▶ We Must Speak Up To End Homelessness

▶ Sharing Personal Experience As Knowledge (SPEAK) - YouTube

Homelessness is a growing problem in the United States that does not get nearly enough attention in the halls of government.  When it is talked about by lawmakers, they talk about it from the perspective of a person who has never experienced it. They meet and discuss what they think homeless people need without ever talking to homeless people about it. The meager laws that do get passed to assist homeless persons usually reflect a woeful lack of knowledge and understanding of the scope of homelessness, and an attitude of blame towards the homeless person. In Washington State, we advocate and fight to keep our safety-net programs from being cut out of the budget every legislative session.

There are lawmakers who fight tooth-and-nail to get rid of programs that help single mothers feed their families or for homeless persons to get food stamps. They seem to think if you take away a mothers' help from the government, she will get off her lazy butt and take initiative on her own to feed her family, or if you stop building affordable and low-income housing, homeless people will somehow find a way to pay market-rate housing when they couldn't even afford to get off the streets in the first place. The arguments they make during the legislative session makes sense to them because the do not have a clue what is really going on with poverty and homelessness. Even the lawmakers that are on the side of homeless people don't know what it is like to be homeless or poor, but at least they are willing to be educated by advocates.

This must change.  But the only way it will is to educate our lawmakers and give them a clear picture of what it means to be homeless.  The challenges homeless people endure are almost impossible to overcome alone. The longer a person remains homeless, the harder it is to not be homeless.  One would think that the longer a person works to get out of the mire of living on the streets, the better their chances are of finding a place to live, but believe it or not, just the opposite is true. This is because the psychological effects of long-term homelessness become more severe the longer the experience lasts.

Homeless people are not any different than the rest of us. Homelessness causes trauma, and trauma is debilitating. Demanding that a homeless person pull themselves up by their own bootstraps is tantamount to asking a sprinter to run a marathon. Being homeless is hard work, and even harder when the challenges are not only internal, but external as well.  Here I speak of the myriad of social and human service programs in Washington State that have failed to come up with any kind of effective system to help homeless persons get off the street.

I have spoken to a lot of homeless people, and one thing that has become painfully obvious to me is that homeless people experience a sort of a domino effect in their lives that begins with the loss of self-esteem, and ends in an almost complete hopelessness and lack of the ability to create a sustained mindset of clear thinking that is needed to get off the street. It is almost impossible to "plan" your way out of homelessness when all that is on your mind is finding food during the day, and finding a safe place to sleep every night. On top of that, if it is cold you might actually die from exposure if you don't find a place to sleep that is inside.

According to the Seattle/King County Coalition on Homelessness, who conducts the annual One Night Count of homeless persons, there are 3,265 people living in transitional housing, 2,906 persons living in homeless shelters, and 3,772 persons living on the street. This is a 21% increase from last year.  Moreover, this statistics stands out in stark relief amidst the lauded 10 year plan to end homelessness in King County as we are in the 10th year of the plan.

To say as it bluntly as I can, the government has utterly and completely failed to help homeless persons in the last 10 years. Programs that are designed to provide better assistance to the poor and homeless in Washington State have been drastically cut, other programs to help end homelessness have been done away with altogether.  This kind of behavior from our lawmakers tends to make me doubt that there was ever any real commitment to end homelessness at all. What makes this whole situation particularly distressing is that while politicians praise their failed 10 year plan, homeless people have been literally dying in alleys and under bridges each winter for the last 10 years.

So, it is now as it always has been in this country, any help for the poor and homeless must come in the form of a real and sustained grass-roots effort like the 99% movement.  If we don't stand up for ourselves we will continue to be ignored by our government. Unfortunately for the homeless, the stakes not only involve income inequality, but literally life and death.

Stand up, and speak truth to power!

