Rodrigo Montijo keeps his sleeping bag nearby.
He doesn’t use it these days, a couple of months after getting a room at the Sonoran House, a long-term shelter for people with serious mental illness at 1367 W. Miracle Mile.
But after a prison term for drug-related convictions, followed by years on and off the streets, he doesn’t trust any situation will stay permanent.
“It’s scary getting used to something like this, because it could get taken away,” he said.
At the end of this week, Sonoran House will be the only facility for the homeless left in Tucson that takes people straight off the streets, whether they’re drunk, high or sober. That’s because the city’s three-month contract with Central City Assembly of God Church is expiring.
Pastor Davide Ferrari said an average of 50 people a night have been staying at the church, 939 S. 10th Ave. The contract, which began when the city forced the “dream pods” out of downtown Tucson, runs out Saturday and the shelter will close. It would take about $100,000 a year to keep it open, he said.
“The only requirement we have is that they can’t consume on the property, and they can’t cause trouble,” Ferrari said.
That’s a contrast with the other big group shelters in town. At the Salvation Army, for example, you have to blow into a Breathalyzer, and your result can’t be higher than 0.000. Any alcohol on you, and you’re barred.
There’s a bit of irony in those requirements, since of course it is substance abuse that keeps many people on the streets. If they could get off alcohol or drugs, they probably wouldn’t be homeless.
Guillermo Andrade, who runs the Sonoran House, said he’s admired Ferrari’s operation.
“He’s doing what I wish we all could do, which is help people where they’re at,” Andrade said.
That’s the key difference between “low-demand” shelters, like Ferrari’s church and Sonoran House, and the typical group shelters. They don’t make you stop drinking. They don’t force you to accept services. They work with people “where they’re at” and try to help them get to a better place.
It worked for Alberto Balderaz. He arrived at Sonoran House in 2011 still abusing alcohol and cocaine.
“I was here eight months before I got sober,” Balderaz told me Tuesday at Sonoran House. He lives down the street now thanks to the help he got at the house, and he goes back to visit occasionally.
The keys were that they gave him an opportunity to get into a recovery plan to quit drinking and doing drugs, and they helped him qualify for Social Security disability payments.
“I finally got my finances straightened out. I bought my little mobile home, and I’ve been there ever since,” he said.
Since 2002, Sonoran House has operated as a “safe haven” — a program established by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development. The federal grant is $423,000 per year, and has been unchanged for years — the rest of the operating expenses are paid for by La Frontera, which runs the house, and the Community Partnership of Southern Arizona.
That allows for 15 people — 10 men and five women in separate wings — to live at the house at a time plus a dozen others to spend days there, washing up, eating good meals and, most of all, resting from the arduous life on the streets.
Among the interesting requirements of safe havens: They must allow residents to stay for an “unspecified duration” and they “must provide access to needed services ... but cannot require program participants to utilize them.”
Low-demand shelters “are intensely important,” Tom Litwicki told me. He’s the CEO of Old Pueblo Community Services and chairman of the Tucson Pima Collaboration to End Homelessness.
That’s because all the communities that are ending homelessness are doing it through low-demand shelters and quickly putting homeless people into housing. He noted that at any given time, Tucson shelters may have empty beds even while people are out sleeping in parks, in washes, and in tunnels.
“I attribute it to the fact that there’s a reluctance to place people into any kind of housing who are unstable in their mental health or who are on alcohol or drugs,” Litwicki said.
City staff, Litwicki and others have begun talking about establishing a new low-demand shelter in Tucson, but it will likely be a year before funding could become available. That’s too bad, because the need will be spiking again come Saturday.
At Sonoran House, Montijo is still grappling with his serious mental illness diagnosis, feeling his way toward a better, more stable life, thinking that maybe he’ll be on the streets again.
“I’ve lived around the parks in the city. I like the north side better — the tunnels are a little wider,” he said.
But under the rules of safe havens, he won’t be kicked out for breaking down mentally, disappearing for a few days or using alcohol on the outside. They want him to stay and get better.
The problem is, now with Ferrari’s church closing its shelter, that’s the only place with these rules. And there are only 15 beds. The need, as anyone in Tucson can see, is much bigger.
