Premium ContentMouse over Home then click on Premium Content for information.Until recently, when the used couch came, Mark Rettele had been sleeping on the floor.
In that one regard, his new home — an actual apartment — was like so many of his old ones. Whether he slept on the street, at a shelter or under the L Street bridge, Rettele was often on the ground.
Homeless for years, he eked it out in the most improbable places, notably under the bridge near 36th and L during that terrible winter of 2009-10. His friends had fled, leaving Rettele alone to survive on that concrete ledge through the snow and the cold.
But the grind was getting old. And so was he.
When a caseworker who'd been hounding him for a year offered him an apartment of his own with no strings attached — no rent, no utility payments, no obligation to stop drinking — the 52-year-old said yes.
Finally, in November, he came inside under a new push to find housing for the homeless.
This is not the story of how Mark Rettele stopped being homeless. It's too early for that.
But his journey from bridge ledge to one-bedroom apartment offers a window into what it takes to get someone like him off the streets, even temporarily. And it shows the challenges of a new approach of housing the homeless in Omaha.
Rettele is one of the "chronically homeless" — people who typically have a disability, an addiction or both and have been continuously homeless for more than a year.
Their needs and society's cost have propelled a national push called Housing First that offers permanent supportive housing — apartments or assisted living with case management — to chronically homeless people without first requiring that they get sober, get healthy or have jobs. It reflects a thrust by the government to get chronically homeless people off the streets and, some skeptics point out, off homeless census counts.
Proponents say it can save lives and money. One recent study of formerly homeless alcoholics in Seattle reported a $30,000-per-person savings a year.
Opponents warn it can detract from emergency shelters, which long have been in the business of providing care to the homeless and can keep closer tabs on them.
Omaha's most recent incarnation of Housing First launched in October 2010. That's when the city joined others in a campaign called 100,000 Homes, named after its goal of housing 100,000 people nationwide.
The campaign gives priority to the most medically fragile, and so an Omaha team works off a list built after a massive census of the homeless. Outreach workers canvass known hangouts or sleep spots for the homeless and try to find and keep up with those on their list. They try to persuade them to agree to housing, then find a place for them to stay. No outreach workers have been added for the project, but current staffers have shifted emphasis.
The team in 2010 surveyed 908 homeless people, identifying 520 as vulnerable under a measure that takes into account emergency room visits, presence of chronic disease, addiction, mental illness and occurrence of frostbite.
Of those 520, 120 have been placed into housing in Omaha. All remain there but six, including one who died.
Local advocates plan to analyze costs, but the Metro Area Continuum of Care for the Homeless couldn't immediately say how much it had spent to get these 120 people housed.
They expect a savings, given national research showing that vulnerable people, once housed, are less likely to wind up in emergency room care or in jail. And their own research indicates that reduced jail and ER time would save money. In 2008, the continuum looked at the costs of a one-night stay in an emergency shelter ($12.54), hospital emergency room ($2,156) and jail ($82 plus $179 for arrest costs).
Under the 100,000 Homes program, those housed get their own apartments; in some cases they go to assisted living with roommates. They also get caseworkers who visit regularly and offer support geared to make that housing stick.
Take Rettele.
Heartland Family Service is paying his $500 monthly rent and utilities. It also has provided caseworker Lisa Rice, who estimates that she has spent more than 20 hours in the past three months on Rettele's needs and about 20 hours before that trying to persuade Rettele to trade bridge life for an apartment.
And he's one of her lowest-needs clients.
Still, moving Rettele into housing is expected to save money. Being housed, advocates say, he is less likely to cycle through jail, emergency rooms and detox.
Rice met Rettele during that Housing First homeless census.
He wasn't found vulnerable enough to immediately qualify for an apartment. But Rice kept her eye out for him during countless hours in South Omaha looking for other clients and trying to encourage more chronically homeless people to come inside.
For nearly a year he stayed off her radar — in part because of three hospital emergency room visits and five jail stints for misdemeanors ranging from having an open container to trespassing.
In August she ran into him and updated his profile. Turns out that, after his hospital stays, he qualified for housing.
Rettele was back under the bridge. What surprised Rice was that he had registered for class at Metropolitan Community College — Rettele wants to get a nursing degree — and despite being homeless and without a car, was able to get to his medical appointments.
Rettele trusted Rice and the two spent hours in her car driving around South Omaha looking for an apartment. The place had to comply with Heartland's requirements of affordability — rent plus utilities couldn't exceed $600 — and it had to have a landlord willing to take a chance on someone like Rettele with no job, no recent record of renting and a criminal record laden with misdemeanors.
"It was so hard," Rice said, "to find people who will give him a chance."
When they finally found a willing landlord and an affordable apartment, it was November. Rettele moved in with nothing more than some clothes.
A homeless resource team in Omaha provides move-in kits that include trash cans, cleaning supplies, pots, pans and dishes and some other basics.
During a recent visit, Rettele had acquired some furniture: a stuffed chair and ottoman, two office chairs, an old TV cabinet and TV and the couch that was doubling as his bed.
