MHA Efforts to get Boost via Grants

Saturday, January 24, 2004

By Joan Durbin - Marietta Daily Journal Staff Writer

MAREITTA - More than $1.1 million in grant money will soon be flowing into the Marietta Housing Authority to pay for capital improvements, housing for the mentally ill, substance abusers or battered women and the hiring of a grant coordinator for a family self-sufficiency program.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development notified MHA of the awards during the last quarter of 2003.

One was a five-year grant extension of an existing MHA program called Shelter Plus Care that houses 24 clients under the care of the Cobb Community Services Board. The program targets the chronically homeless who suffer from severe mental illness or are drug addicts.

"We provide a place for them to live and pay their rent while they're undergoing a recovery program," said Pat Barnett, MHA's director of finance and administration. "This $234,888 grant will allow us to continue serving the existing 24, plus six more."

The program focuses on people who have multiple barriers to obtaining permanent, long-term housing. According to the MHA grant application, people with mental illness or addictions have greater difficulty exiting homelessness than other people.

They are also twice as likely to arrested or jailed, mostly for misdemeanors, and have many untreated health problems.

"Federal research and demonstration programs have shown that supportive services help decrease psychiatric symptoms and substance abuse and increase residential stability" for these clients, the grant states.

The MHA also received $642,300 in funding for a new program that will assist homeless women with children who are referred to MHA through Mothers Making a Change. The women may have fled an abusive spouse, have mental illnesses or drug problems.

"Basically, they can be homeless for any reason," Ms. Bennett said.

In its grant application, MHA wrote that "in Cobb County, like most other areas of the country, homeless women and their families are living on the streets, sleeping in cars, in abandoned buildings, and places not fit for human habitation. For the few families who are able to receive housing, it is usually limited to motels and emergency shelters and some transitional housing."

For these women, the continuous pattern of homelessness and abuse leads to destabilization of the family unit, inability to cope with daily stresses and a loss of self-respect, self-esteem, their health, rights to their children and their family support system.

The newly awarded grant will stretch to serve only 12 clients, Ms. Bennett said, because most of the families will require two- or three-bedroom apartments, which are more expensive than smaller units.

The MHA is also benefiting from other housing agencies' inability to spend their capital improvements grant money within a proscribed period.

Unspent funds go back into a pot that is then made available again for other projects. MHA will be getting $211,759 of that money, which it intends to spend on the demolition of Clay Homes "if we don't get another grant for that," Ms. Bennett said.

In addition, a $47,500 grant will allow MHA to hire a grants coordinator for its Family Self-Sufficiency program, which is open to anyone in the Section 8 housing program.

Family Self-Sufficiency puts money in escrow for families, usually those headed by single mothers, while the breadwinner receives counseling, training and help in making connections in working toward a goal.

"Ninety percent of the time its home ownership, but it could also be something like a car or an education," Ms. Bennett said.

The program's clients contribute their own money to the escrow account as they progress, and the funds are turned over to them when the account reaches a pre-ordained level, Ms. Bennett said.

Jackie Estes, who helped start the Family Self Sufficiency program for the City of Marietta, has been hired for the MHA consulting position.