Supportive Housing for New Orleans: A Plan to Eliminate ...



Welcoming Home People with Disabilities:

A Plan to Create 2,000 Units

of Permanent Supportive Housing

for New Orleans and Jefferson Parish

For More Information, Contact:

Martha J. Kegel, Executive Director: mkegel@

In partnership with city agencies, state agencies, and many local and national nonprofit organizations, UNITY has developed a plan to welcome home people with disabilities who are experiencing homelessness or at risk of homelessness in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Prior to Katrina’s devastation, the City of New Orleans was working on a plan to accomplish the goal of ending chronic homelessness – the long-term homelessness of vulnerable persons with disabilities, in keeping with the President’s goal of ending chronic homelessness in 10 years by creating 150,000 units of Permanent Supportive Housing. Katrina’s catastrophic flooding of New Orleans has led to widespread homelessness beyond that which already existed, including the tragedy of thousands of low-income persons with disabilities losing their homes. The greater New Orleans area can create a national model for ending and preventing homelessness by ensuring that all disabled New Orleanians have a safe, decent, affordable home linked to community services in their beloved city. To reach this goal will require constructing at least 2,000 units of Permanent Supportive Housing scattered throughout New Orleans and Jefferson Parish. Another 1,000 units would be constructed elsewhere in the Go-Zone. This housing would serve individuals with special needs who would typically face homelessness. Most of the housing would target individuals but some of the units would serve families.

Background

In city after city, supportive housing has proven itself to be overwhelmingly successful: a cost effective, community-friendly alternative to shelters and missions which enables individuals to remain stably housed and achieve increasingly greater levels of self sufficiency. Supportive housing, by definition, is permanent affordable rental housing linked to services (health, mental health, employment, etc.) required to help individuals rebuild their lives after homelessness, institutional care or other disruptions. It has been successfully combined within mixed income, mixed use developments, with the supportive housing residents making up 50-60 percent of a building’s tenancy, and the remaining apartments set aside for low wage workers. Typically, an on-site staff would see that tenants have the assistance and support needed to address health and employment issues and navigate the process of securing benefits and accessing work. Other models, ranging from shared homes to scattered site apartments, have also been successfully employed, utilizing a variety of mobile service models.

In national studies, supportive housing has proven to be far less costly than shelters, hospital stays and other emergency responses to homelessness. In one New York City study, placement in supportive housing for formerly homeless mentally ill tenants was associated with a reduction of $16,282 in services expenditures per housing unit. Especially when targeted to very frail individuals who are frequent users of hospital and mental health services, supportive housing produces substantial reductions in public expenditures on emergency and institutional care.

Plan for Supportive Housing in Greater New Orleans

Community leaders, advocates, governmental officials, as well as housing and services providers have come together to ensure that Permanent Supportive Housing will be made available to people with special needs affected by Hurricane Katrina and the devastating levee failures that ensued. This plan was conceived with support from officials of the Louisiana Recovery Authority, Metropolitan Human Services District, Jefferson Parish Human Services Authority, Louisiana Housing Finance Agency, Housing Committee of the Bring New Orleans Back Commission, Catholic Charities Archdiocese of Greater New Orleans, Volunteers of America, Louisiana Advocacy Coalition for the Homeless, Advocacy Center, National Alliance to End Homelessness, Technical Assistance Collaborative, Common Ground Community, National Low-Income Housing Coalition and many other local, state and national partners including the Louisiana Supportive Housing Coalition, which UNITY helped to spearhead and for which we provide staffing.

The plan calls for partnerships by which governmental agencies, nonprofit organizations, and for-profit developers will develop 2,000 new units of Permanent Supportive Housing for people with special needs in New Orleans and Jefferson Parish, with priority given to those who are homeless and especially to those who are chronically homeless. The housing would be available to persons with serious and persistent mental illness, substance abuse disorders, developmental disabilities, chronic physical illness or disability, HIV/AIDS, as well as to the elderly and at-risk youth. An additional 1,000 units would be located elsewhere in the Go-Zone.

Permanent Supportive Housing Models

One model will be single purpose supportive housing buildings, which are generally designed with studio or efficiency (one room, with private bath and kitchenette) apartments appropriate for a single person. Common spaces may include rooms for tenant gatherings, an on-site property management office, and social service offices. Single purpose supportive housing buildings come in all sizes, from six-unit buildings in lower density neighborhoods, to hundreds of units in denser urban high rise neighborhoods. New Orleans will require a range of building types and sizes to reach its goal. These decisions will in part be driven by available land and building sites. Appropriate building sites are those accessible to services (shopping, medical) and transportation.

A second model to be used will be set-asides of supportive housing for a number of apartments in new mixed-income housing developments. A third model will be very small buildings of 1-10 units in which all or some of the units are supportive housing. A fourth model will consist of providing rent subsidies for existing apartments owned by private landlords throughout the city.

Financing

New Orleans has the unique opportunity to use rebuilding resources to create housing that meets the special needs of people with disabilities and the elderly.

Capital: Low Income Housing Tax Credits will be the major financing tool. Federal HOME, Housing Opportunities for People with AIDS (HOPWA), McKinney-Vento Supportive Housing Program funds, and Community Development Block Grant funds may also provide capital to projects. Where possible, the Historic Rehabilitation Tax Credit will also be used to secure private equity investment.

Operating: To implement this important housing initiative, project based rental subsidies are needed in order to ensure that the housing is available to the target population: disabled or elderly people at or below 30 percent of median income who are either homeless or at risk of becoming homeless. The Louisiana Road Home Plan was funded to provide these subsidies. However, Project-based Section 8 subsidies also are needed in order to ensure that persons with 0-20 percent of Area Median Income can access the supportive housing.

Services: The Louisiana Road Home Program has five years of funding for supportive services for the Supportive Housing. A strategy has been developed to ensure that Medicaid can pay for these supportive services on an ongoing basis at the end of the five years.

Implementation

Securing buildings to convert into supportive housing, or land for the construction of supportive housing is a top priority. Building the capacity of local nonprofit organizations to develop and operate supportive housing and provide effective supportive services to keep vulnerable people housed must be undertaken immediately.

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UNITY

of Greater New Orleans

A Collaborative of 60 Agencies

Working to End Homelessness

Bringing New Orleans Home

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