Tulsa's homeless: Struggling with mental illness, many count on downtown services to get through

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A few days before Thanksgiving, Morgana Blevins packed up the flowered hatbox holding her treasures, fetched her three cats from a pet shelter and moved into her own place.

For the past few months, she’s lived at the Tulsa Day Center for the Homeless. This was not the first time in her life she’s lacked a place to call home.

Blevins has struggled with bipolar disorder, anxiety and co-dependency her whole life. Her mental health issues have made everything harder for her, including keeping a steady job, holding a lease and maintaining relationships with family.

Spending the past few months at the Day Center and advice from her caseworker, Bailee Hutchinson, have helped steady her and keep her focused on getting a place to live, she said.

While staying at the Day Center, Blevins relied on several downtown nonprofits, churches and services for help. You might have seen her waiting at the bus station to go visit her beloved cats at the Humane Society of Tulsa. Or perhaps in line for lunch at Iron Gate. (Her hatbox was rescued from a Dumpster near Trinity Episcopal Church.)

Downtown Tulsa’s homeless population tends to live and congregate in the city’s center because that is the location of most services designed to assist them, said Sharon Catalano, development director for the Tulsa Day Center.

And it’s the integration and coordination of services like those currently helping Blevins that experts say is critical to curing long-term, chronic homelessness — especially when mental illness is involved.

More than 60 percent of people who are chronically homeless have experiencedlifetime mental health problems, and more than 80 percent have experienced lifetime alcohol and/or drug problems, according to the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services. About half the time, substance abuse is present with another mental illness.

Blevins said she once struggled with drug and alcohol addiction, but she’s been clean and sober for 16 years now.

“I’ve got a lot of skills I’m working on,” she said. Her cats and Catholic prayer books help, she said.

Blevins has spent large periods of her life homeless, in Oklahoma and Washington state. She most recently lived in Nevada, but said Washington had far better mental health services.

She moved back to Oklahoma this year to be closer to her family. She had her own apartment for a while, then someone stole all her money and she was evicted, she said. She came back to the Day Center, where she first lived during a period of homelessness when she was homeless in her 20s.

Now, she and her cats finally have a place of their own. She wrote a letter of gratitude to the Day Center staff when she started filling out the lease application: “When faced with your greatest darkness of homelessness, everything seems broken, you’re lost and lonely, all doors seem to be closed.”

Caseworkers such as Hutchinson can spend as long as six months simply trying to get someone a government-issued ID card in order to get medical care or apply for jobs. Getting clients like Blevins into more permanent housing options requires assistance with deposits and setting up utilities, she said.

Those who provide aid to Tulsa’s homeless population say the number of homeless people living and seeking services downtown hasn’t increased, but the population of other people interacting regularly with them has.

The revival of shops, nightlife and activities downtown in recent years has created more opportunities for interaction with the homeless population, which congregates downtown because that’s where the majority of Tulsa’s shelters and services are located.

In the past, homeless services were a loose, occasional collaboration among various ministries, church groups and nonprofits.

A few years ago, Tulsa leaders decided that if the city really wanted to make a dent in its long-term homeless population, it needed to do better.

In 2011, the Community Service Council became the host agency for “A Way Home for Tulsa,” a collaboration of nearly two dozen agencies focused on ending long-term homelessness. One of its facets is an intensive case management method called “Pathways,” that includes mental health treatment when needed.

The idea is to give the individual the ability to help direct their path away from being homeless, said Jim Lyall, associate director of the Community Service Council. The overall goal is to increase those individuals’ capacity for self-sufficiency and maintaining permanent housing.

This approach has helped Tulsa significantly reduce its chronic homeless population almost 13 percent.

“I think we’re making exceptionally good progress,” Lyall said.

‘Not a troublemaker’

Long-term or chronic homelessness is defined as someone staying in a shelter for a minimum of 180 days within a 12-month period. In Tulsa, some of the longer-term homeless individuals who met this definition have stayed an average of 264 nights a year in a shelters.

The first step in getting people the help they need to get well and get off the streets? Getting to know them and what resources could best help them, said Michael Brose, executive director of Mental Health Association Oklahoma.

“Relationships with people take time,” he said.

Brose is giving a tour of the agency’s Altamont house when a redhead named Dawn runs out to greet him with a bear hug.

