You can see it today on the streets of San Francisco’s Tenderloin district, said Philip Mangano, director of the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness.
You will be able to see it in a couple of years around Denver’s Triangle Park, promised Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper.
Actually, it’s what you don’t and won’t see: the huddled masses of the homeless.
A report that Mangano’s group released Wednesday said the number of chronically homeless in America is decreasing and proclaimed: “Efforts to reduce chronic homelessness are producing results that are visible, measurable, quantifiable. …”
Well, sort of.
Mangano is right that the country has undergone a “mind-set change” about homelessness from a few years ago. Then, he said, “the best we could do was a bowl of soup and a blanket.”
But the move away from “three hots and a cot” will take time. In Denver for a National Leadership Summit on homelessness, Mangano conceded that those who must see to believe might have to wait a couple of years.
Communities across the nation are developing 10-year plans to end homelessness, Mangano said. Those plans must be given time to work. “In the first year, you might not see much difference,” he said in an interview Thursday. “In San Francisco, they’re in their second year of a plan, and there are quantifiable differences. Not as many homeless people are in the Tenderloin because they are in permanent housing.”
Hickenlooper predicted that Denver’s 10-year plan to end homelessness will render similar results around Triangle Park, where hundreds of homeless mill daily while waiting for nearby shelters to open.
“You will see less shopping carts overflowing with stuff,” the mayor said.
Denver’s most recent census showed homelessness in the metro area down 11 percent. Those who are left still cluster in the city. Hickenlooper remained upbeat. The old way of dealing with homelessness, he said, was “to accept a social disgrace that turned out to be economic madness.” Success meant passing out more free meals each year.
Thursday, Hickenlooper hyped stats from the Housing First program. They show that 77 of the first 100 hard-core homeless people placed in permanent housing with access to medical and social services are still there one year later.
Roxane White, Denver’s manager of human services, said average monthly income of Housing First participants had gone from $185 a month when they entered the program to $431 a month today.
Subsidizing their nonemergency medical care, housing and counseling for a year runs $14,385 per person, White said, while a case of indigent emergency medical care averages $29,000.
This is why Mangano placed Denver “in the first tier to end homelessness.” What the city is doing, he said, “is based on common sense and dollars and cents.”
That makes a great sound bite. The trick will be turning a pilot program into general consumption. Making it work for 100 people is a far cry from making it work for several thousand.
Mangano, who has devoted 25 years to finding solutions to homelessness, believes in “permanent supportive housing.” That means housing, plus medical and social services. Roughly 20 percent of the homeless consume 50 percent of the money spent on services, Mangano said. Turn around the toughest cases, and you have momentum to tip the scales.
White said Denver has created 354 permanent supportive housing units since July. It will need several times that to make the city’s 10-year plan work.
On the other hand, as the number of hard-core homeless drops, the balance shifts. Hickenlooper likened it to a concept by scientist Jared Diamond called “creeping normalcy.” Expectations rise or fall little by little based on what people see happening. That’s why changes around Triangle Park in Denver are as important as changes in San Francisco’s Tenderloin. Both signal hope or despair.
Not only to the people passing by, but to the people living on the streets.
Jim Spencer’s column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. He can be reached at 303-820-1771 or jspencer@denverpost.com.
