Homelessness in Toledo and Lucas County

A Comprehensive Community Needs Assessment and

Action Plan

June 2004

Toledo Homeless Task Force

This report was prepared by Matt White, principal partner of Matt White Consulting, for the City of Toledo, Department of Community and Economic Development. Permission to copy, disseminate or otherwise use information from this report is granted provided that attribution is given to City of Toledo, Department of Community and Economic Development 2004.

Matt White

Matt White Consulting

316 West Second Avenue

Columbus, Ohio

(614) 291-0832

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Acknowledgements

The City of Toledo, Department of Community and Economic Development, gratefully acknowledges the contributions of the following individuals and organizations to the Comprehensive Community Needs Assessment and Action Plan:

Toledo Homeless Task Force Members

Louis Escobar, Toledo City Council, Task Force Chairperson

Paula Baldoni, Community Member

Cedric Ball, Owens Corning

Ginger Bass, ADAS Board

Cindy Bland, TMACOG

Vivan Bush, Lucas County Children’s Services

Susan Choe, ABLE

Mike Craun, Neighborhood Health Association

Hugh Daley, Ohio Department of Rehabilitation & Corrections

Beth Frisinger, Downtown Toledo, Inc.

Linda Heinemann, United Way

Ken Leslie, Community Member

Joyce P. Litten, Lourdes College

Jackie Martin, Mental Health Board of Lucas County

Kathy Mehl, TMACOG

John Miga, Owens Community College

Diane Ninke, Owens Community College

Debbie Paul, Toledo Edison

Mary Price, Toledo Area Alliance to End Homelessness

Maja Reed, Toledo Area Alliance to End Homelessness

Carol Rehm, Lucas County Job & Family Services

Jeff Rhodes, Lucas County Metropolitan Housing Authority

Susan Rowe, House of Representatives Marcy Kaptur’s Office

Sharon Rappaport, Central City Ministries of Toledo

Chardell Russell, Office of Lucas County Commissioner Tina Skeldon-Wozniak

Dean Sparks, Lucas County Children’s Services

City of Toledo, Department of Community and Economic Development

Veronica Burkhardt

DeWayne Dade

Steven Seaton

Presenters
Ruth Arden, St. Paul’s Community Center
Maja Reed, FOCUS
Sally Luken, Corporation for Supportive Housing
Dan Rogers, Cherry Street Mission
John Hoover, Neighborhood Properties, Inc. / Consultant
Matt White


Special acknowledgement is given to Louis Escobar, City Council President. Council President Escobar first envisioned this initiative as a comprehensive community planning process to develop a solution-oriented response to homelessness in the Toledo and Lucas County community. In 1999 the City Council authorized an Ad Hoc Committee on Homelessness to “advise and recommend the best practice of a comprehensive, coordinated and inclusive approach for homeless providers and funders of homeless services to maximize and leverage existing resources so as to strategically address the problems of homelessness in the City of Toledo.” With Council President Escobar’s commitment, vision, and strategic leadership, the City Council, the Office of the Mayor, and the greater Toledo community have realized their initial goals.

Carrying out the vision and mission of Councilman Escobar is the Toledo Area Alliance to End Homelessness (TAAEH), Toledo’s strongest advocate for the homeless, a network of social service agencies that represent shelters, transitional and permanent housing, substance abuse services, healthcare, outreach, homeless prevention and other supportive services. TAAEH has been more active in recent years, bringing the Homeless Management Information System (HMIS) to fruition and hiring an administrator, one of the goals as described in detail within this Report.

This Report represents the fruition of Louis Escobar’s original vision and TAAEH’s commitment to address root causes of homelessness through sustainable systemic change involving coordinated decision making, resource development and funding.

