Jessica Greenwell:
With 91.9 KVCR News, I'm Jessica Greenwell. Today I'm in conversation with Jeff Gaddess, Vice President of Programs and Partnerships with Dignity Moves, an organization striving to end unsheltered homelessness through building scalable interim supportive housing, partnering with a variety of groups, and advocating for legislation that addresses barriers in care and sustainable progress. Jeff, thank you for taking the time to talk today. There's a lot going on with housing and homelessness in legislation currently. Can we talk about that?
Jeff Gaddess:
Well, yeah, I would say that a lot is absolutely happening. Probably more activity than a lot of us have seen in many years, a lot of effort being placed to really address the issues, you know, related to people experiencing homelessness, and certainly what we would call high acuity populations. Which is people who typically are experiencing diagnosis of serious mental illness and co-occurring disorders of substance use of significant substance use, and then the substances, meth and the current iterations in meth and fentanyl. And the challenges with recovering and getting people into recovery on those particular drugs has been an extraordinary challenge for all of us and these new iterations of drugs that are coming on to the streets, which created another challenge, right? But the legislation that's coming through the pipeline, specifically, Prop. 1, is really designed to meet this moment that we are in, in terms of the level of acuity that's out there, the level of high needs that are out on the streets; everything from housing, to treatment, is in that and then the ability to really facilitate getting people help is in that legislation too. Meaning being able to bring people into care court, maybe even expanding the number of people that we can put under conservatorship, in those still rare incidents where we need to do that. But it's given mental health workers and people in the field more leverage to be able to really address the needs of a significant portion of the people out there living on the streets, and even you know, who are revolving through the jails and is their needs it really meeting and resourcing the level of, of needs that they have. I feel really not only good, but great, and a lot of us do have been working in the field for a long time about Proposition 1, specifically, because it has resources in there to staff and train tens of thousands of new mental health workers, which is extraordinary. It is increasing our capacity to build more treatment beds. And then right now what we're trying to do, and I'm in conversations with people is really determining those what those treatment beds are and like how we're going to allocate the build out of those beds, right? In terms of, is it psychiatric hospitalization? Is it residential treatment beds? Is it board and cares? Is it recovery centers? There's a number, it's not just one size fits all. It's really allocating these resources and building out the treatment and rebuild, it's really a rebuild of the treatment infrastructure that was really started to be really compromised with deinstitutionalization. And I think Prop. 1 really steps into that space of deinstitutionalization, and doing a course correction on a lot of things that got shut down, that ended up leading to the number of people with significant mental health challenges and substance use that are in our jails, and also our streets. That in combination with the increasing challenges around housing and the housing inventory, the cost of housing, the cost of living overall. And we have the UCSF Benioff study, which demonstrates the conditions that lead to getting on the streets with housing being a huge component. And the cost of housing itself cannot be forgotten. It's really is along with these other issues. It's a central component. Where we're at now in the face of this legislation, I think even for people in the field, is an education of what this legislation is and a re-education and re-emphasis on how we're going to do this, like how are we going to train people to work with this level of acuity and help bring the people that we're seeing on the streets into treatment and care? That is the task of our time in our day right now? Right? I mean, it looks, it feels to me like what I would call the Mental Health New Deal, really. It's just this huge shift. I mean, they're calling it in part, Behavioral Health Transformation. BHT. That tells you what you need to know. And it's really going to challenge the system. And I'm also hopeful because there's a lot of auditing. I think the broader public that people that are worried about the amount of money we spent and the feels like we're not getting results. That you know, just there's accountability in this legislation that they're going to really evaluate the dollars being spent and the outcome that's related to those dollars being spent.
