Shelter Care in an organization that works to provide people with housing in Eugene, Oregon. CEO Michelle Hankes, talks about how she got into this work, why it is essential in the community, and what makes their services unique.
For more information about this organization and how you can get involved visit https://sheltercare.org/what-we-do/
To find out more about White Bird Clinic, visit whitebirdclinic.org.
Shelter Care in an organization that works to provide people with housing in Eugene, Oregon. CEO Michelle Hankes, talks about how she got into this work, why it is essential in the community, and what makes their services unique.
For more information about this organization and how you can get involved visit https://sheltercare.org/what-we-do/
To find out more about White Bird Clinic, visit whitebirdclinic.org.
Hello, you're listening to White Bird Mutual Aid. My name is Hana Francis. This show explores different community focused organizations and how they work. We talk with folks who offer services to their community, about what they do, how they do it and why it's important. This episode is about shelter care, a local nonprofit and accredited charity, which is focused on bringing services, including housing and behavioral health to people who are either unhoused or on the verge of homelessness. As most of you listening probably know, Lane County has a major affordable housing crisis. As a result of that, in combination with other variables such as lack of access to mental health, and drug rehabilitation services. Lane County records about 4000 homeless individuals every month. Shelter care is doing their part to provide services to people experiencing homelessness in Lane County, by addressing housing needs. And according to their website, they helped 1813 people and the year of 2021 to 2022. Shelter care provides housing services for families, permanent supported long term housing, short term housing, and some behavioral health services. Here to talk to me more about shelter care and their services is Michelle Hankes, the executive director of shelter care in Eugene, Oregon.
Michelle Hankes:So Shelter Care, which has been around for over 50 years now provides compassionate housing and behavioral health services for individuals and families who want a safe and stable home in the Eugene Springfield area. And that most of our programs are focused on long term permanent supportive housing. So that it's, it's, um, wanting people to be stable, resilient at their highest possible level, we do have some programs that look at transitional or short term housing, but we really, really want to make sure that we're creating solutions, not kicking the can down the road.
Hana Francis:Could you tell me a little bit about how you became the CEO?
Michelle Hankes:Wow, if I took on the role of CEO on January, well, December 30 2019, right, a few months before everything really changed with the pandemic. And my skill set is really around developing strategic plans, developing fundraising systems and and outcome development. And, and so that's where I was going to focus on. And then of course, the pandemic happened. Fortunately, my skill set included dealing with disasters. That wasn't why I was hired. But we did work through the pandemic, as if I was leaving disaster program. While this was not a hurricane, it, it was probably worse than than any hurricane I'd ever worked out in, in the southeast. And so we were really looking at communication, how can we shift quickly to make sure we're still providing all of our services, even if it's done, either remotely, or through processes we'd never thought of the staff came up with a lot of different ideas, we had to make sure that that staff were safe. We had to make sure that our consumers, our program, participants were safe. And so we had to, we never paused. We continued to house people, we continue to provide services in every form or fashion, we were able to expand our program for rental assistance. The county when it received the federal funding for COVID Rent relief knew that we already had a program so we were able to expand that. And instead of 100,000 a year we did more than 3 million in a year. Yeah. So we were able to expand off of small things. Because we had to because it was needed. Just every time we ran into a wall. We found a way to go around it over it under it or through it with our partners. And that's that's how we that's that was my introduction to shelter care.
