Buncombe close to ending veteran homelessness

The smell of cornbread wafts through the two-bedroom home off Mullberry Street in Woodfin. Bobby Lewis is making himself dinner. He has pork chops marinating in the refrigerator, baked sweet potatoes in the oven and collard greens on the stove.

At 6 feet 5 inches tall, Lewis is a lanky man who speaks emphatically about his faith in Jesus Christ and the misgivings of his past. His wiry arms wave about as he tells the tale of his coming of age. His mother raised seven boys in the small town of Emporia, Virginia. Lewis was the shortest of the lot, he said, with a goofy grin spread across his face.

As he sits in his living room before dinner, the 60-year-old's smile fades when he talks about the Vietnam War and the passing of his wife. He pauses to lean forward and take a drag on his Pall Mall menthol cigarette.

As a working class black man in the 1960s and 1970s in an area with few opportunities, Lewis said he felt as if he had two choices. He could stay and try to resist temptations that for many were leading to incarceration. Or he could join the military.

The one-time war protester enlisted with the United States Air Force in 1972, just weeks after he graduated high school. Lewis loaded bombs onto aircraft in Phnom Penh, Cambodia for 18 months. After his tour, he would find stability in his family, but when Lewis' wife died in 2005, he ended up on the streets.

Today, Lewis loves to cook for himself and have people over for dinner. February will mark his first year in permanent housing in 15 years.

Thanks to an infusion of federal dollars, a commitment to a "housing-first" model and strengthened collaboration among agencies, Lewis is one of more than 100 veterans in Buncombe County to go from staying at emergency shelters or on the streets to a home of his own in the past year.

An end to veteran homelessness?

With two months to go, local service providers say they will have eliminated veteran homelessness in Buncombe County by January 2016, despite Asheville's affordable housing crisis and its 1 percent rental apartment vacancy rate.

Though more than 100 homeless veterans will still be staying in transitional housing — two-year programs supported by the Charles George VA Medical Center and administered by Asheville Buncombe Community Christian Ministry and FIRST at Blue Ridge, people like Lewis will no longer be forced to sleep on park benches or stay at crowded shelters downtown.

Veterans who don't want to enter long-term programs but are willing to change their lives and continue case management are now likely to find housing within 30 days due to additional support provided by the U.S. Housing and Urban Development Agency and the Department of Veteran Affairs.

"We have a system in place that is constantly doing outreach so that when folks are becoming homeless and experiencing crisis, we can get them enrolled quickly so that homelessness is rare and brief," said Leslie Stewart, project director for Homeward Bound of Western North Carolina's Supportive Services for Veteran Families.

"We know that people will continue to have crises and fall into homelessness," added Stewart, who works for one of the largest nonprofit providers for homeless services in the region. "Part of our efforts are to ramp up outreach as a community so we can identify (homeless veterans) quickly."

Locally, two organizations — Homeward Bound and ABCCM — have received more than $5 million since 2012 for Supportive Services for Veteran Families. The funding supports outreach, case management and other assistance to prevent veteran homelessness.

Homeward Bound was awarded a $2.7 million grant in 2014 as part of a U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs initiative to end veteran homelessness nationwide. ABCCM has been granted a total of $2.6 million over the years.

The U.S. government has pledged to end veteran homelessness this year. Asheville Mayor Esther Manheimer also joined Michelle Obama's Mayoral Challenge to End Veteran Homelessness by 2015.

A magnet for servicemen and women, Buncombe County is home to one of the country's top rated VA medical centers and Asheville Buncombe County Community Christian Ministry's Veterans Restoration Quarters, the nation's third largest veteran transitional housing program.

Veterans accounted for 37 percent, or 207 people, of the 562 people counted as homeless during the annual Point-in-Time census in January.

By November, just 34 veterans were identified as homeless in Buncombe County, all of whom are expected to have a roof over their head soon. Twenty-nine are waiting on a list for permanent housing, while the remaining five are set to enter transitional programs.

Since 2006, Homeward Bound has housed 1,334 people with an 89 percent retention rate.

"Doing this work and succeeding with this goal for this subpopulation shows that we can do it for all homeless folks," Stewart said.

Spinning not moving

Lewis was working as a machinist at the Milkco dairy plant on Deaverview Road when his wife of more than a decade died from leukemia. The family's insurance payments were delayed and the bills had stacked up.

His wife was his source of dependence — the "soul of the house," Lewis said. With her gone and the children grown, Lewis decided to just walk away.

"I made myself homeless," he said. "There was nobody around to put their foot down."

Within weeks of his wife's death, Lewis went to the plant and got his last check. He told them he didn't know when he was coming back. He shut the door to the family's Asheville home and simply stopped paying rent. He lived in public housing for a while, but didn't care to stay.

Free to do as he pleased, Lewis turned to alcohol and drugs. He spent 15 years traveling Asheville's downtown shelter circuit, learning which days charities offered free meals. He panhandled by the bus station and struggled to stay afloat in a community he says was filled with desperation and dishonesty.

