A tale of two states

What happens when you give a homeless person a subsidized apartment? The answer isn’t as straightforward as you might think. But in Utah, it’s proven a resounding success – out of 17 chronically homeless people who took part in the state’s 2005 pilot program, all were still off the streets two years later, spurring a long-term “Housing First” initiative that’s reduced Utah’s homeless population by 74 percent while saving the state millions of dollars.

Lloyd Pendleton, Director of the Utah Homeless Task Force, remembers one woman who took part in the pilot program. She’d been on and off the streets for over a decade, but after she was given a place of her own in Salt Lake City, still chose to sleep outside next to a dumpster. Eventually, she started crashing on the floor of the apartment. And after a while, she began sleeping in the bed. Today, she lives near her family, 70 years old, sober and happy.

Had she lived just across the border in Wyoming, her story might have ended very differently. Though its rate of homelessness isn’t particularly high, Wyoming falls dead last in the nation for sheltering its homeless, with only 26 percent receiving shelter, compared to 61 percent nationally. Plus, Wyoming’s homeless population has been on the rise: According to official data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, it’s more than doubled over the last three years, though Mary Randolph of the Wyoming Rural Development Council says it’s hard to know what the exact numbers are because the state’s record-keeping has been so inconsistent.

Still, she adds, the homeless population has indeed increased: “When the economy tanked, people heard there were (oil and gas) jobs in Wyoming and flooded out here. There weren’t jobs, and weren’t homes either, so a lot of people ended up on the streets.”

It wasn’t until last year that Wyoming officials fully realized that the state’s plan for addressing homelessness lagged so far behind neighboring states’. “We weren’t getting the funding from HUD that we were eligible to get. We didn’t have an organized continuum of care like most other states, and there was (no one) overseeing homeless programs,” says Brenda Lyttle, a senior administrator in the Department of Family Services who now coordinates the state’s homeless services.

Under Lyttle’s direction, Wyoming is taking action. ....

Read the rest of the story at http://www.hcn.org/blogs/goat/a-tale-of-two-states-utahs-become-a-model-for-reducing-homelessness-but-wyoming-lags-behind