CINCINNATI — For Garry Sien, there’s nothing like coming home. He takes pleasure in things he would have taken for granted just 20 years ago.

“Sitting here, drinking coffee, and watching TV,” he said.

Durin the past 10 years, his apartment at the Jimmy Heath House in Cincinnati’s Over-the-Rhine neighborhood, has become a home, giving Sien more independence than he thought he’d see after four years living on the street.

Sien is one of the original residents. He was there 10 years ago when they cut the ribbon on what was at the time, a controversial housing project for Over-the-Rhine Community Housing.

Like everyone at the Jimmy Heath House, Sien was on a list. Caseworkers like Carlos Davis were looking for the people who logged the most time living on Cincinnati’s streets.

The caseworkers then had to find out why they hadn’t found a home yet and then give them a place anyway, through OTR Community Housing’s Housing first initiative.

“So there was a lot of meeting with them in the community doing a lot of outreach resolving legal issues some service coordination,” Davis said.

In 2010, it was a radical proposition to go out and find people with the most barriers to public housing like addiction, mental illness, or trauma and give them a home first, then focus on treatment.

Critics thought the harm reduction approach to addiction didn’t come down hard enough to enforce sobriety and end addiction. Overdose deaths in Cincinnati remain high; the Hamilton County Drug Task Force reported a spike just this summer.

Meanwhile, OTR Community Housing points to statistics on homelessness to back up its success.

During the past 10 years, homelessness has been on the decline in Hamilton County, though shelters still report some of the highest numbers in the state.

Housing First Advocacy has helped more than 100 people in Cincinnati get off the streets and through treatment during the past 10 years, including Sien.

He said he was dependent on alcohol when he moved into the Jimmy Heath House. He used it to keep himself warm and lull himself to sleep when he lived on the street.

“Now I’m in here. I don’t drink nothing like that,” he said.

Sien thanks the Jimmy Heath House for not only providing a roof over his head but guidance, through people like Davis, to help him find a path to get exactly what he needed to keep himself healthy and comfortable, starting on day one.

“Carlos went and got me two bags of groceries from the Freestore,” he said.

Sien said it has never been easy, but when his basic needs are met, shelter, food, safety, nothing else seems quite as hard.

Due to the pandemic, OTR Community Housing couldn’t have a large ceremony to celebrate the house’s 10th anniversary, but they came together for a small, socially distant gathering on the building’s patio to recognize the impact it’s had over the past 10 years.