LOUISVILLE, Ky. — For many years, Joseph Halbert felt lost and without a purpose living on Louisville's streets.
"I felt like a three-legged spider waiting for something to eat me," he said.
Halbert, whose friends call him "Arkansas Joe", said he spent all his money on drugs, and was comfortable living on the streets. In June, he checked himself into rehab and tried to change his life.
“I’m real hard-headed. So, I really tried to hang on to the good time that it used to be. But it was just such a bad time for so long," he said.
While staying at Reclaim Recovery on 4th Street near the University of Louisville's Belknap campus, Halbert was notified that he had been approved for a Permanent Supportive Housing voucher.
It was for $1,077 per month and it was up to him to do the research and find an apartment that would take the voucher.
"They wasn't able to find me until I got to treatment and got an address. But, when I finally got it, it was like hitting the lottery," Halbert said. "I didn't think it was real in my life."
The voucher is funded through Louisville's Office of Resilience and Community Service, and further up the chain it's funded by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
Louisville has between 325 and 350 of these vouchers which are for people straight off the streets who often have co-occurring disorders, like mental health and drug abuse.
"How it all fell into place...[I'm] really fortunate. Really fortunate," Halbert said.
While it was a success story for Joe, he describes the process of getting a housing voucher is a daunting task that many homeless people don't even both with.
The way Louisville Metro Government tells homeless people to sign up for housing is by completing a "Common Assessment." It's is an eight-page questionnaire given orally by Family Health Centers.
The assessment asks questions like about how many people are in your family unit, where have you been sleeping, are you addicted to drugs, do you suffer from any illnesses, and so on.
Family Health Centers sets up a table to give Common Assessments at homeless shelters or day shelters nearly every day. Their office at the corner of South 4th Street and West Ormsby Avenue is open for walk-ins from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesday through Friday.
“The Common Assessment team actually goes out and assesses people on how likely you are to die on the streets," Natalie Harris, executive director of the Coalition for the Homeless, said.
According to Dr. Carey Addison with Family Health Centers, 1,819 people in Louisville have taken the assessment and are waiting for a housing placement. Because the assessment helps people with the greatest need first, it's not easy to predict how long you might be waiting.
“I had heard about [the assessment]. But it wasn’t like a real thing to me. I didn’t…I didn’t think – I wasn’t seeing anybody get housed," Halbert said.
According to Addison, Halbert took a Common Assessment in October 2019 and again in January 2024.
"Between '19 and '24, he dropped of our radar as often can happen when people are out on the street," Addison said.
Family Health Centers will refer someone to a specific type of voucher and then whatever agency manages that voucher will try to contact them. They may also use community activists on the streets who know these people or the city's Homeless Services Division.
“What happens so often is we get a referral from coordinated entry, and the phone runs out of minutes. Or the phone gets stolen," Joe Hamilton said. He oversees the Permanent Supportive Housing Vouchers for Metro Government.
There's a total of 1,388 vouchers that Family Health Centers can place people in, according to Natalie Harris with the Coalition. The vast majority of them are already in use and rarely free-up.
Hamilton said for their 325-350 vouchers, only about 15 become available every year.
"There's a process for folks who have stabilized over time in housing. And we have multiple clients who've been in housing for 10-15 years and have very much stabilized over time," Hamilton said. "They're able to move up to a Section 8 Permanent Housing Voucher."
When Joe was notified, he had been in sober living for 60 days. Anyone who stays in sober living for 90 days no longer meets HUD's definition of homeless and is taken off the list.
"They found me in the nick of time," Halbert said.
Halbert said he's lucky his voucher came with a case manager. Her name is Marie Bingle, and while she's only been a case manager for a few months, she's known Halbert through other homeless outreach in the past.
“Once I recognized what his goal was – and that – the reason why he was missing out on the opportunity to obtain housing, we were able to identify a path," Bingle said.
She drove Halbert to his apartment showings, helped him get a $500 furniture voucher and more. Resilience and Community Services (RCS) has nine case workers; each with 30 clients.
Halbert calls himself "house-broke" because he spent two months in sober living. He got accustomed to everyday things like locking a door behind you, taking showers and not digging through the trash.
Both Joe and Pony Morris, his longtime friend who was also once homeless, said these "life etiquette skills" are crucial to keeping people in housing.
"Who's gonna make sure that he gets to all of the classes he needs to go to? Who's going to make sure that he gets to the doctors appointments he needs to? Who's going to make sure that Joe --besides himself-- does not fail?" Morris said.
The two of them hope one day there will be enough funding to give everyone these wrap-around services, and more funding to increase the number of vouchers available in Louisville.
“And I know that if I can do it, literally anyone can do it," Halbert said.
Halbert's next goal is to get hip surgery, go to trade school and become a union welder.
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