Mental Health U
Mental Health U is a podcast dedicated to demystifying and destigmatizing mental health issues. If you or someone you know is struggling with depression, anxiety, trauma, or some other mental health issue, then this podcast is for you.
Mental Health U
Housing as Healing: Pioneering Homelessness Solutions with Ronelle Aldridge
Unlock the untold stories of resilience as Mental Health U welcomes Ronelle Aldridge, the dynamic force behind the Housing First program in Northwest Ohio. Experience her profound insights on revolutionizing the lives of the chronically homeless through the provision of stable housing without preconditions. Ronelle's expertise in mental health shines as she explains the transformative impact of placing essential shelter above all else, ensuring that the foundations of autonomy and security are laid down before tackling the intricacies of underlying issues. This episode promises not just a window into innovative strategies but a celebration of human triumph over adversity.
Join host Bill Emahiser in a candid and heartfelt exchange with Ronelle as we trace the steps of those who have climbed from the despair of homelessness to the security of a home of their own. Witness the meticulous process of rebuilding identity, the strategic navigation of the bureaucratic maze, and the ripple effect of hope as one man's story of regaining his sense of self unfolds. The Housing First program's wrap-around services come to life, illustrating their essential role in not just obtaining housing but in sustaining it against the odds, and ensuring that an impressive 94% of participants can proudly call somewhere home a year later. Discover how to connect with or refer others to these life-altering services—a testament to the program's commitment to ongoing success and community support.
But that was the greatest blessing that I could have ever received just knowing that he's still good, that he's still in his same place. He didn't want to move. After he moved into the group home he's doing very well and it was just like. These are the things that you have to do to make sure that individuals like that that has no one's, know that it depend on you and know you're going to do whatever you can to make sure they are successfully housed and stay housed.
Bill Emahiser:Hello and welcome. I'm your host, Bill Emahiser, and you're listening to Mental Health U, the podcast dedicated to demystifying and destigmatizing mental health issues. So if you or someone you know is struggling with depression, anxiety, trauma or some other mental health issue, then this podcast is for you. This episode is proudly sponsored by Unison Health, dedicated to making lives better through compassionate, quality mental health and addiction treatment services. Learn more at unisonhealthorg. I am so excited to have Ronelle Aldridge, manager of the Housing First program, on the podcast today. We are going to talk about her program and homelessness in Northwest Ohio. Welcome, reneal. How are you today?
Ronelle:I am fantastic. How about yourself?
Bill Emahiser:I am super fantastic because I get to chat with you today and I'm really excited about your program. I know a lot about your program and I'm hoping that we can help others learn about this amazing program Before we get going. First of all, thank you for being on today. Can you tell us a little bit about your background and professional experience?
Ronelle:Yes, so I have been working in a mental health field for almost 17 years. I first started with children from the age of five to 21 and worked with them for 13 years, and after that I switched over to adults. Once I started working with adults, I was a adult case manager and then, about five years ago, I was asked to pilot a program for our homeless population, and this is how I came about working with the homeless population and being able to assist and help them.
Bill Emahiser:That's wonderful. Can you tell us a little bit about the Housing First program? Like what is Housing First?
Ronelle:So Housing First is a homeless program that focuses on individuals. That's chronically homeless, you have to be chronically homeless. We assist individuals and families with children or without children, adults, married couples we help them all. But you have to be homeless, chronically homeless, and that's nine months or longer and we can go back over a three-year period. Okay.
Bill Emahiser:So it doesn't have to be homeless contiguous. You could be homeless for three months and then maybe have a residence for a month and then six more months In over a three-year period. That would qualify somebody for Housing First.
Ronelle:So no, if they sign to, at least, even if it's just for a month and they get evicted or put out or actually leave then that was still sign of residence. So then we can't house them because they wouldn't qualify for being homeless. Now if they couchsurfing, they want to go stay with a family or a friend, it's different. And then homelessness you have to be living in a shelter on the streets, maybe abandoned buildings, just nowhere where you're attached to anyone's housing or anyone's lease.
Bill Emahiser:Can you tell us what makes Housing First so unique?
