For my final project in my News Reporting & Writing class, we each chose our own topics to research and report on as an enterprise story. We were tasked with creating the topic, interviewing sources, and doing research over the span of four months. For my enterprise story, I chose to focus on the homelessness crisis in Phoenix, Arizona and how it intersects with serious and chronic mental illness. I was inspired by a workshop I helped to lead at Valle Del Sol, a community health center in Phoenix. I was able to speak with a few people who are designated SMI/CMI and/or struggling with substance abuse and their experiences made me want to dive deeper into this issue and share the stories of people who have been overlooked before.
In recent years, Arizona’s homeless population has increased at an alarming rate. This rise began even before the pandemic took its toll and as a result, more conversations have opened up about why more people are living on the streets of Phoenix.
“It’s not a homelessness problem, it’s a hopelessness problem,” says a Valle Del Sol counselor, who has witnessed firsthand the difficulties people with serious mental illness (SMI) and chronic mental illness (CMI) face when looking for suitable housing.
Erik Ish, a counselor with the Phoenix-based community health center, Valle Del Sol, works primarily in the SMI department leading workshops and therapeutic groups. During his time working with people seeking mental health counseling and support, Ish has noticed that a stable housing environment and readily available support provides someone with a greater chance of recovering and healing.
“If you have mental illness and something knocks you off your center, you’re derailed for sometimes months, years, or forever, and what derailing for them means, is a lot more severe than for us, so if there’s a way to offer those people both housing and hope…we’d probably see lot better outcomes.” Ish said. But with rent increasing at increments Ish has never seen before, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for people to find affordable housing that offers proper care.
According to a study done by the National Alliance on Mental Health (NAMI), 35.3% of Arizonans dealing with a mental illness did not receive care due to costs in 2021. For those that qualify to receive vouchers and assistance to pay for housing, there are long wait times, leaving people in queues for months on end.
For the lucky few that are able to find suitable housing, their troubles continue on. A Scottsdale resident, who asked to remain anonymous, relays her experience watching her daughter be thrown out of multiple housing options due to financial issues.
Her daughter experienced her first psychotic episode at the age of 22 and has now been working with Arizona to get proper treatment for nearly 15 years. She describes herself as relatively affluent and says that even for her it is not sustainable to continuously pay for her daughter’s care. For non-medication related expenses, her daughter has received coverage via the Arizona Health Care Containment System (AHCCCS), which has helped to relieve the financial burden that finding housing and care can create.
AHCCCS is the primary insurance provider for those looking to receive mental health support like housing as Medicaid only covers medication costs. Her daughter was able to bounce from home to home on the support of AHCCCS. This was until January 2022 when Social Security and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits increased by 5.9% which put Fuchs’s daughter over the eligible monthly income to receive AHCCCS support.
“When she got kicked out of AHCCCS, everything came crashing down,” she said regarding how her daughter was promptly thrown out of her newest group home when her insurance ended. If she wanted to pay out of pocket instead, her bill would’ve been $17,000.
Her daughter had only been in the home for a few weeks, so while the dollar amount seems outrageous, she was not phased. She relayed that there were facilities her daughter had used before that cost upwards of $3,000 a day.
“There’s nothing,” she expressed when asked if there were any other housing options that were more affordable. Ish responded similarly by saying, “The opportunity to find a place or suitable housing has become a lot more difficult recently.”
With no accessible housing or affordable live-in care for Arizonans diagnosed with SMI and CMI, it prompts the question: what can we do?
Dr. Alison Cook-Davis, Associate Director of Research at Arizona State University’s Morrison Institute of Public Policy, might have an answer. In May 2021, Dr. Cook-Davis helped to curate a report on why housing is crucial to healthcare and how mental health and homelessness go hand in hand.
A case study within the report featured lighthouse model community homes. These homes, managed by Copa Health, offer 24/7 care and long-term professional support and provide data that supports the notion that housing is a pivotal part of healing one’s mental health. “One of the challenges is being able to find appropriate housing for individuals who are in high need but not at the level of needing a hospital,” Dr. Cook-Davis stated regarding her and her team’s findings.
Arizona’s mental health and housing support systems are weak and require reform and improvements, but with reports like Dr. Cook-Davis’s there is hope to find a way to bridge the gap between homelessness and healthcare.