- He's gone.
He's gone.
He's gone, he's out hiding.
- [Driver] I know, when I was
talking to him this morning,
I was telling him, "Where did you go?"
- [Mark] Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
That's him.
- [Driver] Where?
- [Mark] Right here, right up there!
- [Driver] Right up there to your right.
- [Mark] Yeah.
- [Driver] Do you want to stop?
- [Mark] Yeah, but pull up, let me just go.
- You're gonna make me cry, Lanny.
(laughing)
- I love you too, Lanny.
- Well, we're close.
We're the closest we've been in three years
to get you into housing.
- We're the closest we've been.
- I was a street outreach worker.
And our mission in that previous program
was to identify people that
were particularly vulnerable,
because of their mental illness or addiction.
And if we felt they might be a danger
to people, we would take
them to Bellevue Hospital.
Two or three weeks after the hospitalization,
that same person would be back on the street.
The repetition of that cycle
began to be very disturbing,
and began to raise a number of questions
of like, "What are we doing?"
Maybe you have a little short-term gain,
but that person just spent thirty days
in the hospital at $1500 a day, that's $45,000.
We could have bought them a condo,
you know, certainly paid the rent for a long time.
What we decided to do, was to start listening
to the people on the street
and take our cue about what to do from them.
It led very, very quickly to the idea
that housing is the most important thing
to a homeless person, regardless
of mental illness, or addiction, or anything else.
And once they're housed, they'll consider maybe treatment,
maybe reconnecting with family,
maybe having their kids come back,
maybe looking for a job.
But the first response was always housing.
- Here we are in Lanny's new apartment,
and he actually went and did,
Put all of his cupboards and stuff away.
That's pretty amazing, man.
And, how long has it been
since you've had an apartment?
- Oh, it seems like a century.
- A century?
Well it almost has because you
were homeless since 2002.
- Right.
- That's, that's insane.
- Yeah, it is.
- So, how are you feeling?
- Elated, very good.
- Yeah?
It hasn't hit me yet.
- Well, I feel human again.
- You feel human again.
(somber music)
- [Mark] How did getting a set of
keys make you feel different?
- That I was finally home.
That I was finally in a place where
I can start focusing on measuring myself.
- The remarkable thing was that
people did so well.
People, once housed, began to have a life,
even though they still suffered
with addiction and mental illness.
People have a functional ability
that is quite separate from their diagnosis it turns out.
You can believe that the government
is after you, or that there are people flying
in from outer space and they're going to,
you know, take over the planet.
Leaving all that aside, you can still go,
you know, get a ham and cheese sandwich
and some french fries and have a meal,
or go shopping and all of that.
They are like two hands doing independent things.
So, that was a great surprise,
and I think most gratifying was
the fact that people can get housed immediately
from the street, and they can
be supported to keep that housing.
(calming music)