Ronelle:I think Housing First is unique because of the people. And then we eliminate the barriers that come with individuals being homeless. You can have a criminal background we don't mind that at all but we can't work with individuals with certain criteria, like this is registered sex offenders, which is unfortunate, but we can't. If you ever had an arsonist charge or if you ever had a meth lab those are three automatically knows that we'll get from our family. And then, on top of that, if you have too many DVs and a setting within a year or a couple back to back or the behaviors that's very aggressive to anyone, then we also look at that too. And if you have too many, then we can't work with you. Because we house individuals and families around children and families and we want to make sure that wherever we get how individuals, how that everyone is safe. Other programs tend to have a lot of issues.
Bill Emahiser:You have to have 30 days in a program or you have to already be linked to certain programs before you can get housed. Housing first does it a little bit different, though right, housing first is very unique to that, because we don't look at the substance abuse, we don't look at anything prior to them getting housed.
Ronelle:Our focus is getting the client's house and starting to find a way to get the learner try and arts organization or institutions that are helping provide advice to my family and choice no-transcript is causing you to be homeless. What has caused you to be homeless? What are some barriers that you're dealing with? Whether it's physical health, mental health, whether it's alcohol, whether it's trauma.
Ronelle:we look at all those after we get you housed, so we start from the end at the beginning and then work our way around just to make sure that it's client oriented and then make sure that client is in control of the program. We just assist and we make sure that client knows that they are running the show. We just there to guide them, advocate for them and show them how to be successfully housed.
Bill Emahiser:I love it. So it really is kind of like Maslow's hierarchy of needs. It's like taking care of, we're not concerned. And I think it's really hard for people to kind of put their selves in that position because we take so many things for granted. We don't, most of us are not worried about where our shelter is and where our next meal is coming from, those things we kind of take for granted. But if you're on the streets and you're struggling not only with not knowing maybe you have a mental health issue or an addiction issue, but on top of that you don't know if you're gonna make it through the night because it's freezing cold, or you don't know where your next meal is coming from You're probably not going to access going to your, your physical health or your mental health appointments. You're probably thinking about survival. And so housing first, I think, is so cool.
Ronelle:And the housing first really looks at. Okay, if, put yourself in that position. If you're living on the street, your focal point is oh, let me go see my doctor, make sure I get on my meds, or let me go see my psychiatrist to make sure I'm staying on my psych meds. My focal point is day to day, is how to survive, and so we look at that. So we eliminate your survival and give you something stable. Then we have somewhere for you to sit. Be peaceful and mindful that everything is gonna work out.
Ronelle:Now we can start looking at how we get to appointments scheduled. How can we assist you in fighting the resources you need? If you need a specialized program, then we assist you. If you need to be linked to services, then we'll help you. If we need to sit with you out of your appointments, we will sit with you. We'll make sure that when we're done with you, that you feel capable of doing everything independently by yourself and don't feel like the world is sitting on top of you while doing it. So we try to make sure that each client individually case is looked at upon their needs and wants, and not what we want, but what the client wants.
Bill Emahiser:Love it. Yeah, you tend to get a lot more success when we are being the guide and not telling people what they need to do or what they should do. I love that about your program. You just talked a little bit about challenges and barriers. Can you talk a little bit more about that? What are some of the challenges and barriers that clients experience due to being homeless and having a mental health condition?
Ronelle:So I can tell you about my first client that I ever worked with, and they'll give you some barriers.
Ronelle:It's heart-drinking and everything. So I had a gentleman who stayed on the bench downtown when he first came about. It was one of the senior citizen centers that actually connected me to him and I started working with him and he knew his name. He couldn't remember his date of birth. He knew it was in September, but that's all he could remember. He couldn't remember his social, but then he was an Army vet too and then he couldn't remember when he served, but he remembered his DD 214. So he can tell me that we started with that first and we got nowhere. He had no birth certificate, no ID, no social security card, so he has nothing.
Ronelle:It was like a blank slate trying to figure out who this guy was. He knew that he was born in Chicago. He knew that he was raised there and didn't come here until after he got out of the services and both his parents were deceased and he was the only child. So we had no one to go to the ask questions to ask anything, cause he couldn't remember any family that he had prior to going to the service. So we started with if he knew what elementary or high school that he went to. He can remember high school, but he remember his elementary because he liked one of the teachers there. So that's where I started it.
