New Orleans program works to get disabled homeless people into their own apartments

From The Times-Picayune in New Orleans:

For three years, Dorothy Grace (pictured) has slept beneath a concrete overpass in a 7th Ward park, selling bottled water to survive and scrawling notes with her always-handy pen and paper to try to combat forgetfulness that may mark the onset of Alzheimer's disease. But July 31, Grace moved into her own apartment.

The 56-year-old woman will be one of the first helped by a long-awaited housing program for the disabled homeless.

"I like it, " she said of her new place. "It's inside."

This week, UNITY of Greater New Orleans is housing five of its clients through the new "permanent supportive-housing" program run by the Office of Aging and Adult Services, part of the state Department of Health and Hospitals. The program provides rental assistance linked to supportive services, allowing disabled people to live independently, avoiding institutionalization or further homelessness.

But as the program launches, it faces an almost overwhelming need. While the initiative for now can process only five new people a week, UNITY's registry of disabled homeless people now stands at roughly 850 -- and its Abandoned Buildings Project alone finds five to 10 additional disabled people each week.

Local caseworkers have been preparing for the program since June 2008, when Congress appropriated $73 million for 3,000 rental-assistance vouchers. The accompanying services are paid for by $72 million from Louisiana's Road Home storm relief plan. However, state workers can't quickly process clients who tend to have a multitude of severe problems.

"No one is happy with the slow pace, " said UNITY director Martha Kegel, who hopes to work with state and federal officials to pick up rate of helping clients.

"For our clients, these vouchers are literally a matter of life and death, " she said.

The 850 people on UNITY's registry are ranked by mortality: Those highest on the list are the most likely to die or become victims if left on the street, according to a 46-item questionnaire developed by an East Coast doctor. The doctor worked with the homeless and found that 40 percent of people who have been homeless for more than six months and who match one of the questionnaire's high-risk factors will die within seven years.

Caseworkers' assessments have proven accurate: Three people at the top of Unity's list have died waiting for housing. Caseworkers heard recently that another man was hospitalized and fear he is in critical condition.

One of those who died was Ralph Magee, whose heart, liver and kidney disease overtook him in April. Magee was Grace's longtime companion and protector who fended off predators who commonly accost homeless women. Typically, the two of them woke up early, stashed their bedrolls and rolled her grocery cart to the corner of Elysian Fields and North Claiborne avenues. There, she sold bottled water from a well-worn blue ice-chest, for $1 a bottle. With the profits, they were usually able to buy a hot evening meal from the store down the street.

Clarence White (pictured), Grace's caseworker for the past 3 1/2 years, said that if he didn't see the duo, he'd leave a note on her cart and she'd find a way to call him when they returned. He also recalled driving down Claiborne at twilight and seeing the two of them walking toward the park.

"He'd be pushing the cart with her, " White said. "Wherever she was, he was too."

"The Lord called him home, " Grace said, tears streaming down her face. She misses her taller companion and his sense of humor. "At the end of the day, he'd say, 'C'mon, Midget, let's go home, ' " she recalled. That was her cue to pack up the battered cooler and any clothes and food they were given by passers-by, who often would honk and wave at the couple.

In addition to her other vulnerabilities, Grace has high blood pressure and her assessment showed that she registered with at least two high-risk factors: She has suffered both frostbite and "immersion foot, " a painful condition caused by feet that are wet for long periods of time.

Still, even if she's housed, she said, she can't imagine giving up her blue cooler and the people she's seen nearly every day since the Red Cross put her on a Greyhound to New Orleans from Dallas, several months after Hurricane Katrina.