Rebecca Chatteram, the Chief Operating Officer of HousingPlus, recently spoke as a panel member at SEEN II, the second annual symposium on solutions and innovations in services for people experiencing homelessness, with a focus on the hardest-to-house individuals.
One question we frequently hear is: how can we build bridges? In fact, the theme of the symposium was “Bridging Borders and Homes.” One thing that supportive housing providers, like HousingPlus, often encounter is concern, pushback, and even outright opposition campaigns against new supportive housing.
In the panel discussion — alongside Katie Bower (Project Renewal), Gary P. Jenkins (Urban Pathways), and Alexandra Frances (BronxWorks) — Rebecca spoke about building support for affordable housing in neighborhoods.
“We have to first understand the root cause, which is fear of change,” said Rebecca. Rebecca identified several concrete steps that are must-dos to make sure affordable and supportive housing projects have community buy-in, including sharing stories, backing up claims with data, and building partnerships with other businesses and organizations already within the community.
For anyone working in housing advocacy, or for those whose neighborhoods may be current or future sites of supportive housing, these are some of the key takeaways from SEEN II, which is hosted by Housing Solutions of New York (HSNY), that came out of a day’s discussion of the importance of supportive housing and how to address concerns related to it.
The most important part of supportive housing is the support.
Supportive services, embedded within and alongside housing, can prevent the escalation of unwanted tenant behaviors. This is why organizations like HousingPlus offer services such as mental health counseling and job training to every supportive housing tenant. The presence of continuous and accessible support from case managers, therapists, and social workers can often help our tenants stabilize and make profound changes in their lives in a relatively short time. When your case manager works from an office right down the hall from you, a problem doesn’t need to become an emergency; you can ask for help right away.
Supportive housing tenants are human.
We hear stories every day of tenants who succeed in changing their lives. From someone who left prison determined to never return, to a Veteran with severe health complications, these are individuals. Just like any apartment building or neighborhood, there will be residents who may come into conflict or break the rules. These are individual problems among individual people, not a facet of the entire population of tenants. Each individual is distinct, but no less deserving of dignity and a dignified place to call home.
Systems are connected, and a broken system can leave people homeless.
There are many broken or damaged systems in this City. Just one example shared at the SEEN conference was that of Rikers Island. Many individuals leaving Rikers Island have lost access to their housing, often because, during their time inside, they were unable to pay rent. And because of this, many women (and men) leaving Rikers go right into DHS shelters. This problem is exactly what HousingPlus’ Justice Works seeks to address by identifying people who are exiting Rikers and are very likely to become homeless, or who were already before their interaction with incarceration.
