This response is interesting to me. Why stop at the superficial solution? The photo suggests that some homeless people seem not to have a good place to store their worldly belongings. The response? Lockers! Problem solved! The peasants have no bread? Let them eat cake!

It would seem that the real solution to homelessness is housing. A blanket or a tent or a cot in a shelter or a hot bowl of soup should surely only be a stopgap response. Why not take the bull by the horns and help people find permanent housing and help them find a way to stay there? Then maybe their world doesn't need to fit in a locker.

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Woof!

Knox County is seemingly prepared to spend $100,000 per acre for a dog park, but $85,000 per acre to house the homeless, not so much.

"I fully support dispersed permanently supportive housing solutions for the homeless."

A very progressive idea from Bill Haslam, the progressive choice for Governor.

What does your statement mean? That you support putting addicts out of sight and out of mind so they can continue their drug addiction in apartments rather than on the street? A better plan is ending addiction. Does dispersed permanently supportive housing actually do that? Studies say it doesn't. HUD says there are serious problems.

Housing addicts isn't treating addicts with a goal to sobriety. Treatment is the key and it isn't part of permanently supportive housing solutions. If it were the Seattle Plan wouldn't be the failure it is.

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Seems like solving the housing problem would make it easier to do everything else you are talking about (addiction, mental illness, medical, social reintegration and spiritual needs of the homeless).

Not solving that problem makes it much harder to do anything else.

Housing First is the dominant approach among US cities in dealing with chronic homelessness. It is the one that Knoxville and Knox County chose and endorsed after a long study period a few years ago. Like any other approach it has its advocates and detractors. Once one gets into the academic line of discussion the advocates and detractors often do so on the basis of a greater world view. Here,as the authors of the cited Columbia piece make clear. “In addition, the two paradigms are easily mapped onto contrasting social messages (e.g., “housing is a human right” and “treatment works *”), both of which can have a useful political effect.”

If one holds any approach to a social problem to a bar so high as “All problems for all affected groups are not universally met” or “there are no issues with all subgroups” or “it might not work for all people” then, of course we do nothing, or, rather, we default to the pure emergency shelter approach that, while necessary as a component of any linear approach, is a recipe for continued cycle of failure for human beings and great expense to taxpayers and citizens. Whatever doubts about the efficacy of the housing first model chosen locally might be, they apply to all approaches including the status quo approach. Whatever costs are associated with the housing first approach exist in equal or greater degree with other approaches (San Antonio's is very expensive and unproven). Hence so many communities have chosen this approach and hence both the Bush and Obama HUD offices have supported it.

As Kertesz et al, (cited here as if taking some sort of position in favor of one approach or another) make clear, any community is going to be disappointed if it makes unrealistic claims on the success of the program they use. See below.

“...communities in which they find themselves, rarely pursue just one objective (housing versus recovery). No community is obligated to offer only one form of intervention, and we suggest that it would be harmful for communities to constrain themselves in that fashion..... Researchers and other stakeholders should acknowledge the limitations of what has been shown to date through research and consider the risks of overreach when extending either linear or Housing First approaches to populations for which the data are, at present, insufficient. Not to do so risks long-term disappointment should a program’s results fail to match the public’s expectations.”

* Housing First for Homeless Persons with Active Addiction: Are We Overreaching?
STEFAN G. KERTESZ, KIMBERLY CROUCH, JESSE B. MILBY, ROBERT E. CUSIMANO, and JOSEPH E. SCHUMACHER: Milbank Quarterly, Vol. 87, No. 2, 2009  p. 525.

As interesting as an academic in exile like me finds theoretical battling in academic journals and appreciates the role of Google in making these arguments accessible, the reality is that we will open one site later in the year (Minvilla) and on Tuesday Council will consider approving expenditure of the final funding piece from among federal funds already appropriated for that purpose (Flenniken). The construction and operating of the purely residential component of each of these structures will cash flow without any local taxpayer funds, funded by private equity and programs set up expressly for low income housing. Low income residents will bring with them vouchers to pay the cost of operating the residence.

The residents will live in a facility staffed 24/7 and will have caseworkers on site during the week to help them get the medical and counseling care that will enable them to lead productive lives. VMC will provide the caseworkers. That is the major expense, and that will reflect their movement from emergency shelter to primarily housing as the TYP has effectively worked with all providers to align services. They have instituted the HMIS (Homeless Management Information System) and set in place a system that will provide hope to human beings, remove burdens from emergency providers, hospitals, etc.

Residents are already eligible for Medicaid, Tenncare, and other programs. They will pay for their own food and clothing from among sources that any resident of low income housing does. Some will be employed and obviously will make use of these resources. Caseworkers will make sure they access these services. Without permanent housing none of this is possible. Nobody much argues with that. The different approaches deal with the nature of the housing provided to some at different stages and at what point a person enters permanent supportive housing -- during the treatment cycle or at the beginning to support it.

