Homelessness, Part 4: For many, a long, long road

At 11 years old, Edward Lander II was carrying a bottle of whiskey in his back pocket.

Born to a pair of bikers and raised partly among motorcycle gangs, he lived a life of brawling and boozing that landed him on the streets for years.

Liquor quelled depression and abandonment, even as it led to cold nights huddled under bridges.

Today, at 54, after 13 months in prison and an extensive effort from local homeless advocates, he's been plucked from this endless cycle that costs the community thousands of dollars a year in services.
But his rescue wasn't easy.

And it won't be easy to rescue the few hundred other chronically homeless people in Colorado Springs.

It's a group that makes up just 20 percent of Colorado Springs' estimated homeless population, but it's the most complex to reach and consumes the lion's share of local resources. New practices are creating success stories such as Lander's, but a scarcity of money, manpower and critical services such as mental health care hinders more sweeping efforts.

Consequently, the community racks up an estimated $22 million a year feeding the cycle. And with the city's only detox program scheduled to close by Jan. 31, chances are the tab will only grow.

Finding and implementing solutions to these issues is at the heart of a 10-year plan to curtail homelessness the City Council is considering this month.

A complex population
Experts on homelessness balk at the notion that living on the streets is a chosen lifestyle.

A few might fit that profile, but experts say most people who have spent at least a year on the streets are either mentally ill, addicted to alcohol or drugs, or both.

Poor choices abound in their lives, but the choice to spend cold nights beside creeks or days wandering without direction has been made for them, say those who work with them.

"The shame and the guilt and the demoralization that you have when you're on the street pretty much demands that you stay numb, because the reality of what's going on is too overwhelming," said Kevin C., a formerly homeless man who did not want his last name used because he's involved in a 12-step program.

Kevin's luck ran out in September 2005, when he was 47. After too many raids on friends' liquor cabinets and too many thefts from their wallets, his couch-surfing was forced to a halt while his 20-year addiction carried on.

He couldn't stay sober long enough to sleep in a shelter.
He wandered to a spot by the railroad tracks near Weber Street and Chelton Road, where he tried in vain to sleep through the frigid fall night.

It was the beginning of a two-month "fuzz" of walking, drinking and little else, save for some day labor to cover his habit.

He was luckier than most. Someone on his path - with multiple stops in detox and a trip to Memorial Hospital - usually falls into a routine that lasts for years, but he found a police officer who gave him a choice between detox and jail time after a disturbance call.

In detox, a counselor pointed him to Harbor House Collaborative, an intensive housing and rehab program that helped him get clean.

Today he has a good-paying job and his own place.

For Lander, a childhood of alcohol abuse and violence led to an adulthood of living on the streets and encounters with the law. He joined the Army at 17, but after a few years was dishonorably discharged for drinking and fighting, with no military benefits or services.

He was in four high-speed chases with police, the last of which landed him in prison. "Every time I went to jail I was drunk or messed up," he said.

He was released from prison into the homeless shelter. There, he found help through The Resource Advocacy, a group that coordinates the various local services for the homeless.

He now takes medication for depression and avoids alcohol.

A staggering price tag
Each success story equals thousands of dollars saved, says Robert Holmes, executive director of Homeward Pikes Peak, a United Way program that coordinates local homeless programs and helps obtain grant money for them.

The 400 or so chronically homeless in Colorado Springs consume about $54,000 each in resources each year, advocates estimate. The figure includes encounters with police, time in jail, emergency room visits and trips to detox.

For some, the costs are far higher.

Holmes recalled one man who visited the ER some 260 times in one year. Based on ER charges that typically range from $390 to $800, the man's care would have cost the hospital between $102,000 and $208,000 that year. Odds of it being repaid? Zero.

At Memorial Hospital Central, the emergency staff knows many of these "frequent fliers" by name. "There are people we keep overnight just so they don't go out and freeze to death," said Dr. Marilyn Gifford, director of Memorial Hospital Central's emergency services.

Some arrive at the hospital multiple times a week - or a day, in rare cases.

Philip Mangano is executive director of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness.

He said it's well-known on the streets that the emergency room is an easy way to find affection from a caring staff and temporary escape from the cold.

