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It happens all the time. Religious groups (call them churches, cults or whatever rocks your boat), busily marketing their superior wares, sometimes resort to suggestions along the lines that if their followers pray hard enough their ailments will be healed, without any need for medical interventions. There are plenty of examples of this, both with regard to religious groups in the West as well as with regard to cults like Falun Gong in the East or charismatic churches in Africa. To give you just two recent examples. I was recently in China, visiting both the Chinese as well as the Shanghai Academy of the Social Sciences, as well as community groups agitating against Falun Gong in the country.
Falun Gong in ChinaFalun Gong is a nasty, racist, homophobic and misogynist cult that has successfully misled some of its adherents to not seek medical care and instead focus on its exercise regime as a means to fight illness. I met a man in Shanghai who told the story of how his family fell apart, his wife (like him and his daughter Falun Gong adherents) did not seek care for her cancer and died eventually. The woman believed that following the Falun Gong guru's teachings would translate into her being cured (without having to seek expensive medical care). The Chinese authorities have outlawed Falun Gong because they consider the organisation a destructive cult. Us Westerners get of course all flustered about this, because we believe that religious freedom is of greater importance than preventing the harm caused by these groups.
Synagoge Church of all Nations in BritainIn East London the evangelical Synagoge Church of all Nations reportedly promises its followers miracle healing. As a result of this several people with HIV infection chose to stop taking HIV medication. At least three reportedly have died as a result of this choice. The BBC reports that a growing number of evangelical churches in the UK is making wild healing promises (no big surprise, they're outcompeting each other on this front in order to attract followers). Unlike Falun Gong in China, the Synagoge Church of all Nations as well as others like it may continues its practices unhindered in Britain and other Western countries, and more people will predictably die.
I think it is reasonable to ask why religious freedom is somehow valued higher than other convictions (of an ideological kind) in the West. If a complementary medicine company made such false healing claims for its products, it obviously could not hide behind the religious freedom mantra, hence state authorities in the West would prosecute the company for making demonstrably false claims resulting into harm. I do wonder why there is this special dispensation in the context of religious belief, at least when this belief is uncontroversially harmful (as is the case in the context of miracle healings).
Should groups who make such claims not be forced to provide evidence in support of their claims, and lacking that evidence should they not be prevented from making such claims? Why is the religious freedom mantra seen to be a more significant societal value than harm prevention? Most of the liberal reasons for permitting such religious groups to spread their deadly teachings are unsound. Just think of John Stuart Mill's famous justifications for permitting such ideologies to be spread without hindrance: 1) we better be careful with censorship as they might be right after all - in this context surely an implausible proposition; 2) society can learn from debating their erroneous ways by getting a better understanding of why they're wrong, hence we are better off letting them continue to spread their views - what exactly are we learning in the case under consideration other than that poorly educated, vulnerable people tend to fall for such deadly quacks, no surprise in that; 3) people grow as persons if permitted to follow their eccentricities - in our case there's little growth as people die as a result of bad choices they make based on religious propaganda. Much of Mill's case seems based on all sides involved in freedom of expression cases having a serious (of sometimes faulty) case, ie that at least they believe what they say. This is a somewhat doubtful proposition in the case of money grabbing cults, they're in it for revenue generation and gains in political influence. If they were genuinely concerned about their members well-being they'd stop peddling lies about the benefits associated with following the cult rules, given that all the available empirical evidence points against their case..
I am not suggesting here that the Chinese answer to the problem of destructive cults is perfect compared to what we have in the West, but at least there is some recognition that harmful propaganda must be confronted and cannot be led go unanswered by the state under the guise of protecting religious freedom. Surely people's well-being must come first. Well, truth be told, I am ambivalent about this matter. Any comments are very much welcome.
13 Ekim 2012 Cumartesi
Critical Success for our anthology '50 Voices of Disbelief'
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Here is a post copied verbatim from Russell Blackford's blog.
