Riverwood program gets federal grant

PROVIDENCE – Riverwood Mental Health Services last week announced that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services awarded the organization a five-year, $2 million grant to continue a pilot housing program that saves residents an average of $8,000 per year.
The Housing First model, an effort to cut chronic homelessness, has had a 90 percent success rate in keeping clients in permanent housing, Riverwood said. Nationally, transitional housing leads to permanent housing between 20 percent and 40 percent of the time, Riverwood said.
“This is permanent – not temporary – housing and is a long-term solution to this horrific problem” of chronic homelessness, Riverwood Executive Director Dan Kubas-Meyer said at a press conference last Thursday. “We have seen time and time again how housing becomes the lynchpin to accessing medical, substance abuse and other vitally needed services. I can say without hesitation that this program is dramatically improving all facets of our client’s lives.”
In November 2007, a study released by Providence College and Roger Williams University professors showed that the first two years of the program cost $475,000, a figure which included $175,000 from United Way of Rhode Island.
The program targets the 10 percent of Rhode Island’s homeless who use more than half the available state services. The study looked at 48 people in the program – prior to it they cost the state an average of $31,617 a year and while enrolled in it they averaged $22,778.