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Contents

1.  Executive Summary 1

2.  Introduction and Background 5

3.  Community Context 7

4.  Profile of Homelessness in Lucas County 10

5.  Needs of Homeless Sub-Populations 15

6.  Assessment of Lucas County Continuum of Care 19

7.  Strategic Action Plan 29

Appendix 1 – Needs Assessment Survey Tool 35

Appendix 2 – Service Provider Bed Data 42

Notes 43

Tables

Table 1 – Rental Market Apartment Units and Vacancies, February 2004 8

Table 2 – Rent and Vacancies Analysis – Studio Apartments, February 2004 8

Table 3 – Rent and Vacancies Analysis – 1-Bedroom Apartments, February 2004 9

Table 4 – Rent and Vacancies Analysis – 2-Bedroom Apartments, February 2004. 9

Table 5 – Rent and Vacancies Analysis – 3-Bedroom Apartments, February 2004 9

Table 6 – Ranges of Homelessness Estimates for Toledo/Lucas County 11

Table 7 – Toledo/Lucas County General Homeless Trends in 2003 (Individuals) 11

Table 8 – Toledo/Lucas County General Homeless Trends in 2003 (Households) 12

Table 9 – General Homeless Demographic Profile 14

Table 10 – Rates of Behavioral Health Issues for Toledo Homeless Persons 18

Table 11 – Inventory of Continuum of Care Beds, 2004 20

Table 12 – Annual Emergency Shelter Bed Capacity 23

Table 13 –Need for Additional Emergency Shelter Beds 23

Table 14 – Projected Transitional and Permanent Supportive Housing Need 25

Table 15 – Annual Transitional Housing Capacity Based on Current Inventory 25

Table 16 – Need for Additional Transitional Housing Beds 26

Table 17 – Annual Permanent Supportive Housing Capacity Based on Inventory 27

Table 18 – Need for Additional Permanent Supportive Housing Beds/Units 27

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Executive Summary

Toledo and Lucas County have made great progress over the years in providing support and services to individuals and families who find themselves in a housing crisis. Our emergency shelters, our service organizations, and our residents – all have worked together to help our homeless community members obtain food and shelter. While results have been positive, we are at a critical point that requires us to re-evaluate our approach and develop plans to meet our changing times.

Difficult economic times impact all our citizens, especially the families and individuals experiencing a housing crisis who might be living doubled up or temporarily sheltered in one of our community’s homeless programs. As the need for affordable housing and emergency services continues to grow with limited resources available to fund these programs, it is time to develop new and more effective models for homeless service provision, coordination, and funding.

The Need

Officials in the Toledo homeless planning and advocacy community estimate that 2,785 persons experience homeless in Toledo throughout the course of a year. Although nearly half of all homeless persons are single adult men, 26% of the homeless population is made up of children.

People become homeless for a variety of reasons and often experience multiple barriers to resolving their housing crisis. Homeless people who come to shelter report that relationship problems, loss of a job, and lack of affordable and safe housing are the primary reasons for their homelessness.

A variety of services and shelter programs are available to provide emergency help to these Toledo residents experiencing a housing crisis. The Toledo and Lucas County community receives 4.9 million dollars annually from federal, state, local, and private sources, including the United Way of Greater Toledo. This funding provides support to nearly 1,400 beds for homeless people and supportive services that promote self-sufficiency, self-determination, and employment. Unfortunately, a lack of coordination and collaboration among government funders and homeless providers has created inefficiencies, overlaps in services, and gaps in critical need areas. The available resources are not enough to help all people resolve their housing crisis, and resources are not coordinated in the most efficient manner possible. Every night in Toledo homeless people sleep on the streets and homeless children go without food.

Toledo Homeless Task Force

In response to this critical need, the City of Toledo constituted a Toledo Homeless Task Force of community leaders to assess the current service system and make recommendations for improvements that will promote cost efficiency and service effectiveness throughout the continuum of care system. The Task Force prepared this report, A Comprehensive Community Needs Assessment and Action Plan. The Needs Assessment component describes the current service system and client needs. The Action Plan component outlines the development of a homeless services management authority, a new organization that will assume responsibility for implementation of Toledo Homeless Task Force recommendations.

Homeless Services Board

The Action Plan creates a new organization charged with implementation of Action Plan recommendations. The Homeless Services Board is a unique and independent partnership between local government, businesses, the faith community, and private sector funders with oversight representation from each partner. The Homeless Services Board will address the problems of homelessness on a regional basis and promote solution-oriented planning and coordination of services. As an administrative entity with 501©3 status, the Homeless Services Board will channel public and private sector funding to focus on the problem of homelessness. The Homeless Services Board will contract with community-based nonprofit agencies to provide homeless services throughout Toledo and Lucas County, advocate for the needs of homeless people, plan for and fund homeless services, and ensure effective use of public resources through program and fiscal monitoring of funded programs.Goals of the Homeless Services Board include:

Ø  Build a collaborative community-wide partnership to encourage effective and efficient use of resources, and promote implementation of best practice models of service delivery and housing development.

