Adding affordable housing.

Byline: Randi Bjornstad The Register-Guard

Local programs that help homeless military veterans and people with developmental disabilities are among a dozen beneficiaries statewide of housing grants awarded recently by the state Department of Housing and Community Services.

The St. Vincent de Paul Society of Lane County will apply its $175,000 allocation from the Housing Trust and HELP funds to buying and rehabilitating 12 units of affordable housing in the second phase of its VetLIFT project.

Just more than $170,000 will go to the Oregon Supported Living Program to reduce debt and rehabilitate Sandy House, a group home for people with severe disabilities.

Anne Williams, housing programs director for St. Vincent de Paul, said that more than 1,800 chronically homeless veterans live in the Lane County area, according to an annual census taken by the federal Veterans Administration.

Thursday morning, case manager Cindy Leming checked in with some of VetLIFT's residents while her counterpart, Colleen Stewart, distributed the weekly bread delivery from FOOD for Lane County.

Veterans often fall through the cracks because it can take years for them to realize they are in a downward spiral from traumas they have experienced, Leming said. And then it can take years more to qualify for, and receive, entitled services, she said.

Jim Kostman, 46, who spent 14 years in the military - 10 in the National Guard and four on active duty in the Army - said it took two years for him to get into housing once he connected with the Veterans Administration and started looking for help with substance abuse issues and homelessness.

"I lived in my van for six years," Kostman said. "I've been here for almost a year, and it has helped me get my life back to being structured and responsible. I hope to go to school or get back into work as a landscaper, which I did for 10 years."

As a group, veterans "have very specific needs and issues for housing and services," Williams said. "They are a population that is much more cohesive than most other homeless people - they're much more willing and able to support each other, which makes this kind of program very effective."

Like St. Vincent de Paul's first VetLIFT project, this one involves buying and refurbishing a small apartment complex that will house only veterans. The two locations also complement each other in terms of community, Williams said. The first is located at 951 W. Seventh Ave., with the new project just a block away, at 1025 W. Seventh Ave.

Veterans of recent wars have an intensity of symptoms that make it doubly important "to have people come off the street," she said. "Post-traumatic stress syndrome is enormous, and now we also see traumatic brain injuries - many of these people don't realize that getting their heads shaken (by continual explosions) is a cumulative injury."

VetLIFT has enjoyed some success in helping some of its first wave of veterans get back on their feet, Williams said.

One has moved out to be closer to Lane Community College, where he takes classes, and a second has purchased a motor home. A third had to be "released" from the program for substance abuse, but case managers continued to work with him, helping him confront his addiction and become recertified in his trade, she said.

"Now he's living in Portland and making $39 an hour," she said.

Most of the veterans pay $230 to $250 in monthly rent, Williams said, "but for those who find that impossible, we find a way to help."

The biggest problem St. Vincent de Paul and other helping agencies have is maintaining funding for services to people in their programs, she said. In recent years, the federal government "has devolved in its interest in funding social services."

Deteriorating conditions because of reduced funding also figured into the Oregon Supported Living Program's need for the state funding it has just received, executive director Christina De Cristo said.

"Sandy House was our first residence when we first started our program" to provide severely disabled people homes in the communities instead of institutions, De Cristo said. "But, later, funding dried up, so for many years we didn't have the money we needed to maintain our residences properly."

The state grant will allow the center to retire the remaining $45,000 of the mortgage on Sandy House, as well as make critical updates that have been delayed since the home was first occupied in 1988, she said.

"We will be able to install forced air central heating, remodel the kitchen, add a pantry and redo the flooring. We hope to be done in October."

The home's four residents have been relocated to other sites until the remodeling is complete.

"I think we got the grant because the people from the state had a real understanding of how difficult it was for agencies to do what was needed during the long periods we had of dry funding," De Cristo said. "They came out and looked, and they obviously supported what we're doing."

In total, the state allocated $6.7 million to 12 programs that will assist in construction or rehabilitation of 126 units of affordable housing throughout the state.