Walking the Tab

More than two dozen mentally ill people could be left homeless due to an administrative foul-up that cost Harris County a half-million dollars in federal housing grants.

Local mental health officials have until the end of the month to come up with a financial plan to save the Safe Haven transitional housing program at 1215 Dennis Street in Midtown. Safe Haven’s 25 efficiency apartments are run by the Mental Health & Mental Retardation Authority of Harris County, which received $2.5 million from the federal government in 1995 to build and manage a residential halfway house for homeless people with severe mental illness.

When the initial grant expired a year ago, MHMRA submitted a proposal for another $500,000 to operate Safe Haven in 2001. That proposal was supposed to be included in a county-wide grant application sent to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development last May. But for reasons that aren’t entirely clear, the Safe Haven proposal was left out of Harris County’s application and, therefore, was never considered by HUD.

“For whatever reason, the Safe Haven portion of the application never made it to us,” says Scott Hudman, a spokesman for HUD’s regional office in Fort Worth. “And unfortunately we have to go with the application that is submitted.”

As a result, when HUD announced the 2001 grant winners in January, Safe Haven received nothing of the $6.6 million awarded to Harris County. Moreover, unless MHMRA raises at least $225,000 by March 31, the agency will be ineligible to apply for future funding to operate Safe Haven. In that case, the facility, which opened April 1, 1998, would likely close for good.

Local housing officials are playing down the omission of the Safe Haven proposal, at least publicly, as a onetime oversight.

“The ball was definitely dropped, no doubt about it,” says Pam Williford, executive director of the Coalition for the Homeless, which helps administer the application process. “I don’t want to, and I wouldn’t, and it doesn’t do anyone any good to blame anyone.”

Despite the outward diplomacy, the submission of a flawed grant application to HUD has triggered a flurry of backstage finger-pointing among local housing officials. With millions of dollars at stake every year, questions have been raised about how Harris County applies for federal money, as well as who’s ultimately responsible for the results.

For years, local social service agencies that provide shelter for the poor, including Harris County and the City of Houston, submitted their own grant applications to HUD. That changed in 1995, when the county, city and the nonprofit Coalition for the Homeless formed a so-called collaborative to combine the individual proposals into a single application.

The collaborative approach was intended to ensure that only the best proposals — those put forth by experienced providers to fill bona fide housing needs — were part of the application to HUD. The process of separating the wheat from the chaff begins in March, with a call for proposals by the collaborative’s “project manager,” the Harris County Community Development Agency. A month later, the county forwards the proposals to a team of readers, who score each one using criteria set by the collaborative.

Low-scoring proposals are disqualified, and the rest are sent to a steering committee appointed by the collaborative. Committee members hold public hearings and then rank the remaining proposals based on merit and potential for success. The package is then passed along to a fourth entity, two grant writers hired by the collaborative.

The grant writers’ job is to weave specifics of the preferred proposals into a “narrative” that explains what kind of housing will be funded by the grant and who will benefit from it. Finally, the application — 700-plus pages, depending on the number of ranked proposals attached — is ready to be shipped via overnight carrier to HUD in Washington, D.C.

Harris County’s 2001 application arrived at HUD on the deadline of May 31. It wasn’t until December, however, that the collaborative learned the Safe Haven proposal was not where it should have been, behind tab No. 18, in the application.

“I got this shocked call from HUD,” recalls one local official, who did not want to be quoted by name. “They said, ‘You need to know there is a missing project, No. 18. It’s MHMRA’s, and it’s not there.’ “

What went wrong depends on who you ask. The homeless coalition’s Williford said that, as project manager, the Harris County Community Development Agency probably saw the application last before it went to HUD.

“As I understand it, the grant writers deliver it to Harris County, and they get it signed off by Commissioners Court, assemble it and mail it off,” says Williford. “I’m assuming what the grant writers told me is true. I wasn’t there.”

It’s not true, says Annette Dwyer, a county spokesperson. Dwyer says that, as best she can tell at this late date, the grant writers hired by the collaborative put together the final application, made ten copies and shipped it to HUD. Dwyer said the application process gets so hectic that the collaborative typically doesn’t see the final document until after it’s been sent to Washington.

“It’s more common than not for the application not to be final until just before it’s due to HUD,” Dwyer says. “I don’t think any members of the collaborative review it. I don’t think it’s ever been done, and we’ve been following the same process since 1995 with no problems.”

