Program gives homeless shelter, hope

EMILY ANN HOLMAN

Published: July 20, 2009

Johnny Fagin said he wouldn’t be alive and sober without his artwork — as well as one of Tulsa’s initiatives to end homelessness.

“I’d probably be dead right now if I had kept going like I was,” said Fagin, 47, a formerly homeless drug addict.

Fagin is one of 178 formerly homeless who has started over through the Building Tulsa, Building Lives program, an initiative of the Mental Health Association in Tulsa. It was started to provide affordable housing for Tulsa’s homeless, said Associate Director Greg Shinn.

Shinn said the program also offers supportive services essential to keeping residents off the streets, such as employment opportunities and treatment for mental illnesses and substance abuse — an opportunity that Fagin took advantage of.

With the program’s support, Fagin said he found help to manage his bipolar disorder and substance abuse. He said having a place to call home helped relieve stress that often threw him into a manic or depressive phase.

“They’ve been good to me,” Fagin said of program personnel. “All they ask is that you don’t get stoned. “I’ve got problems right now, but at least I’ve got an apartment to live in. I’ve got everything I need.”

Connally Perry, an administrator who works in Fagin’s building, said the program wouldn’t work without supportive services.

“Trying to treat someone with addiction or mental illness on the streets just doesn’t work,” Perry said. “Housing is the first step. Try to do anything without a home whether it’s a library card, receiving mail or anything.”

Fagin also found the chance to work on his art, a French technique used to imitate marble and wood treatments for walls and woodwork. Fagin uses brushes and sponges to create the designs he said make him feel the happiest.

Although Fagin learned the technique when he was 18, he said his homelessness and drug addiction kept him from pursuing his passion.

“People know me [as an artist], but I’ve kind of been lost,” Fagin said. “I’d been doing drugs. I was trying to [paint], but my mind was just not right.”

Cost-effective

Fagin is also one of the 65 chronically homeless Building Tulsa, Building Lives houses. The program focuses on ending chronic homelessness by 2012 in Tulsa.

Shinn said chronically homeless people include those who have been homeless one year or more, or who were homeless at least four times in three years. The chronically homeless also have a serious mental illness, an alcohol or drug addiction or both, Shinn said.

“These are the people that use the vast majority of the services and never get unstuck from the system,” he said.

Services such as hospitalization, psychiatric stays, jail visits, temporary shelter use and other medical costs, rack up about $32,000 a person each year, according to an August 2007 report on the costs of chronic homelessness in Tulsa.

Shinn said the chronically homeless cycle through services at a “huge cost to taxpayers.” However, supportive housing like the program provides can cut costs to about $24,000 a person each year, according to the report.

Although the program needs $30 million, it has received $21 million from the Zarrow family foundations, donations, and state and federal money.

With the money, Building Tulsa, Building Lives operates 287 of the 511 units needed to end chronic homelessness.

Perry said he isn’t sure why more cities haven’t adopted a plan like the Mental Health Association in Tulsa’s initiative.

“We have people from all over that toured our program, and they were just amazed,” Perry said.

Oklahoma City plan

Dan Straughan, the executive director of the Homeless Alliance, said Oklahoma City’s Homes for the Homeless plan is similar to Building Tulsa, Building Lives but doesn’t always include the live-in staff and supportive services that helped Fagin start over.

Straughan said Oklahoma City has about 1, 470 homeless people while Tulsa has about 600. The money needed to start a program like Building Tulsa, Building Lives keeps Oklahoma City from following Tulsa’s footsteps.

“The high cost is spread out across the system — police department, jails, local hospitals. No single entity is feeling that pain,” Straughan said.

“It’s hard to get a community to say ‘Oh, it would cost us less, so let’s do it.’ Tulsa has sold it to their community.”

However, Straughan said the city and the state are using a federal funding program that will provide $2.5 million for a resource center and day shelter for the homeless.

The resource center allows the city to concentrate homeless services while dispersing housing citywide.

“It would function as a one-stop shop so that no matter what your issues are, we have the resources in one place to help you get out of homelessness,” Straughan said.

Almost home

Although Perry isn’t sure why other cities haven’t started similar programs, he said he is lucky to see Tulsa’s initiative making progress with individuals like Fagin.

“I get to see miracles on a daily basis,” Perry said. “I see people becoming reconnected with their families, getting back into a work environment, paying taxes — things that you think of as normal everyday deals. I see people step back into society.”

Perry said Fagin is one of those miracles.

“You can’t give up on these folks. They’ve been given up on all their lives.”

Although Fagin said he knows has issues to work on, he said the program helped reconnect him with his art and himself.

“My life — I don’t really have it together,” Fagin said. “But that painting over there, I guarantee you I do.”