Mental health care for homeless is focus

United Way releases tally for Triangle

As Triangle leaders work to end chronic homelessness within the next decade, they say there is a dire need for low-cost housing with associated mental health programs to better keep the mentally ill homeless from a quick return to the streets.

Craig Chancellor, president and chief executive officer of Triangle United Way, made that pitch Tuesday as he released results from the most recent count of people trying to survive without homes in Wake, Durham and Orange counties.

At least 1,711 people were living under bridges, in abandoned cars, in the woods, on the streets or at emergency shelters Jan. 25 when volunteers fanned across the Triangle to make the annual count.

Nearly a third of the homeless were children, counters said.

At a time when the state is involved with a massive overhaul of its mental health care system, many advocates for the homeless worry that future counts might get higher if more money is not set aside for housing for the mentally ill. Nearly 30 percent to 40 percent of homeless North Carolinians are mentally ill, according to the state Department of Health and Human Services.

"Mental illness does not cause homelessness," said Terry Allebaugh, chairman of the Council to End Homelessness in Durham. "Homelessness, especially chronic homelessness, makes those conditions causing mental illness worse."

In 2001, when the state began making changes to the mental health care system, the goal was to move toward treating the mentally ill in community-based programs instead of big state institutions.

Consolidation planned

The state plans to close two hospitals, Dorothea Dix and John Umstead, within the next two years and replace them with one hospital with slightly fewer beds.

Mental health advocates worry about the day the hospitals close, saying that most emergency shelters are not designed for the needs of the mentally ill.

Too often, some mental health advocates say, the state is recycling some of the mentally ill from state hospitals to emergency shelters and back again.

Mike Hennike, chief of state operating services for the state division of mental health, developmental disabilities and substance abuse, said Tuesday that it can be difficult to find anything but emergency shelter for patients who must be released from state hospitals within 72 hours.

Before release, Hennike said, social workers arrange appointments with mental health programs in the community where the patient is going.

For any patient who has been at a state mental hospital for 30 days or more, very specific housing plans are made, Hennike said.

Chancellor, the chief of Triangle United Way, said the state needs to provide more money for housing, too. Rent for a one-bedroom apartment in the Triangle is, on average, nearly $700 a month, he said. Monthly income for someone receiving disability pay is $564.

"We have to be about knowing where people's incomes really are," Chancellor said.