Steve Berg: What Ending Homelessness Looks Like

[OneGrassRoot]

(My note: Poverty has even been invisible to me here at DU because of my own ignorance; I haven't explored the groups and forums NEARLY enough, and didn't realize this forum was here. Thanks to billl for guiding me...:))

She’s not going to be homeless, even though her boyfriend beat her and disappeared with her money. Even though her job disappeared next, she and her babies had to move in with her mom, and now her mom’s boyfriend wants them out.

She’s not going to be homeless because the domestic violence counselor sent over a woman who mediated, found some places that were hiring, contacted a new day care center, connected her with a different landlord, and paid the security deposit and her storage bill.

She’s not going to be homeless.

She’s going to unwrap the dishes. On one of the newspapers she’s using there’s a story about The Last Homeless Person in America. She laughs, thinking, “That could have been me.” She’ll have to read it later.

<snip>

This is a work of speculative fiction – for now. Ending homelessness in America will require us quickly and comprehensively to address the combination of vulnerability and crisis that leaves people homeless today. It will require us to elevate prevention and re-housing tools to the same national scale as our shelter systems. It will require that we invest the resources and passion necessary to confront and untangle – five thousand times a day – the personal, emotional, and physical afflictions of people who today experience homelessness.

Full article here: http://blog.endhomelessness.org/?p=935

[stopbush]

1. I work at a homeless shelter in CA. Most people have an erroneous idea of

what a homeless person looks like.

Homeless people look like you and me. The vast majority of homeless people in this country are homeless for less than 30 days. That doesn't mean that those 30 days are by any means easy or carefree - the pressures are incredible.

When people think of the homeless, they think of the filthy bag person looking thru the trash and mumbling to themselves. Surprisingly, estimates are that only about 112,000 people in the entire country fit that description.

Homeless people are families who can't pay their rent and end up stuck in county- and state-provided facilities like motels for years at a time, unable to find work and unable to find a way to break out of the downward cycle. Homeless people are young kids who have been deserted by their families, as well as people in their 20s and 30s who have significant mental, drug and alcohol issues. Homeless people are seniors and vets who just don't have the wherewithal to keep up with the cost of living.

What most people think of as a homeless person is a caricature of reality. That caricature makes it easy to ignore the homeless, to imagine that they're homeless by choice or by making bad choices for themselves that "normal" people avoid. I know, because I've met a lot of homeless people at our shelter who thought that's what a homeless person was, and who never for a minute imagined that they themselves would be homeless - people who were living the American dream until an illness or a job loss or something else suddenly and unexpectedly changed their fortunes.

When it comes to dollars and cents, the most expensive place a homeless person can end up is in an emergency room. The next most-expensive place they can end up is at a shelter like ours, where the daily cost to house a homeless person is about $80, or about $2500 a month. The least-expensive place for a homeless person to end up is in their own apartment, a place that they can call home. That's why the momentum in the movement to end homelessness is in building supportive housing, where the homeless can live and have a place to call home. It's the cheapest and most-effective solution out there, but there are always, ALWAYS major NIMBY issues in any city that elects to follow this route in dealing with the problem...which is why so many cities elect to simply shuffle the homeless out of sight, out of mind, allowing slumlords to rent out flea-bag rooms at $10 a night, where the homeless can indulge their drug and alcohol addictions out of the view of polite society.

The homeless are US, people. They need to be treated as people, because given the proper support, they can get back on their feet and return to "normal" society.

[OneGrassRoot]

2. A few online things of interest...

for anyone reading who may not be aware of them.

Well, actually I'm sharing four things. ;)

In response to your wonderful sharing, here are two sites -- both by Mark Horvath -- that I really appreciate:

http://www.invisiblepeople.tv ("homeless has a name")

http://wearevisible.com/ (giving those without homes a voice online)

And, finally, I connected with this amazing woman very recently: Julia Dinsmore (http://www.buildingchanges.org/news-room/heads-up/75-heads-up-blog-item/244-a-powerful-voice-weaves-stories-of-change)

Here's the video based on her poem: My Name is not "Those People" - http://www.wishadoo.com/videos/id_21/title_My-Name-is-Not-%22Those-People%22/

[kdt]

5. neverending cycle

Its impossible for homeless to do anything to get out of poverty. Who would hire a homeless? There needs to be a system that allows them to get out.

[Rageneau]

3. I remember NO homelessness before Reagan.

It wasn't until the Raygun Revolution that the despair of homelessness began to trickle down into all our communities.

[OneGrassRoot]

4. Some brilliant DUers have written about that specifically....

bobbolink and mntleo2, if I'm not mistaken, and provided details. My brain can't hold on to details like theirs can, so I've tried to bookmark pertinent OPs.

But, yes, I recall them saying the exact same thing: It was Reagan who dismantled a variety of institutions which led to homelessness in a way that wasn't seen before. Other things have piled on to make it worse -- without anything or anyone making it better -- since then, so it seems.

:(