Hana Francis:Michelle said that in order to really understand Shelter Care services, it's important to understand the distinction between different kinds of shelter and housing. Generally speaking, there are three different types of shelter housing that shelter care provides. There's short term or immediate shelter, which is often brief and reactionary shelter. Then there's transitional housing, housing provided to someone for a transitional or a waiting period. This could be due to a waitlist, a need for skills building or other reasons. And then there's long term supported housing. People have leases and pay rent, in this situation 30% of their income. This is essentially having a lease with a safety net, in which case, the staff of shelter care provides the financial humanitarian safety net,
Michelle Hankes:There's shelter, and there's housing, I want to make sure that there's a definition with both of them. Short term, shelter short term emergency shelter is immediate, it's very frequently congregate in it is it may be very brief, it may be for a weekend as people are transitioning, say you have a disaster that could be emergency shelter, there are a lot of different things that could end with emergency shelter. Transitional or short term housing is someone may be looking, they have a plan, they there's a process there's there's there's a goal, but they need maybe skills, or maybe the unit the apartment is available, it could be a process of if you've been chronically unhoused, there may be a lot of barriers to you getting housed in a more permanent way you might be needing documentation, you may not have your driver's license anymore, or your social security card. There may be skills that you need to relearn or learn so that you're successful when you get a lease to a long term apartment. So that transitional time, a lot of different needs a lot of different reasons for that transitional one of our transitional programs is the shelter care medical recuperation program. And that is housing and meals for individual rooms so that there's safety for people who are literally homeless coming out of the hospital. And perhaps they've had a limb amputated, they've have severe diabetes, they have had a heart attack, they have had a severe medical trauma. And the hospital says, we we want these people to recover. But keeping them in the hospital is expensive, and perhaps not the best place. So we can house these individuals as they heal. And we do work with them trying to find a housing plan long term, of course, as well. But that transition is around healing and becoming and recovering. Now, long term or permanent supportive housing, people have leases, they do pay rent 30% of their income and a lot of our our program participants have an income of some sort from some some source, whether it might be Social Security might be disability might be a job a lot of different reasons, but they pay rent, they have a lease, it may be a master lease program, which is kind of like subletting through shelter care, so that they can create a resume for a future long term lease in their own name. And others have clientele leases throughout the community. And so what that housing is, is this, it's it's a having a lease with a safety net. And that safety net is our, our staff who may be working with them again for skills, they may make mistakes, they're they're new to leases, and, and and the rules of being having a lease so our staff work with them to make sure that they're successful, to hold accountable. And sometimes, sometimes it doesn't work. It's not that they're out of the program, they may leave a unit that is in a location that's not good for them. Because of maybe someone is traumatized by certain noises and if they're by a train track, that might not be a good location for them. So it's sometimes its location, sometimes it's, well, you made some mistakes, what did you learn from them? Let's try it again. And and frequently. They're very successful. The the long term win success for the community is that people may not need our services anymore. They have their lease and they're they're part of the community and and it's a really good feeling to be part of that.
Hana Francis:Shelter care works in a pretty interesting way and manages a series of individual 501 C threes that have passed operates around Eugene and Springfield and through these individual 501 C threes they provide behavioral services, paperwork assistance, support and facilitation to all these housing programs. They offer rental assistance to those who qualify and they also manage programs that coordinate alternative ways of helping folks get housed or avoid homelessness altogether, such as the Reds program. This is an example of a short term shelter program offered by shelter care. The rapid exit and diversion services helps people find short term shelter within their own social networks. Many people especially during the pandemic have lost their housing because of not being able to afford rent, being evicted and or being unable to find new housing on short notice. The Reds program can facilitate finding a friend or family member to reach out to and can offer financial assistance for things like groceries or moving cost. This helps people avoid overwhelmed emergency shelters. And more importantly, to avoid unsheltered living situations altogether. For more information, you can go to shelter cares website shelter care.org. Short term housing can prevent folks from becoming an housed and present them with opportunities to get on their feet and find long term housing. Long term housing assistance is also offered through shelter care. The organization provides help with paperwork, sustained coaching, and advice to ensure that folks are able to retain the housing you can find family stories of success. To read about these stories, you can go to shelter care.org. Another program which Shelter Care offers for family housing is the keystone program.
Michelle Hankes:Keystone opened last year, and it is 15 apartment units for chronically homeless families. chronically homeless means approximately seven years on housed. On average, these families in this program also received wraparound services around access to our staff, work with the families to make sure they have access to health care access to signing up for appropriate benefits access to helping whatever those needs are when you have kids and the kids are anywhere from infant to 17 years old, those needs can be very, very varied. And that is in partnership with homes for good.
Hana Francis:Shelter care also offers some behavioral health resources to assist in the process of getting housed and remaining housed. You mentioned behavioral health services. So can you elaborate a little bit on the specific kinds the offer?
