Tag

homeless

Feb 28
0

Inside Out

By | Homelessness, The Race to End Homelessness | 5 Comments

Growing up, my mom had a framed print on the wall that proclaimed “It takes a village to raise a child.” Since we lived in suburban Rhode Island, which can hardly be considered a village, this confused me. When I walk around Baltimore City, it may seem like even less of a village, but I know now that a “village” can exist in a suburb, a city, or even hidden in the woods. It all depends on the people that call that village their own.

Despite its urban setting, many Baltimoreans wake up and see forest surrounding their homes. The woods of this city are the home to dozens of individuals without traditional houses. Photographs by Ben Marcin reveal the wide range of these dwellings – some are simple tarps, while others boast clotheslines and home gyms. This is not a phenomenon unique to Baltimore. Many cities actually have far more developed groups that live outdoors. Tent City, a Steven Cantor documentary, shows the mini society that exists in the woods of Nashville, and the people that prefer the outdoors to the shelter system. It is not uncommon for these makeshift cities to have their own rules or guidelines, and for neighbors to work together for protection, or to build some of the more elaborate shelters that exist outside.

Are the shelter systems failing the populations they aim to serve? What would draw a person into the woods rather than sleep in a shelter bed and utilize heat, indoor plumbing, regular meal service, and daily shower accommodations ?If we really think about it, there are plenty of reasons, and the decision to stay outside is different for each individual. These include fear, not wanting a record in the social services system, freedom from rules, or not wanting to be separated from one’s partner or immediate family (as most shelters only accommodate single adults).

Have you ever had a roommate? Have you ever been annoyed by something your roommate did or said? Now multiply that by 10 roommates. Or 30. Or 200, depending on the capacity of your local shelter. Shelter life and tent living are drastically different. When you are outside, you might have a few neighbors, and not many people know where you are. Living outside allows you to choose the people with which you surround yourself, a privilege that usually disappears when someone becomes homeless. Shelter life means living with strangers.

Respecting both privacy and personal space is crucial to the well being of all people. The prevalence of a tent community is not the markings of a city that is failing its homeless population. In Baltimore, individuals can receive services at many shelters or drop-in centers without staying nights at the program. It is important that we allow these individuals the right to choose what services they want. This practice is important to allow people the space they need to survive, and the power to chose their own village.

Feb 14
0

No Late Fees for Housing Referrals

By | Homelessness, The Race to End Homelessness | 2 Comments

When I wrote about my hope that this month’s Superbowl would be an uncharacteristically peaceful and inclusive one for the homeless population in New Jersey, I had no idea that the game would actually lead to finding housing for one youth experiencing homelessness. A young man who was spotted at the Seahawks celebration dressed in San Francisco 49ers garb inspired die hard SF fans to get the boy a ticket to an upcoming game. Upon learning the youth was actually a homeless ward of the state, fans raised almost $25,000 to support him.

San Franciso, while having some of the most generous football fans in the league, is also home to a revolutionary approach to homeless services – from inside its main library.

In what seems to be an ever increasingly expensive culture, there are few free places to spend long periods of your day without being asked to purchase a coffee or get off the bus at the next stop. Combined with their climate control and their access to books and internet resources, this makes libraries a desirable destination for many experiencing homelessness. This is well known not only by those who are homelessness, but by other library patrons and staff as well. Branches, often those in urban settings, that see a consistent homeless population visiting them, have approached the situation in very different ways.

In Summer 2012, Newport Beach public libraries put an end to this trend by banning anyone who “lacks personal hygiene.” Sleeping bags and blankets – even if carried in, not used on site – are also banned. Many other districts have similar policies or bans in effect.

The San Francisco Main Library is not among them. In 2010, this branch employed Leah Esguerra, a licensed social worker in the library five days a week. Much like Michelle Walsh, who calls Penn Station in Newark her office, Esguerra meets with individuals who are struggling with homelessness in a place they already visit regularly. She strikes up conversations, makes referrals, and aims to make calling security an option only in extreme circumstances, instead of just because someone is sleeping. Her program also employs formerly homeless individuals part time to help connect with those using the library and encourage them to seek help.

Since her start in 2009, Esguerra has helped more than 60 individuals find housing, and she and her staff – individuals who were once homeless themselves – have connected hundreds of people to services.

Demand for positions like Walsh’s and Esguerra’s exist because they can meet individuals experiencing homelessness in locations that are already popular for other reasons. The Department of Social Services – in most city’s, anyway – doesn’t offer free internet access of comfortable chairs for a few hours.  The success of each of these positions suggests that homelessness is not a problem we need to ban from public spaces, but that we can use these places to meet people where they already are, and help them find a better place to stay.

Aug 30
0

Proceed Directly to Jail: Do Not Pass Downtown

By | Homelessness, The Race to End Homelessness | No Comments

Lawmakers in Columbia, South Carolina, are worried about you. Yes, you — even if you don’t live there. They’re worried you won’t want to visit them. They’re worried if you do visit, you won’t patronize their businesses. They’re worried that if you do visit and you try to buy something, you’ll be afraid to get out of your car. It turns out Columbia city officials are much more concerned about you — a potential visitor — than about some people who currently reside in the city. In order to protect you, the city council passed a plan to outlaw homeless people from the downtown area.

