PORTLAND – City officials are starting to wind down a program they credit with getting more than 800 people off the streets and into apartments.

The program, funded with $876,000 in federal economic stimulus money, identified people who were at risk of becoming homeless or already chronically homeless, and helped develop plans to get or keep them off the streets and out of shelters.

Additional Photos

Becki Ver Sluis and her young son, Paris Knight, now enjoy the comfort and security of a Portland apartment. Ver Sluis is part of a city program that used federal stimulus money to get housing for more than 800 people. John Patriquin/Staff Photographer

Doug Gardner, Portland’s director of health and human services, said the program was especially helpful during the depths of the recession, when Portland’s shelters for the homeless were operating at capacity most nights.

Portland used the federal grant money to temporarily hire seven full-time caseworkers and one part-timer to help get the homeless off the streets. The city also had access to federal housing subsidies, which were routed through the state housing authority and increased in response to the recession.

Gardner said the program is due to taper off toward the end of this year. No more people are being enrolled because of limits on the available subsidies.

He said caseworkers picked people for the program by scouring the rolls at the shelters. They looked for people who had spent a high number of nights at the shelters and were considered chronically homeless, and those with only a handful of nights, suggesting they were newly homeless.

Caseworkers also targeted people who contacted the city looking for help because they were about to lose apartments.

Many people needed help coming up with security deposits or first-month rent, Gardner said.

Caseworkers put together plans for making sure that people who were placed in apartments would be able to stay — by getting jobs, tapping into available programs to help them pay rent, or getting benefits for which they were eligible.

“We didn’t want to just enroll folks in the program and then have them not be successful in that housing,” Gardner said.

The case of a woman who had just gotten out of an abusive relationship illustrates how the program worked, said Alice Corson, a human services counselor in the program.

Becki Ver Sluis was pregnant and getting out of her relationship when she showed up at a city shelter. Corson said Ver Sluis was a good candidate for the program, since she quickly got on the waiting list for a housing subsidy.

The city helped her find a unit in an apartment complex, paid the rent until the subsidy came through and put her in touch with a program that helped her furnish the apartment.

Ver Sluis said she had to deal with some health problems with her infant son, but once the doctors said he was healthy enough to go to day care, she started looking for a job and landed a full-time position at Anthem.

She still receives the subsidy, which requires her to put 30 percent of her income toward the rent, and looks forward to being able to pay the full amount on her own soon.

“A year ago, I felt helpless, with nowhere to go. I had nothing,” Ver Sluis said. The program that got her into an apartment “really turned my life around. It’s not just a step — I’ve made it up a whole staircase.”

City officials are now working with more than 849 people, representing 509 households, who were placed in apartments under the program, to work on maintaining their housing.

“There’s no cliff here,” Gardner said. “When the (stimulus funds) are gone in November, folks that have been enrolled in the program will have a sustainability plan.”

Staff Writer Edward D. Murphy can be contacted at 791-6465 or at:

emurphy@pressherald.com

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