 I'm Leslie McVane. Welcome to CTN member highlights. Today my guests are Dana Totman, the president and CEO of Avesta Housing. Hi Dana. Hi. And Mark Swan, who is the executive director of Preble Street. Welcome to both of you. And today we're gonna talk about housing first, which is something I'm just sort of learning about. And maybe you can explain it and then talk about how you've combined forces on this project. Sure. I'll start. Housing first is you know simply put it's the solution to chronic homelessness and it's the it's the best work we've ever done. You know when we opened Logan Place 12 years ago now that was sort of a light bulb moment for the organization, for me personally. Okay we can really do something here to put a stop to what had been an increasing number of people at the shelter. We could actually reverse that and we did when we opened Logan Place. And really it's kind of a simple model but it's also complex. Up till this model you know what happened was when somebody was homeless they needed to be housing ready and they needed to sort of have a lot of things in place before there was any housing programs available to them. They needed to be seeing a case manager. They needed to be to have a Medicaid card. They needed to be sober. They needed an employment plan. They needed all these signs of stability that we would all want like they're all good things. It sounds overwhelming. Well for some people you know and it is important to say for 80% of the people who come into our shelters that works and you know within three weeks they're out of the shelter. I mean I don't think most people know that but you know the average person coming into our soup kitchen or our shelter is out of that system within three weeks. But it's the chronically homeless at 15 or 20% that are just stuck. They're stuck in the shelter and so we might want them to get sober. We might want them to have all these pieces of stability in place but they don't. And it's really because of untreated mental illness and really deep, deep addictions that are also untreated. So they're not able, their functioning level is such that they're not going to take all those steps. So they're stuck in shelters for years, decades even and their lives are tragic and sad. So the housing first model real quick is to sort of reverse put that all in its head and say well rather than have all these things in place we're gonna give you an opportunity for housing first and then work on these other issues. And then you know once you're stable, once you have housing, once you have a sacred place called home you can start to heal. Yeah. And maybe at that point you can get sober, you can get help, you can start to deal with your long-term mental illness and we found it works. It's been a miracle. It is, it's a great, great approach and program. We'll talk a little bit more about what community means and what the services are after we talked to Dana a little bit about how you and Mark got together. Sure. In 2003 we moved our offices from Gorham to downtown Portland at the corner of Cumberland Ave and Elm Street. And I had known Mark and Prebble Street throughout my career, particularly when I was working at Main State Housing Authority. So we started having coffee regularly at the public market when it was open across the street and we were kind of kicking around ideas and essentially we landed on this idea that let's try to do a housing first development. And what it really did is it brought I think two organizations that kind of stuck to what they did well and brought that to the table. And so Prebble Street clearly knows how to work with clients, how to advocate on their behalf, how to serve them, how to be good social workers, how to do case management. We don't know how to do that. We know how to develop housing, we know how to build housing, we know how to manage housing, but we don't do sort of direct person-to-person work. So we brought what we thought was their strength with our strength and came upon this idea. We sort of made an agreement early on that this is going to be housing for us. We know there are going to be opportunities to, well, how about if we give you this money and you build it, but we want the people to be sober when they move in? Or how about if we give you this money but we want you to only allow them to stay six months? Each layer of money would bring different restrictions and we said, no, we're not going to take those opportunities and we're going to stay true to what we're trying to do here so that we can really serve those that have been homeless for the longest periods of time and to get them into housing. And so we kind of brought our two organizations together and spent about three years planning and designing and conceiving Logan Place, which opened in 2005 and now we've done Florence House and Houston Commons as well. But I think the key to our relationship is Preble Street doesn't really do and know how to do housing development and they're far stronger at serving people's needs directly than we are, so we bring the best of what we have together and stay true to what our objectives are. And the newest project is Houston? Houston Commons. And that is going to have 24-hour services available for the people who are living there? Yep, all the programs do. They have 24-hour social work staff to support people and be there if and when they need help and support and to just really help build a community and that's one of the beautiful things about this model that we've seen at the first two and we're starting to see already at Houston Commons is people really do kind of develop relationships and watch out for each other and the tenants take ownership of the building of the facility of the neighborhood at Logan Place. The tenants there for ten years now have planted tulips the whole length of the street just to beautify the whole neighborhood and really the sort of empowerment that happens is just a beautiful thing to watch. And they become family to each other and I was reading on the web page for Logan Place about sort of the progression the first year, the second year, the third year and then the art the tenants art started coming up on the walls. I mean they really embraced it and how lovely is that? It really is and what a lot of people don't realize is the staff that are there and that was critical that they be there 24 hours. Much of them their the staff presence is to help folks succeed and develop that sense of community but at the same time people's previous lives before moving in to Logan Place or Florence House or Houston Commons has been kind of living