What is Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH)?
Permanent Supportive Housing gives a person more than just a place to stay. It provides or directs individuals to support services to help with independent living and growth. For some that means stopping by once in a while to see how they are managing. For some it means helping with goal setting. For some it means offering information about programs or other resources. For others it means gentle reminders to pay rent, to take medication, and to go to appointments.
For the community it means offering a compassionate solution to homelessness. It costs much less to provide supportive housing than to warehouse people in jails, homeless shelters or psychiatric hospitals. Shuffling people from place to place is destabilizing to the individual and costly to the community.
What other benefits come with supportive housing?
When individuals are housed, they can recover, rejoin the community and work to improve the world around them. If they achieve paid employment, their spending and tax revenues benefit the community.
How else does permanent supportive housing benefit the community?
There is environmental value in improving the housing stock of neighborhoods. When NPI purchases a property, we clean it up, rehabilitate and add landscaping. When you improve one site, you increase its value and the whole area benefits. When one property is upgraded, neighbors are more inclined to take care of their properties as well. Purchasers are more likely to invest in the street, and the cycle of growth unfolds.
That is why we believe so strongly in our mission at NPI. With community support we can fight homelessness, reclaim neighborhoods, and support the local economy.
How does NPI provide Permanent Supportive Housing?
From 1988 through 2018, NPI provided versions of tenant support services intended to help people find and keep their housing. Known as Housing Support Services (HSS), NPI’s efforts often plugged holes in the safety net as Medicaid case management services were redesigned and declined.
During this 30-year journey other “pilot projects” were incorporated in and around NPI’s HSS, including PATH outreach, CABHI critical time intervention team, expedited SSI applications through SOAR, supported employment, HUD/HEARTH program specialization and peer support coaching. The effort to improve the outcome of all these efforts has NPI looking to the future and Recovery Services 2.0, the next generation of permanent supportive housing services.
Today NPI is planning the transition of permanent supportive housing, and how to provide the very best service within the community. The vision for Recovery Services 2.0 employs housing teams using the best of evidence-based practices such as the PATH, CABHI, critical time intervention, and crisis intervention models.
By redesigning supportive services by functional need, NPI tenants will receive access to onboarding services (i.e. outreach and leasing), housing stabilization services from CTI teams (i.e. CTI specialist, SOAR specialist and peer recovery navigator), and At-Risk consultants specializing in trauma/domestic violence, AOD, forensics, bedbug and hoarding, etc.
Recovery Services 2.0 will provide the appropriate amount of services when needed to help people living with a mental illness gain safe, decent, stable and affordable housing and improve their long-term recovery.
NPI offers permanent housing with supportive services to every person accepted to be housed. Support services are provided as needed to all, or as required upon acceptance into one of the following programs:
Homeless Outreach
Projects for Assistance in Transitioning from Homelessness (PATH) is an advocate, helping navigate documents, applications, and appointments needed to get housing and treatment. Clients of PATH survive & thrive by being connected to local resources; by being linked to housing; by being helped through the rough terrain between homelessness and stable housing. PATH typically works with a person for 90 days coaching, negotiating, transporting. PATH’s ultimate goal is to identify and guide homeless individuals to supportive housing and mental health care.
HOPE
The Homeless Outreach and Person-centered Engagement (HOPE) Project is a partnership between Zepf Center and Neighborhood Properties Inc (NPI). The organizations are utilizing its expertise in recovery wellness and housing supports to provide a variety of services and resources that assist families and individuals attain stable housing while improving their quality of life.
Homeless Families
NPI offers permanent housing for homeless families with children in which one member lives with mental illness. The program serves 30 families per year on average, allowing them to stabilize and begin healing.
A Fresh Start - for Homeless Women with Children
NPI offers permanent supported housing for homeless women with children, providing them with a chance to recover and rebuild in a safe environment where they are equipped with the tools needed to maintain housing, get healthy, take care of their children, and set goals for the future. The program serves 30 families per year on average, allowing them to stabilize and begin healing.
Transitioning – for Young Men and Women
Progressive Assertive Community Treatment (PACT) for young men and women age 18-24, transitioning from the public mental health system for children. Young adults facing big changes are housed and guided toward adult mental health services and independence.
First Avenue to a New Beginning - for Young Men and Women
This program is for young men and women age 18-24, who have been involved with the criminal justice system and who have been stuck in a cycle of repetitive, unhealthy behaviors, we can provide supportive housing for up to two years. Participants are required to meet with program manager regularly, attend group meetings for peer support and problem-solving and attend group trainings offered on-site.
Veterans - for disabled male & female veterans
We offers transitional supported housing which includes monitoring of sobriety, symptom monitoring & management, stress & anger management, help with applications for government benefits, housekeeping skills, as well as camaraderie with other veterans, weekly meetings with a social worker from the VA, and the services of NPI recovery specialist and peers.
Peer Recovery Coaches Program – for additional support, socialization and connectedness
This program promotes healthy recovery through events and activities that empower tenants to socialize, empower, and connect to family and friends. These activities are free, non-judgmental, and inclusive. Recovery Coaches, because of their own life experiences, function as a guide to help tenants with decision making and support steps toward recovery. Activities are geared toward balancing the participant’s critical needs with the resources and strengths that he or she possesses to adapt to stressful situations, confront environmental challenges, improve quality of life, and advance in recovery.
Adult Care – for individuals unable to live and thrive on their own
Opportunities exist for group home operators to collaborate with NPI to house individuals who require more direct and intensive housing support services. Adult Care Facilities provide these vulnerable and sometimes fragile individuals with a place to call home.
Fostoria Junction – rural support and privacy
Appropriate housing can be difficult to find in the quiet, agricultural areas outside Toledo. NPI owns a beautiful facility in rural Northwest Ohio so customers can stay close to home and get the support and privacy they need.
