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Is the issue Monty Python or is the issue the Ten Year Plan?

Keep trying though.

I watched Tuesday’s, City Council meeting last night on my Tivo, and saw a story that has gone completely un-reported in the Media.

David Arning, from Southeastern Housing Foundation, while formally withdrawing his Variance request for the Flenniken School project. Announced that the Metro Planning Commission has determined that Southeastern Housing Foundation must re-do the Use-on-Review approval that was granted to him by City Council last August in a 5-4 Vote that overturned the original MPC Denial. Now that he will build the 58 spaces required by Zoning for the site, he has to alter his site plan, and go back to MPC.

He said that he has re-filed his application, and the case will go before Metro Planning Commission on August 12th. He also said that he expected that the issue would be back before Council in September.

Like the June 11th, 2009 meeting of MPC, in which Mr. Arning presented the first Use-on-Review request for Flenniken, Mr. Arning must believe that once again, MPC will determine by Majority Vote that the Use-on-Review does not meet the usage allowed for the site. The Vote at MPC last year was 12-1 to deny his Use-on-Review request.

Arning must believe that the City Council will, once again over turn MPC’s Denial of his UOR Request. Considering the change in Council members since last June, I wonder if this will be the case.

The residents on the Southside that have been fighting this development for over two years, appears to have gained some real momentum, considering Local Powerhouse Attorney John King is now on their side.

This may have gone unreported in the "media", but not here. I posted sometime last week that I had found out the UOR had to go back to MPC.

BTW, back to my usual type of question, but who's paying John King's salary? He said he was respresenting the south Knoxville residents, but Ron Peabody's signature was on the appeal form. So who's paying John King?

Rachel,

What I said was:

I watched Tuesday’s, City Council meeting last night on my Tivo, and saw a story that has gone completely un-reported in the Media.

So you are correct, I should have said that you said they would have to go back to MPC and do the UOR again, on this blog site a week or so ago. Sorry about that.

What I meant to say was that since the meeting on Tuesday night it had gone completely Un-reported in the media.

As for the who is paying for John King thing, you should probably ask him.

This was just posted on the KNS article about the Sheriff's office, transporting Homeless from other counties to KARM:

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"Lakeshore: TYP has no plans to pursue development of PSH at Lakeshore Park.....

....The July 9, 2010 edition of the Knoxville News Sentinel ran a front page article titled Ashe against idea for park to be future site for homeless residence....
...We want to make it clear that we are not pursuing any development of permanent supportive housing at Lakeshore Park and have no plans to pursue a Low-Income Housing Tax Credit application for Lakeshore in 2011".....

.....TYP, Tell the truth.

At the City Council Workshop on February 11th of this year, the TYP showed slides that stated that Lakeshore Park would be the next site developed after the Teaberry Lane site. Teaberry Lane was to be completed by the fall of 2011, and then you would develop the Lakeshore site, with a completion date of the fall of 2012. Your organization announced the Teaberry Lane site that night, and it was in the Newspaper the next day.....

.....This is a perfect example of the TYP’s continued attempts to manipulate the Media and the truth.

I have to wonder how much bang for the Buck the TYP is getting from Ackermann.

Just an fyi - the new route schedule eliminates service for Northshore at Lyons View (Lakeshore area). I don't think that Lakeshore, as a PSH site, was ever anything beyond an idea - never got as far as becoming a plan.

"The topic will be mental healthcare services in the context of permanent supportive housing."

Wonder if the TYP will talk about who will provide these services, where they will provided, and how they will be paid for?

Anybody, think about how Mercy's current financial situation may effect the Ten Year Plan?

M,
Although we all enjoy your witt, the question remains.

Does Peninsula Hospital, provide Mental Health services to the Ten Year Plan?

Sheryl McCormick, Coordinator, Recovery Training Services at Peninsula, is speaking tonight. What Role does she have in providing services at any of the Ten Year Plans PSH developments?

According to the TYP Web Site:

We have heard specifically that citizens would like to have a better understanding of case management, service delivery, permanent supportive housing development, costs to implement the TYP, and other elements of the plan and its implementation. In order to help that happen, the TYP is offering this series of public conversations to present details about these specific elements of the TYP. We would like to keep these meetings concise, to respect the time commitments made by attendees. We’ll offer them on a regular basis, and invite presenters who can speak to their areas of expertise and to the roles that they play in support of the TYP.

So the question remains, what role does Ms. McCormick have in the TYP, or the plans for the delivery of Mental Health services in their Permanent Supportive Housing facilities?

These meetings are suppose to be in the context of the TYP's Facilities, and what the Public can expect.

If you look in the phone book on page 347, you will see in the right hand corner that Peninsula provides "comprehensive alcohol/drug and mental health outpatient services for adults, adolescents and children."

TYP is proposing permanent supportive HOUSING not an institution with mental health and addiction counselors on site. I will reiterate that if anyone really wants to understand what is being proposed I will personally do whatever is necessary to facilitate a visit to current sites.

Ray Abbas

On PBS last night, a history of the deinstitutionalization movement. It was very interesting to hear more about how it started in California, the lack of funding for adequate community care, the extraordinary level of parental involvement and advocacy, and how the movement spread across the country. For better AND worse, the deinstitutionalization movement was a huge contributor to the problems we're dealing with now.

The program ended with this statement: the largest psychiatric facility in the US is the LA County jail.

I want to be crystal clear in the fact that I don't speak on behalf of the TYP. With that said, I believe Peninsula has a role in the TYP as a service provider for mental health and addiction counseling and subsequently was asked to speak to the topic. I guess I am equally as confused as you are on why you DON'T think they play a role in the TYP. When the excerpt you refer to was written regarding the public conversations, I believe their intention was to open a broad dialogue about more than just bricks and mortar.

