Funding for Motels4Now hits a crossroad

SOUTH BEND — The 45-year-old man had slept on benches south of downtown, where his backpack holding all that he owned was repeatedly stolen.

He took to hugging it while he slept, his arms through the straps. Once, he said, he awoke to find someone had cut off the straps and taken the bag anyway.

By November, N.M. (he agreed to give only his initials) moved into a Knights Inn room with the Motels4Now program for people who are chronically homeless.

“This place helps immensely,” N.M. said, “because everything is under lock and key, so I can carry just one small backpack to wherever I need to go for the day.”

This is stable housing. It's a low-barrier concept that places you in a room first, then works on your stickier issues, such as addictions and mental health with help from Oaklawn. And it allowed N.M. to think about finding a job.

Back when he was carrying all of his possessions on his back, he suspected employers would figure out he was homeless and sour on the prospect of hiring him.

Just recently, he joined the waiting list for the federal government’s housing vouchers.

But Motels4Now is reaching a critical point: a risk that it may run out of operating dollars, even as it makes plans to build a permanent New Day Intake Center to replace its leasing agreement with Knights Inn.

Pandemic aid requests spread resources thin

Motels4Now’s current funding from the federal pandemic-era American Rescue Plan — a total of $1.56 million — will run out at the end of March. And its leaders are hearing that it may be unlikely that the St. Joseph County Council will allot the more than $875,000 that they’re seeking for operating expenses through 2024.

Margie Pfeil, board president of Our Lady of the Road, which runs Motels4Now, said it may be able to carry on operations for a while after that.

But, she noted, “We don’t have several months for people to wrap their heads around it."

If Motels4Now couldn’t operate and house people, she fears, many people could end up living in tents and under bridges. She doesn’t want to see the downtown encampments that led to Motels4Now’s creation in August 2020.

So several supporters are poised to come to the county council meeting at 6 p.m. Feb. 14 in the County-City Building to speak and urge the council to award the money.

The council is faced with tough choices.

County Auditor John Murphy said the county has just more than $16 million left of its original allotment of $50 million in American Rescue Plan (ARP) dollars. Per federal rules, they must be obligated — that is, signed into a contract or purchase order — by the end of 2024 and be spent by the end of 2026.

And there are far more requests for ARP money than can be awarded. Carl Baxmeyer, president of the county’s Board of Commissioners, said he’s learned from council leaders that they are now more inclined to use ARP dollars for county projects that hadn’t received help before.

A county council committee is expected to consider ARP funding requests on Feb. 28, and then it could come to the council on March 14. Once voted on by the council, it would go to commissioners for their vote.

Murphy said the council has a current ranking of the funding requests. Neither council President Mark Root nor Dan Schaetzle, chairman of the council’s budget and administration committee, returned The Tribune’s calls this past week to discuss the ARP funding process.

But Schaetzle had told The Tribune in December that the council was weighing a series of other ARP requests. He’d said they included “serious water issues” faced by Lakeville, sewer issues in Walkerton, and a new brush fire engine and help paying for a new fire station in North Liberty, along with new fire wells in Warren and Clay townships.

“We are really trying to help some of the communities that have not yet been helped with ARP money with some pretty serious needs,” he’d said in December. “That's not even half of the needs that many of our communities have outside of South Bend.”

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The county health department and Oaklawn are seeking almost $3 million for a behavioral crisis center. It’s a required second pitch after commissioners didn’t sign an agreement to run the center by the Dec. 31 deadline for using ARP money that the council had previously approved.

Just recently, commissioners also requested $3 million to run the county-owned home for disabled and low-income adults, Portage Manor, if officials decide to close it, as expected.

And Baxmeyer noted other requests to study the use of the County-City Building and to develop a new county park on Anderson Road, among many more.

County council member Diana Hess said she isn't a fan of the current Motels4Now site on Lincoln Way West, including, she said, how the Knights Inn owner has taken care of the property. But, as long as South Bend stays true to its financial pledges for Motels4Now, Hess said of the ARP funding, “I’d like it to get something.”

“The problem is we have a community with a lot of needs,” she said, referring as well to the proposed behavioral crisis center and Portage Manor. “How you prioritize these projects is really challenging.”

Homelessness is more costly not to address, advocates say

It was just last week that Baxmeyer informed residents of the financially strapped Portage Manor that all 105 of them would eventually have to find new homes, with help from staff and consultants. He said the decision hasn’t yet come for a final vote, though he sensed that county council leaders couldn’t see funding beyond the $3 million for a transition or spending much more to build a new home.

He and a county attorney assured residents that they wouldn’t be left homeless.

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Baxmeyer said he hopes to soon reconvene a group of stakeholders so they can back up and look at the bigger picture of homelessness and mental health needs across the county and what the various efforts are.

He'd talked about this in December when advocates of the proposed behavioral crisis center urged commissioners to sign off on an agreement to build and run the center. Since then, South Bend Mayor James Mueller has pledged $2.66 million of the city’s ARP dollars for the crisis center’s building expenses and first year of operations, but it still needs funding after that.

“I do think the public, the commissioners and the council should have a better picture,” Baxmeyer said. “Right now, we won’t be able to address every need with the dollars we have.”

Hess agrees and adds, “Not addressing it is also expensive.”

