Mental health officials say a three-year federal grant to help homeless veterans was a huge success.
Homes, Honor and Health for Oklahomans, or H3OK, is a housing-first program. That means participants were first put into permanent housing like an apartment, then connected to services to help them stay there.
"It could be mental health services. It could be substance abuse treatment services. It could be employment services. It could be any kind of services that they choose and that they want, and then it’s the housing plus services that are offered together, simultaneously," said Mental Health Association Oklahoma Chief Housing Officer Greg Shinn.
Shinn said offering housing and services at the same time is more effective than making housing contingent on sobriety or work.
H3OK received a $3.6 million dollar grant from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration that started in October 2014.
In three years, H3OK reached 193 people, 70 percent suffering from mental illness and addiction. Today, 88 percent of those placed in housing are still there, 70 percent have health benefits, 59 percent are employed and 50 percent are receiving an income benefit, like Social Security.
"SAMHSA is looking at H3OK as a model for the rest of the country because the outcomes were so good. It represents the best of what Oklahoma can do," Shinn said.
With the SAMHSA grant having expired, the focus now turns to preserving state-level funding and incentives to sustain H3OK efforts — or grow them.
"If we want to take this grant and look at 193 people, we want to triple it or quadruple it or even bigger, we want to take it to scale. So, we need access to a lot more affordable housing, and then we need access to more services," Shinn said.
Shinn said that will involve advocating for tax incentives for affordable housing projects and funding for mental health services.
