Program targets hard-core homeless in Columbia

Fifth Circuit Solicitor Dan Johnson is overseeing a new initiative to identify and help the most hard-core of the Columbia area’s hundreds of homeless.

“These are the people who are only a small percentage of the overall homeless, but they commit the most low-level crimes and who are getting arrested numerous times a year,” Johnson said.

“We have 20 homeless guys who cost us $1.9 million last year,” Johnson said.

The intensive effort to get long-time help for 20 elderly homeless men could both help them and relieve the stress on both public services and other residents in downtown Columbia, advocates say. What the program is doing that is perhaps different from what service providers are doing is starting from scratch, with the toughest cases, and inserting representatives of the legal system from the beginning.

The public service cost estimate was tallied by assistant solicitor Daniel Coble, who is managing the program that began late last year. It includes those 20 people’s 1,794 nights in the county jail, 161 arrests, court expenses and hospital emergency room costs. A chronically homeless person typically visits local hospitals numerous times annually, costing an average of $89,000 a year each, according to a study by the S.C. Public Policy Institute, Coble said.

“With the chronic homeless, I’ve learned, a lot of them just fall through the cracks and never get out,” Coble said. “What we’re doing is taking notice of these people, and if we can help them, that’s what we’re going to do. It’s not going to work for everyone, but we want to start somewhere.”

Coble declined to identify the 20.

But he described one as a long-term elderly homeless person he and other providers are now working with.

This person spent half of 2015 in jail for offenses such as drinking in public and being drunk in public, Coble said. Although eligible for Social Security disability payments, the person is so dysfunctional he never gathered the proper documents to apply for Social Security, Coble said.

Once those Social Security payments start, Coble is hoping he will be able to find housing for the individual and use that money to pay for the housing and other needs for that person.

Johnson calls the program the “Downtown 100,” a name he took from a similar program in Minneapolis.

Minneapolis city attorney Susan Segal, whose office runs the six-year-old program in that city, said in a telephone interview it is a success.

“We are really pleased with the results,” Segal said, saying the program has resulted in both significantly fewer downtown arrests in the targeted homeless population as well as better delivery of services to them that have improved their lives.

The program relies heavily on partnerships between the various agencies and social workers that come into contact with the homeless, she said.

As in Minneapolis, Johnson’s program is a team effort, depending on buy-in from police, central city business interests, local hospitals and service providers who deal with chronic offenders.

“We are not going to have 100 – we have identified about 20,” Johnson said. “But after we deal with these guys, there will be more guys, right?”

The program works this way: Coble works with police and others to identify the chronic offenders and then get them help. Police often know by name the ones who are the most-arrested, and then Coble pulls their records to make sure.

The program is targeting those 20 – but not in the sense that police are singling them out and arresting them, Coble said. It is after these repeat officers are arrested that police notify Coble. Then, he and other service providers spring into action and make a concerted effort to see if they can help the person break their cycle of arrests and homelessness.

Observers cheer the solicitor’s effort to bring a fresh approach to a longstanding problem.

“This is a really good idea but it’s still in its infancy,” said Matt Kennell, CEO of the Columbia City Center Partnership, which helps direct growth and retail recruitment in the downtown area.

“These are people who are clogging up the system, clogging the emergency rooms and the courtrooms,” Kennell said.

Johnson said areas he hopes will benefit from the program are the popular Main Street corridor and the Vista, where some homeless people commit a range of petty crimes, including breaking into cars.

Columbia police chief Skip Holbrook praised the program for focusing on the “revolving door” of the homeless problem.

Beat police cooperate with Coble, the chief said. “They call him and give him a heads-up and say, ‘This person is on our list,’” and he takes it from there,” said Holbrook, who described Coble as “incredibly responsive.”

The program can not only help the homeless but make downtown safer, Holbrook said.

“We want that vibrancy downtown, but if someone gets approached, or there’s panhandling, it’s an unnerving feeling to many, and the merchants are very tuned into that,” Holbrook. “This program is helping mitigate that perception.”

Craig Currey, CEO of Transitions, a downtown shelter that provides 260 beds and services for the homeless, welcomed Johnson’s office to the homeless scene.

“It’s a team effort,” Currey said. “It’s not like one agency out there is going to solve mankind’s problems with the homeless.”

Currey warned that some homeless, with their mental health and drug issues, are so dysfunctional they won’t be able to live in an apartment setting. “A lot of times these people are resistant to going into any program.”

According to a 2011 homeless census, some 1,600 homeless were in Richland and Lexington counties.

This winter, some 500 homeless are sleeping in just two Columbia shelters –Transitions and the city’s inclement weather center – on cold or rainy winter nights. Oliver Gospel Mission downtown takes in another 88 on an emergency basis. Many others sleep in Columbia’s parking garages, under bridges and in parks.

The “Downtown 100” is an offshoot of the Homeless Court, a city initiative begun several years ago.

But the Homeless Court is for those homeless who have been arrested and who are in general more easily rehabilitated.

“We are trying to look at this less as more a social problem,” Johnson said. “Because when you look at it as a criminal justice problem, what we have been doing isn’t working.”

This story was originally published February 5, 2016 at 7:06 PM.