One person’s stay at Motels4Now is currently estimated at $39 per day for staff and rent. By contrast, county officials say it costs roughly $77 a day to house a person in jail, averaged over time and accounting for shifting numbers in jail population.

“Mental health and addictions and homelessness are so interrelated,” Baxmeyer said last week. Asked about Motels4Now, he said, “I think it’s all important.”

Already, over the past couple of years, Pfeil said, it has been “heartening” to see agencies and officials engage in “good conversations” over homeless issues.

What are the costs?

Our Lady of the Road and Motels4Now organizers originally were going to ask the county for help with the capital costs of constructing the New Day Intake Center. But, seeing the county’s myriad ARP requests, Pfeil said, they pared it down to just Motels4Now’s operating expenses: $375,712 for 2023 and $500,000 for 2024.

Also, the project is asking the county to allocate a total of $702,474 in opioid settlement dollars to help with operating expenses through 2024.

In 2025 and beyond, it hopes the county will provide more operating-expense support from local income tax revenue and the opioid settlement.

Organizers continue to seek grants. Meanwhile, the city of South Bend has pledged $4 million to help build the $10.3 million New Day center, plus $500,000 per year in operating expenses. The city also provides financial support for wraparound services, including treatment from Oaklawn and meals that are prepared by Hope Ministries.

The Indiana Department of Mental Health has awarded $2.5 million to help build the new center.

Police Chief Scott Ruszkowski and St. Joseph County Sheriff Bill Redman have both written letters of support for Motels4Now. So has Willow Wetherall, executive director of Downtown South Bend, writing that, since Motels4Now began, downtown has seen a “dramatic” drop in the number of chronically homeless people, which, she said, had hovered around 100 for several years.

She noted the personal harm to both individuals living on the streets and the "devastating effects” of homeless camps due to violence, unsanitary conditions, drug dealers and others who’d prey on the vulnerable.

“These conditions also undermine the brand and the bottom line of our small business community because people don’t want to shop, live, work, or visit areas where they feel unsafe,” Wetherall wrote.

Many who are homeless stay in 'fight or flight'

Eliana Armounfelder works for Motels4Now in a retrofitted motel room on site, where she helps guests to find permanent housing.

With her clients all in one place, she can better navigate the “huge, complicated system” of subsidized housing. She can stop by someone’s room to follow up on their application or let them know about the litany of personal documents they’ll need to gather.

Armounfelder doesn’t expect guests to easily absorb questions about housing paperwork. They’ve spent months asking, “Where is my next meal coming from? Where am I going to sleep tonight? If I’m sleeping outside, am I going to get beaten up or sexually assaulted?”

“A lot of times people are in a fight-or-flight mode,” she said.

As she sat at her desk last summer, a guest banged on the window. His roommate was sprawled on the floor of their room and was very sick. An ambulance took him to a hospital.

“I thought he was going to die,” Armounfelder recalled.

That man, Rob, who’s 54, suffered from inflammation of his stomach lining. He’d started drinking too much and hardly eating after a chance at permanent housing fell through. The stress led to depression, he said, which led to self-destructive behavior.

“I was vomiting real bad,” he said.

On Thursday, Rob leaned forward attentively, elbows on his knees, as Armounfelder told him he’s on the waitlist for a housing voucher. He's now taking medication and feeling well.

Motels4Now is “a social healing for you if you really want it,” Rob said. “And I want it, and I’m gonna get it. I’m just a couple steps away from it.”

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The program estimates that 75% of its guests are either housed there or move on to “positive options” for housing.

Every 90 days, 170 guests are added to Motels4Now’s wait list. Pfeil said that about 50 of its guests typically have housing vouchers they could use to help pay for an apartment, but, because of a shortage of affordable housing, they can’t find a place to use the vouchers.

“One of the challenges is finding landlords who are willing to work with Section 8 vouchers,” Pfeil said, referring to the past name for the Housing Choice Voucher program.

A total of 1,358 people have signed up for Motels4Now’s wait list from its opening in August 2020 until January 2023. It has housed more than 520 of them, and there's an average of 350 “meaningful engagements” each month with guests in their treatment for mental health or substance abuse.

Building a new center

Pfeil said organizers are looking at various sites to build the New Day Intake Center.

In the first phase, current plans for the New Day center call for 38 double occupancy units, plus four handicap-accessible units.

That’s a decrease from the maximum of 120 people that Motels4Now can now accommodate. Pfeil realizes that it may take further efforts with agencies such as the Veterans Administration and the South Bend Housing Authority to pick up the slack.

Next door to that, in a second phase, South Bend Heritage Foundation would build, own and operate an integrated housing community with 54 units, half of which would be for supportive housing. Oaklawn and New Day staff would keep offices at the New Day center but bring in support and services. The agencies are hoping to finance it with tax credits.

Will this be enough to prevent people from living outside again in tents and under bridges?

“That’s my question,” Pfeil said of the evolving plans. “We hope so.”

South Bend Tribune reporter Joseph Dits can be reached at 574-235-6158 or jdits@sbtinfo.com. Email city reporter Jordan Smith at JTsmith@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter: @jordantsmith09

This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: Motels4Now funding at risk for homeless in St. Joseph County