The reviews quoted on the Amazon site have mounted up over time, and there are a few I didn't know about (in particular, the one in the Times Higher Education Supplement had slipped past me). We really did have some critical success with this book. So let me brag a little, just this once:
The reviews quoted on the Amazon site have mounted up over time, and there are a few I didn't know about (in particular, the one in the Times Higher Education Supplement had slipped past me). We really did have some critical success with this book. So let me brag a little, just this once:
"For students in comparative religion this volume offers ample material and powerful reasons to make them subject most if not all religious claims to a highly critical appraisal, preparing for a constructive and public debate." (Acta Comparanda, 2011)
"50 Voices of Disbelief: Why We Are Atheists brings together many scholars and intellectuals from a variety of academic fields who explain the reasons why they do not believe in God. Russell Blackford and Udo Schüklenk's unique collection of original essays not only consists of short, digestible essays which are full of introductory presentations of both positive and negative arguments in support of atheism, but also in its candid testimonials which are more personally oriented." (Reviews in Religion, 2011)
"The international cast of contributors includes many well-known names, from a diversity of fields-notably philosophy (about a third of the writers are philosophers) science, journalism, politics and science fiction. By no means do they agree on everything, but the unifying themes of rejection of conventional religions and acceptance of secular humanism shine through brightly. A descriptive list of contributors and an excellent index complement the essays, many of which are accompanied by useful endnotes and references." (Quadrant, September 2010)
"It was mostly fascinating reading, in particular, those articles that abstained from using dull polemics and cynicism. Some of the articles-most notably from Nicholas Everitt, Thomas W. Clark, Michael Shermer, Peter Tatchell, Michael Tooley, and Udo Schüklenk-can indeed be used in undergraduate courses concerned with the existence of God in philosophy, ethics, and theology. I recommend this volume especially for all those who need to grasp a general and easy introduction into atheistic reasoning." (Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 2010)
"I recommend this volume especially for all those who need to grasp a general and easy introduction into atheistic reasoning." (Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 2010)
“The essays in this book reveal a great concern for our human plight, a concern that is the equal of religious impulses; they raise a richness of issues that are too often ignored, including the ultimate fear of the theists that perhaps in time it may well be possible to settle the question of God’s existence. The fifty voices in this book have spoken out with more than a small amount of courage. What emerges from thinking about these essays is a realization of what human reason is up against, within ourselves.” (Free Inquiry, August/September 2010)
"Good writing and clear thinking don't always go hand in hand. It's a pleasure, then, to find both in a recent book about going it alone -- no deus ex machina for us, please -- titled 50 Voices of Disbelief: Why We Are Atheists. In one volume, edited by Russell Blackford and Udo Schuklenk, you'll find idiosyncratic essays by a range of atheists from science fiction authors and philosophers to scientists and activists." (Psychology Today, Creating in Flow Blog, May 2010)
"Many of the pieces in this book are full of superior contempt for the intellectual inadequacy of theism. Tatchell is forthright in his criticism of religion, but he never sneers. The essays in this book are all clearly argued, and will reassure the already faithful that they are neither daft nor deluded." (Church Times, April 2010)
"The contemporary relevance,and timeliness of this book is unsurpassed. It is ... an account of various well known non-believers [and] personal viewpoints, directed at a popular audience. Very approachable at all levels, containing a wide range of stories, anecdotes and personal statements about why each of the authors considers themselves to be a non believer. Overall, this book is well suited for a mainstream audience, interested in questioning the power that religion holds over our lives. It [also] has good references ... which will also serve to guide the reader if further information is wanted. Thus, I recommend this book to anyone (regardless of their views concerning religion) interested in understanding why different people hold certain views concerning religion." (Metapsychology, April 2010)
"By turns witty, serious, engaging and information, it is always human and deeply honest, and immensely rewarding to read." (Times Higher Education Supplement, December 2009)
"Carefully considered statements … .Contributions range from rigorous philosophical arguments to highly personal, even whimsical, accounts of how each of these notable thinkers have come to reject religion in their lives. Likely to have broad appeal." (Australian Atheist, November 2009)
