By Steve Lopez for the Los Angeles Times

I shared on Capitol Hill what I’ve learned since meeting Nathaniel Anthony Ayers, a former Juilliard School student who has taught me about this nation's triumphs and failures in helping those who battle mental illness and end up homeless.


I told a few dozen congressional staffers, policy wonks and service providers about Ayers, who lost nearly everything at age 20 to schizophrenia. By the time I met him four years ago, he had been living on the streets for decades, with little to keep him going but his love of music.


In helping him find a home at Lamp Community in Los Angeles, I learned firsthand how permanent supportive housing is not only the humane approach, but often the cost-effective one, too.


Lamp has rescued hundreds of people from lives of despair and saved taxpayers the cost of churning them endlessly through emergency rooms, criminal courts and prisons.


The US homeless population is growing because of the recession and the number of veterans returning from the battlefield physically and mentally wounded. It’s not that we don’t know how to help them rebuild their lives, I told my audience, but that we haven’t provided nearly enough support for alternative courts and for programs such as Lamp.


And so vets sleep in parks, jails serve as mental institutions, and there’s a waiting list at Lamp and other agencies with good track records but limited funds.


On behalf of Ayers, I urged my audience to support a better way of dealing with society’s neediest, then stepped aside so the professionals could speak.


Bob Carolla, of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, talked about how, while working as an aide to former Maine Sen. George Mitchell, he was overcome by debilitating depression and found himself in handcuffs near the Capitol.


“No one is immune from mental illness,” he said.


Hyacinth King, a business-school graduate, told how schizophrenia left her homeless until Project HOME in Philadelphia gave her back her life, including a job as both an advocate and computer specialist, and a home with enough support services to help her thrive.


Deborah DeSantis, chief executive of the Corporation for Supportive Housing, listed a number of cities that have reduced homeless populations and asked congressional staffers to go back to their bosses and tell them how it was done. DeSantis and other speakers had a specific request: They want a budget allocation of $2.2 billion this year in the Housing and Urban Development Department’s McKinney-Vento grants. That would be an increase of about $500 million over this year’s funding, and it would pay for 15,000 new supportive housing units.
They also argued for $120 million to support programs that help keep formerly homeless people from ending up back on the pavement.


And what are the chances these pleas will be answered?


A staffer for Rep. Henry Waxman, D-California, told me that, given the current fiscal crisis, it would help convince doubters in Congress if there were more hard evidence that supportive housing can save money over the long term.


I left it to one of my fellow panel members to make that case. Sister Mary Scullion of Philadelphia is convinced beyond a doubt that, with a combination of public investment and private support, investing in permanent supportive housing is humane and cost-effective.


The last time I visited Sister Mary in Philadelphia, she took me to a formerly devastated neighborhood that was rebuilt by Project HOME, which she co-founded two decades ago. When I asked who did all the work, Sister Mary said, “our people,” meaning formerly homeless, mentally ill people who were given homes and jobs rebuilding the neighborhood.


If Congress can find $80 billion to bail out the inept insurance giant AIG, she said, surely it can come up with $2.2 billion for supportive housing. As for the request for $120 million in support services, Sister Mary added: That was roughly what AIG paid in executive bonuses.