A group of men in the vanguard of a new model of housing for chronically homeless people with mental illnesses sat around a small conference table eating pizza recently in Leavenworth.
It was the monthly social gathering for residents of the Marion Apartments, a single-story, 10-unit complex just off Main Street.
The building is unremarkable, like many other apartment complexes. That’s by design, according to Susan Crain Lewis, president and CEO of Mental Health America of the Heartland, a nonprofit that supports people with mental health problems in Kansas and Missouri.
What makes Marion Apartments remarkable is that residents can stay there as long as they want.
It’s a model called permanent supportive housing that flips the more traditional forms of housing assistance in the mental health realm by assuming that successful treatment follows housing stability, not the other way around.
[For more of this story, written by Andy Marso, go to http://kcur.org/post/open-ende...mental-health-issues]
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