"I am strongly recommending it as a present for anyone who has an interest in atheism/theism from either side of the debate. It's just a great read, from great authors." (Stephen Law Blogspot, October 2009)
"It’s a very good book, and I recommend it for all of us godless ones — or those who are considering abjuring the divine. It’s far more than just a collection of stories about 'How I came to give up God.' Many of the writers describe the philosophical and empirical considerations that led them to atheism. Indeed, the book can be considered a kind of philosophical handbook for atheists." (Why Evolution is True Blog, October 2009)
"Wow! A book about atheism and it’s not written by Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett or Harris! So this book is welcome partly because it helps break that knee-jerk reaction. But it’s also welcome because many of its contributors advance interesting ideas. There’s plenty to choose from. And one advantage of a collection like this is that you can dip into it wherever you want. There is something for everyone. And there is the opportunity to discover new ideas." (Open Parachute, October 2009)
"For many who have spent some time involved in any form of engagement in these matters, the names should appear familiar: from the great AC Grayling to the revolutionary Maryam Namazie. Finally, in one book we can hear their stories – if not about themselves, then about the aspects of religion or lack thereof they find most important. If all these contributors were speakers at a convention, it would be sold out many times over." (Butterflies and Wheels, October 2009)
"In their excellent collection of essays exploring and defending the philosophical stance of atheism, Russell Blackford and Udo Schüklenk had an inclusive vision. Contributors to the book range from those with science-fiction backgrounds to modern-day philosophy." (Kirkus Reviews, October 2009)
"In more than 50 brief statements organized by Blackford and philosopher Schüklenk ... contributors share views—their routes toward nonbelief and their feelings about the place of religion in the world ... including James (the Amazing) Randi, a well-known magician and debunker of spurious psychic phenomena. Considering the popularity of Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion, Christopher Hitchens's God Is Not Great, and Sam Harris's The End of Faith, [these] memoirs and observations will be of interest to disbelievers." (Library Journal, October 2009)
The German political system's bizarre state of affairs on offended Muslims
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A remarkable article in the German news magazine DER SPIEGEL reports an incident in the German state of North Rhine Westfalia. A bunch of radical rightwingers and a bunch of fundamentalist Muslims ran into each other during a demonstration. The rightwingers clearly intended to provoke the Muslims by showing a Danish cartoon depicting the religious figurehead of Islam in a not particularly favorable pose. As you might recall, when a conservative Danish broadsheet published said cartoon there was a big outcry amongst Muslims (they don't like any depictions of their prophet, neither positive nor negative ones). A lot of people were duly killed by enraged Muslims (including, not unexpectedly, many Muslims). So, when in Germany the rightwing activist group Pro-NRW announced its demonstration and its intention to display the Danish cartoon it knew that its favoured enemy, enraged Muslims, would show up and make complete and militant fools of themselves. and so they did. - Between the two of us, without the help of radical Muslims and anti-Islamophobia leftist counter demonstrators, nobody would have taken notice of the 30 or so pro-NRW demonstrators. But hey, like bulls don't take lightly to red sheets of cloth neither do Muslims or leftists in Germany take kindly to a tiny rightwing group trying to look like they actually have the people on the ground to organise a serious demonstration. Fun was had by all involved: The end result, a whole bunch of seriously injured people, including police officers trying to keep the peace between the two sides.
None of this is terribly newsworthy, of course. Rightwingers (especially rightwing Christians) and fundamentalist Muslims love having goes at each other in Western societies, because the rightwing Christians mistakenly believe they own these places and need to defend them against Muslims wanting to establish Sharia law. It's of course a good idea to defend the secular state against any kind of religiously motivated legislation (lest you want to live in failing states like Iran or pseudo-outfits like the Vatican).
Here's the odd bit. The interior minister of the state where said demonstration took place wants to place restrictions on future demonstrations by the extreme rightwing group. A prohibition on showing the offending Danish cartoon during public demonstrations is in the making. Here is the tortured logic: The Islamic fundamentalists count about 1500 members according to the German security services. There is about 4 million Muslims in Germany that want to have little, if anything, to do with their violence. In order to protect German police officers from their violence it is necessary to prevent the extreme rightwingers from showing the cartoon during their demonstrations.
