It also means that we provide access to a wide array of housing options, based on personal choices and level of care required. From independent living in apartments that are integrated into the community to a specialized facility serving people with mental illness, addiction disorders, and/or HIV/AIDS, PfP has long recognized the need for choices when it comes to where a person calls “home.”

Places for People has always considered safe and stable housing for its clients to be the first priority and currently offers a variety of housing options:

• Assistance finding, establishing, and maintaining affordable and safe independent housing within the community
• PfP-owned and operated emergency or short-term independent housing for clients who were recently homeless
• West Pine Group Home: the first psychiatric group home in Missouri
• CJ’s Place: a safe, secure congregate setting for people living with mental illness co-occurring with substance abuse disorders, some of whom also have HIV/AIDS

A core value of our agency is that services should be individualized. That means, in part, listening to clients’ goals and wishes, including housing preferences. PfP works with each client to find a good fit between the resources available to the client and the desired housing environment. PfP also works closely with the client to identify and overcome any obstacles that have prevented the client from retaining housing of choice in the past.

Also, as Executive Director of PfP Francie Broderick puts it, “Different people need different things.” A vast majority of PfP clients, she says, move directly to apartments. However, a small minority has experienced difficulties in independent settings.

“We recognize that most people can and want to live in their own apartments. But we also recognize that when it hasn’t worked repeatedly, maybe for some people different options are better. And so we believe in an array of choices,” Broderick explains.

This clear vision has guided PfP from the start, even while housing theories endorsed by the Department of Mental Health have swung from one extreme to the other.

A Brief History of Housing Theory

Initially following the upheaval of deinstitutionalization, the Community Placement Program was established to place people discharged from psychiatric hospitals. Many people went straight into nursing homes or boarding houses. Client choice was not a high priority, so people who did not want to go where they were placed often wound up homeless.

Recognizing that placement of former State Hospital clients in nursing homes was essentially exchanging one institutional setting for another, the state of Missouri during the 70s and 80s adopted a new model: continuum of care. The goal of this model was to identify a series of housing stages–ranging from most to least restrictive–through which a client would move after meeting specific benchmarks. The end goal was independent housing.

There was a litany of problems with the system that led to a backlash: it was inflexible; it did not reflect the cyclical nature of mental illness; it forced people who could be paranoid and anxious around others to live in congregate settings; the skills “learned” in one stage did not transfer well to the next; and it devalued the right of the individual to choose his or her living environment.

In the early 90s, the backlash took the form of a dramatic paradigm shift: “The pendulum swung completely in the other direction,” says Broderick. “And suddenly no more congregate housing was going to be good. No more provider-owned housing was good. Everybody had to be living in independent housing of their own.”

Though the theory of supported housing, as it is known, is good and remains a value at PfP, there are practical pitfalls to declaring a ban on all congregate housing.

“The reality is some people are not sustaining housing like that,” says Broderick. “And so people are living in congregate settings–in jails, in shelters, and on the streets. And which is better?”

Today and the Future

PfP was ahead of the times in recognizing the need for group home and specialized supported-housing facilities, even while continually championing the value of independent housing. The state is now also recognizing the value of an array of housing options, for several reasons:

• The high cost of providing services to high-need individuals in independent settings
• Insufficient development of affordable housing
• Hospitals becoming backlogged with court-ordered clients with mental illness

At Places for People, they never have been.

Labels: Affordable Housing, Agency Philosophy, Fall - 2008

Pieces of a Puzzle: PfP’s Housing Array Seeks Right Fit for Clients  

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Affordable Housing: A Challenge for People Living with Disabilities

The monthly fair market rent for an efficiency apartment in St. Louis is $547. This presents an extraordinary challenge to most PfP clients who receive $654 in disability benefits each month. This amount must be stretched to cover rent, groceries, utilities, medication, transportation, clothing, etc.

On average, PfP clients receive a total of $654 in disability benefits each month. Finding affordable, safe housing at that level of income is becoming harder and harder.

St. Louis housing stock, which used to be plentiful and fairly affordable is becomingly increasingly out of reach for many people living with disabilities. In the early 90's, changes in mental health policy precluded many mental health providers from developing their own housing, making it difficult to house increasing numbers of individuals seeking assistance.

During the same time, there had been limited interest among developers in providing low cost housing for people with disabilities. In addition, when landlords have many people vying for vacancies, they are less motivated to rent to people with disabilities or people who need to have housing subsidies to afford the rent.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Fair Market Rent on an efficiency apartment in the city of St. Louis has risen from $323 in 2000 to $547 in 2007, a 41% increase.

PfP's community support workers provide assistance with finding, securing and maintaining affordable housing for clients who are especially vulnerable to losing housing. When many of the Medicaid billing options that once paid for finding and setting up independent apartments were eliminated, PfP continued to provide these services to clients at no charge.

PfP also provides free moving and money-management services. These services, which are underwritten entirely by donations, is critical for people living on an extremely tight budget.

Labels: Affordable Housing, Housing First, Summer 2007

Affordable Housing: A Challenge for People Living with Disabilities  

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