Why we need sober, rehabilitation-based housing locally
Residential buildings on the campus of Haven for Hope in San Antonio, Texas on May 10, 2023. Photo by Jordan Vonderhaar for CalMatters.
Since opening its doors in 2010, San Antonio's all-inclusive Haven for Hope homeless shelter has provided resources (counseling, childcare, etc.) to help folks get back on their feet. Despite overwhelming success, Haven has faced criticism for requiring program participants to be sober. CalMatters thinks it'd be difficult to replicate this shelter in CA, though the tide may be turning in SJ.
Haven for Hope, a 22-acre, 1,600-person shelter in San Antonio addresses the homelessness crisis at a scale that’s unheard of in California. The facility serves 85% of the city’s total homeless population. It virtually guarantees that anybody who wants to sleep indoors, can, while accessing a plethora of on-site social services. …
“Haven for Hope has not solved homelessness in San Antonio,” said Sacramento County Supervisor Rich Desmond, who visited the campus in 2021 and tried to incorporate parts of the model into programs in his own district. “But they have certainly done a much better job, I think, than most places in California.”
Scrambling for new solutions to a seemingly intractable problem, a handful of California politicians and nonprofit groups support replicating Haven for Hope (or at least copying pieces of it) here. A Placer County group recently pushed for a San Antonio-inspired project outside of Rocklin in the Sierra Nevada foothills, and a grassroots Sacramento group is trying to rally support and funding for a similar concept
But some homelessness experts throughout the country are critical of the San Antonio model. In several ways, it would mark a shift away from some of California’s widely accepted best practices. Haven for Hope’s most robust program requires participants to be sober, for example, contradicting the prevailing belief in California that everyone should be offered housing before addressing their addictions and other issues.
Conditions at the San Antonio shelter are crowded, too, with 80 bunk beds in a room, or a few hundred mats inches apart on the floor. California has plenty of those types of shelters, too. But increasingly, officials and nonprofits here are using hotels, tiny homes and other facilities that hold fewer people but give residents a private space with a locking door. …
Haven for Hope also poses a fundamental question for California and every other state struggling with homelessness: Should officials prioritize emergency shelters that get people out of dismal encampments quickly, or long-term housing that takes years and piles of money to build?
The trade-offs are clear. Haven for Hope succeeds in pulling many people off the streets, but it hasn’t done as well when it comes to connecting those people with permanent housing.
Of the more than 7,000 people Haven for Hope served last year, just 15% moved into permanent housing.
Aside from its sheer size, what draws Californians to Haven for Hope is the shelter’s all-inclusive model. The campus has medical, dental and eye-care clinics, a hair salon, a free clothing store, childcare and counseling services, as well as offices with staff who can help clients get a new ID, find housing, get a job or secure disability benefits, and more.
The idea is to make the labor-intensive, bureaucratic process of getting back on their feet as smooth as possible. Instead of trekking all over town to appointments at various departments – a challenging task for someone without a car – clients can do everything in one place.
For people who need extra help, there’s a facility with mental health crisis, detox and addiction recovery beds across the street. …
Huete said Haven for Hope requires sobriety because children and recovering addicts live in that part of campus. But critics say that setup flies in the face of the “housing first” model – which advocates eliminating barriers to housing – that is widely adopted throughout California and at the federal level. The notion is so ubiquitous in California that programs that don’t follow it cannot receive state funding. …
But Nick Golling, director of homeless services for the city of Sacramento, [thinks,] “If you see (drug use) and cannot get away from that, it can be difficult to maintain that type of sobriety if that’s where you’re at in your journey … I do see that as a gap in services as far as I’m concerned.”
Finding the space and political will to adopt an all-inclusive mega-shelter like Haven for Hope is a challenge in California. … “When it comes to actually siting a program,” [Keith Diederich, president and CEO of The Gathering Inn] said, “a lot of times people who want to do something about homelessness don’t want it near them.”
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