Michelle Hankes:Sure we have a very small but mighty clinic focused on behavioral health and our niche in the behavioral health system is those with severe and persistent mental illness and have lived history lived lived experience being unhoused and may be currently unhoused. They may have been housed. Most of them are in our housing programs, or were in our housing programs and have stayed with us. Again, it's a very small group of behavioral health with very specifics now, we don't do everything. There's a it's impossible to be everything. So we partner with other organizations like white bird and the chrysalis program for drug and alcohol addiction services. So it's um, it's important that we have our partners like white bird, to make sure that our clients, our program, participants have the resources they need. So our behavioral health therapists and our skills trainers work together to say if this if if riding a bus is very important, because you don't have a car, you need to go to work, you need to go get your groceries, you need to get your prescriptions that that riding the bus might be anxiety inducing. So some of that skill building might be this is how, let's Let's ride the bus together. All right, now let's have you do this. So some of it is around skills, skills training, and of course there's therapy.
Hana Francis:As you may have gathered already, Shelter Care works with a lot of other programs and organizations in town in order to try and make housing accessible to folks. What other organs stations do you work with round town?
Michelle Hankes:Oh my goodness. What don't who don't we work with might be a better way to do it. We work with, of course White Bird in multiple ways through CAHOOTS. One of our short term housing units that we have is always open and available for cahoots. If in the middle of the night, they are addressing some issue in the community that requires removing somebody and getting them housing briefly overnight, that emergency housing, that unit is always available for the CAHOOTS team to access. We of course use CAHOOTS on our side when frequently we have not frequently but sometimes we have some of our program participants have again, severe persistent mental illness, and they need help. They need help and and the CAHOOTS fan is there to help deescalate and help help make sure a bad situation becomes much safer for everyone. We love CAHOOTS. Absolutely. Then of course we work with there is the behavioral health resource network that's been established this year for working with addiction. And in a services, Shelter Care is providing seven units. Some when I say units, I'm talking about efficiency apartments in our converted motel to serve individuals that our partners are working with and rehabilitation drug rehabilitation programs. And so many of our clients. While we do not have those services, many of our clients need those services. So again, we're working with Oh, who's on that that list? White Bird again, we veterans housing for veterans. They're 19 agencies also. So those are nonprofits. But we're also working with city of Eugene city of Springfield, Lane County, government, we're working with the chamber and the organizations with the chamber on their homelessness Task Force. We're really trying to make sure that everyone is part of making our community stronger.
Hana Francis:One of the most important collaborations is working with the county, because the application process for shelter care runs through link County.
Michelle Hankes:While no process is perfect, the process that all Shelter Care's programs are we work through the centralized waiting list at the county. That way people don't have to go from place to place to place trying to figure out where do they fit at one, one funnel one one entry point. Now, they can get on that list through multiple ways. But that way, when a program opens, whether it's for a family program, whether it's for an individual program, we can go to the county that we have an opening, they know who's on the list, who has what needs and who would fit for the programs. So it's it's helpful in that way. Now, again, is that process perfect? Of course not, there's no such thing as perfection. And the county, in partnership with several other agencies that are working with the unhoused are coming together to say how do we improve this process? How do we can how can we constantly make improvements to our process to serve people as best we can?
Hana Francis:Yeah, absolutely. I'm really curious, like what some of those issues might be? Would you mind expanding on that a little bit?
Michelle Hankes:Sure. Some of the issues may be how do I get to that list? How do I people don't just wake up knowing all the answers. So how can we make sure people are finding it. Now some individuals or families come and have a specific need that might not be permanent supportive housing, it might be more short term, it might be more we need some rapid resolution, we need diversion. We need these things, these things. So they want to make sure we're that you don't have to go through if you need to. If you are needing help, that the process stops where you need to stop so you don't have to ask or answer or go through other assessments for the programs you're not necessarily looking for. And, and again, it is a constantly making sure that the process is easy, but we want to make sure that people are met where they are, and have access to the resources that they need at that time.
