug everything she learned into a system-wide database, logging in real time where people are staying.
Houston has dismantled 127 homeless encampments, but only after housing had been found for all of the occupants. So far this year, The Way Home has already housed more than 750 people. It helps that this city, unlike many, has a supply of relatively affordable apartments, and that it was able to use roughly $100 million in COVID aid to help pay for rentals, on top of its other homeless relief dollars.
But Houston’s message is this: What’s really essential to success is committing to homes, not just managing homelessness.
“What Houston has done for this country is, it’s established a playbook that now allows any city to do the same, because we’ve proven that it can be done,” Chapman Semple said.
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Story produced by Sara Kugel. Editor: Carol Ross.
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NEW YORK — Former New York Gov. David Paterson and his stepson were attacked in New York City on Friday night, authorities said.
The incident occurred just before 9 p.m. on Second Avenue near East 96th Street on the Upper East Side, according to the New York City Police Department.
Police said officers were sent to the scene after an assault was reported. When officers arrived, police say they found a 20-year-old man suffering from facial injuries and a 70-year-old man who had head pain. Both victims were taken to a local hospital in stable condition.
In a statement, a spokesperson for the former governor said the two were attacked while “taking a walk around the block near their home by some individuals that had a previous interaction with his stepson.”
The spokesperson said that they were injured “but were able to fight off their attackers.”
Both were taken to Cornell Hospital “as a precaution,” he added.
Police said no arrests have been made and the investigation is ongoing.
The 70-year-old Paterson, a Democrat, served as governor from 2008 to 2010, stepping into the post after the resignation of Eliot Spitzer following his prostitution scandal. He made history at the time as the state’s first-ever Black and legally blind governor.
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A 17-year-old boy was critically injured and a person is in custody after a gunman opened fire on a SEPTA bus in North Philadelphia Friday evening, police said.
At around 6:15 p.m., Philadelphia police were notified about a shooting on a SEPTA bus traveling on Allegheny Avenue near 3rd and 4th streets in North Philadelphia, Inspector D F Pace told CBS News Philadelphia.
There were an estimated 30 people on the bus at the time of the shooting, Pace said, but only the 17-year-old boy was believed to have been shot. Investigators said they believe it was a targeted attack on the teenager and that he was shot in the back of the bus at close range.
According to Pace, the SEPTA bus driver alerted a control center about the shooting, which then relayed the message to Philadelphia police, who responded to the scene shortly.
Officers arrived at the scene and found at least one spent shell casing and blood on the bus, but no shooting victim, Pace said. Investigators later discovered the 17-year-old had been taken to Temple University Hospital where he is said to be in critical condition, according to police.
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Through their preliminary investigation, police learned those involved in the SEPTA shooting may have fled in a silver-colored Kia.
Authorities then found a car matching the description of the Kia speeding in the area and a pursuit began, Pace said. Police got help from a PPD helicopter as they followed the Kia, which ended up crashing at 5th and Greenwood streets in East Mount Airy. Pace said the Kia crashed into a parked car.
The driver of the crashed car ran away but police were still able to take them into custody, Pace said.
Investigators believe there was a second person involved in the shooting who ran from the car before it crashed. Police said they believe this person escaped near Allegheny Avenue and 4th Street, leaving a coat behind.
According to Pace, police also found a gun and a group of spent shell casings believed to be involved in the shooting in the same area.
“It’s very possible that there may have been a shooting inside the bus and also shots fired from outside of the bus toward the bus,” Pace said, “We’re still trying to piece all that together at this time.”
This is an active investigation and police are reviewing surveillance footage from the SEPTA bus.