Here is a collection of news stories from January that feature CSH and our work.
USA Today, January 6
Ky. Program Targets Jail's Revolving-Door Offenders,
Stults is now the poster child for an intense new treatment program planned by Metro Corrections and Seven County Services that will target the jail's 50 top revolving-door offenders, whose chronic struggles with mental illness, substance abuse, homelessness and criminal recidivism rack up millions of dollars in taxpayer costs at jails, courts, police, hospitals and treatment centers. Louisville would be the largest of as many as 14 such voluntary "assertive treatment" programs across Kentucky that state officials plan to begin this spring, pending federal approval to use Medicaid funds to pay for it. The state would pay $1.8 million toward a $6 million effort over the first two years.
Since then, various versions have spread to states such as New York and Michigan, said John Fallon, a program manager for the Chicago-based Corporation for Supportive Housing, a nonprofit that helps set up such programs.
Huffington Post, January 6
Your Voice Is Needed to Help Stop the Community Care Facilities Ordinance in Los Angeles, January 6
In brief, the Community Care Facilities Ordinance requires that in a neighborhood zoned for single family homes and duplexes a home can have only one lease. If a home has two or more leases, such as where two families are sharing or where a person with disabilities is living in shared housing, the ordinance would categorize the home as a "boarding house." Under current law, boarding houses are prohibited in residential zones. Thus, by categorizing all homes with multiple leases as boarding houses, the ordinance would eliminate shared housing in these residential zones. The information included in this article was taken from a letter from Corporation for Supportive Housing to Honorable Council President Wesson.
LA Downtown News, January 14
Downtown Forces Fight Boarding House Law
Under a proposed set of new, carefully worded regulations set to go before the City Council this week, such shared living environments would be outlawed in low-density zones. Landlords could, however, be allowed to operate boarding houses in any zone through a new permitting process. On the surface, the Community Care Facilities Ordinance might seem only to impact neighborhoods with quiet leafy streets, driveways and garages and front yards — in other words, not Downtown. However, a wide array of local stakeholders are banding together to urge the council to defeat the ordinance.
Critics of the proposed regulations say they would put the squeeze on a crucial segment of affordable housing. Doing so, they warn, would send more people to Downtown in pursuit of the area’s abundant social services, further concentrating homelessness in the Central City. One aspect of the law that has perplexed critics is that it targets a problem that is technically already illegal.
Boarding homes are currently outlawed in low-density zones, and many of the nuisances affiliated with overcrowded housing can be addressed under existing laws, said Molly Rysman, director of the Corporation for Supportive Housing Los Angeles. “The houses people have issues with, boarding houses, they’re illegal today,” Rysman said. “It’s not that there aren’t laws on the books. It’s that the city has had trouble enforcing them.”
The Columbus Dispatch, January 16
Former Lancaster Orphanage to Become a Home for the Homeless, January 16
A 19th-century building that sheltered orphans and other homeless children is being renovated into apartments for 16 homeless families. The plans for Rutherford House are very much of the 21st century, however. The homeless tenants chosen to live there will dwell in “permanent supportive housing.” They will receive not only a roof over their heads but also on-site services such as mental-health, substance-abuse, financial or job counseling. An estimated 10,000 supportive-housing units now dot the state. They increasingly are being built not just in Columbus, Cleveland and Cincinnati but also in smaller cities such as Lancaster, Circleville and Athens, said Sally Luken, the director of the Corporation for Supportive Housing’s Ohio office.
Glendale News-Press, January 18
Glendale Memorial Hospital disperses more than $118,000 to local nonprofits, January 18
The recipients of this year’s grants were the Armenian Relief Society, Ascencia, Glendale’s Commission on the Status of Women, the Corporation for Supportive Housing, the Glendale Assn. for the Retarded, the Glendale Community Free Health Clinic, Glendale Healthy Kids, the Glendale Salvation Army and the YWCA of Glendale.
The money, awarded through the hospital’s Community Grants Program, is provided by Glendale Memorial’s parent company, Dignity Health.