Ronelle:I got his documentation from his elementary school and we was able to figure out who he was. I think I worked with him every day, sometimes four to five hours a day, trying to figure this out. And then one day he said I'm tired of seeing you. And I said is that a good thing or a bad thing? And just joking with him, he said no, it's a good thing, I'm tired of seeing you only because I'm afraid this would be my last time seeing you. And every time you come here, every time I call you, you always here and available. And I'm afraid that one day you're gonna do me like everyone else did and leave me. And I told him no, we're gonna get through this and into the end of it until I get you house in your own space and I'm gonna be there step by step. If you need anything, please call me. And when he called, I did do any and everything to make him feel comfortable. Let him know that we was gonna make him and get him house.
Ronelle:So we was able to finally get all the documentation this the school, sign it over to me, was able to find out who he was. He thought he was 69 and he was really 89. So he was 20 years, was 20 years short of when he was and what age he was at. And so when we finally figured out that he was 89 years old, that he had Pensions and money because he didn't have any income at the time but because he served in an army for 22 years, that he had funding, he had money, he could apply for Social Security, but he couldn't get nowhere because he had no identification. That's who he was.
Ronelle:We went over to the veterans place to get assistant and because we didn't have the correct date of birth and stuff, because he didn't know it, they wouldn't assist him, they wouldn't help him, they wouldn't guide him. But by the time we got done it took me over six months, but we did process and get them through. We did get him identification. We did get him income started, got him a bank account. Also got him a payee, worked on trying to get him to learn how to keep up with his Documentations. We got him a lockbox that he wanted to put his identification stuff in there, never lose it again. And we got him house.
Ronelle:We found him apartment and he seen it and he told me I'm afraid, I'm afraid to stay by myself. I'm been by myself all this time and it's, it's killing me to be by myself, alone in this house. Even if you, even if you put furniture in here, it's still gonna be hard for me to sit here every day and be by myself. And I said I got something better. We're gonna put you in a group home, that way you around people, you'll still have your own bedroom, but you're not by yourself I.
Ronelle:It's been five years. He's still housed, he's still up and running. He is almost 95 years old and he still calls me every now and again just to say, hey, I'm alive, I'm good, I'm still housed. But that was the the greatest blessing that I could have ever received, just knowing that he's still good, that he's still in his same place. He didn't want to move. After he moved into the group home, he's doing very well and it was just like. These are the things that you have to do to make sure that individuals like that, that has no one, know that it depend on you and know you're gonna do whatever you can to make sure they are successfully housed and stay housed.
Bill Emahiser:Mental Health U is brought to you by Unison Health. Unison Health making lives better. That's such an amazing story and I know I love that you have a connection with this gentleman that even five years later he's still reaching out to you just to tell you he's, he's still in there, he's still hanging in, he's still around. I love it. It's such a great story, but it does highlight all of the you know, all the barriers, like things again that we take for granted, like knowing our social security number, having our date of birth, having you know a license, having ID, those kinds of things. And this poor man boy he was 20 years older than what he thought he was. That's, I mean, that's really tough. So you really went ways back to elementary school. God bless that elementary school for keeping those records that long. I mean that's, that's amazing.
Ronelle:Which was shocking because I'm thinking back then they probably had it in paper form.
Bill Emahiser:Oh, absolutely.
Ronelle:Because they had paper form. They also transformed them into a CD where they still can get back into it and look for old documents, and so it was hard at first. I did have him sign a release of information. We played tug of war for a minute with the school until I finally just broke down. Look, this man is homeless, he has nowhere to go. I can't get no identification because I can't get to correct birthday. So if you can just help us in any kind of way, please, we're willing to do anything. If we have to pay for copies, I pay for copies. And she finally said ma'am, we have it, we'll fax it over to you. And by the end of that day she had faxed it over to me and was able to get the process started. And I think his biggest joy was having an identification and having this.
Bill Emahiser:ID.
Ronelle:Everywhere he went, he would say I got an ID. And he won't show everybody, because he had this ID and he finally knew who he was.
Bill Emahiser:God bless you. This job for you is. You pretty much have to have a hat that says detective on it to track stuff down, a hat that has advocate for trying to argue for the rights and the benefits of your clients and trying to get them housed. I can only imagine that this job is very rewarding. I feel just blessed to even hear your story and to be part of an organization that you belong to doing this kind of work. How do you measure success? How does the Housing First program measure success?
Ronelle:I think we measure success by just getting our individual house, being patient with the process, because that's key Patients you definitely have to have, because you have to go through so many loops and barriers to even get some documentation.