on the streets and living in a unhealthy environment perhaps with relationships that that aren't healthy or contributing to to one's success in any means and so while they're trying to create new community they're also kind of letting go of another community not a very good one but so those those staff sometimes have to kind of keep former friends from visiting and disrupting what now is a new life and oftentimes the residents themselves don't have the strength or the confidence to say no you can't visit now and no you can't come do that here but that staff will and they'll sort of help protect those those new residents so they're kind of letting go of a unhealthy life on the streets and starting this new community which really does have some magic to it whether it's you know a super bowl pool on the wall of picking the numbers or watching the Kentucky Derby or the Oscars they they have sort of wonderful social events in those those communities that's very precious and I know that at Florence House anyway and maybe the other two places they do have emergency beds Florence House is a little different because it's for women and that's a unique situation and a very important one for a woman to be alone on the street can be very dangerous not that it isn't for a man but the women have a few more challenges oh absolutely there their vulnerability is ratcheted up you know quite a bit we know more than half the women that we serve at Florence House have a history of recent domestic violence and or sexual abuse on the street while trying to survive I mean it's it's a very vulnerable group and Florence House is a little different it's it's got the housing first apartments but it also has an emergency shelter component to it as well as a safe haven program which are for women primarily who are suffering from long-term untreated mental illness who are on the streets for years and as much as we're hoping and wanting them to get into the housing first apartments they're they're still reluctant to do so so rather than just rely on a shelter bed we've built sort of semi-private spaces half walls it's really quite designed quite well where they have their own place to kind of that they can count on every night first of all but they can also make their own they can nest a little bit they can put pictures up on the walls there's a bureau for them so it's it's not a shelter bed but it's not quite an apartment but they're going to be there they'll be safe it'll be their space every night with the ultimate goal and it does happen sometimes that they do end up moving into an apartment because they built trust they've built relationships with the staff and when an apartment becomes available we're hopeful that we can convince them to move in there's kind of an arc to it now with the housing first how do how do you select who's going in and also how long a period can people stay there is it as long as they need or forever or how does that work I'll answer the second part and Mark can answer the first part people can stay there for as long as they want so long as they abide by the the rules and the lease terms and and it's working so this is intended to be permanent housing for for those that were chronically homeless and some do have their lives get into a better order and are able to move on and live independently some oftentimes unfortunately end up passing away in in their unit here moving on to a long-term care because they do have many the residents have a number of physical illnesses that we've discovered somewhat surprisingly after they moved in but the intent is that this is their home in most cases they could never manage an apartment larger than the efficiency apartment they have and at the same time they do very well in this sense of this community with that level of support there and in most cases they would not succeed back on the streets living independently they need this level of support so they can stay as long as they can in fact we have 85 different developments out of Vesta housing for for seniors and for a workforce and for a variety of folks and our longest term tenants tend to be at these these three three developments so people tend to stay longer there which is a bit then it is good yeah the the number one reason that people have left these housing first apartments is because they've died um it is we actually had five deaths at Logan place just last year out of 30 apartments which i think speaks to the the the vulnerability of these folks and the level of you know years and years of untreated medical issues um but your question of how do we decide it is one of the hardest things we do at public street it's it's wrenching the list for the 30 units at houston commons i think it ended up at about 120 people who met the met the criteria of chronically homeless in years on the street and basically we looked at the 30 most vulnerable you know we didn't cream we didn't take people we thought would be successful we took people who were the most in need with medical issues psychiatric issues substance abuse problems and really we're almost playing god like who are the 30 people that we're going to save here um because it is a lifesaving opportunity for people it would be so hard we need five more housing first developments yeah tomorrow okay well get busy we're trying we will what what a lot of people don't realize is how much money we save by keeping the residents out of the emergency rooms out of jail the the the cost savings um associated with these developments is just incredible and we really have having extensive data that just demonstrates it costs far less to house somebody than it does to not house them um so it really obviously it saves lives and changes lives dramatically but the cost savings to the community to the state to to our governments is just incredible and that's the reeducation of the public that we need to do to to make them understand our policy makers that's really need to understand this so main is one of the very few states in the country that has not really endorsed and adopted and supported this model and we were very discouraged we had a bill for housing first funding this past session and went through the legislature we got a it was passed but the governor vetoed it and the legislature did not override the veto so well the it steps backwards yeah it is happening in the state over and over again well i thank you both for what you do and you need to come on again because this wasn't long enough we need to talk more there's so much more to to let people know about and we will do that thank you thanks for having us thanks thank you