Jessica Greenwell:
And Jeff, we've spoken a couple times now and originally at the San Bernardino Wellness Center campus for the announcement of the expansion of an existing facility for men. And now this is being expanded with adjacent land, and in a partnership that addresses some of the barriers that are often met in your field doing the work. And perhaps the grant funding is one-time and you can't have supportive housing facilities maintained with that grant funding. So, this will only get this piece of land, but then we need something else here. And as I go out, the issue that comes up a lot are the barriers to making it work, because of the way that funding is allocated and the requirements of such funding. I met you through Dignity Moves, who is building interim supportive housing, that can be scaled; I'll let you speak to that. But your background is more than you have a bird's eye view.
Jeff Gaddess:
Yeah, and you know, just I'll start with the barriers, because I think that's the right word, that's a word we often use people who are really effective or effective, by any measure, are those of us who understand barriers and navigate barriers. We have to, we have to meet them and engage them because they're real. But we've had to adapt. And we've had to be really adaptive in terms of like, what the barriers are in order to get anything done. Right. But, um, but in that sense, what again, just to pivot off what my hope for Prop. 1 and the kind of funding that I'm seeing coming in is, it's less, we're going to be less dependent on, my hope, dependent on time phased grants that are only here for so long. And then we've got to figure out another way to fund it. And you're right, I talked to a lot of service operators, a lot of people in the field, who are hesitant or trying to figure out like, look, I'll take this money, but how do I maintain ongoing operations? Again, Prop. 1 is a fundamental shift in terms of ongoing operations and support for these projects to meet these barriers. So, they are, the state is and everybody is aware of, and now addressing through this significant legislation, and we'll see what happens after this. But it'll be that bridge to continued funding. If you're doing the work and you're demonstrating the results, my belief is you will continue to get the funding and we'll continue to be able to build this out, and the amount of resources that are needed to help this level of acuity, this level of need. So, the utilization of existing resources and partnerships is fundamental to that. Breaking down silos of care and getting people to work together in what we would call, and it is a real thing in the field, it's called a multidisciplinary approach. Which is you're bringing public health, mental health, public defender's office, community-based organizations that are focused on this stuff, people focus on everything from food and clothes, everything coming together around these issues. Doctors Without Walls, right, all of these different organizations that come in, on a site in a place around a group of people in a region, working together and sharing resources. So, this isn't also the ask for more resources. This is the utilization of existing resources. That's the mantra that I've been out there saying is like, I don't want the public to think we're going to keep asking; what we're doing is really reintegrating and really utilizing structures that we've already built that are there. And we have highly skilled professionals out there in the public health and mental health and social services field that are ready to go and willing, they just need integration and places to do their work where we draw people in to meet them. Because it's so difficult to find people out on the streets and in encampments, and work with when they're constantly moving around. And they're so unstable out there and so vulnerable out there, that it's hard to triage and maintain a continuity of care. Bringing them inside with these multidisciplinary teams working with them, and stabilizing them, that's where we've had a big impact. That's where dignity moves comes in. We build the interim supportive housing sites where the developers really that come and work with the communities, political leadership, the social service, community-based organizations, and philanthropy and private sector people coming together to join forces, to find the land, get even get people to donate the land, if we can, from churches, to private landowners to city and county land that's available for us to use. We have emergency shelter legislation and ability to build these sites and fast track permitting, which is really important. And we're able to lower costs because they're modular units. So, we've been able to significantly lower costs that you would see like, again, in permanent supportive housing tell us about a building. Those are so extraordinary, and modular units built this way in this configuration. We've significantly reduced the cost of these projects and the sites and fast track them but we can do them anywhere from four months to a year depending on the scope and size and the things that we have to move through. We can build them really fast and get people off the streets as quick as possible. From Dignity Moves perspective, our mantra is the streets should not be a waiting room.
Jessica Greenwell:
Jeff, thank you so much for your time. I've been speaking with Jeff Gaddis vice president of programs and partnerships with Dignity Moves. We'll continue our conversation next week and get deeper into the details of care, triage and needs assessment, and the broader cultural and systemic dynamics at play. How they shaped the current mood, as well as potentially impact the trajectory for meaningful and measurable progress. For KVCR News, I'm Jessica Greenwell.
