The heat of summer is slowly rolling in with daily high temperatures hitting 90 degrees. The nighttime lows are still in the 60s. We are in full-on Thirst Aid mode to collect bottled water and raise money for heat relief supplies. With 900 people sheltered at Key Campus every night and hundreds of other individuals accessing services on Campus during the day, the need is real. The least we can do is offer hydration and shade…. while the most we want to do is help everyone to find their permanent, affordable, accessible home.

One step at a time.

In the last blog, I addressed a current local and national message that looks to assign the source of all homelessness as substance use and/or mental illness, and that places blame on service providers for the increase in homelessness. As a reminder, local data does not support a conclusion that any singular factor or condition is THE primary cause of homelessness. And those of us serving people who are unhoused are not causing people to newly fall into homelessness.

I have been asked throughout this current legislative session questions about the types of services provided and challenged on why more services are not offered, with the underlying assumption that everyone needs substance use or mental health treatment.

At Key Campus, after asking each individual who arrives seeking assistance a list of intake and assessment questions, we provide an overview of the services available at Key Campus. Individuals list the following as reasons for their homelessness and barriers to housing stability: mental health disorder, chronic health conditions, physical disability, drug use disorder, developmental disability, alcohol use disorder, both drug use and alcohol use disorder, and HIV/AIDS.

Focusing solely on Key Campus, a dozen organizations provide services five to seven days per week. These include:

Organizations that provide more episodic services include, however are not limited to: Arizona Pet Project, Brain Injury Alliance of Arizona, Maricopa County Superior Court Homeless Court, and Maricopa County Probation.

On top of that, Keys to Change leads the coordinated entry system for single adults and conducts housing match, housing navigation, and supports moves into Bridge Housing and permanent housing.

Yes, it’s a lot. No, it isn’t everything. There are initial pieces to address all of the reasons for homelessness. We do not have sufficient collective capacity to serve all people at all levels to meet all of the need. All organizations on Key Campus do work through networks of service providers to connect people with services and programs off Campus.

Another missing piece to capacity is sustainable funding. The Federal U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) extends funding through a plethora of avenues that provide a portion of revenue to operate emergency shelters, coordinated entry, rapid rehousing, street outreach, permanent housing, etc. HUD does not fund health care, dental care, behavioral and mental health care, substance use treatment. There are sources of funding for those services via the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

So to answer the local question of how is HUD money being used for substance use and mental health services in homeless services programs? The answer is, it isn’t, because that is not what HUD funds.

HHS has a different array of funding applications with different required outcomes than those of HUD. HUD and HHS are not coordinated to provide funding to a braided system of care for people experiencing homelessness. This is an area of opportunity for advocacy at the Federal level. Creative ways to connect funding sources that would shorten the length of time that someone is homeless would be super-duper fantastic. Being able to meet more of the demand for service would be wonderful.

In the meantime, service organizations provide services that can be funded. There is a short video produced by the Human Services Council of New York that describes this well.

You wouldn’t demand falafel at a pizza shop… please don’t demand services that our organizations are not structured to provide.