PAGE – Catholic Charities team Cole Lentz and Shay Richardson are making a difference in Page.

Lentz’s and Richardson’s outreach program is working with 13 individuals, building relationships and connecting them with services.

One of their programs is emergency housing for homelessness with a COVID-19 connection. They’ve helped four households and 16 people secure temporary housing in motels. They have eviction prevention funds available too. They help with past due rent, late fees, anything to keep people from becoming homeless. Catholic Charities also has rapid rehousing programs. They’ve helped three households, and two were in the process as of last week.

Sandi Flores, the senior program director for Catholic Charities, said, “We’ve had four units of permanent supportive housing for those who have experienced homelessness and have a long-term disability. This year, we were able to move in an additional three families, which includes 14 more individuals.”

“We are absolutely out there housing folks. We have a lot of resources,” Flores said and encouraged people to reach out to them.

Part of the city’s effort to reduce substance abuse in Page is the new “drug court.” It’s not a new concept. Many cities use this constructive alternative to fines and jail time.

What exactly is a drug court?

Page City Attorney Josh Smith said, “It’s essentially a treatment court instead of convicting somebody and imposing fines and/or jail time. It’s like an intensive supervised probation. With misdemeanors, often what happens is instead of a conviction, I offer them some type of a plea agreement that avoids a conviction but requires them to go through a treatment program. And it was supervised.”

Smith said the city is trying to secure a $500,000 federal grant. It would assist with treatment and the drug court team’s time, which is typically a judge, defense attorney, prosecutor, probation officer, and a treatment provider. The treatment could range from inpatient to intensive outpatient care.

The drug court program would require weekly hearings.

Smith said, “You have accountability where you come back, and you are in front of the drug court team and the judge every week.”

He said offenders in the program must report and answer questions like, “Did you attend all of your counseling that you are supposed to in the last week? Did you have any issues, relapses, dirty UAs, whatever?”

Smith expanded, “The judge has the ability to impose sanctions immediately if somebody relapses or slips up. It could be anything from a homework assignment, like an essay to jail time. And you also do rewards.”

The program works in phases. Upon graduation, charges are dismissed.

Smith shared a few statistics with the task force, comparing Page to Kanab. He emphasized that the two towns are similar in many respects, but Page is larger by about 3,000 people. He also added that the numbers aren’t exact because of reporting variables, so it’s a rough estimate. Smith said 2020 was a “down year because of COVID” for police and court activity. He said the court had about half as many cases.

Smith said Page had about 13,500 calls for police service while Kanab had 5,500. Page had 2,144 substance abuse related calls. Kanab had 89.

“We had 130 DUIs in Page last year. Kanab had 24 and Kane County had seven. So, you can start to see the magnitude of the alcohol issues manifesting themselves in the statistics,” Smith said.

Kane County’s drug court, located in Kanab, began in 2013.

Smith said drug courts aren’t a silver bullet, “But they are statistically much more successful than the traditional justice process of going to court.”

Smith also clarified that drug courts include alcohol abuse. He said, “99.999% of our cases are alcohol.”