There are many complicated, impossible problems facing this county. After working for a housing nonprofit for five months, I’ve learned that homelessness doesn’t have to be one of them. I got involved with housing and homelessness work because I thought it was one of those big, impossible problems: how can anyone work, learn, or live healthily without a place to lay his or her head at night? With an average of 4,000 people homeless on any given night in Baltimore City and winter quickly approaching, it seems like there is someone on every street asking for my spare change, but it doesn’t have to be this way.
We need to pay attention to homelessness not simply because it is the roadblock to solving bigger, more complicated problems; not only because it is more expensive to run shelters than to maintain affordable housing; and not even just because so many of us are just one paycheck, one accident, or one diagnosis away from being without housing ourselves. Homelessness deserves our attention because we’ve been letting it get the best of us for too long.
This is not as much an impossible problem but an endlessly frustrating one. There are empty houses in Baltimore; there are soup kitchens with uneaten food. There are solutions to homelessness; we just fail to properly grasp them. I do not have the answers to homelessness, but I can tell that determining what these solutions are and implementing them is within our reach.
Baltimore has boldly adopted a 10-year plan to end homelessness, and other cities around the county are doing the same. While this isn’t a fail-proof recipe for social change (five years into the plan, there are more people without housing in Baltimore than when these efforts began), it is encouraging to see municipalities paying close attention to this issue. I aim to evaluate which cities are making progress towards reducing homelessness and poverty, and how they are accomplishing it.
Is it large or small cities that have an advantage when trying to reduce homelessness? Which resources are the most important to sustain housing? Furthermore, how does homeless look different today than a decade ago, before the economic downturn? As cities struggle to answer these questions, I plan to learn which measures are working – and which are not – in the effort to end homelessness. The right combination of innovation and support can dramatically reduce homelessness in any city in America – will Baltimore be the first?
Next Time – The Race Begins: a look at how we measure homelessness within and between cities.
[Photo: Dean Terry]
We are so proud of you!!
Jasmine,
How refreshing you didn’t run up to Wall Street immediately after graduation. Always keep that soul alive in yourself. You won’t regret it. This is the karma the world needs.
And by the way, check out Mumford & Sons’ “Awake My Soul.” Maybe you know it already.
John Macomber
Jazz, It was awesome to see you and just as awesome to see what you are doing. I want to keep posted on your research and finding…VERY important stuff! Thank you for what you are doing.
Great job. Heroes work!! Very proud of you.