Hana Francis:Another important collaboration that Shelter Care takes part in is with Lane County Behavioral Health to create the Birch 378 Aid and Assist Program. Folks living without shelter or without a house are statistically more prone to spend time in jail and the hospital. There are many reasons for this, including the fact that there are laws that criminalize things which would be normal to do in a house also the number of times that unhoused folks interact with the police are increased because of regular patrols and camp sweeps in which folks are forced to move from their shelter by the police. Psychologically, people are more likely to have a smaller window of tolerance when they are in, let alone living in heightened or stressful circumstances. Add the frustrations of not being able to obtain comfort and safety, it's no surprise that situations are prone to escalate. Not only is this an unhealthy cycle for the individual, it also uses a lot of money to pay for these services from the county. So the Birch Program aims to facilitate folks with mental health needs from jail and psychiatric hospitals to study shelter and community. So far, the bridge program has successfully served 21 individuals this year.
Michelle Hankes:Our Birch Aid and Assist 370 Program, and it is working with Lane County Behavioral Health. And these are individuals who are frequent users of system engagement and are in the court system and have been identified as not able to stand for themselves. And so these are individuals that may be coming from the prison or it could be OSHA to jail. They may be coming from the state hospital a lot of different reasons they're identified that those are the right places for them to grow and to heal and to address their issues. And so our birch program has been working for I started right, about the time I got here, we did a little bit of a re reorganization, as we discovered that certain systems need to be in place, what's the best way to do it. But we have started to see really good success in this program, we use houses that have four bedrooms, three of them have an individual and the fourth one is for a staff member who doesn't live on site, but has office space, so that they're in and out. And there's there's so there's independence and expectations. But there's also that support person who can help them navigate whatever challenge it is that they're seeing. And we have individuals who get they get work, they get an employment they get they graduate and with their own lease. But one of them, we like to say that those were more than like to say we know that those with frequent user SYSTEM engagement. And those systems include law enforcement, the emergency room, the they're just they're costing the community a lot of money, because they're not coping, for whatever reason. So they get into our FUSE programs. And we have - F U S E-Frequent User System Engagement. And we have multiple programs that specifically addressed these individuals. And we know that the savings for an individual, the savings because they're not using those systems, when they're in enrolled in these different programs is approximately $27,000 per person per year. So we have about 100 FUSE individuals that we serve annually. So 100 100 times 27,000 per year, that's what saving the community mean, put those numbers, boom, boom, boom. But here's, here's a, I wish I could show you that. So I'm going to paint this picture for you. And imagine a graph, and it's for 12 months. And there's a line for every time and individual you was used in the head to go to jail was in the ER had a hospital stay. There's a different color for all the systems that they're using. And it looks like a rainbow of colors. I mean, it has lots of colors. And then you look at the year that they spent in the Shelter Care program. In this case, the birch program, one little spot where they use the ER that's significant, the significant to the community. So we did just get a grant to expand our Birch program, and also to look at not only when they get when they have reached that point in birch to say, Yay, successful, we've gone to the courts, maybe it's a diversion, whatever the case may be, then where do you go? "Oops, you've been supported, you've had the services, and you're done. Goodbye, see ya." and now some of our folks of course, have gotten their job and gotten their lease, but some people aren't ready for that yet. The courts are saying you're done. But what do you do, there's a clip that you just fall off of this will expand so that there is a better runway to get people to their next step to be successful. And so that that's that expansion will, again, long term, save the community money because people are becoming resilient and they'll be on their own and and be successful. So our birch program is one of the ones that we are concentrating on for this coming year to expand we got a lot of other things going on but that one I'm very proud of the staff. Recent Josh, Brittany and Mark yay.
Hana Francis:For more information about the Birch program, you can visit sheltercare.org How many employees are there?
Michelle Hankes:88. Now we have 88 positions we do have several openings but I always think of it it's a like a lovely piano you need all 88 keys to make music and I'm missing a few keys so if anyone's interested in working at shelter care we got everything from and HR coordinator to peer support maintenance staff member maintenance specialists to therapist and everything in between it's all on our website
Hana Francis:Thanks to Michelle with Shelter Care for sharing her time and thanks to local musician Kiki Soda for their musical contributions. If you have questions or comments, please feel free to email me at whitebirdmutualaid@gmail.com. To listen to episodes online, you can visit
https://whitebirdclinic.org/podcast or listen on Spotify, Apple podcast or anywhere you get your podcasts. Thank you for listening to White Bird Mutual Aid. I'm Hana Francis.