New center looks to rehab the homeless, not jail them
After a benefactor threatened to withdraw a $750,000 pledge following years of inaction by city leaders, Indianapolis is on track to open the city’s first homeless engagement center before the end of the year.
Advocates didn’t get everything they wanted — it’ll have fewer beds and about half the operating budget initially planned. But on a project that dates back to at least the Peterson administration, many are just happy to see it come off the drawing board.
“Most of our attitude now,” said Don Hawkins, founder and CEO of the Homeless and ReEntry Helpers advocacy group, “is that something is better than nothing.”
The 30-bed Reuben Engagement Center will serve as a detox facility for homeless and other individuals that would normally be arrested for public intoxication. For the first partial year of the pilot program, city taxpayers will spend $563,000 to staff and operate it.
Today, people with substance abuse problems frequently do short stints in jail and start detox but are released before there’s any meaningful treatment, said Margie Payne, CEO of the Midtown Community Mental Health Center. Instead, those taken to the engagement center would be connected with groups that offer mental health and treatment for drug and alcohol addiction once they sobered up.
“You’ve got to strike while the iron is hot,” Payne said. “Help them connect with that provider and start services that day.”
The center will be housed on the second floor of the Arrestee Processing Center at 742 E. Market St. It will be named after Albert and Sara Reuben, whose estate pledged $750,000 for the facility back in 2011.
Their son, attorney Larry Reuben, said he chose the project on their behalf because it dovetailed with many of the social issues about which they were passionate, including homelessness and mental health.
“One of my father’s favorite expressions was ‘I cried because I had no shoes until I saw the man who had no feet,’ ” he said. “My parents had nothing when they came to Indianapolis.”
For years, Reuben’s donation went unspent because the recepient, the Center for Homelessness Intervention and Prevention (CHIP), lacked the resources to staff it, and efforts to secure funding from the city-county government ran into one road block after another.
“It’s been a very exhausting, very frustrating, ongoing situation,” Reuben said. “It’s only after pushing and shoving that the city’s on board.”
Democratic Councilman Leroy Robinson sponsored the latest iteration, after attempts to secure a 50-bed stand-alone facility with a $1.8 million annual budget failed.
The council approved the proposal 18 to 9 in March, overcoming opposition from some on the right, who questioned the program’s benefits, and some on the left, who questioned whether it went far enough. Unlike earlier versions, only 20 beds will be reserved for those who are homeless.
But while the proposal doesn’t have everything advocates wanted, it will give them the chance to show whether the program can have an impact. One in four people counted during CHIP’s annual point-in-time homeless census reported suffering from chronic substance abuse problems. And a 2006 study by Indiana University found the county could save $3 to $8 million by not jailing intoxicated homeless people.
Other large cities around the country, including Denver, San Diego and Philadelphia have implemented similar programs, and proponents say they have saved money. The inspiration for many of these: a 2006 New Yorker article by Malcolm Gladwell on “Million Dollar Murray” — a homeless man whose revolving stints in shelters, jails, emergency rooms and hospitals cost public institutions over a million dollars in a 10-year period.
Payne isn’t sure whether Indianapolis’ program will pay for itself right off the bat. “It probably won’t,” she says. “But it will save dollars in emergency rooms and the jail. The cost of care for those individuals goes up the more they use substances.”
Call Star reporter Brian Eason at (317) 444-6129. Follow him on Twitter: @brianeason.