Brose recalls seeing her sitting on a bus bench several years ago, in the pouring rain.

“I just said a little prayer, and then she showed up,” he said.

She’s now been at Altamont long enough to move from one of the smaller safe-haven units to one of the larger, permanent apartments upstairs.

Altamont was a hotel in the 1930s, and then it was the original site of the addiction treatment program known as 12&12. The Mental Health Association bought the property several years ago and turned it into individual apartments designed to provide emergency and long-term housing for people with mental illness.

Mark, a relatively new resident at Altamont, doesn’t want his picture taken at first and shies away from shaking hands because he fears his hands are too dirty.

Mark came to Altamont from the Tulsa Jail, where he was held in the mental health unit for several months. He was arrested in April after walking into a FedEx store and allegedly trying to set some books on fire with a lighter. He went into the store to buy his mom a present, he said.

“I’m not a troublemaker,” he said.

Tulsa County prosecutors charged him with fourth-degree arson. Eventually, his case was moved to the county’s mental health court.

Mark has schizophrenia and struggled with alcoholism for years until he got sober in 2011, he said. He has three grown children in another state, but hasn’t seen them since they were 10. He’s been struggling with schizophrenia since the 1980s.

Since he moved to Altamont several weeks ago, he is taking his medication and working hard on his community chores around the building, staff said. He’s almost unrecognizable compared to his jail booking mug shot.

“I didn’t realize I looked like Grizzly Adams,” he said.

He weighed 117 pounds when he was booked into jail. He spent nearly six months there before moving into Altamont. Supportive mental health housing options for people like Mark can save taxpayers nearly $35,000 a year compared to incarceration, according to Mental Health Association Oklahoma.

But people like Mark end up in jail and prison cells because as a society, we seem to be OK with untreated mental illness, even when it results in chronic, long-term homelessness, Brose said.

Families often wear out from dealing with the stress of a loved one in a mental health crisis. Individuals with untreated illness sometimes get evicted, and a lack of treatment beds and training for law enforcement lead to costly jail stays that compound these problems, Brose said.

From homeless to givers

Churchgoers at Tulsa’s First Baptist have gotten used to seeing some homeless regulars making their way to the church’s Caring Center, waiting in line for lunch next door at Iron Gate or dropping into First Baptist’s coffee shop for a Bible study offered by the associate pastor, Eric Costanzo.

The more exposure members of his church have had to downtown’s homeless population, Costanzo said, the more they see them as people.

“They just need support and resources like anyone else having a hard time would,” he said. “Mental illness can happen to anyone. That, to me, is an equalizer.”

Many don’t have anyone to help them get back on their feet, so they come downtown for help from churches, nonprofit agencies and ministries that aid the homeless, he said.

Some of the homeless, formerly homeless and mentally ill individuals helped by his church are now members.

“People stay a part of our ministry even after they’re no longer homeless. It’s an amazing thing when a formerly homeless person becomes a giver,” he said.

Mental illness is one of the top three reasons folks end up in line at the Caring Center, he said.

“The biggest thing they need is advocacy,” Costanzo said. “If you have nothing and no support system, where do you go?”

Tulsa’s homeless: How to get (and give) help

Mental Health Association Oklahoma Denver drop-in house, 252 W. 17th Place: A drop-in day facility for adults experiencing the challenges of living with a mental illness or another co-occurring disorder. Open Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. and on Fridays and Saturdays from noon to 9 p.m.

Mental Health Association Oklahoma referral line: 918-585-1213. Open Monday through Friday 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Tulsa Day Center for the Homeless, 415 W. Archer St.: For information about volunteer opportunities, please contact Colleen Helms at 918-556-6418 or chelms@tulsadaycenter.org.

Iron Gate, 501 S. Cincinnati Ave.: To donate food, hold a food drive or volunteer, call 918-359-9007 or email volunteer@irongatetulsa.org.

Salvation Army Center of Hope, 102 N. Denver Ave.: Call 918-587-7801, ext. 113 for information on volunteering.

John 3:16 Mission, 205 E. Pine St., Suite 103: For information on the organization or volunteering, call 918-587-1186.

First Baptist Church of Tulsa Caring Center, 305 S. Detroit Ave.: Offers clothing, food and utility assistance. To volunteer, call 918-587-1571.