Housing Retention Rate
With a 92 % housing retention rate, the Housing First Campaign to end chronic homelessness has shown that it provides a solution to helping the most vulnerable individuals in our city who find themselves struggling with homelessness move into and stay in housing.
The Housing First formula for success is:
Housing + Case Management + Income = Reduction in Homelessness.
The formula for success summarizes the solution to homelessness.
With 92%, Nashville’s Housing First retention rate lies above the 80-85% housing retention rate many other cities report for their Housing First programs. Housing retention rates are calculated based on program participants who have been permanently housed and have retained their housing until present or the time of graduating into self-sufficiency.
Based on that calculation, 50 of the 54 participants who have been permanently housed in Nashville’s Housing First program have retained their housing. Of the four individuals who lost housing, three lost it due to a lack of income and one chose to leave housing. The housing retention rate is not affected when people move while in the program.
The Housing First model has three significant components:
- Access to permanent housing;
- Intensive and comprehensive case management by a team of master’s level social workers who are available to the client 24/7; and
- Acceptance of homeless clients who have been rejected by other programs.
Now the Housing First program will be expanded to target 15 of the most vulnerable veterans in the Downtown area with Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing (VASH) vouchers and case management.
(It needs to be noted that since the inception of the Metropolitan Homelessness Commission more than 350 chronically homeless individuals have been housed, not all in the Housing First program.)
Vulnerable Veterans Program
 Fifteen of the most vulnerable homeless veterans in the Downtown area will receive the option for Housing First in the coming months. The program will leverage The Key Alliance’s Housing First Downtown Campaign, which aims to house a total of 50 of the most vulnerable homeless individuals in the Downtown area.
The program is a partnership between the Metropolitan Homelessness Commission and the local Veterans Affairs Tennessee Valley Healthcare Systems (TVHS) office and costs $150,000. Clifton Harris, executive director of The Key Alliance, the nonprofit fundraising arm of the Metropolitan Homelessness Commission, said the new program will target vulnerable veterans in Downtown Nashville and provide them with permanent housing and intensive case management.
“The program is a partnership between the VA TVHS, which has provided 15 federal VASH vouchers to house individuals, and the Homelessness Commission, which is funding the case management needs,” Harris said. “The Vulnerable Veterans Program will provide leverage to The Key Alliance’s Housing First Downtown Campaign.”
Eckman/Freeman and Associates will provide the case management. A stakeholder meeting to launch the program is set for late August. What will make the program successful is the partnership between the Commission, Eckman/Freeman and the VA.
"The Vulnerable Veterans Program will provide a case manager-to-client ratio of 1:15,” Harris said. In addition, Eckman/Freeman case managers are master’s level social workers. In comparison, many other organizations providing case management have a ratio of 1:30 or higher, which does not allow for daily or weekly contact between a case manager and his/her client.
Intensive case management is the key to keeping people housed.
“We often run into the cost question,” Harris said. “Yet when you compare the cost of putting people into jail or the cost of utilizing the ER as primary health care, the cost of case management is very reasonable.”
On average, the Metropolitan Homelessness Commission pays a little over $9,000 for case management services per person per year. An arrest in this city with one night in jail costs $1,000 in comparison (the average jail stay is about 21 days). And the average cost of an ER visit is $800-$1,000.
The Housing First Downtown Campaign
“Being able to house 15 veterans from the Downtown area is a great start for The Key Alliance’s Housing First Downtown Campaign,” Harris said. “In this campaign, The Key Alliance will raise $550,000 from the private sector to leverage with the $150,000 from the Vulnerable Veterans Program. The goal is to provide 50 people with Housing First opportunities as well as raise the funding to place one additional street outreach worker in the Downtown area.”
The campaign will not only help 50 individuals receive housing, but also address the quality of life issues of residents and businesses in the Downtown Nashville area.
To support the Housing First Campaign’s fundraising efforts please visit www.thekeyalliance.org.
Community Partner: Ramada Hotel in La Vergne
 When the Red Cross Shelter at Lipscomb University closed its doors on May 18, roughly 100 homeless individuals and families were left with no place to go. Community partners of The Key Alliance stepped up and provided different options that would allow flood victims some more time to find housing.
One of these partners was Jay Patel, owner and general manager of the Ramada in La Vergne. Patel offered The Key Alliance eight rooms at not cost for six days and housed about 15 individuals, seven of whom were children.
“The Indian community in Nashville wanted to do something for flood victims,” Patel recalls. “Many of us own hotels and motels, so we figured we have rooms and they need a place to stay.”
So the Gujarat Cultural Association, a local hotel association, reached out to the Red Cross. During the flooding, Patel had already opened Ramada’s doors to people stranded by the flood and to locals from La Vergne who could not go home and gave them deep discounts immediately after the flooding started.
In mid-May, Patel received a call from The Key Alliance asking him for help to house several homeless individuals.
He immediately agreed and instructed his personnel that The Key Alliance would bring some people to receive free rooms, no questions asked.
One of the homeless flood victims was Price B.
“Price checked in and we never saw him after breakfast,” Patel said. “He stayed mostly to himself. But he chatted with my wife, and she learned that he had worked as a maintenance man.”
After the week was over, the Patels decided to offer Price a job. He was immediately forthcoming, telling them that he was a veteran and suffered from a heart condition, which prevented him from heavy lifting.
“We now have a deal where he works five days a week and lives upstairs,” Patel said, who in addition to the free room and board pays him a small salary.
Price, who was not available for an interview, has stayed at the hotel for three months now. After a hearty breakfast, he takes care of the hotel pool and then assists the housekeepers until about noon when he gets off work.
But not all the guests who were offered free room and breakfast for one week were as easy to deal with as Price.
“There were problems,” Patel admits, saying that it was clear some people simply didn’t know how to act in a hotel, and during their stay he was afraid they would bother other guests.
But Patel said he will continue his partnership with The Key Alliance.
The Ramada in La Vergne ranks among the top 10 (usually anywhere from 7th to 9th) out of 470 Ramada hotels nationwide. Take a virtual tour at www.ramadasmyrna.com.
News Briefs
 Project Homeless Connect: Planning has started for PHC 2010, which will be held Wednesday, December 8, at the Tennessee State Fairgrounds. Sponsors and volunteers are needed. Please visit www.thekeyalliance.org for more information.
Housing Voucher update: We are continuing to work with MDHA on the Section 8 vouchers that were released for flood victims. So far, 35 vouchers have been issued; 18 applications are pending due to missing information, but they will be reviewed as soon as we receive the missing information.
Poster Contest: We have exhibits at the Nashville Chamber’s offices and Café Coco on Louise Avenue off Elliston Place. Stop by there for a cup of coffee and let the owners know you came to see the posters. As a reminder, the poster contest is our year-round awareness campaign. At the beginning of the year, we partner with Metro School’s H.E.R.O. program to create a contest for 4th graders to express what home means to them and what they think about homelessness.
Ongoing media outreach: In the past month, we were mentioned in roughly a dozen media reports. Coverage ranged from the Adopt A Meter program to the Tent City Antioch move to Housing First. Read the latest column by Clifton Harris in the Tennessean about why governor’s candidates should talk about homelessness. http://blogs.tennessean.com/opinion/2010/08/02/next-governor-must-address-homeless-problem/#more-4232
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