“High-barrier” or “treatment-first” shelters ask their guests to make diligent efforts towards sobriety, to be in treatment for mental health conditions, to participate in programming such as job training, to follow a fairly extensive list of house rules, and sometimes to attend church, bible study, etc.

High-barrier shelters have an important role to play in our continuum of care. But there will always be unhoused people who cannot meet these conditions, for a wide variety of reasons. Without a high-access (sometimes called low-barrier)r shelter, folks who do not or cannot meet these requirements have no other option than to sleep outside. This comes at a high cost to the unhoused, who usually see their mental and physical health deteriorate as they face poor sanitation, lack of medical care, poor sleep quality, and a deprivation of their dignity.

It also comes at a high cost for society in general. People experiencing homelessness tend to use expensive emergency services and police services at high rates, for example, and may also pose a serious challenge for downtown businesses, libraries, and government services buildings.

New Day Intake Center will continue Motels4Now’s work as South Bend’s only housing-first, high-access shelter, using an evidence-based approach to help end homelessness in Michiana by working with the most vulnerable among the unhoused population.

You can read more about housing-first here:

https://nlihc.org/sites/default/files/Housing-First-Research.pdf

Success to us is any positive experience for a guest. We claim success for:

1. Guests who are currently participating in the program and living on-site.

2. Guests who have achieved long-term, sustainable, off-site housing, either on their own or by reuniting with family.

3. Guests who enter in-patient treatment and/or recovery.

Our policies have evolved over time and will continue to do so.

Primarily, we do not allow violence or threats of violence. Anyone visiting our facility or our guests must be registered with our staff at least 24 hours in advance.

Our top priority is maintaining a reasonably peaceful environment within which our guests can begin to heal and move toward stable and permanent housing.

We have internal policies and procedures for addressing situations on a case-by-case basis, and our staff is trained in de-escalation and intervention to ensure that we are providing a stable, safe, and secure environment for our guests, community partners, and staff, to practice our values of Nonviolence, Constructiveness, and Accompaniment.

A significant percentage of unhoused people self-medicate on the street and are unable or unwilling to make a transition away from substance abuse before being housed, which means “high-barrier” shelters are not an option for them.

Our evidence-based, housing-first approach does not require guests to be clean and/or sober, neither on entry nor during their stay. That said, we do not allow dealing on site.

This approach respects the agency of individuals to make this transition on their own time. It also proposes that long-term housing stability is an avenue by which this can be achieved.

We encourage guests who express interest in rehab programs to participate, and our partnerships with area mental health providers have supported many guests to enter residential rehab. Both our staff, and on-site recovery coaches from community partners, accompany guests on their healing and recovery journeys.

The vast majority of our guests who move out have either arranged their own housing, reunited with their families, or been placed in permanent housing by our housing team. As of October 2023, this represents over 400 people. If we’ve placed them in permanent housing, we also assist them with lease-signing and moving; provide them with donated furniture using one of our electric vans; and follow up with them as needed to help them maintain their housing. In any given month our housing team keeps in touch with about 30-40 percent of housed guests, and keeps a closer eye on roughly a dozen identified as having a higher likelihood of success because of continued support of our staff.

A small minority of our guests, usually 3-7 each month, are asked to take a break from the program due to repeated violations of our (very few) critical policies. In virtually all cases, these guests are re-added to our waiting list and are welcome to move back in when their number comes up, typically within about 3-6 months.

An even smaller number of our guests are arrested and incarcerated, or admitted to the hospital. In either case, they are welcome to return immediately upon release.

Many of our guests have become disconnected from the health care system and either have chronic and persistent ailments, and/or have long sought out care only in the emergency room.

Resident Physicians from Beacon Memorial Hospital hold a clinic on site every other week where they typically see seven or eight guests, spending significant time with each. They then refer the guests to followup care in a more traditional clinical setting. Some guests have primary care doctors for the first time in decades as a result of this program.

Oaklawn recovery coaches also assist guests as they make appointments for medical and psychiatric care, and arrange transportation for guests to appointments as available.

We have a small work program that assists some guests in getting to and from cleaning jobs downtown. Other guests find their own jobs, and our model means that, unlike in other shelters where guests may not be able to work because they have to be at the shelter at particular times to obtain a bed, our guests can work whenever they want to and are able.

However, the vast majority of our guests are disabled in various ways, whether due to mental illness, active addiction, and/or to physical disability. Approximately 1/3 are senior citizens as well.

Because of this, while we are delighted to support our guests who can work, we recognize that for the majority, pursuing Social Security and/or subsidized and/or permanent supportive housing is the best path forward, and we concentrate on finding housing tailored to the individual situations of our guests rather than prescribing employment as the only avenue by which to achieve housing stability.

We are grateful for our access to the motel that has housed our program for over three years.

However, it was built many decades ago and saw very little maintenance in the interim. During our first winter on-site, half a dozen guests fell through their bathroom floors as these collapsed due to rotting floor joists. We do as much maintenance as we can (at ~$5-10k/month), but the building is not sustainable over the long term.

Further, our current site makes no provision for administrative offices, has no kitchen or dining space, and has no sterile spaces for our healthcare providers to operate.

The new facility will provide office space for mental healthcare providers, our street medicine clinic, and for our administrative staff. It will also enable us to cook and serve healthy meals to our guests and - most of all - will provide more dignified and purpose-built accommodations.