The housing model provides a stable residence that formerly homeless people with mental illness and addictions can’t “fail out” of, though some describe feeling stuck.
The housing model provides a stable residence that formerly homeless people with mental illness and addictions can’t “fail out” of, though some describe feeling stuck.
The housing model provides a stable residence that formerly homeless people with mental illness and addictions can’t “fail out” of, though some describe feeling stuck.
Good morning. It’s Thursday. Today we’ll look at an apartment complex in the Bronx where about 60 formerly homeless people live in what’s called permanent supportive housing. We’ll also get details on a federal judge’s decision to drop corruption charges against Mayor Eric Adams.
An apartment complex in the Bronx, called the Lenniger Residences, is home to about 60 formerly homeless people with mental illness. My colleague Andy Newman, who covers social services for the Metro desk, and the photographer Thea Traff spent more than a year talking with residents and workers at the Lenniger. It is owned by a nonprofit, the Center for Urban Community Services, and follows a model called permanent supportive housing. I talked with Andy about what life there is like.
From what you saw, how well does permanent supportive housing work? Is its one-stop approach a panacea?
The main goal of permanent supportive housing is to keep people who have been chronically homeless out of homelessness, and from what we saw at the Lenniger, it does a great job of that.
Over the last four years at the Lenniger, 97 percent of the supportive housing residents — all battling mental illness and most struggling with substance abuse — have either remained there or moved to other stable housing. About half the people who moved in when the Lenniger opened in 2011 are still living there.