The 2015 Conference to End Homelessness

I got back from the 2015 Annual Conference to End Homelessness yesterday. I was asked to co-facilitate two workshops, and I facilitated my own workshop called How to Stay Engaged with Advocacy.  This years conference was very much like the one I attended last year in Yakima, Washington.  There were lots of white faces, very a few black faces and a full compliment of classes and workshops to one again examine a great many of the issues surrounding homelessness in Washington State. 

The conference itself was sponsored by the non-profit, Washington Low-Income Housing Alliance. I have been working with them for a couple of years learning how to be an advocate for ending homeless.  Between going to workshops, co-facilitating workshops, and preparing to co-facilitate workshops, I saw a lot of people only in passing, and stole a few glimpses from a few attractive women. One thing that I have noticed in both conferences is that there are A LOT of service workers, professionals and community leaders trying to help the homeless.  Two days of classes - 48 workshops in all, with names like, "Neutralizing Homelessness: Federal Policy & the de politicization of poverty" and "Unleashing the Capacity for Deeper Collaboration Among Congregations, Service Providers, & People Experiencing Homelessness" While the long names might be an indication of how serious some Washingtonians are about ending homelessness, the irony of it can't be escaped: All these professionals walking around attending workshops on how to end homelessness, and not one single homeless person on any panel, in any workshop, or anywhere else at the conference. 

While that sounds kind of slick to write, the truth is, the problem of homelessness is extremely complex mostly because many of the homeless are mentally ill and frequently exhibit anti-social behavioral patterns that will keep them on the margins of society as they are not able to maintain anything close to healthy interrelationships. However, with the right commitment to build affordable housing, and a modified Housing-First model that can somehow address the increased need for case management services with the objective of seriously moving their client towards independence, simply building more affordable and low- income housing is not going to solve the problem. In fact, it could be said that building more subsidized housing might present us with a whole new set of challenges related to helping mentally-ill persons maintain their various residences. The services most homeless people need are multi-teared; housing, healthcare, employment need to be in a wrap-around type system and in one location to insure easy access. Providing social services to the homeless is only half the battle, however.
 
The other half of the equation that can solve homelessness is examining our legal and court systems. Recently, cities and states have responded to increasing homelessness by creating laws the criminalize homelessness. In many Washington State cities, local governments have begun to create ordinances that make it a crime to sit, stand, lie down, eat, or sleep in public. These ordinances have a devastating effect upon the life of the homeless person. There is a 'cycle of homelessness' that occurs when a homeless person is caught breaking one of these ordinances. Here's how it works:

The Criminalization of Homelessness

a.     Root causes of homelessness - must ground ourselves in this to be able to talk about addressing criminalization.

b.    What does the cycle of criminalization look like?

        i.   Examples of laws and policies that criminalize people who are homeless - Kirk can draw on examples from his advocacy and personal experience (park hours, no sit/lie ordinances, sprinklers in parks, restricted parking hours, etc).

Connection to the criminal justice system - civil citations result in court dates and fines to pay. Missed court dates result in arrest warrants. Suddenly you’re in the system.

Acknowledging the cycle of criminalization is also bigger than this, because there is structural and institutional racism and oppression at play: economic inequality, school to prison pipeline/criminal justice system at large, unemployment, food/housing insecurity, access to health care, etc. These systems interplay with the criminalization of homelessness and perpetuate disparities in how homelessness and criminalization impacts people of color, people with mental illness, people with disabilities, LBGTQ people.

 

 How does the “personal responsibility” frame that pervades our thinking and policy making around homelessness play into criminalization? I should also point out that this narrative reinforces the cycle of criminalization, flattens the issue and keeps us from looking at this as a racial justice issue, disability justice issue, etc. If we can’t see it as a systemic problem, pushing for the systemic solutions we need will remain incredibly difficult.

The practical application here comes down to how we treat the individual and how we work toward a solution for that individual. We cannot give mere mental ascent to the fact homelessness has its roots in systemic failure, but then treat the individual as if all of the responsibility for their condition rests solely upon them. We need to work towards changing the system, not just changing the person.