When Sam Tsemberis decided he wanted to dedicate his life to ending homelessness, he started by doing something not many homeless advocates before him had done. He went straight to the source.
Tsemberis took a “consumer-driven” approach by asking chronically homeless people — many of them suffering from mental illness or addiction — what it would take to get them off the streets.
“Most of them said ‘For me, it’s not about the mental illness or the addiction. I’ve lived with that. I need a place to live,’ ” said Tsemberis.
Based on those conversations, in 2004 Tsemberis founded Pathways to Housing, a no-strings-attached program that gets homeless people off the streets and into their own apartments. What makes the program different from a shelter or other housing program, Tsemberis said, is that the housing component comes before anything else. In other programs, homeless people suffering from mental illness or addiction often must show they are on the road to recovery before getting a spot.
“People in those conditions have to almost cure themselves of their illness to get into a shelter,” he said. “[Pathways to Housing] provides immediate access to housing. You don’t have all these obligations. You’re only obligation is to pay the rent.”
Pathways provides an apartment to each client. The rent is subsidized by federal programs, and the remainder of the rent is usually paid through the client’s disability income. Each client also gets a team that includes social service workers, doctors and substance abuse counselors at their disposal.
“The team is constantly hovering and asking, ‘What would you like help with next?’ ” Tsemberis said. “The mission is to help them get back into mainstream society.”
Since Pathways was founded, the program has housed 109 people. Washington is the second Pathways chapter. Tsemberis founded a Pathways in New York City in 1992, and he is in talks with numerous other states to launch similar programs.
His hope is that the Pathways model will be able to eradicate homelessness within 10 years.
“We’re not providing transitional housing. We’re providing permanent housing,” he said. “We know the cure. It’s just a matter of getting the resources to end the problem.”