The scattered site approach, based on involving the private sector, is a key part of this approach. It rejects large, government operated institutional approaches that have failed in other housing settings (Pruit Igoe solutions do not work!).

The underlying metric on all of this – permanent supportive housing with responsibility put on the resident - is personal responsibility. The residents of permanent supportive housing will have to live up to a personal contract or be asked to leave. Personal responsibility is the hallmark of the COK's public policy in the last few years.. legislation against aggressive panhandling and the sit and lie ordinance supplemented with provision of much better space with behavioral requirements. These have provided improvement, marginal as it might be, to a situation that had spun completely out of control and was sapping lives without providing any element of hope.

Every one of these initiatives has had and will have significant opposition, some based on ideology, some on some other less grounded principles, some based on mistrust, and some based on whatever activates a person to object - other agendas involving some of the parties, dislike of the folks currently in office, etc. It is just not possible, or desirable, to tackle anything as difficult as this problem without engaging public disagreement and debate and it really does not matter what animates the disagreement.

For better or worse we have to deal with this issue. Ever since the the society moved against the notion of involuntary institutionalization local governments have been led to bear the burden of national and state inaction. We simply must call on the better angels of our nature to address it.

There is a difference between an external situation that causes, usually temporary, homelessness and persistent conditions, like mental illness, that cause frequent, repeated, long-term episodes (chronic) as the TYP targets. Maybe we've learned a few things since 1998...

The money issue has stood out from the time I started looking at this issue.

Three hundred thousand for the Teaberry land seemed hard to believe. Still does. The corporate structure and non profit status of the numerous groups involved with the TYP seem to be a great way to get around the Sunshine law and keep the general public away from the books, but not in the taxpayers best interest.

The refusal of the TYP officials to consider infrastructure also signals money problems. I'm currently wondering if this present fast tracking is anything more than a ploy to cash in on stimulus moneys. When the short term funding dries up, who will be stuck holding the bill to pay for the ongoing expenses of this project? Haslam is leaving. What does he care?

I am also curious as to whether these construction projects are paying their workers prevailing wages ( as is often a requirement with public money) or are they driving down the prevailing wage by paying below that level. Without open books, it's hard to know just exactly how these people are operating.

I've said this before, but it bears repeating. Done properly, housing first can benefit the neighborhoods it locates in and the Knoxville community as a whole. With our greenway system and local climate we already have a cheap, mostly completed transportation infrastructure system in place. I don't think that the solutions to homelessness are out of reach and impossible, but I do think the present people in charge are either incompetent, lazy, corrupt, or just too plain arrogant and full of themselves to make this plan work. At least that's the image they're portraying.

it is a good article - not unexpected from matt taibbi, one of the best investigative journalists in the country. he writes:

the world's grandest toilet — "the Taj Mahal of sewer-treatment plants" is how one county worker put it

knoxville is actually building one of these on bernard off no. central street, just down the block from "downtown north." it's in its third year of construction, surely one of the biggest (in complexity and cost) projects in town.

For argument's sake, let's take your premise for analysis. Let's say there are no direct monetary savings in police costs. There are still the same number of police officers on patrol. Even with that assumed, there's still the consideration of opportunity costs. What are those officers doing with their time? Right now an officer might be taking several hours of his shift to book in a homeless serial inebriate, only to repeat the process a few days later, and again a few days after that. What is the impact if that inebriate is diverted from the judicial system and is no longer on the streets requiring repeated arrests for causing a public nuisance? That police officer is freed up to do other things. Even if he's just patrolling through your neighborhood, there's a real value to having him spending his time being visible, possibly preventing criminal activity, as opposed to hanging out at the detention center, filing paperwork for the 37th time on the same serial inebriate.

answer: none of the above.

Address the macroeconomic conditions that created this wave of new homelessness since the 1980s. Knoxville can't do it. A national movement of Ten Year Plans won't do it. It will make the do-gooders feel good, but until you control the pipeline of chronic homeless--caused mainly by poverty, addiction, and massive cuts in spending on affordable housing programs--you're not going to get a change in the fundamental levels of homelessness. We're trying to bail water out of the Titanic with teacups.

Achieving greater access to affordable housing would be a step in the right direction of reducing the number of chronic homeless. More Section 8? maybe. probably cheaper and faster.

Required reading...The new social contract: America's journey from welfare state to police state By Joseph Dillon Davey.

Pay particular attention to Chapter Three: The New Homelessness: The Reagan Legacy.

In a nation like the United States, with its strong Calvinist tradition, a problem like homelessness is almost always viewed as a failure of individual character rather than as a natural outgrowth of macroeconomic dislocations or ill-conceived political policies.