In a recent visit to Memorial Hospital during a tour of Colorado Springs, he was told the hospital spends about $5.5 million a year on the homeless.

Colorado Springs Police Chief Richard Myers calls his force the "gatekeepers" of the community's social- safety net because of how often officers are called to intervene among the homeless population.

Trained to catch criminals, officers find themselves acting as social workers, connecting the homeless with social services, urging them to visit a shelter or, from time to time, giving them a few bucks for a meal, Myers said.

Police also are summoned to provide security for calls that range from inconvenient - as when police officers must stand guard in an emergency room because of unruly drunks - to the serious.

In the past year, at least eight homeless people have died, two from being attacked.

Just last week, 62-year-old Robert Sherley suffered a fractured skull in a fight with a 22-year-old man in Acacia Park and was in critical condition at Memorial Hospital.

Two homeless people have been found dead in Fountain Creek in the past two months, including a man found partially submerged near the Cimarron Street bridge on Dec. 1.

Although authorities are investigating the deaths, such cases often involve someone passing out drunk and then drowning or freezing.

To prevent such tragedies, police officers routinely visit homeless camps before dangerous temperatures approach. It's the beginning of a cycle one veteran officer described as a "Band-Aid-type solution."

"I'd like to see a little more done in terms of housing - a safe house, or something to get them out of the elements," said Sgt. Jerry Steckler.

A fragmented system
Colorado Springs is home to about 15 organizations devoted to helping the homeless. That means there are plenty of services - but the homeless have to be able to navigate them and keep up with the rules.

The Salvation Army's New Hope homeless shelter, for example, requires sobriety. Several faith-based programs don't allow prescriptions for medical or mental- health problems, partly over concerns they contribute to substance abuse.

Even Colorado's Medicaid program is problematic. The application is 28 pages long and takes at least three months to process - a hassle for most people, but a sometimes insurmountable barrier for a population struggling with mental health problems and substance abuse.

Additionally, mental health funding is lacking, with only the most acute patients getting care, officials say. And the Salvation Army announced last month that it would have to downsize its free drug- and alcohol- rehab services because of a decline in thrift-store sales and donations.

Programs that have been effective in pulling people from the streets can accommodate only about 20 percent of the chronically homeless at any given time.

Housing First, a program that gives shelter and services without requiring sobriety, has proven remarkably effective in getting results, Holmes said, with more than 80 percent of its participants staying off the streets.

Still, it helps fewer than two dozen people. Harbor House has had similar success, but its capacity is about the same.

Perhaps the most effective local program is the philanthropically funded Resource Advocacy Program, which assigns the chronically homeless with a worker, usually a formerly homeless person or addict, who helps them piece together the patchwork of resources.

In its first two years, the group has documented a 100 percent decrease in the use of drugs and alcohol, 75 percent elimination of contact with the criminal justice system, and a 90 percent decrease in psychological symptoms among the 105 people it has served, according to Connie Allen, the Resource Advocate coordinator.

Yet for all of its successes, the group needs more workers spending one-on-one time with such complex cases, and it lacks the ability to do extensive outreach often needed to lure people in after years of failed rehab and burned bridges.

A tough sell
Advocates are confident they're doing as much as they can - under the circumstances.

Eradicating homelessness, as called for in the city's 10-year plan, would require about $5 million, Holmes estimates.

It also calls for significantly more oversight by city and county officials, said Dee Drake, project director of The Collaborative, a group that helps uninsured adults find mental health care and substance abuse treatment.

In a fiscally conservative community like Colorado Springs, it could be a tough sell.

Holmes notes that it would cost about $15,000 to house and comprehensively treat the chronically homeless. But he says it's a far cheaper price tag than the $54,000 it costs to turn the other way.

That's why Mangano, a Bush appointee, has traveled the country with a sales pitch strikingly similar to a businessman's. Fighting homelessness is not just about humanitarianism, he said, but economics.

Lander might disagree, considering that the services he received from various agencies have turned his life around.

He's re-established contact with three children and two grandchildren. He's starting to think beyond tomorrow.

"I mean my whole life has changed. He (God) brought me back from the dead, pretty much."


Contact the writer: 636-0198 or brian.newsome@gazette.com