Asheville held up as model in dealing with homelessness, but is it?

Jason Sandford

Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.

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This CapeCodonline.com story says that Asheville is being held up as a model for dealing with homelessness by the executive director of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness.

But is Asheville a model? If you heard recent reports to Asheville City Council, you’d wonder. First, the local Tourism Development Authority said local businesses are complaining about what they report as an increase in aggressive panhandling in downtown. Then the city employee who is overseeing Asheville’s 10-year plan to end homelessness was grilled by council. Her answers highlighted problems: there are more homeless people in Asheville than a year ago, service agencies aren’t using a computer database set up about three years ago to track the homeless and more.

But don’t let those little facts get in the way of a good story:

HYANNIS — Philip Mangano has called many times for the nation to wage war on homelessness.

Mangano, who is executive director of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, was at the Duffy Health Center on Park Street yesterday to announce a $2 million five-year grant to help combat homelessness on Cape Cod.

But with his visit to Hyannis following closely after a meeting Tuesday at the Federated Church on Main Street where tensions ran high between the business community and the homeless, Mangano called on Cape Codders to think in terms of cooperation rather than conflict.

“I think some of you should take a pilgrimage,” the Eastham homeowner said to the group of about 20 politicians, service providers and Barnstable town officials crammed into one of the health center’s small buildings.

Asheville, N.C., had faced a similar tensions and solved many of the same problems, he said. “Why reinvent the wheel?”

Asheville addressed the issue by creating permanent housing for chronically homeless citizens and providing services to keep those residents in their homes, he said.

“If you just place them into housing and say the job is done, you’re just setting them up for failure,” he said.

Some of the Duffy Health Center’s $2 million grant from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration could go toward similar initiatives on the Cape, he said.

Regardless of how Cape communities decide to address homelessness, there is a price to be paid, Mangano said.

During a meeting earlier in the day at Cape Cod Hospital, Mangano was told the hospital sees a minimum of 10 homeless people each day, he said. Each of those visits costs at least $1,000 and the annual cost to the hospital in unpaid services is at least $3.65 million, he said.