A new home is rising for people who could die without one.
The Vancouver Housing Authority and contractor Team Construction have broken ground on Lincoln Place Apartments, 30 units of permanent housing intended for a special population: the worst-off of the chronically homeless. The ones who are likeliest to die on the street if they’re not helped into housing.
“We are really excited to see this project started,” said VHA executive director Roy Johnson.
The $6.06 million project, paid for mostly with federal funds, should finish up next spring, according to Team Construction project supervisor Doug Odom. The building, on West Lincoln Avenue between 13th and 14th streets, will be deeply subsidized, with VHA expecting to take in little or nothing by way of rent payments from residents.
VHA will own the building and nonprofit agencies Share and Community Services Northwest will provide around-the-clock resident services. Share House, the men’s shelter and soup kitchen, is right across the street, and residents who don’t feel like cooking in their own studio apartment kitchens will be able to stroll over for a free hot meal.
Share has already used what’s called a Vulnerability Assessment Tool during interviews with many of Vancouver’s hard-core homeless to score individuals on vital matters including: Does this person have street smarts and survival skills? Are they an easy target for predators? Are there festering wounds or chronic illnesses? Is there mental illness or mental decline? High scores determine who moves in first, Share officials have said.
‘Housing first’
Lincoln Place won’t require residents to be clean and sober. The whole point of this project, proponents have said, is “housing first.” That philosophy holds that it’s easier to kick your addictions and build a stable life if you’ve got a stable roof over your head already — and that demanding that people with problems such as substance abuse and mental illness straighten themselves out while they’re still living on the street, in the woods or on somebody’s couch is demanding a lot.
Lincoln Place is “low-barrier housing,” Council for the Homeless executive director Andy Silver has said, and it’s aimed at “the small percentage of homeless who … are homeless for years and years. They are the hardest-to-reach people. Unfortunately, they’re also the most visible. Historically, other programs and services haven’t worked for them.”
Coaxing such people toward services is the hope behind the plan. Opportunities including life-skills training, addiction and mental health counseling, health care classes and social outings will always be available to residents, although they aren’t mandatory, officials have said. Research has shown that people who live in housing first facilities tend to do dramatically better than they would have otherwise — and that housing first saves society money by reducing the need for more expensive services such as shelter space, emergency room visits, police calls and incarceration at the county jail.
It’s expected that the people who’ll move into Lincoln Place are already living in and around downtown Vancouver streets — so the building should be improving, not further damaging, the blighted west side, according to VHA.
Security measures
Odom, the project supervisor for Team Construction, said on Wednesday morning that current neighbors have told him they’re excited about the project. They expect it to improve the neighborhood, he said.
The entrance will be secure and staffed 24 hours a day. Also at the entrance will be the so-called bug oven, a decontamination room where incoming residents’ clothing and other belongings will be heated to kill bedbugs.
The 30 studio apartments at Lincoln Place will be outfitted to outsmart mishaps — for example, stoves and faucets will shut off automatically, there will be drains in the floors and walls will be extra thick and fire-suppressive. The entire place will be outfitted with more security cameras than is usual, VHA construction manager Terry Harder has said.
There will be an elevator ,too. That’s not something VHA would normally install in a three-story building, Johnson said, but the potentially unhealthy and disabled population of the building makes it a necessity.
