Somewhere in Lansing there’s a chronically homeless man walking around who — over the years — has cost the city of Lansing more than a million dollars and who is still no better off than he was when he first became homeless, says Joan Jackson Johnson, the city’s director of human relations and community resources.
“We call him the million-dollar man,” Johnson told the Lansing City Council during last spring’s budget deliberations.
And, she said, there’s more than one of them. She reckons there are about four or five. She refers to them as “the million-dollar individuals.”
Considering the ongoing budget crisis that our state has been grappling with over the past several years -- which has since trickled down to local units of government -- it's upsetting to think that so much money has been spent on chronically homeless individuals, with so little to show for it.
Ms. Johnson explains:
The chronically homeless wander the streets until a citizen complains, Johnson explained. Maybe they’re urinating in public, or acting strangely, or loitering. The police show up and may issue them tickets. Then they typically bounce from hospital to court to shelters to temporary treatment programs, gobbling up taxpayer dollars along the way.
In the end — because none of these are permanent, long-term solutions — these people end up back on the street with nothing to show for it except unpaid tickets and hospital bills.
[Johnson] says the bottom line is to get the chronically homeless off the streets permanently and into treatment. She’s proposed developing a “homeless initiative” that will do just that.
“There’s this whole vicious cycle,” Johnson explained during a recent telephone interview. “Everything we do for them is crisis oriented. It’s a Band-Aid treatment at its best, over an oozing sore. We have a lot of people that really bleed the system.”
We're with Ms. Johnson up to a point. The program she's proposing sounds like it's meant to be a form of "tough love":
Her homeless initiative is in the very early stages, Johnson stressed, and isn‘t completely worked out yet. Initially she wants to track about 15 to 20 chronically homeless people to see how much money is actually spent on them. Later, after a long-term way to help them is worked out, if they won’t voluntarily cooperate, Johnson envisions forcing them to get help by threatening them with jail time. She says her initiative is modeled after a San Diego program that she says worked with 17 people and saved that city $1.6 million in one year of operation.
“We’re trying to help motivate some of the chronically homeless,” she said. Because their lives are so difficult, sometimes they just give up, she added.
The threat of jail time might be a bit harsh, but the current system clearly isn't working either.
Susan Cancro is the executive director of Advent House Ministries, an area faith-based organization that helps the homeless. She says a survey taken about a year ago showed that there are about 400 homeless people living in Lansing. She estimates that about 50 to 80 of them are considered chronically homeless.
Cancro said she too believes there are “million-dollar” individuals in Lansing, “because they use the system so much.” A lot of them suffer from mental health problems, she continued. “They clearly can’t function in the community.”
Cancro agrees that something new is needed to push them into a different way of thinking and acting, although she says jail isn‘t the place for them.
I think we're with Susan on this one, but it's good to know that decision-makers are at least acknowledging the problem:
Councilwoman Carol Wood said whether she or the rest of the Council will support Johnson’s homeless initiative beyond the $15,000 in this year’s budget isn’t certain.
“It would depend on what the program is,” Wood said. “Part of what I would like to see is a holistic view. Part of the problem is it becomes a revolving door.”
Ah, the money issue again. Well, for the umpteenth time, this leads us back to the same old argument for why our state needs to invest in the Michigan Housing and Community Development Fund.
If we want to grow our economy, we need to make sure folks have access to affordable housing -- and chronic homelessness falls under this umbrella as well. That's why our friends at the Michigan Coalition Against Homelessness are also partners in the Living in Michigan campaign.
Yes, the state budget is tight. However, we can't continue to acknowledge that our current way of dealing with homeless citizens isn't working, without taking the time to invest in sustainable solutions that can help break the cycle of chronic homelessness.