Indeed, in the six years since the collaborative was formed, Houston and Harris County have received almost $80 million in federal grants to house the homeless. However, that success has tapered off in recent years; the $6.6 million the county received in January was barely half the previous year’s award.

A portion of that decrease can be attributed to shifting priorities at HUD. But some people familiar with the county’s collaborative application process question its effectiveness. One retired grant writer, who did not want to be named, says some grant writers won’t work for the collaborative because the process is so chaotic. Important information is turned in late or left out of the application completely. And, because oversight is lax, it was only a matter of time before something went wrong.

“It’s unheard of not to review a document going to HUD, to make sure nothing is missing,” the former grant writer says. “It’s a nuisance. It’s not professional work, but you don’t turn it over to the mail clerk, either. There’s a lot of money involved.”

Safe Haven — a clean, neatly designed three-story building at the corner of Dennis and Caroline, across from MHMRA’s Bristow Community Center — is the only housing project of its kind in Harris County. Its tenants are referred by homeless shelters or invited in off the street by MHMRA caseworkers. In many situations, their mental illnesses, mostly schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, have never been treated.

Jerry Johnson is a 61-year-old former electrical technician with bipolar disease who hasn’t worked for eight years. “I just kept getting slower,” he says. Last summer Johnson was admitted to Rusk State Hospital. By the time he was released, his wife had begun divorce proceedings. Johnson found himself living in a series of homeless shelters. In January caseworkers at the Open Door Mission referred Johnson to MHMRA, which had a vacancy at Safe Haven.

Tenants like Johnson can stay up to two years, though the average is about nine months, says program director Sandra Brock.

On a recent tour of Safe Haven, Brock showed off the room of a tenant who was preparing to move into his own apartment. Homeless just a few months ago, he was working and had purchased a television, VCR and small stereo. His modest pantry was well stocked, and he had hung curtains over the apartment’s single window.

Safe Haven tenants aren’t forced into treatment. Instead, the facility’s 24-hour staff members “mildly teach,” as Johnson puts it. Tenants have the opportunity to learn everything from how to manage symptoms with medication and therapy to how to cook, clean and take care of themselves. Staffers also help tenants get social services such as food stamps and Medicaid or social security benefits. It is hoped that eventually tenants will become stable enough to live independently.

Johnson doesn’t know how long he’ll need to remain at Safe Haven — “It’s up for tosses,” he says — but having a roof over his head and people to talk to has helped. “This is about the best thing I know of,” he says.

Safe Haven’s 25 apartments have been filled since August, and there are now about a half-dozen people waiting for a vacancy. If they are ever to get the chance to live at Safe Haven, MHMRA needs to keep the facility open for another year. For now, the agency has enough cash — about $350,000 — to operate Safe Haven until fall. MHMRA estimates that $225,000 more would cover the operating deficit — and, equally important, keep Safe Haven in the running for a piece of next year’s grant award.

HUD’s Hudman says the facility will have to provide more information and work with his agency’s community development staff to get funding next year.

“It’s a complicated process,” he says. “But honestly, first they are going to have to pound the pavement to find the money to stay open.”

Apparently the mistake that threatens to close Safe Haven has prompted a shift in responsibilities for the 2002 grant application process, which is just getting under way. Williford says the Coalition for the Homeless will take over as project manager and assume the ultimate responsibility of getting the application to HUD. Williford is also supporting MHMRA’s efforts to convince the city and county to cover Safe Haven’s operating deficit until next year.

The possible loss of Safe Haven is a headache MHMRA doesn’t need. The agency, which finished its last budget year about $3 million in the red, has trimmed its clinical services to the bone. Poor and uninsured patients have to wait eight to 12 weeks for appointments, and most of them are forced to rely on only medication.

Ironically, Safe Haven was a program MHMRA thought it didn’t have to worry about. The agency was mostly concerned with securing $2 million from HUD to continue its permanent housing program. Because of poor grant management, that proposal was ranked dead last of the 31 submissions in last year’s application. To almost everyone’s surprise, HUD funded the permanent housing program. Almost certainly, the federal agency would have funded Safe Haven as well, given the chance.

Rose Childs, MHMRA’s director of clinical programs, says she’s still unsure what went wrong and how. If nothing else, Childs wants to know who to ask for a refund of the application fee paid by MHMRA to submit the Safe Haven proposal.

“That cost us $3,000,” she says with a small laugh. “And I’m going to get it back.”