SD Focus: City Responses to Homelessness

(gentle upbeat music) - [Announcer] This is a production of South Dakota Public Broadcasting.

(gentle upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to South Dakota Focus, I'm Jackie Hendry.

Rates of homelessness are on the rise nationally and here at home.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development reports about 1,300 homeless people in South Dakota, and the vast majority of them are in Sioux Falls and Rapid City.

Now, homelessness is a complicated issue, and a person can become homeless for a variety of reasons.

Charities and non-profits provide some support as well as local governments and their outreach services.

Tonight we'll hear about just a few of the efforts to alleviate homelessness and we'll start out west, in Rapid City.

Recently, that city's police force partnered with a group that knows firsthand how to build relationships with people on the street and get them the resources they need.

The Journey On outreach team stands out with bright green shirts and hoodies.

Six days a week they offer rides, water, and food to people without a reliable place to live.

Toby McCloskey is the Director of Operations for Journey On.

He calls the people they serve houseless relatives.

- Now, the reason why I say they're houseless relatives is because we're all home.

We're home where we're at, we just don't have houses to live in.

- [Jackie Voiceover] Most Journey On team members have first-hand experience living on the street.

McCloskey was homeless in Rapid City for two years.

Those memories can make the job more difficult sometimes.

- And we engage our houseless relatives and let 'em know that we're not trying to force a lifestyle change.

We're just there to let you know that there's gonna come a time when you decide that for yourself, and when you look up, Journey On will be there.

- Rapid City is one of several cities around the country that now rely on people with lived experience to respond to people living on the street, rather than law enforcement.

Dr. Rich Braunstein is the Executive Director of Journey On and a professor at the University of South Dakota.

He was part of the 2018, collective healing effort in Rapid City.

That was an effort to improve the relationship between Rapid City's law enforcement and the Native American community.

Now, in South Dakota, Native Americans make up less than 9% of the overall population, but they account for nearly 70% of the state's homeless population.

That's according to the South Dakota Housing for the Homeless Consortium.

Braunstein says Native elders wanted a new approach.

Journey On is based on a citizen-level response that started in New Jersey.

- There's no better way to respond than to have people with lived experience, people that are from the community, and so you can dispense with all of the initial distance that would be present from an outsider coming in.

There's an important element of trust and empathy that goes both ways, that is to say, between our outreach workers and the relatives on the street.

- [Jackie Voiceover] We first visited Journey On in September.

The team members Manny Hernandez and Krystal Rencountre checked in with people, offered rides to the afternoon's hot-dog feed in a nearby park, and partway through their shift, they see a homeless man they know bleeding from a cut on his head.

He says a man in a motorcycle vest attacked him outside the liquor store up the road.

After treating his injuries, Krystal Rencountre calls police dispatch for backup, it's a move she usually tries to avoid.

- Because we don't want any of our relatives to get put in jail and go through that cycle over and over again.

We wanna be able to help them and try to find them other resources.

But for this person, I called back up for the reason being, there's a knife involved.

Somebody did get assaulted, he did say he seen a knife, and just for the safety of our team and you guys who was with us, we wanted to make sure there's a police officer there when we do a welfare check.

- [Jackie Voiceover] On the way to find the man in the vest, Rencountre calls out to other relatives she happens to recognize.

- Hey Dave, we'll be back, we're gonna go get somebody else, brother.

Did he put his thumb out?

(both Laughing) He's so funny, he makes me laugh.

Hey brother, how you doin?

There's a feed up there at the skatepark.

- The man in the vest is still outside the liquor store.

Krystal Rencountre talks with him for a few tense minutes.

At one point he gets agitated and steps toward her.

A homeless man who knows Krystal gets between them to protect her.

Eventually, a patrol car arrives, and the responding officer takes the man in the vest into custody.

We head back to the Journey On office.

Would you call this a typical day?

- Yeah, this is the new normal.

We stop for every single person that is in crisis, so we see this a lot.

Because of the respect and trust we have with the relatives, they have given us information that they don't give other people.

Like just now, that gentleman who told us what happened, he does not wanna speak to the police officer, he doesn't wanna speak to anybody, but he did tell us what happened.

- [Jackie Voiceover] Homelessness carries many costs for a community, but some of the biggest involve local law enforcement.

Steve Allender is the outgoing-mayor of Rapid City with nearly 40 years experience in law enforcement.