What is the new Social Contract?

Those kinds of questions don't get answered here. Some people don't even consider them questions.

Don't get me wrong, I think you ask very valid questions and I hope for the city's sake you get them. But don't be shocked if you get slammed for daring to ask.

"So to me, the assertion from VMC's Ginnie Weatherstone at the City Council meeting on Tuesday night that VMC could handle the expense of 44 Case Managers, with annual salaries of $55,000 each, to the tune of $2,420,000 yearly for all of the Housing First-Permanent Supportive Housing Units needed for the Ten Year Plan, is an Amazing Outrage."

To quote another commenter, "That is the elephant in the room".

Tuesday night was a desperate play to save a failed plan. What people are talking about today is that the Ten Year Plan has no plan to provide any therapeutic addiction or psychiatric services. Tuesday night the real work was summarily subcontracted to the Federal Government, TennCare, and VMC.

It got worse Tuesday night. They said it will cost Knoxville City taxpayers zero, nada, nothing. They really thought people believed them. You would think that would be a front page story, but the KNS missed it somehow.

So be clear, after Tuesday night the Ten Year Plan builds buildings. That is it.

For VMC to claim they will receive enough private money to fund the 44 case managers in beyond fantasy. White elephants will fly before VMC can fund $2.4 million dollars a year.

As far as TenCare funding therapeutic addiction or psychiatric services. If Ashley Manes cannot get TennCare funding, then how in the hell will homeless drug addicts?

They didn't insult the peoples intelligence Tuesday night. They assume the people have no intelligence.

NASHVILLE — Gov. Phil Bredesen proposes shrinking overall TennCare spending by another $860 million in the coming year, and Ashley Manes is, indirectly, one small part of that plan.

The 14-year-old Knoxville girl, a quadriplegic whose life depends on a ventilator and multiple medications because of a traffic accident 10 years ago, has been deemed ineligible for continued TennCare coverage, according to Joe Manes, her father.

"Is there anything we can agree on?"

Did you see the City Council meeting Tuesday? If so, based on that meeting, would you agree the Ten Year Plan is about building buildings?

I saw that the actual goal, helping the homeless patients, had not been given much thought as to who would provide the needed therapeutic addiction/psychiatric services, where they would be provided, and who would pay for them.

And they are patients, not residents. The idea that they get to stay on drugs as long as they don't get caught by the cops isn't going to help fund raising much.

I think this should go back to the drawing board. It doesn't make sense. At the last second we learn that the Ten Year Plan does nothing but select sites and builds buildings. After five years that is shocking.

This town owes the Teaberry Lane people a huge thanks. They dug into this and exposed a plan that isn't a plan at all. Just the case managers for the two sites that have been approved require $214,200 a year. That is much more than the City provides VMC now. Do we really believe that people will donate to VMC after Tuesday night's meeting?

Tuesday night proved this is unsustainable. Considering that Jon Lawler is not capable of answering a direct question, maybe part the problem is obvious. And that same problem extends to Madeline Rogero. Who made a really strong case as to why she should not run for City Mayor.

And on that note, do you believe this?

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Guess we should ask Bud what he thinks of the Ten Year Plan.

"Units could be secured ad hoc as the need arose and they would be distributed throughout the community - never having the opportunity to become part of the "homeless culture"."

I challenge you to a discussion.

Continue with your out of the box thought process on, "never having the opportunity to become part of the "homeless culture"."

And?

You're trying to get us all in trouble by thinking coherently and coming up with real world workable solutions aren't you?

I also had a thought. If we're going to put a homeless facility in west Knoxville let's put it in the N.E. corner of the McMurray farm. (I think that is the name of the farm at the corner of Kingston Pike and Cedar Bluff) With some paint and a little traffic light adjustment, there is access to the green way system from Farragut to West town , sidewalks, a hospital, grocery stores, jobs, hell there's even a strip club and a liquor store to appease those that consider these sorts of things vital. The are also two strong churches (one whose mission is to help those in recovery) within walking distance. It's the best place I've found.

Since getting involved in this process, I find myself looking at every piece of vacant property I see and wondering, "Would it work here? Why? Why not?"

I would agree that the KNS comments section is the functional equivalent of that particular article. That woman has a problem with in depth, objective reporting.

Did you watch City Council last week? Guess not, or you would know.

So now that we know that Sobriety is not a requirement for the residents of the Ten Year Plan's Housing Units, lets put one with the Kids at Lakeshore, Yeah, Great Idea

Knoxville councilman wants to prohibit housing for homeless in Lakeshore Park

See you all Tuesday night at 7:00PM at the City Council Meeting in the Main Assembly Room of the City County Building. I wouldn't miss it.