SIGMA HOUSE STRUGGLES TO PUT SUPPORT PROGRAM INTO ACTION

Executive Director Of Treatment Facility Wants To Build Apartments To Get
Homeless Off Streets.

There has never been enough help at Sigma House.

These days, as counselors scurry from client to client, helping them deal
with their drug and alcohol addictions, Ann Cobb fills in where needed.

Counseling, administrative duties - she is, after all, the executive
director - and when necessary, janitor.

Some days, Cobb says, "I clean the toilets."

So Cobb is only cautiously optimistic about a plan to help a small, but
highly visible segment, of the homeless leave the streets and find
permanent shelter and sobriety through her treatment facility at 800 S.
Park Ave.

Prospects for a new "Supportive House Program" were jolted this year by
state funding cuts that forced Cobb to eliminate 12 existing staff
positions, including building maintenance.

But bolstered by a $500,000 federal housing grant recently received, Cobb
hopes to build 12 apartments near Sigma House.

They would be occupied by the homeless struggling to leave lives of
chemical dependency and mental illness for long-term treatment and recovery.

Cobb knows what she's up against.

"Oh, it's a challenge," she says. "It's a huge challenge."

On a recent day at River of Life Church and Outreach on Commercial Street,
a number of potential candidates for the program huddled in cafe booths,
drinking coffee and smoking hand-rolled cigarettes.

Kenneth McPhearson scanned the group of a dozen or so homeless men. How
many might be willing to turn their lives around with long-term treatment?

"I see maybe two or three," he said.

McPhearson did not count himself among them. "Houseless," alcoholic and a
frequent sufferer of clinical depression, McPhearson finds what comforts he
can in his bohemian lifestyle.

Cobb knows of a lot of people like that.

Sometime soon, a group of volunteers will begin to present them with new
options.

A mobile outreach triage unit was to have begun in July of 2000. Roaming
the city's most popular homeless havens - like Commercial Street - the
volunteer group would offer a ride to Sigma House to sober up, ideally, for
the long haul.

When an anonymous $281,500 donation secured through the Salvation Army fell
through last year, the project was sidetracked.

Today, a van is ready to go. Volunteers are being trained, and with a
$10,000 grant recently provided by The Visiting Nurses Association, mobile
triage may hit the streets within the next few weeks.

Cobb thinks it could help clear Commercial Street of those whose drunken,
sometimes delusional, behavior has hindered revitalization efforts in the
historic district.

Once they're off the street, the Supportive House Program could keep them
from straying back.

In her grant proposal for the federal housing dollars, Cobb said Sigma
House would work closely with social service providers like The Kitchen,
Inc., Springfield Victory Mission and The Salvation Army to access about 38
people singled out because their drinking, drug use or mental illness makes
them unable to function in available housing or shelters.

These people live in constant transition between remote camps, motel rooms,
the mission, hospital emergency rooms, and Sigma House, Cobb says.

"They use some type of service all the time. Unless it's warm outside. Then
they're down at the (railroad) tracks sleeping."

Cobb is confident mobile outreach will soon be operating. But there's no
construction date for the apartment complex.

She isn't even sure where it will be located.

She still needs about $200,000 to build and staff the apartment project. A
funding source is not in sight.

Springfield city officials have pushed for several years for state funding
for substance abuse and mental health treatment. They have received no new
dollars.

Not for lack of trying, city officials say.

Mayor Tom Carlson believes Springfield has been overlooked for funding by
lawmakers who saw a greater need in places like Kansas City and St. Louis.

Adds City Manager Tom Finnie: "The state's had a tough budget. (And) the
stakeholders are not the most prominent members of society. They have very
little voice."

Both officials agree the city does not consider itself responsible for
funding such services.

But when the city commissioned a $15,000 study into the problem of
homelessness six years ago, the key solution was in steering people to
recovery.

Sigma House President Randy Ebrite, who owns Nellie Dunn's store in the
heart of the cities homeless district, says that suggestion has gone nowhere.

Today, "I don't see a change and I don't see anybody to blame," he said.