- By and large, our cost of homelessness in Rapid City is no less than $15 million a year.

And I say that because about 65% of the police force spends 50% of their time on homelessness.

- [Jackie Voiceover] Allender says that percentage is even higher for firefighters and other emergency responders.

But that's changed since Journey On launched in late 2021.

When we talked with Mayor Allender last fall, he was very pleased with Journey On's impact.

- Certainly within a few months we were seeing dramatic results, and so this group, Journey On, is literally taking calls away from the police.

In the first six months of 2022, we can document about a million dollars in savings to the tax payers because of Journey On.

- [Jackie Voiceover] Now, nearly a year and a half after the program's launch, the results continue to impress Rapid City Police Chief, Don Hedrick.

He says Journey On has handled more than 12,000 calls for service that would have come to police.

- And what that has done is it's allowed us to free up, you know, we've had the community knocking on our door asking for traffic enforcement.

They want people out in the neighborhoods enforcing school zones and speeding and walk-throughs downtown.

These are all requests that come in to us and since we partnered with Journey On it's allowed us to focus on those proactive activities that only a police officer can do.

- [Jackie Voiceover] That's a big reason Mayor Allender proposed a major funding increase for the program from the city budget last year.

As a non-profit Journey On runs on funds from community partners and grants.

It recently received a million dollars from a federal Department of Justice grant to expand staffing.

On a recent ride-along earlier this month, Manny Hernandez was driving with a new team member named Betsy Running Shield.

She had just finished training the week before.

In the last hour of their shift, they get a call to transport a man from detox to a local shelter for the night.

He's a familiar face to the team, and they chat along the way.

When they clear that call, there's a welfare check for an intoxicated man at the public library.

Hernandez and Running Shield take him to a county-run facility where he can sober up.

It's a cold day with a few flurries, which usually means a slower day for calls.

We spend the rest of the shift on the road, looking for people who need help and talking about this job's greatest challenges: burnout and guilt.

Yeah, I could see this being really hard to put down at the end of the day.

- Especially at nighttime when you gonna go home to a warm bed and you just think about them.

- [Manny] You worry about all the relatives.

- I worked for the last three nights and that was my feeling at the end of the night.

'Cause they were like, Just cruise me around for a little bit.

(Manny laughing) And I'm like, "I gotta go home".

And then you feel bad 'cause you gotta go home.

- [Jackie Voiceover] That guilt comes from a passion for helping the people Journey On team members call relatives.

Krystal Rencountre says anyone can be one crisis away from living on the street.

Through tears after our first ride along, she tells us the man who had assaulted someone outside the liquor store asked for her before the police officer drove him away.

- When I walked back to that police car, the reason he called me back there is because that gentleman wanted to apologize.

He apologized to me.

He said, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry if I scared you".

He said, "I'm really sad right now.

"I'm getting evicted and I just lost a family member".

So he's just going through a crisis.

He didn't have the right support around him at the time.

- [Jackie Voiceover] She talks about how complex homelessness really is.

- This man right here, you walk by him, and you see him holding up a sign.

He's 25 years old, he looks pretty good.

He's healthy, he should get a job.

I'm not gonna give him no money.

He looks like he can work.

Little do you know that that man doesn't have any documents 'cause he got his backpack stolen.

He doesn't have an ID, a social security card, a birth certificate, so he can't get a job.

He wants to live at the Mission, but you gotta pay seven dollars a night to live at the mission.

So how is he gonna get paid if he doesn't have an ID?

He's gonna stand there, and he's gotta panhandle.

He's got to put himself out there, you know.

It takes a lot of courage to stand out there with a sign asking for help when no one knows your story.

So Journey On, we ask what their story is.

And once we get to know them, they're our family.

I love these people with my whole heart.

I would do anything for them.

- The Journey On model of outreach to homeless people is inspiring a similar model in Sioux Falls.

City leaders have studied homelessness before, but a pilot program through South Dakota Urban Indian Health was one of the recommendations from a recent task force report.

The group says they've come up with sound policies that will make a difference even beyond the state's largest city.

Perhaps the biggest challenge for the Sioux Falls homeless task force was narrowing down the scope of their recommendations.

City Councilman Rich Merkouris led the group.

He says they focused on areas of consensus.

For example, shelter capacity was a contentious topic.

But the task force did not recommend building any additional homeless shelters in Sioux Falls.

