Amanda White
Mark Adams, a U.S. Marine veteran, found a home through Housing Initiatives after getting treatment for his addiction and health problems. He’s now on the organization’s board.
Mark Adams doesn’t mince words when asked where he’d be without Housing Initiatives: “I’d be dead.”
“My using wasn’t going to get any better. Where it was at, it was going to kill me,” Adams says. “I had hepatitis C too, and I would have died from that. Luckily, I just got treated for it, and I don’t have it anymore.”
A U.S. Marine veteran, Adams had struggled for years with drug addiction related to post-traumatic stress disorder. In 2008, he finally sought help from the VA hospital to get his addiction under control. But when he emerged from treatment, he was faced with an equally daunting task: finding a clean, safe, affordable place to live.
That’s where Housing Initiatives came in. The 20-year-old organization specializes in providing housing for mentally ill people who are homeless. “There’s something wrong with homelessness in general, but there’s something more wrong with veterans who are homeless,” says Dean Loumos, the organization’s longtime executive director. The group houses about 50 veterans.
Housing Initiatives currently has 114 units scattered around Madison. About 95% of its clients never return to homelessness.
The organization recently received a combined $1.1 million from Madison and Dane County, which it will use to buy two buildings from the Madison Development Corp. and two other yet-to-be-identified buildings.
Now, it’s hoping to raise $2 million more from private sources in order to acquire another 30 units — with the goal of putting veterans in 20 of those units. Unlike other efforts to provide affordable housing, Housing Initiatives intentionally focuses on smaller buildings. Rather than trying to build or buy a large apartment building, it looks for houses with four to six units.
Because of that, Housing Initiatives doesn’t have to wait until the end of the campaign to start spending.
“It’s quicker,” says Loumos, a member of the Madison school board. “We raise a little bit of money, then we’ll buy a house, so we acquire properties as we go.”
“You don’t need big 60-unit buildings,” he adds. “You can spread [housing] all over the neighborhoods.”
Housing Initiatives doesn’t provide support services for its tenants. But its staff understands what the residents are coping with, says Amanda White, capital campaign director.
“The maintenance guys who are out in the field every day, they’re kind of like first responders,” she says. “They’re trained in what to look for. If they see someone might be having a rough patch, they’ll call and make sure they get connected.”
Some residents may become self-sufficient and work again. Tom Hasting is one them.
A veteran who also suffered from PTSD, Hasting says he might have been able to find housing on his own after getting treatment through the VA Center. But he says it would have been extremely difficult.
“I wasn’t in an emotional spot where I was strong and could take rejection,” he says. “Housing Initiatives was there with an open heart. For me personally, it was more necessary than I wanted to admit.”
Hasting now works at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art and has been able to repair his credit. He hopes to eventually have his own place.
But many of Housing Initiative’s tenants will never be able to find their own housing again, Loumos says.
Loumos calls Adams — who sits on Housing Initiative’s board — a high-functioning individual who once ran his own business and worked as a drug counselor. But when faced with his own illness, he still struggled with addiction.
“The underlying issue of mental illness trumped all of that,” Loumos says. “It negated...his understanding of himself. The illness was so powerful it stopped everything he knew to do. Then an opportunity came and he took it, and he got back on track.”
Adams says he sees folks who are in similar situations all the time on the streets of Madison. The solution isn’t that complicated.
“[The city’s] got to provide more housing. There’s just not enough housing for homeless people,” he says. “There’s a lot of vets on the street, and it’s a shame. It’s one of those things people want to sweep under the rug.”