Bert Nash, housing authority have long — and successful — history of partnering to provide housing for homeless

When it comes to affordable housing, it definitely takes a village.

The Lawrence-Douglas CountyHousing Authority knows that betterthan most.

“We’re all in this together,” said Shannon Oury, housing authority executive director.

The city of Lawrence is among those partnering with the housing authority to reduce homelessness in the community. On August 4th, commissioners approved $100,000 in the 2016 budget for the housing authority’s voucher-based transitional housing program. The program provides vouchers to help families and individuals rent housing from private landlords. Commissioner Stuart Boley pushed to include the housing funding in the city budget.

The housing authority’s list of partners also includes the Bert Nash Community Mental Health Center. The two organizations have been working together since the mid 1990s to provide housing for those with mental illness and people who are homeless.

“We are successful in this community at Bert Nash because of our partnerships,” said David Johnson, the Center’s CEO. “One of the ones that I’m proudest of is our partnership with the Lawrence-Douglas County Housing Authority.”

From the housing authority’s side, the feeling is mutual. It’s a partnership that works, because both agencies do what they do best.

“We bring our expertise in housing and Bert Nash brings its expertise in mental health treatment and we marry those two things that we’re both really good at. And we don’t try to do the things that we’re not good at,” Oury said. “This partnership is successful because we combine the service and the support with the housing, versus situations where you don’t have that and people are trying to make it on their own out there."

The people the two agencies work with are individuals and families who have housing stability issues or who are homeless. The first order of business is to try and get those people who qualify into transitional housing. That is, as long as the funds are available to do so. And that figure has been shrinking due to federal budget cuts.

“We have a need that is expanding and a supply that is decreasing,” Oury said, referring to the loss of funding. “In 2011, our federal grant that we get through the city was $300,000. This year it will be $174,000. The funding is being cut to such an extent that the program is half as big as it was four years ago. If the funding is less, then that’s less people we can house.”

Funds from two HUD HOME grants are used to fund two transitional housing programs: the Bert Nash Community Support Services Program for people with mental illness, which receives funds allocated by the state, and the Lawrence Homeless Transitional Housing Program, which receives funds allocated by the city. Both programs provide rent subsidies through housing vouchers for low-income individuals and families. There are waiting lists for both programs.

But with the amount of funds shrinking, more homeless people are staying at the Lawrence Community Shelter, which even with an expanded capacity from 75 beds to 125 still can’t keep up with the demand.

“We have people at the shelter but there are very limited places for them to go from there,” Oury said. “The shelter has been having people stay there for extended periods of time, and that’s a very expensive housing model. We need the emergency housing at the shelter, but it’s not good that our emergency housing is also becoming our transitional housing.”

It is also more costly.

“It’s much less expensive to keep somebody housed than to have someone cycle out of housing back to the shelter, then out of the shelter and back to housing, and to continue that cycle,” Oury said. “That’s a very expensive proposition for our community.”

The housing authority as well as Bert Nash works closely with tenants who are receiving housing assistance. And if an issue arises that could jeopardize the housing arrangement, Bert Nash and the housing authority work with the family or individual to try and solve the problem.

“That’s not just important, frankly, for the people we serve, but it’s important for landlords, too, so they know they have someone to turn to if they see that a resident in one of their units is in need of help,” Bert Nash CEO Johnson said. “It’s a win-win situation.”

With the partnership between Bert Nash and the housing authority, the goal is to help homeless individuals and families move into transitional housing. This might require the foundation to look for builders and proper building materials from trusted suppliers. The partnership can also help in providing support services, such as mental health care, that will help keep them on track to eventually move into permanent housing – the ultimate goal.

“With transitional housing, we enter an agreement to pay part of the rent for 24 months,” Oury said. “Then any individual who successfully completes that 24 months, we graduate them to a regular Section 8 voucher that they can keep as long as they want. These are folks who need housing assistance. We still have people who came into the program back in the ’90s who are still in the program. We are the permanent housing solution for some people, and we intend to be that.”

But the housing authority doesn’t do it alone. It depends on community partners, like Bert Nash.

“The housing authority is an expert in being a landlord and helping people who are at risk when it comes to housing or who are in need of housing, and our expertise in is providing mental health care,” said Bert Nash CEO Johnson. “Our partnership really allows both organizations to do what they do best to the benefit of the people who we are serving.”

In 2007, Bert Nash received an Ad Astra Award for Best of the Best: Innovation in Housing and Community Development. The award recognized Bert Nash for providing interim supportive housing for people who are being released from a mental health hospital and have no home to return to and are at-risk for re-hospitalization. That program worked because of the partnership with the housing authority, Bert Nash CEO Johnson said.

But with federal support for housing programs declining, both Bert Nash and the housing authority hope other funding sources will be found in order to maintain this community partnership.

“The real message is that we have a really great program that works well and has worked well since the mid 1990s when it was started, but we’ve been losing funding,” Oury said. “The additional money from the city helps, but it doesn’t solve the problem. We don’t need to create a new program. We need to figure out how we’re going to continue to fund a program that actually works."