- Ultimately we kinda landed in a spot that said, let's work on some of these other things and maybe that would help alleviate some of the pressures on the shelters.

- [Jackie Voiceover] One of their recommendations encourages more collaboration among organizations that help low-income and homeless people.

Kadyn Wittman was on the task force.

She worked with the Bishop Dudley Hospitality House that offers shelter and services for poor people, and that experience led her to run for office.

Wittman now represents part of Sioux Falls in the State House of Representatives.

- One thing that really surprised me, and maybe less surprised me, but I had confirmation of what I had suspected, was that a lot of these local nonprofits that serve this population, we tend to work in silos.

I think about, you know, Southeastern Behavioral Health is not always in communication about which of their clients are staying at the Bishop Dudley House versus St. Francis, versus Union Gospel Mission.

So just kind of realizing that miscommunication and that some of these organizations are offering the same service, but they don't even know about each other.

- [Jackie Voiceover] But that kind of collaboration can involve sensitive information.

So, the task force recommends the city help with the cost of a HIPPA-certified database.

It will include organizations involved with the Helpline Center.

Another recommendation calls on the city to foster healthy relationships with homeless individuals and the community.

Sioux Falls will have its own street outreach team much like Journey On in Rapid City.

That two-year pilot program will run in tandem with a public education campaign.

That should help residents better understand homelessness and ways to help.

Terry Liggins is another member of the task force.

He's also founder and CEO of The Hurdle Life Coach Foundation, a mentorship program for young people and adults.

He's been homeless twice, once as a child in Omaha when his mother left an abusive relationship, and later as an adult in Sioux Falls when his own relationship ended a year after his incarceration.

- There was someone in my network who was willing to bring me in with grace, with compassion, and not cause me to feel worse than I already did being in that situation.

And I think that's something we can take away from as a community when we're looking at adults that are in transition and dealing with those insecurities.

Shame and guilt does not assist that person in recovering and re-establishing some type of stability and security in their lives.

- [Jackie Voiceover] Another contentious topic before the task force was city signs that discourage giving money to panhandlers.

The signs suggest direct support to charities instead.

That's led to a public education campaign and another recommendation to review local panhandling ordinances.

- People think it's maybe really generous and caring to hand out some dollars out the window, but the reality is that it's probably not helping the individual doesn't really understand what poverty is.

Poverty's not just a lack of money.

Poverty is living in a broken system, broken relationships, broken opportunity, broken education, and so if you just hand out money that doesn't necessarily heal the brokenness.

- [Jackie Voiceover] Of course, other task force members like Terry Liggins have a different perspective.

- Right before one of our previous meetings, no cameras on, I watched you walk up the sidewalk.

A man happened to ask you if you had a few dollars to spare, and without hesitation you offered some money out of your own pocket.

- Yeah, yeah.

- What would you like to say?

- Well, I would just say that it works for me.

I think that what happens for people is they get lost in the perception of what is the person gonna do with the money.

They're only gonna use the money to further into their addiction or some other scheme, and for me, it's less about what they are gonna do with it and more about who I am as a person.

- [Jackie Voiceover] The final task force recommendation is a partnership between the City of Sioux Falls and Minnehaha County for services that focus on housing options.

Rich Merkouris explained it to the city council like this when he presented the task force recommendations.

- Many years ago in Sioux Falls, Sioux Falls saw its first Safe Home concept started between the county and the city.

The whole concept of the Safe Home is, let's get someone into housing, and then let's start working on some of the other issues they're experiencing in life.

Oftentimes the approach that we've taken historically is we've said, "Stop drinking, "and then we'll give you a home".

Anyone who understands substance abuse knows it doesn't work that way.

- I look at Safe Home that exists here in Sioux Falls.

It was founded just over 10 years ago for individuals that were so chronically homeless and chronic addicts that it saved taxpayer dollars to house them instead of putting them in jail every single night, wasting police resources on them, putting them in detox.

And what they saw when they gave people housing without stipulations or requirements was that people started to re-engage with their communities.

- If a person doesn't first have basic security and safety, they're not even biologically able to access that problem solving part of the brain.

So the housing first initiative says, let's house them first.

Put them into a place where they can regulate, rest, center, ground.

And then from there we're actually able to work them up the hierarchy into actually, recovery support programs, employment, reunification with family members and loved ones, but you first have to establish safety and security in all things for human needs and that's why the housing first initiative is sound approach to part of this issue.