Ronelle:But being patient is key. I think that's the one thing I've learned with this program and understanding that, hey, I can be in that same situation and I will want them to be patient with me, understand where some of my trauma is coming from, understand that being homeless can create mental health, understand that you know I'm saying it's traumatizing to have to live on the street and constantly watch over your back and not getting sleep or getting the nutrition you need to be healthy. So I think our biggest measure is just getting them housed and keeping them housed. So our program is successful because we have a wrap-around program that we do. So our program two-step process. So once we get you housed, we have a stability coordinator come on and work with you twice a month and sometimes more for the first year. Because we learned when we first started that first year we was getting individual housed and it wasn't a problem. The problem was the maintaining housing, because we didn't have wrap-around services.
Ronelle:So we created the wrap-around service to help them be successful, get an understanding of what caused them to be homeless, to prevent that from happening again, to show them how to do the simple things and filling out money orders.
Ronelle:We're to find money orders, helping them to understand okay, these bill has to be paid on time in order for you to keep your lights off, in order for you to stay housed and keep your rent paid. Um. So individuals that couldn't do it themselves, we just created programs that would. So we will use the payee program or we'll use the budget plan on some of the bills where they just take it out automatically, um, and put them on a budget plan so they'll catch them up, so they won't get their utilities cut off, so they won't get automatically evicted, um. So stuff like that. We try to eliminate all barriers to make sure that each client, each family, stay housed after their year success and understanding of what that entails and what that takes. Um our percentage. We only had two people ever evicted in the five years we've been doing this program. Wow, so we created that so we can eliminate the eviction process.
Ronelle:I'm trying not to be looking at rehousing them but, keeping them housed successfully, and if they want to move, they can move anywhere they choose to and rinelle I, I didn't.
Bill Emahiser:I see um. Tell me if I'm wrong on this, but I saw that, like you said, sometimes I know how housing people can be challenging because there may not be enough housing available out there for folks. But once you get them housed, one of the big problems is maintaining that housing and I saw a statistic I thought there was like 50 percent or 60 percent of the people that are homeless and then become housed end up homeless again within the first six months to a year. Is that is my number right? Is that so?
Ronelle:it's about 68 percent actually. Okay, um, so 68 percent of people typically won't stay housed for that first six months if they don't have to support and assistance. They need to eliminate some of the barriers or old be had, old habits they had prior to getting housed. So we have to look at, okay, what caused you from being housed? Uh, homeless, I'm sorry, what caused you to be homeless? What did that look like? And then we look at that, the overall picture, to say, okay, so now we need to draw a budget plan. Maybe we need to do that. Now.
Ronelle:We need to look at okay, can you read and write? Do you understand the process of this lease that you just signed? You can't just stay there for two months and decide, oh, I'm done, I'm just not gonna live there anymore. We have we get them to understand that part of it. We get them understand to be comfortable within your own household. So if you're having problems with your the other tenants there, or you're having problems with your landlord, you come, talk to us and we'll assist you along the way and help you communicate with your landlord, communicate with other tenants to make sure that you feel safe. And that's the biggest point is, like, we need to understand what caused them to be homeless and then work on work with them on eliminating those bad habits and creating new habits so they can get an understanding. If I do it this way, versus the old way, then I could be successful house and still address what I need to address so what percentage of your program do people after a year are still housed?
Ronelle:we have 94 94 percent.
Bill Emahiser:That's amazing. That is awesome. Well, how can people, if people um are homeless and they hear this, if people are, I know, family members or maybe they have clients that are homeless and think they could benefit from this program, how would they go about um learning more, getting access or doing a referral?
Ronelle:they can go on to unison health dot org and we're on there for housing. First you can look up there, um, you can get the number from there and everything, and then they'll reach out to me and then we'll go from there fantastic.
Bill Emahiser:Well, thank you so much for spending time with us today sharing your knowledge. I really, really enjoyed our conversation together. Definitely going to have to have you back on again in the very near future.
Ronelle:Thank you so much thank you so much, it was a pleasure to learn more about housing first, go to unison health dot org.
Bill Emahiser:Forward slash housing first. This podcast has been brought to you by unison health. Unison health is a non-profit mental health agency dedicated to serving the northwest Ohio community for the past 50 years.