Photo by Kevin A. Roberts
Don Hamilton cried on the day he moved into his one-bedroom home in the new Garfield Place Apartments, opened late last year in a renovated school building in Benton Park West. Hamilton had been a welder making nearly $20 an hour. Then a porch fell on him, his wife left him, and he started drinking. He lived on the streets for more than two years before moving in here on December 5.
Sitting on his couch in his living room, Hamilton says the words “my apartment” with unmistakable pride, then nearly tears up again describing his daily routine. First he wakes up in his own bed; then he takes a shower in his own bathroom. He fixes breakfast in his own kitchen and eats at his own table, where his Bible sits open. “This facility here is out of sight,” says the 57-year-old.
Hamilton would like to go back to college and, someday, start a shelter for abused women. For now, he keeps the building pristine, mopping floors and cleaning the elevator. “This is the start of a new life for me,” he says. “I’m going to take it and run with it.”
Peter & Paul Community Services spent years searching for somewhere to build this “safe haven,” a place where chronically homeless people would be placed straight into permanent supportive housing. The plan sounded great to all who heard it, so long as it wasn’t built in their back yard.
“I think a common perception is that we’re bringing crazy people with drugs into their neighborhood,” says shelter director Tom Burnham. “Well, those things are already here… We help people get better.”
Burnham likes to say that homelessness is a neighborhood problem that demands a neighborhood solution. It was a different neighborhood problem that finally gave Peter & Paul a place to build. The historic Garfield School had been vacant for years and was crumbling. A community cornerstone was becoming a blight. Alderman Ken Ortmann persuaded the neighborhood association to give it to Peter & Paul.
After an $8.5 million renovation, the building now has 25 apartments, all already full. When considering a prospective tenant, Garfield program director Adam Pearson looks for the opposite of what a traditional landlord would. The less able a person is to live independently, the more severe his or her mental illness or substance abuse, the more likely that person is to be accepted. Residents sign a one-year lease, agreeing to take care of the property. They may renew as many times as they want, staying for five years—or 50. Rent, including utilities, is $475, usually covered with government assistance. Dinner, laundry, and social work are provided free of charge. The idea is that it’s more cost-effective—not to mention humane—to give chronically homeless people apartments than it is to pay for them to live on the streets, where they wind up in emergency rooms, jails, and courtrooms.
The neighborhood has been supportive: Garfield residents have a plot in the nearby community garden, and the staff is working with Cherokee Street businesses on programming.
Pearson has already seen a transformation in many of the residents. They can look for jobs without worrying about where to shower for the interview. They can pick up hobbies without worrying about equipment being stolen. “When people are no longer worried about their housing,” Pearson says, “they have a home base on which to really build the rest of their lives.”
Key Stats
- Chronically homeless people represent 10 percent of the homeless population but use 50 percent of the resources dedicated to helping the homeless.
- A study in New York City found that it costs $40,000 to keep a chronically homeless person on the streets.
- If you provide permanent supportive housing, that figure drops to $24,000.
