[Dion]

Success in the Big Apple - New York City finds path for mentally ill.

Housing homeless before treatment bucks conventional wisdom

For 12 years, the program has been pioneering what is called the "housing first" strategy of whisking the homeless into permanent residences with no in- between steps of counseling or transitional shelters required. Even more unusual is the practice of placing them by themselves -- not in buildings full of other homeless people, but in apartment complexes of regular tenants who often have no idea who just moved in next door. It takes them even if they're still shooting dope, still drinking, still barely able to distinguish fantasy from reality.

And the amazing thing is that Pathways works -- mostly because it swarms its homeless tenants with continual counseling and programs to help them get their lives stable after they move indoors. The program is so successful that researchers and leaders from former President Bill Clinton to the homeless czar for Clinton's ideological opposite, President Bush, say it is setting a new standard in America on how to coax the hardest of the hard core of the homeless up off the sidewalk and into healthier lives.

All of Pathways' residents are mentally ill, and 90 percent are drug addicts or alcoholics -- yet 84 percent of those who move into Pathways stay housed. More conventional programs in New York that emphasize medical treatment, halfway houses or hospitalization for similarly mentally ill homeless people have only a 23 percent success rate, according to a recent study conducted by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

In another age, many of Pathways' tenants would have been locked into mental institutions; and indeed, many have spent time in jail for indigence before, only to be put right back out on the street again. But because of the intensive counseling and individual empowerment method at Pathways, they don't just stay housed -- they live productive lives, going to college, holding jobs, and helping other homeless people get stable.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...NGRS75HEE1.DTL

Maybe Canada should start a project like this....