As far as the Pathways program you linked and the excerpt you provided is concerned, I don't interpret that to mean that the services are located on-site. I think they are just trying to make the point that they are very responsive to the needs of the residents. The fact that "teams are available on-call 24 hours a day, seven days a week and are provided in a participant’s natural environment— usually that persons’ apartment, neighborhood, or workplace" does not necessarily mean that they are located in the facility. However, I am open to other interpretations.

Ray Abbas

I am going to be unable to attend this meeting tonight. I do hope that one (or several!) of you will post a report here on KV.

I won't do a full recap since Robert said he does that on the TYP site, but I will share what I took away from the meeting last night. I was moved by Jessica Bocangel's challenge (at the end of the meeting) to not fall into the habit of focusing only on the "illness", but rather to think about these issues in terms of mental "health" and am trying to change the way I think/speak about the subject.

Sheryl McCormick was a very informed and eloquent speaker to the issue of mental health services available to people in our area. She spoke from both a professional's perspective and then, very candidly about her own viewpoint as a person who experienced mental illness and even homelessness in her life.

Basically one-third of persons who experience mental health problems seek help. Stigma is a major reason why people don't seek treatment and labels such as "mentally ill" (and worse) create barriers to people seeking help. Sheryl also spoke about anosognosia (pronounced anna so nos ya), a term I had never heard before, which is basically a denial of or "an impaired awareness of illness." Sheryl talked about the varying levels of the recovery process from a remission of symptoms to complete recovery. Some common myths about mental illness were debunked. In fact, people who experience mental health problems are more likely to be the victims of violence than the perpetrators of it. Also, people CAN recover from mental illness.

A powerpoint slideshow outlined the continuum of mental health services (from hospitalization, mobile crisis unit, and short-term crisis stabilisation to an array of supports to help people out in the community) that are available to people in our area. Some services seemed to be available only to those with insurance or TennCare, but there were other services that helped create a safety net for those who may not have those resources to get the services they need. On a personal note, having worked in mental health and housing years ago, I was gratified that some of the ideas discussed years ago have been realized into mainstream programs that even get state funding (such as peer counseling programs).

There was some confusion, that later got clarification, about what of these many services were going to be available to residents of permanent supportive housing. At first it seemed that there was a disconnect between the services offered and who/how the services would be accessed, but Sheryl clarified that these services are available to ANYONE, resident of psh or not. The role of case management in linking the person to the needed service and resources was again detailed, as distinct from a more medical or treatment case management role at the mental health center. Depending upon a person's level of need, he/she may have more than one "case manager" on their support "team."

The issue of continued state funding for community mental health treatment was raised as a critical factor in being able to meet the needs of the community. I believe it's important to advocate and lobby for parity in funding for mental health services as with other medical services.

Both Sheryl and several others, including a doc from Peninsula (I didn't get her name), stressed the importance of stable housing being the key to stable mental health. Trying to stabilize people living on the street is an extremely difficult and expensive proposition because of the stressors people face just trying to survive in that lifestyle.

On that note, the Peninsula folks brought along a graphic display of photographs of the challenge people face living on the streets. It's hard for me to imagine how life on the streets could not help but lead to anxiety, depression, etc.

To wrap up, the information presented was thorough and clear. The speaker showed tremendous personal courage in sharing some of her personal journey with mental health. While there are a wide array of mental health services in our community providing a pretty full continuum of mental health care, we need to raise awareness to keeping it funded. There is a great deal of hope for people experiencing problems to recover and live a better life. And there are many caring people, like Sheryl, along the way.

*Some people are impaired by mental illnesses through no fault of their own (or their mother's).
*Mental illnesses can be treated successfully.
*Access to treatment is more likely if the person has an address and a secure place to sleep - and recovery involves lots of sleep. It is exhausting to deal with all the false signals the brain sends out in mental illnesses.
*The criminal justice system should not be the primary provider of mental health services. Having a debilitating illness should not be a crime. Personally, I can't understand why folks with mental illness are not protected, under the ADA, from being incarcerated for non-violent crimes (urinating in public, being psychotic in public, etc).
*The best money spend right now would be to provide PSH to as many folks as we can afford.
*I believe I understand the reasons for expensive new construction (access to federal funding); if we had a local source of money (underwriter, donor, philanthropy) that would permit more sensible and less-expensive use of existing housing stock, that might not be an issue.
*None of us knows what the future holds for us and we can only do what we can plan for today. And today there are people living on the street who could benefit from PSH and access to services to treat their illnesses. Status quo is not acceptable.

Did I miss the announcement of this meeting on Knoxviews?

From the TYP Web Site:

The TYP will dialog with residents of the neighborhoods close to the Flenniken School about safety on Thursday, July 29 at the South Knoxville Community Center.

The last time we met was on June 21. At that meeting we discussed establishing a regular meeting concerning Flenniken Housing. Attendees agreed that a monthly meeting on Monday* evening would be appropriate, and that the meeting should continue to take place at the South Knoxville Community Center. Attendees also generated a list of potential topics for those meetings. It became apparent at that time that the most significant concerns shared by Flenniken’s neighbors are related to the over-arching issue of safety, and that is what the meeting on the 29th will be about.

*Please note that this meeting had previously been scheduled for Monday, July 19. It was changed to Thursday, July 29 at the request of a City Councilmember whose schedule did not permit attendance on the previously-scheduled date.

Again, we encourage you to attend this meeting and to invite others to join you. Safety for residents of permanent supportive housing, as well as for their neighbors, is of vital concern no matter where it’s built.

The meeting is scheduled to start at 6:00 PM at the South Knox Community Center, 522 Old Maryville Pike.