Cardboard boxes served as end tables. The single lamp glowed without a lamp shade.
Rice found some decor: three wooden boxes painted with the following words: "Dream." "Believe." "Hope."
It's a nice message, but there's a tough reality of housing long-time homeless people with addictions, mental illnesses and other problems, advocates say.
Neither Mike Saklar nor Del Bomberger, who run emergency shelters on different sides of town, are sold on Housing First.
"How do you ensure you've got the care for them?" asked Saklar, who runs the 340-bed Siena-Francis House in north downtown.
Bomberger, who runs the Stephen Center in South Omaha, said that Housing First targets the "really difficult cases" that need the most support.
"They tend to still want to come back to the shelters for motivation, moral support, meals and pantries," he said.
Yet both see the direction the federal government is headed as funding shifts toward permanent housing.
Homeless services here, as elsewhere, rely on government grants and private donations. One major federal grant has increased overall funding for Omaha from $209,000 in 2009 to $360,000 this fiscal year. But the emergency shelter portion is now capped at 60 percent. At least 40 percent of the formerly Emergency Shelter Grant, now called Emergency Solutions, must go to other long-term housing strategies.
And so Saklar and Bomberger have plans of their own to add "permanent housing" to their emergency shelter campuses.
Siena-Francis House is building 48 efficiency-style apartments; Stephen Center has plans for a complex to house 14 families and 40 single people. The Open Door Mission in east Omaha opened 42 two- and three-bedroom apartments.
Saklar said his staff has had to retrieve formerly homeless people from off-site apartments because conditions became too unsafe. He said the apartments he's building on campus will help his staff keep better tabs on their homeless clients.
Saklar said his shelter calls 911 at least once a day for what is often a seizure or heart problem.
"A lot of homeless people need 24-hour care," Saklar said. "We see lots of people who have head trauma, heart problems, and they need medical care. You have to ensure they're taking (their meds) daily. If someone like that is placed in (off-site) apartments, how do you do that?"
But proponents of Housing First say the alternative leaves some of society's most vulnerable to street life, which is dangerous and expensive.
The 2009 Seattle study found that it was twice as costly to do nothing than to provide free housing to the homeless. Over the course of a year, participants in the Seattle Housing First program reduced their total costs by more than $4 million, compared with the year before they enrolled, according to results published in the April 2009 Journal of the American Medical Association. That amounted to a savings of nearly $30,000 a year per person when Housing First costs were considered.
In other words, in the year they were on the streets, this population of homeless people with jail and hospital time racked up costs of about $43,000 apiece. But when fully paid apartments and on-site social services were factored in, costs dropped to about $13,000 per year per person.
The experience of two Omaha men illustrate the challenge and success of implementing the model.
Francis "Butch" Korger and Levi Webster spent years living mainly on Omaha streets, drinking together, passing out in alleys, getting kicked out of shelters and being told by police not to come back downtown.
Korger, 54, is the ponytailed man whom drivers might have spotted on West Dodge Road holding a cardboard sign outside a Lutheran Church near 93rd Street. Webster, 63, is a white-haired Native American whose heritage draws from three Nebraska tribes: the Omaha, Winnebago and Ponca.
Korger got fed up with street life. A month ago he got housing: an efficiency-style apartment that Community Alliance owns in the Field Club neighborhood. It came furnished and with a working phone. Korger will pay rent once he gets an income.
"I have a safety net," he said of the support he's getting. "I look around my apartment and say 'I'm not about to screw this up.' I like where I'm at right now and I want to get better."
Living independently has been a lot harder for Webster.
Apartment life didn't last long. Placed at 24th and Harney Streets, a quick walk from a liquor store, Webster resumed drinking. While taking a shower, he passed out in the tub.
A building manager found him and called 911. Caseworker Nancy Faure came up with a different plan: an assisted-living center where drinking is not allowed. Webster has a roommate, eats community meals and is trying to stay sober.
Just last month a reporter driving downtown on Leavenworth Street spotted Webster outside. He was slumped on the sidewalk, leaning against a building.
For Rettele, the verdict is still out on how successful his move to housing will be.
In the three months he has lived at his apartment on South 25th Street, Rettele has endured a near-eviction and a break-in.
Rice said longtime homeless people such as Rettele, who built community on the streets, suffer a sort of survivor's guilt at landing their own place. They want to help their friends and invite them in. But in Rettele's case, she said, she had to tell him it was either keep your apartment to yourself or go join your friends on the street.
But she credits Rettele with solving his own problem.
"I told them 'You have to leave,' " Rettele said. "I'm not here to take care of everyone."
Rettele sees this as a second chance and so far is abiding by his mother's advice: Don't screw this up.
He doesn't want to return to street life.
"It's warm," he said of his apartment. "It's my own place."
Contact the writer:
402-444-1136, erin.grace@owh.com
Copyright ©2012 Omaha World-Herald®. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, displayed or redistributed for any purpose without permission from the Omaha World-Herald.
