What are the housing options for those overcoming homelessness?
At Springs Rescue Mission, our top priority is helping men and women find pathways our of homelessness. The ultimate benchmark of this endeavor is seeing individuals succeed in our shelter programs and move on to permanent housing.While permanent housing may sometimes refer to an apartment or single-family home, there are many transitional and supportive housing options for those working to overcome homelessness.In this article, we take a look at four different types of housing for former guests of Springs Rescue Mission.
Sober Living
For men and women in recovery — especially those who’ve recently completed a rehabilitation program — a sober living environment and community is of vital importance.Most sober living houses are structured around a faith-based or 12-step structure and include requirements to encourage sobriety from drugs and alcohol.A sober living house is an interim step on the path to sobriety where people recovering from addiction can live in a supervised and sober environment with structure and rules, i.e. mandatory curfews, chores and therapeutic meetings. In many cases, successfully maintaining sobriety requires patients to alter everything about their previous lives when they were actively addicted to alcohol and other drugs. This could include changing jobs, eliminating friends, and even abandoning loved ones who are deemed toxic to their sobriety.The typical requirements of sober living homes include:• No drugs, alcohol, violence, or overnight guests• Active participation in recovery meetings• Random drug and alcohol tests• On-time guest fee payments• Involvement in either work, school, or an outpatient program• General acceptance by peer groupSLHs have been shown to improve recovery outcomes when utilized in conjunction with 12-step programs. Residences providing a highly structured schedule of activities tend to dramatically improve the likelihood of long-term sobriety.
Supportive Housing
Supportive housing is a combination of housing and services intended as a cost-effective way to help people live more stable and productive lives.Supportive housing is widely believed to work well for those who face the most complex challenges—individuals and families confronted with homelessness and who also have very low incomes and/or serious, persistent issues that may include substance use disorders (including alcoholism), mental health, HIV/AIDS, chronic illness, diverse disabilities or other serious challenges to stable housing. Supportive housing can be coupled with such social services as job training, life skills training, alcohol and substance use disorder treatment, community support services and case management to populations in need of assistance. Supportive housing is intended to be a pragmatic solution that helps people have better lives while reducing, to the extent feasible, the overall cost of care. As community housing, supportive housing can be developed as mixed income, scattered site housing not only through the traditional route of low income and building complexes.As a widely supported means to address homelessness (i.e., lack of a place to live or adequate housing), supportive housing seeks to address two key problems:• Without housing, there is at best a highly problematic basis from which to mitigate the factors which lead to homelessness (e.g., lack of adequate income) and expensive problems which burden social service systems.• Without supportive services, the tenant is likely to regress (have a difficult time) for the reasons that are presumed by service providers and government to lead to their loss of housing in the first place.• In the capacity building context, support services can be integral to maintaining the housing, the tenant or cooperative relationships, the financial and economic security, the contribution to the family and neighborhoods, and the growth opportunities to return to a valued life situation.
Transitional Housing
Transitional housing is temporary housing for certain segments of the homeless population, including working homeless people who are earning too little money to afford long-term housing. Transitional housing is set up to transition residents into permanent, affordable housing. It is not in an emergency homeless shelter, but usually a room or apartment in a residence with support services.The transitional time can be short, for example one or two years, and in that time the person must file for and get permanent housing and usually some gainful employment or income, even if Social Security or assistance. Sometimes, the transitional housing residence program charges a room and board fee, maybe 30% of an individual's income, which is sometimes partially or fully refunded after the person procures a permanent place to live in. In the USA, federal funding for transitional housing programs was originally allocated in the McKinney–Vento Homeless Assistance Act of 1986.An example of Transitional Housing designed specifically for youth is the Foyer model. Providers generally provide a combination of affordable accommodation with vocational, work, and counseling opportunities.
Permanent Supportive Housing
Permanent supportive housing is a proven solution to homelessness for the most vulnerable chronically homeless people. It pairs housing with case management and supportive services.Permanent supportive housing is an intervention that combines affordable housing assistance with voluntary support services to address the needs of chronically homeless people. The services are designed to build independent living and tenancy skills and connect people with community-based health care, treatment and employment services.How Permanent Supportive Housing Can End Chronic HomelessnessInvestments in permanent supportive housing have helped decrease the number of chronically homeless individuals by 20 percent since 2007. In addition to ending homelessness for people who are chronically homeless, research has demonstrated that permanent supportive housing can also increase housing stability and improve health.A cost-effective solution, permanent supportive housing has been shown to lower public costs associated with the use of crisis services such as shelters, hospitals, jails and prisons.
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