- [Jackie Voiceover] Of course, all of this has a price tag.

The task force is recommending nearly a million dollars in city funds to support the initial for recommendations and there are plenty of conversations still to be had about where that money comes from and what happens next.

But members of this task force see an opportunity to make lasting change for Sioux Falls and beyond.

- If we can keep up the spirit of change, the spirit of hope, knowing that hope is that light, hope is that hope that keeps people going and pay it forward.

We have to have that, and I'm sure about that every single day.

I'm very hopeful for Sioux Falls.

- We'll end tonight with efforts to help a specific subset of South Dakota's homeless population, military veterans.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development's 2022 count says there are 40 homeless veterans in South Dakota.

That's four zero.

Now, homeless counts often fall short of reality, and different organizations use different qualifications to reach their estimates, but there are service members in our communities who are falling through the cracks.

Combat veterans who want to close those gaps founded the Veterans Community Project.

Bringing the number of unhoused veterans to zero takes a village, or in this case, a village of tiny homes.

- [Jackie Voiceover] This undeveloped grove of trees in central Sioux Falls doesn't look like much, but it holds real potential for the future.

Eric Gage says it will offer homes to more than a dozen veterans.

- To the left here is where our 15 single units will be for individual veterans to live in.

Right here in the center will be our village center where all of our services will be ran out of, so like, our case workers will work out of there.

- [Jackie Voiceover] We first toured the property with Gage last year.

The Veterans Community Project plans a village of tiny homes to serve as transitional housing for homeless veterans.

It's an expansion of a project founded by combat veterans in Kansas City, Missouri.

For Gage, this project is part of a personal mission.

He's from the Sioux Falls area and joined the Air National Guard after high school.

- I figured, you know, Dad was in the Guard, and Grandpa was in the Guard, so on September 11th, I was in basic training.

And that kind of changed the trajectory of all Guardsmen, really.

- [Jackie Voiceover] After 12 years serving stateside and overseas, Gage found a place with the Veterans Club at the University of South Dakota, that led to a job with Student Veterans of America in Washington D.C. - And during that, I came across a lot of very high functioning individuals, people that were at the top of their game, you know.

They'd gotten into really good schools after the military and were thriving in the classroom, but even amongst that population there were still some that had those friends, or even their own personal experiences where they had struggles.

They either didn't qualify for some VA benefits, or, you know, because of their time in the military had some underlying issues that they hadn't yet dealt with.

So even amongst this population that on the surface level was doing very well, there was some of these underlying issues that need to be worked on, on a personal level.

And reflecting on that even with my own story where, after, you know, coming home, I would sometimes flounder, trying to find what was next for me, trying to, you know, find my way back in my own community.

- [Jackie Voiceover] Gage eventually moved back to South Dakota with his wife and young son.

He happened to catch a presentation from one of the founders of the Veterans Community Project, Vincent Morales.

Gage introduced himself.

- And a little while later, the job opening popped up and Vinn is like, 'Hey man, something came up.

"You should probably apply for that."

- It turns out The Veteran Community project had also caught the attention of Sioux Falls city leaders.

They courted the organization to choose this city as an expansion site, and left no room for doubt of the city's commitment.

- So we needed land.

Well, somebody knew about this piece of land and how to get their hands on it.

They talked about zoning.

Well, they knew how to change that because the person in charge of zoning and permitting was in the room.

And over the course of that meeting with VCP, they were able to overcome all the obstacles and that's what really set Sioux Falls apart from any other community that reached out.

Because not only was there a champion in city government, but the city government itself took the initiative to put all the right players in the room.

- [Jackie Voiceover] But these projects don't always get a positive reception from neighbors.

Sioux Falls Mayor Paul TenHaken said as much at the groundbreaking last June.

- I'll tell you, one of the problems we have with housing right now is the attitude of, not in my backyard.

You wanna put affordable housing, accessible housing, workforce housing, everybody wants it, no one wants it near 'em.

- [Jackie Voiceover] But this project was a different story, Eric Gage says there was no opposition to the Veterans Community Project development during the public rezoning process.

- This land being in the middle of this neighborhood here, being undeveloped, has kind of been attracting not good uses.

- [Jackie Voiceover] Think teenagers looking for places to mingle.

But as Gage's team began to survey the site, they made another discovery.

- While preppin' for the groundbreaking we cleaned up a lot of brush and stuff and we piled it back in here.