Being homeless was exhausting. So, in February of last year, when a social worker at Homeward Bound's A-Hope day shelter approached him and told him that because of his veteran status, he could get a place of his own, he decided to stop and listen.

"I was spinning, but not moving, not moving forward," he said. "I told them to give me a chance. After 15 years walking around in a circle, I thought it was time for a change."

Housing first

Communities across the nation are turning to the "housing-first" model to mitigate trauma and keep people from relapsing into homelessness. Service providers first find an individual a permanent home and then refocus their energies on dealing with the other stressors, whether that is addiction, unemployment, chronic illness or mental health problems.

Once permanent housing has been established, care teams of social workers and counselors help each individual figure out their next steps in life. Sometimes that means a client enrolls in services and therapies. At other times, it is as simple as hosting a board game night or helping an individual find a pet.

Providers started coming together weekly to meet with homeless veterans to discover each person's unique needs and preferences in 2014. The VA, Homeward Bound, ABCCM and others maintain a master list of veterans identified as homeless in the community daily.

If a veteran enters an emergency shelter for the evening or stops by A-Hope day shelter for a cup of coffee, their name gets recorded. The VA runs a 24-hour homeless veteran hotline, and every time someone comes for health care services they are screened for housing security. Within 24 hours of their identification as homeless, social workers start looking for housing.

"Identification of homeless veterans and facilitation of access to care are top priorities in ending veteran homelessness," said Whitney Lott, homeless program coordinator at the VA. "We are striving to reach a functional zero with regard to veteran homelessness and more specifically want to ensure that no veteran in Asheville is forced to sleep on our streets," she added.

In Buncombe, the VA holds a total of 321 subsidized housing vouchers for homeless veterans and their families. Similar to Section 8, eligibility for the HUD Veteran Assistance for Supporting Housing program is based on family size and income levels. Fair-market rent rates are set by HUD.

The voucher will usually pay around $723 a month for utilities and a one-bedroom unit for veterans living at 0 to 50 percent of the area median income, or earning below $19,600 a year, said Stewart. Rates can change annually based on local market forces, but veterans will never be charged more than 40 percent of their adjusted gross income.

This month 262 vouchers were in use by homeless veterans and 59 additional voucher-holders were in search of a rental unit.

Transitional needs

The "housing-first" model falls short when there is a lack of available rentals, and when people need more care than a house and continued support can give. Chronically homeless veterans are often dealing with psychosocial stresses that require intense long-term support and intervention.

"The key is identifying the housing intervention program that makes the most sense for each individual veteran and honoring, above all, veterans' personal preferences," said Lott.

The VA sponsors 182 transitional housing beds for veterans in Buncombe County, the majority of which are provided by ABCCM.

"It's not just about housing being the silver bullet, because it's not," said the Rev. Scott Rogers, executive director of the crisis ministry gearing up to break ground for 44 additional permanent housing units for veterans next to its Veterans Restoration Quarters on Tunnel Road.

That facility already has 50 efficiency apartments being used as permanent housing, and over the years staff have helped place more than 300 veteran families into permanent homes throughout the region.

A refurbished hotel, the focus of the Veterans Restoration Quarters, however, is to offer long-term transitional housing, education and workforce training annually to some 240 veterans in need.

Since 2008, ABCCM has served 2,665 homeless veterans with its transitional housing programs, 85 percent of whom have never returned to charity needing housing, Rogers added. Employment studies show a 91 percent job retention rate of program graduates earning an average of $15.81 per hour.

"We're successful because we don't just try to find them a place to live," said Mary Sczudlo, director of ABCCM's homeless services. "We also help them develop new job skills, life skills and get their physical and mental health in order."

Moving ahead

Showing off the stack of Bibles he has collected since moving into his new home, Lewis acknowledged today he has a different set of worries. No longer concerned about where to sleep each night, his thoughts are filled with excess.

Lewis now has too many pairs of shoes and is planning to donate several pairs to his church over the holidays. Since his wife has passed, he never knows what to do with his leftovers. He often gives half to the stray cats living near his home at Mountain View mobile home park.

He doesn't work and lives off his VA pension. For entertainment Lewis listens to the radio, making sure to keep the volume low so as not to disturb the woman next door. Another neighbor promised him a used, unwanted flat screen television. Lewis can't wait to watch the Carolina Panthers play.

When people see that someone is willing to work hard to obtain their goals, they become generous, said Lewis. "The main thing is I have a roof over my head."

"I was patient enough to wait, and I waited, and now I can say that God has blessed me."

For the first time in years, Lewis has a primary health care provider. He takes medicine for blood clots and depression. He wants to sign up for school and to start volunteering more at church. He plans to renew his lease in February.

Every morning, the first thing Lewis does after waking up is make his bed and tidy up his home, chores his mother taught him decades ago. "She always told us, 'You never know who will stop by,'" he recalled as a wide grin spread once again across his face. "I plan on staying here for a long time."