Richard Blasser, a business owner in Columbia explained that the homeless “scare people.” To quell the scariness, City Council put an end to homelessness, just not in the way service providers and social justice groups might have hoped. There was no Ten Year Plan to End Homelessness used, no input gathered from service providers or people experiencing homelessness. Instead, City Council member Cameron Runyan wrote a plan on his own, a provisional version of which was approved by the council, and which will be reviewed in full in September.

It is now illegal to be homeless in Columbia. Anyone found committing the crime of homelessness in the downtown area will be asked if they would like to be transported to the city shelter, the city jail, or if they would like to leave town (and as appealing as it might sound to leave a city as intolerant as this one, there is no assistance provided for this option). Since the city shelter contains 250 beds, it is unclear where the remainder of the city’s estimated 1,500 homeless individuals should sleep.

By trying to become a thriving economic center, the Columbia City Council has placed their city last in the race to end homelessness. Michael Stoops, from the National Coalition for the Homeless, even awarded the plan with the title of “most comprehensive anti-homeless measure that [he had] ever seen proposed in any city in the last 30 years.”

At the same time, Interim Police Chief Ruben Santiago seems unwilling to let his city lose this race so easily. Santiago opposes the police involvement proposed by the plan. City Manager Teresa Wilson has also expressed confusion in regards to implementing the proposal, and has not yet allocated police to enforce its rules. While Santiago and Wilson are still in talks with the City Council, Santiago stands committed to the rights of Columbia’s homeless. He has stated that he and his team are not about to coerce people into jail because homelessness is not a crime.”

In Columbia, Chief Ruben Santiago is doing more to change his city for the better than the City Council, and others can learn from his admirable stance and follow his lead. The ideas of the Columbia City Council may not be law everywhere, but these baleful attitudes exist across the country. May every city be lucky enough to also have a voice protecting these supposed “criminals,” because only then can it move forward in the Race to End Homelessness.

 

Mar 25
0

Let Them Eat Subway

By | Social Enterprise, The Thagomizer | 2 Comments

I was walking down the street this weekend when two homeless men stopped me to ask for a couple of dollars to buy a sandwich. I told them I didn’t have cash on me but one of the men suggested that I could just go to Subway and buy them the sandwich on my credit card. I agreed and while we were waiting for the sub, he says to me “It’s a shame you didn’t have cash, we would have been able to get cheaper food.” Now my first thought was something akin to “You ungrateful SOB,” but then I realized he was right and in fact being a good steward of my charity. If I had given him the seven dollars I spent at Subway he might have been able to go to the corner store where he could have gotten a decent meal for $4 and still had $3 to put toward his next meal. If I wanted more bang for my buck in terms of impact on his empty stomach I should have just given him cash.

This is a problem with our welfare system as well. There are programs to pay for heating, food, medical expenses, etc. but they are all in separate pots and restricted for a limited purpose. Not only does that mean people are forced to go to dozens of different places with different application processes to meet their needs, they are also not able to budget in a way that works for them. This has led to a black market where people sell or trade their food stamps  to pay for rent, shoes, heat, diapers and other necessities. While some people are appalled by the business of buying and selling welfare benefits, the practice allows people to make ends meet.

So why don’t we just give out money? One argument you hear frequently is that by giving a sandwich I at least know my money is spent on food. If I just gave the man $7 he could have used it to fuel the addiction which caused him to be on streets in the first place or for some other nefarious action which would have left him off worse than before and still hungry. The giving of sandwiches is intended to ensure that the money doesn’t go toward actions that would hurt the recipient but it also prevents them from doing anything with the money that might help them, so that, possibly, they would not need me to give them a sandwich. You can’t build financial stability by saving food stamps in a bank account and then using them to pay your heating bill in the winter. In that way it undermines the financial health of the recipient. The system of earmarking donations assumes that the recipient has become poor because they don’t know how to manage their money. So we take control of their financial future.

Malcolm Gladwell points out that any cost that helps a person out of homelessness is far more cost-effective then just meeting their presumed needs in this fascinating piece. He gives the example of a program in Denver that gives chronic homeless people free apartments because the cost of providing an apartment and a case worker is far cheaper than the housing, medical, and other expenses that come as a result of having them out on the streets. Fellow ChangeEngine author Jasmine Arnold offers another example in her blog about asking versus assuming the needs of homeless people. She cites an article from The Economist profiling a charity called Broadway, which moved 84 percent of their clients off the streets simply by asking individuals what they needed to improve their lives. To quote The Economist piece: “The most efficient way to spend money on the homeless might be to give it to them.”

I’d like to challenge the assumption that the way the givers of welfare earmark funds does a better job in lifting people out of poverty than the way the recipients would spend it. As economist  Uwe E. Reinhardt argues, it is in ineffective. If we are looking to maximize the impact on the recipient per dollar we give then we should give money not benefits. Why? We aren’t experts in other people’s needs. What we think people need might be different than their reality but the walls we’ve built around their benefits prevents them from accessing those funds for anything beyond our understanding of what should lift them up from poverty.

Let’s stop defining people’s needs for them. If we’re going to maximize our impact on someone per dollar spent, we’ve got to stop assuming we have the answer and start asking some questions. Let’s stop giving sandwiches and start helping people get the reigns back on their financial futures.

 

IMAGE CREDIT. Courtesy of cobalt