This housing ‘gap’ has led some formerly homeless Boiseans to drink themselves to death

It was a pattern that had become all too familiar to Terrence Sharrer.

The supervisor of Interfaith Sanctuary ’s Project Recovery, he was working with a resident in her early 60s who was addicted to alcohol. With the help of shelter staff members and programming, she got sober, left the shelter and moved into independent housing.

“She was high-functioning,” Sharrer said of the resident, a former nurse who’d worked for 45 years. But living on her own meant leaving behind the structure and supportive community at Interfaith. In isolation, she started drinking again, and ultimately “drank herself to death,” Sharrer told the Idaho Statesman by phone.

“The disease of addiction … got her,” he said. “And there wasn’t anybody there to help her.”

She wasn’t alone. Advocates from Interfaith say they’ve seen this happen five or six times in recent years. The advocates say some people moving out of homelessness aren’t yet ready to rent and live in an apartment on their own.

What they need, advocates say, is transitional supportive housing, an intermediate step. Such housing offers reduced-cost or occasionally free apartments temporarily, with counselors, case managers and other residents providing support and connection.

Without that support, Interfaith has seen the at-times devastating effect of isolation on “really good people, people we’ve developed long-term relationships with, that we’ve helped and helped and helped,” Sharrer said. And after what seems like a level change in their recovery, things take a turn.

“They finally get into housing, and they die,” he said.

Too little transitional housing in Boise area

Transitional housing can provide common spaces, shared meals, case management and structured programming. Some transitional housing exists in the Boise area, but there’s “definitely” too little, said Jodi Peterson-Stigers, Interfaith’s executive director.

Some businesses operate clean and sober houses in the community, but not enough for the number of people in need, Peterson-Stigers told the Statesman by phone. These are drug- and alcohol-free spaces for people recovering from addiction, often a next step after a drug rehabiliation program. But in practice, she said, they often lack the support residents need.

When former Interfaith residents have gone on to those facilities, they often “don’t have the management and structure that makes them feel safe,” she said. “So they are often in a really vulnerable position for relapse … and also a return to the shelter.”

In April, the Boise Rescue Mission launched The Next Step , which offers 58 apartments on the Bench. The program aims to bridge the gap between homelessness and private apartments that the Rev. Bill Roscoe, the Rescue Mission’s president and CEO, said are too expensive for people exiting homelessness to afford, the Statesman reported . Apartment List says Boise’s median rents now are $1,121 a month for a one-bedroom apartment and $1,292 for a two-bedroom.

The Next Step’s residents do not pay rent, Roscoe previously told the Statesman, but do pay a monthly program fee on a sliding scale between $0 and $500, depending on their ability to pay.

But even with the Rescue Mission’s new building, transitional housing “is a gap,” Peterson-Stigers told Ada County commissioners during a meeting in August.

“Someone who’s gone through the recovery program with us, they’re very connected to that community of well-being and recovery and family setting,” she said. “Then they have moved to an apartment that’s outside of our service area, and they don’t have transportation, and they lose connection.”

“With those struggles, they isolate,” she told the Statesman after the meeting. “They just lock themselves in. They don’t know how to move forward.”

This isolation can unravel months or years of work, Sharrer said.

“We see a cycle,” he said. “People isolate when they get their housing. They don’t have the services and everything that they need while they’re in their housing, and then they lose their housing. They get evicted, or they get kicked out of their housing because they’ve been getting high or had other people doing drugs in their homes. And then they come back to the shelter again, and we start the process all over again.”

Boise has spent millions in recent years to combat homelessness and incentivize and create more affordable housing. Most recently, the city announced its plan to more than double the amount of permanent supportive housing available for the city’s chronically homeless population through New Path, an apartment building at 2200 W. Fairview Ave.

In its first four years, New Path saved the city $6.7 million and reduced the time emergency services spent responding to calls by more than 4,000 days, according to a study by Boise State University’s Idaho Policy Institute. When residents had housing, they were much less likely to need medical attention, experience mental health crises or get arrested, the Statesman reported .

But there has been less of a focus on the population of homeless people who need transitional housing — people who, with the right support, could earn a degree or return to the workforce, Peterson-Stigers said.

Boise Rescue Mission offers model

At the meeting in August, commissioners agreed with Peterson-Stigers about the importance of transitional housing.

They noted that the Ada County Jail offers a 108-bed community transition center for people leaving custody and reentering the community, where each participant receives case management and has access to provided meals and common areas.

And they shared that they had tried — unsuccessfully — in recent years to use federal funds for a transitional supportive housing project that would fill a vacant lot near the Allumbaugh House, an addiction treatment center at 400 N. Allumbaugh St. It turned out that particular source of funding couldn’t be used for transitional housing, they said.

In August, commissioners toured the Boise Rescue Mission’s apartments at 1777 S. Curtis Road, a converted assisted-living building. The Next Step has already had five people successfully transition out into the community, Roscoe said during the tour.

He emphasized the importance of being goal-oriented but not rigid. When people apply to be in the program, they decide on a set exit date, but it’s “very flexible,” he said.

“It can be changed, but nonetheless, everybody comes in knowing and planning that in this many weeks, days, months or years from now, we’re going to move out of here,” he said.

One answer to Boise’s affordable-housing woes? The Rescue Mission just offered this

New subsidized ‘affordable’ apartments won’t help most Boiseans who can least afford them