But also early on while we were looking at the property we found some signs of a homeless camp, which you can actually see back there.

You see that chair?

- [Jackie Voiceover] People were already using this piece of land tucked behind a ridge and surrounded by trees as a discreet place for shelter.

- Over here, this is a collapsed tent that presumably somebody was living in.

There's also some bike parts, abandoned bikes.

Some furniture over here.

There's a mattress, and the mattress used to have, like, construction plastic draped over it between the trees.

There's also some chairs.

There's a baby playpen, which is quite sad to see.

- [Jackie Voiceover] Discarded cans of food and cans of beer litter the site, maybe from partying teenagers, maybe not.

- And speaking to one of the neighbors, he's in the past come over here and cleaned up drug paraphernalia, so that his grandkids wouldn't find it when playing in the area.

So we know that this is what we're seeing now, but there's been more here over time that folks have taken upon themselves to clean up.

It looked like people were camping back in here last year.

It doesn't look like anybody's really touched it since the spring, but you know, it's kind of interesting how we're taking this land that has had folks, homeless folks living on it, to build it to be a village for homeless veterans.

- [Jackie Voiceover] Construction crews started clearing the grove and in the past 9 months the site has transformed.

Even with weather-related delays and supply shortages, the Veteran Community Project in Sioux Falls is catching up with the two other sites under construction around the country.

A big step in the process came late last year, when Harrisburg High School students got involved.

The school's Home Builders Academy made frames for the first few houses.

- [Eric] The house we're sitting in right now, all the walls were framed out in that facility and then loaded on a trailer, and then brought to the site and stood up by the framing crew.

And then it comes to the house you see today.

- [Jackie Voiceover] The Veterans Community Project model relies heavily on community volunteers and donations.

Gage's small staff includes David Rieger, an Army veteran, as the construction lead.

- I'll be the one with the volunteers out here, kind of showing them the ropes if they don't know anything about what we're doing that day, say it's framing, we'll show them how to frame a house.

- [Jackie Voiceover] Recent college graduate Kaelyn Giefer is working with the project as well as their Community Engagement Coordinator.

- Every day is a new celebration.

We come out and it's just so amazing to see all the progress that's been made each day.

And I mean, we haven't even hit the good part yet.

We haven't even started housing veterans yet.

So it's only gonna get even better and better.

- [Jackie Voiceover] They hope to welcome those first residents later this year.

Factors like weather, funds and supplies all make a difference.

But once the houses are ready, this project has partnerships already planned with other city services to connect with veterans.

- After a person is identified, they meet with their case manager, and their case manager works one-on-one with them to ID What they need to be successful.

What brought them to this point in life?

What are those demons that they need to overcome?

What are the things they need to be successful?

And what is success to them?

Where do they want to be at the end of this?

Our average resident stays at VCP 10 to 14 months with an 85% success rate.

And those are numbers that people that work in transitional housing programs almost don't believe because they're so preferable.

- [Jackie Voiceover] The Veterans Community Project doesn't accept federal funding.

That frees it to serve veterans who may not qualify for services through the VA. Of course, that also means the organization relies on consistent community support.

- [Jackie] What do you need next?

- Right now, we're building.

Building everything.

We're building a village.

We're building a team.

We're building a volunteer base.

We're building a donor base.

We're assembling materials, getting donations.

We need literally everything.

So we're building out a team of Veteran support services that will do the work.

So that's a director of Veteran Support Services and case managers that will serve the individuals in the village as well as work in the field with those that we hope to serve.

We're looking to assemble an army of volunteers to help us build this village to do the work with the veterans, or work with Kaeylin out in the community doing community events, going to hockey games or the fair or a parade or whatever that is to bring our message to the community.

We're building the resources we need to stock these houses.

Every one of these houses comes fully stocked when a new person moves in.

And a fully stocked house is 186 different items.

And that's a lot of stuff.

- [Jackie Voiceover] If the response at last summer's groundbreaking is any indication...the community support is there.

- Our mission as veterans, housing veterans armed with the support of the community.

And we want the community to be part of this.

Arm us to do what we do and join our mission.

- That's all we have time for tonight.

I'll see you again on Thursday, May 25th.

We'll hear how high school students in Sturgis deal with isolation, and learn more about how we can support good mental health for our state's young people.

Until then, I'm Jackie Hendry.

Thank you for watching.

(gentle upbeat music)