CHAPEL HILL -- Orange County joins about 200 other communities across the country today when it begins discussing how to end homelessness in 10 years.

But even as the Partnership to End Homelessness in Orange County starts gathering ideas and studying what other communities have done, changes are under way that will change how services to homeless people are provided here.

The federal government is encouraging the 10-year plans, with studies showing communities are better off financially and socially if they pay to put people in permanent housing rather than continuing to react to their needs on the streets.

Raleigh has started the Housing First program, putting chronically homeless men and women into apartments right away. Social workers then come to them to help.

Billie Guthrie, a housing coordinator for OPC, the local agency that provides mental health services for Orange, Person and Chatham counties, would like to give that a try here.

“It’s easier to focus on recovery if you’re not worrying about where you’re going to lay your head or where your next meal [will come from],” she said.

Consolidating services

While momentum picks up for the 10-year plan, the Inter-Faith Council for Social Service is making plans to move the Community Kitchen and other services from its men’s shelter in downtown Chapel Hill to its headquarters on Main Street in Carrboro.

The hope is more people would get help if programs were offered where the IFC serves meals and provides crisis services like free bags of groceries to needy families.

“Programs like ours, or anywhere, depend on linkages to other groups to do the job training, the job-seeking skills, to do substance abuse [recovery], to assist veterans with their needs or to find housing,” said executive director Chris Moran.

The IFC also continues to look for a new site for a separate men’s residential facility so it can leave the town-owned building at the corner of Rosemary and Columbia streets.

The estimated cost of refitting its headquarters and building a new men’s shelter is between $3 million and $5 million.

The county’s partnership expects to hire a consultant this month, as both Raleigh and Durham have done, to lead public discussions, collect data on local homeless people and write the plan.

Moran hopes whatever plan evolves incorporates work the IFC has done in drafting its own plans to improve services.

“We have a planning process . . . and I just don’t think it’s being clearly seen or appreciated,” he said. “Going in a lot of different directions doesn’t resolve it.”

Making the transition

The county’s largest provider of homeless services, the IFC started sheltering people in churches 20 years ago.

When it moved into the old town building in downtown Chapel Hill — a former jail — women slept in old cells in the basement and men slept on the second floor. The kitchen has operated on the first floor.

Seven years ago, the IFC built a separate facility for women with children. Project Homestart, with three buildings off Homestead Road in Chapel Hill, provides two years of housing for women, now with or without children. Women meet with a social worker, can take classes to work toward a degree or work and save money for a home. The women make their own meals and do chores to get or stay in the habit of taking care of their own home.

On nice evenings, children push tricycles up and down the sidewalk, work on homework or romp on the playground while their moms carry on conversations on the porch.

Since 2003, women who need emergency shelter have stayed there, too.

Moran has described the future men’s shelter as more like the women’s facility.

Men would have to stay drug-free, train for new jobs and get used to taking care of a home while progressing to a more independent living arrangement than what’s available at the current emergency shelter.

“Men are going to have to earn the opportunity to move from one area to the next — start in a quad, move to double, then transition into permanent housing,” Moran said.

“Individuals [will] have to make a commitment in a program like this that they’re willing to do it for the long haul and they’re willing to do it together,” he added.

But first the IFC has to find a location for a new men’s shelter. Residents opposed proposed sites on Merritt Mill and Legion roads last winter.

Starting a shelter

In the past, churches in the Hillsborough area have driven homeless people to the IFC’s Chapel Hill shelter. When the 75 shelter beds and the floor space filled up, churches have paid for people in the northern end of the county to spend a couple of nights in a hotel.

Now, a new nonprofit called Neighbor House of Hillsborough is creating a shelter program for northern Orange County. Local church members and residents are planning an October start for the program, which would provide dinner, breakfast, shower and a cot on a rotating basis in local churches.

Contact staff writer Cheryl Johnston at 932-2005 or cherylj@nando.com