Ø  Increase the awareness and understanding of policy makers, funders, and the community at large about homelessness.

Ø  Promote an effective and sustainable advocacy organization in the form of a Homeless Services Authority to support the work of community-wide planning, prioritizing, and funding of homeless services and housing.

Although a Homeless Services Board will immediately bring cost savings to the community by coordinating homeless services and prioritizing the allocation of limited resources, an initial community investment is required to establish the Authority. Planners estimate that a single staff person with leveraged staffing and space resources from the City of Toledo and the United Way is enough to launch the Homeless Services Board. Start up costs for the first 18 months of operation are estimated at $150,000. This investment will fund one full time equivalent staff position to manage Action Plan implementation and secure ongoing financial support for the Homeless Services Board.

The Investment

Toledo must mount a sustained campaign to remedy its severe shortage of housing affordable to people with extremely low incomes. To begin to address the shortage, the Action Plan calls for making 450 additional rental units affordable over the next five years to people experiencing homelessness and living with disabilities. The Plan calls for linking these 450 units with support services.

While new resources will be needed to meet these goals, much of the cost can be funded by maximizing use of current public and private resources, using existing resources to leverage new sources of funds, and strategically redirecting existing funds. And because Toledo and Lucas County have a surplus of rental housing affordable to people with incomes somewhat higher than those of the poorest of the poor (See Section 2: Community Context on Housing), creating these supportive housing units will not require a significant amount of new construction.

The centerpiece of this Action Plan is a call for a sustained campaign to address the severe shortfall in affordable housing with supports for persons experiencing homelessness. But the recommendations of the Plan also focus on other strategies aimed at preventing homelessness, enhancing certain services to people in need, better coordinating the system of delivering services, and ensuring that the system is effective in ending homelessness.

City Council President Louis Escobar and Mayor Jack Ford have mounted a significant effort to improve the homeless delivery system for homeless people and establish better oversight for community resources dedicated to homeless services. Community support from public resources, private sector funds, business community investment, and homeless provider coordination are all needed for Toledo and Lucas County to be successful.

Action Plan

The comprehensive Action Plan serves as a guide for the implementation of business process improvements in the homeless service sector. The Action Plan identifies practical solutions based on Needs Assessment information, research on national best practices, and local expertise. Beyond the recommendations for 450 additional units of permanent supportive housing, this Plan calls for implementing the strategies listed below. They are explained in more detail in the full report that follows.

Recommendations include:

Prevention

Create a neighborhood-based prevention system to identify and assist people who are at-risk of becoming homeless.

Outreach

Develop coordinated street outreach services to engage people living on the streets of Toledo; and engage those clients in shelter, housing, and other services, as needed.

Emergency Shelter and Transitional Housing

Although additional emergency shelter and transitional shelter capacity may not be warranted, clients with specific barriers such as mental illness, large family size, and substance abuse encounter significant challenges accessing emergency and temporary housing resources. The following recommendations are made to strengthen the emergency shelter and transitional housing systems in Toledo:

Ø  Develop a system-wide strategy or vision to address homelessness in Toledo. In

Ø  addition to system-wide approaches, this strategy must include service delivery approaches at the program level that emphasize housing and seek to end an individual or families’ homelessness.

Ø  Require participation in the local Homelessness Management Information System. Collect demographic, service utilization, and outcomes data on clients of all homelessness prevention programs. Enhance existing programs and develop any new programs based on the self-identified needs and service utilization patterns of clients.

Ø  Establish inclusive admission policies/practices and relapse-tolerant program requirements to improve the system’s ability to engage all clients, at all levels of crisis, addiction, and recovery.

Ø  Develop minimum standards for all emergency shelters and transitional housing programs. These standards should address facility, operations and staffing issues.

Ø  Maximize existing, mainstream community resources. Instead of re-creating a new system for homeless people, the system should develop partnerships with mainstream service providers to improve linkages to mental health and substance abuse treatment services, and other needed services. Consider partnering to offer on-site satellite offices at shelter and housing programs. These on-site offices can offer clients quick and easy access to mental health and substance abuse assessments, entitlement assistance, and employment resources. Plus, it offers a low-cost strategy to meet the varied needs of homeless people.