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Even as Springfield's homeless residents secure housing, an uphill battle awaits them

Martin Pyško via Pixabay, used with permission

In this third segment of our 10-part series, we look at the challenges facing people immediately after they transition from homelessness into their own dwellings.

What happens in the weeks and months after a homeless person secures housing? At first glance, you might think having a safe, warm place to stay is enough to help someone get back on their feet.

But our reporting revealed that the transition can be wrought with challenges—many serious enough to lead people back into homelessness.

One of those challenges is social isolation, which affects mental health.

Katie Kring is the director of the Springfield Street Choir and homeless ambassador. She works with the unsheltered population in Springfield daily.

“The homeless community is a thing, people have friends, you see each other at meals. You know, it's kind of a traumatized and a little bit brittle community. Sometimes you have a lot of social interaction and a lot of stimulation and things like that,” Kring said.

While there are several shelters in and around Springfield, the ultimate goal is to get people into dwellings where they can live independently. The options for affordable housing in Springfield are slim and waiting lists are often long. And even when a person does secure long-term housing, isolation often awaits them.

”If you just house somebody, you just pick them up and put them in a house, you're putting them in a house that may or may not have a television. They may or may not have any friends or neighbors. So they're just sitting in a house like, you're housed, but you don't have anything to do. You don't have anywhere to be. You don't have anybody to talk to. And so that can actually be a really hard time for a lot of people's mental health,” Kring said.

Another challenge immediately after transition into housing is getting—and keeping—a job. Transportation to and from work can be tough, and so can doing laundry for uniforms and clean professional clothes.

And then there’s the issue of recovery from substance abuse. A significant portion of unsheltered residents turn to alcohol or recreational drugs to numb the pains of homelessness. Once they find housing, those habits often follow them and are very hard to break without professional help.

One person who recently moved from Springfield’s streets into a rental home is Coco. We agreed to only use their first name because they feared negative repercussions regarding employment.

CoCo is a parent of two children, one of whom they gave birth to while struggling to find shelter.

“I lost my subsidized apartment in October 2019—October 31st, 2019. And from that date until January 3rd of this year, I was homeless with my child. And it wasn't for lack of trying,” Coco said.

CoCo and their two children moved into their rental home in central Springfield a few weeks ago, after Kring helped arrange the logistics. Inside are a couch and a chair, a table that props up a small TV, and some cactus-shaped Christmas lights draped for decoration.

Coco said they’ve lost many close friends to vices like heroin use. One thing this community really needs, Coco said, is a way to help people to overcome addiction once they are housed.

“Don't dehumanize us. We're valuable people. We just fell on hard times, and I challenge you to care because what else? What else are you going to do?” Coco said.

Kring says Springfield lacks a comprehensive strategy for attacking homelessness. She also says the people who manage to secure housing, despite Springfield’s severe shortage of affordable units, still need resources as they continue their journeys to a more stable life.

“You need to have a strategy and you need to have a whole community program that involves the city and the nonprofits and everything else that has real actual goals that are humane and ethical. So not just- because a program is we will house 50 people when it is less than 32, and a goal is no one sleeps outside. And we've currently put in a lot of effort into running programs. But we don't have goals and we don't have any accountability for when we fail to meet them. And that's what we need,” Kring said.

Before people can even begin to address these transitional challenges, they have to first find housing.

In Springfield, the organization tasked with addressing homelessness is the Ozarks Alliance to End Homelessness, administered by the Community Partnership of the Ozarks, or CPO.

CPO officials have said a top priority in terms of homelessness is finding more affordable housing. Springfield is facing a shortage of about 14,000 affordable housing units, which is creating a backlog in shelters—meaning more people remain on the streets.

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