I have no sympathies for the rightwingers here, but it seems to me as if the German state is caving in to Muslim fundamentalists. German citizens would - in future - be prohibited from doing things that could offend members of a Muslim fundamentalist sect in the country, lest the Muslims would otherwise go on a rampage injuring police officers and other demonstrators. Freedom of speech is subjugated to concerns about security of the security forces (whose job, among many other obligations, ironically, is to uphold German citizens rights to express even harsh criticism of religious ideologies). I can't wait to hear how the German courts will respond to this interior ministerial edict.
Interesting parallel: in Jamaica, a Caribbean island state known for its large number of militantly anti-gay Christian citizens, we see the police routinely prohibiting demonstration by gay civil rights groups. Their logic also is that there are so many enraged Christians out there that they couldn't guarantee the safety of the demonstrators (at least - unlike in Germany - they're not concerned about the security of the security forces). Another example of a democratic society caving in to religiously motivated militancy.
The trouble with religious freedom is that it is all too frequently misunderstood as the unrestricted freedom of the religious to run roughshot over everyone else.
None of this is terribly newsworthy, of course. Rightwingers (especially rightwing Christians) and fundamentalist Muslims love having goes at each other in Western societies, because the rightwing Christians mistakenly believe they own these places and need to defend them against Muslims wanting to establish Sharia law. It's of course a good idea to defend the secular state against any kind of religiously motivated legislation (lest you want to live in failing states like Iran or pseudo-outfits like the Vatican).
Here's the odd bit. The interior minister of the state where said demonstration took place wants to place restrictions on future demonstrations by the extreme rightwing group. A prohibition on showing the offending Danish cartoon during public demonstrations is in the making. Here is the tortured logic: The Islamic fundamentalists count about 1500 members according to the German security services. There is about 4 million Muslims in Germany that want to have little, if anything, to do with their violence. In order to protect German police officers from their violence it is necessary to prevent the extreme rightwingers from showing the cartoon during their demonstrations.
I have no sympathies for the rightwingers here, but it seems to me as if the German state is caving in to Muslim fundamentalists. German citizens would - in future - be prohibited from doing things that could offend members of a Muslim fundamentalist sect in the country, lest the Muslims would otherwise go on a rampage injuring police officers and other demonstrators. Freedom of speech is subjugated to concerns about security of the security forces (whose job, among many other obligations, ironically, is to uphold German citizens rights to express even harsh criticism of religious ideologies). I can't wait to hear how the German courts will respond to this interior ministerial edict.
Interesting parallel: in Jamaica, a Caribbean island state known for its large number of militantly anti-gay Christian citizens, we see the police routinely prohibiting demonstration by gay civil rights groups. Their logic also is that there are so many enraged Christians out there that they couldn't guarantee the safety of the demonstrators (at least - unlike in Germany - they're not concerned about the security of the security forces). Another example of a democratic society caving in to religiously motivated militancy.
The trouble with religious freedom is that it is all too frequently misunderstood as the unrestricted freedom of the religious to run roughshot over everyone else.
Follow-Up on 'Ex-Gay' Story
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Some weeks ago I wrote here about Dr Spitzer, a noted US psychiatrist who penned many years ago a study ostensibly showing that it is possible to change the sexual orientation of homosexual people who wish to do so. His work has since been used by mostly religious fundamentalists for blaming gay people to be what and who they are, and for suggesting myriad bogus conversion schemes (all condemned by professional psychiatric and psychological associations the world all over etc.).
Dr Spitzer noted in an interview that he thinks he misinterpreted what 'ex-gay' homosexuals he interviewed for the purpose of the study told him. There was a big outcry over this. Spitzer claimed that he tried to retract his study but the Archives of Sexual Behavior where he published his work allegedly refused to do so. The Editor of said journal says that that ain't exactly how it happened, but be that as it may, in today's New York Times Spitzer declares in an interview that he has written a Letter to the Editor of the Archives of Sexual Behavior denouncing his own work and that this letter would be published in said journal. A draft of the letter has been leaked some time ago. It ends with an apology to the gay community for the harm done to the gay community by his study's baseless support of 'reparative therapy' for homosexuality.
It takes courage to admit that one is mistaken.
Dr Spitzer noted in an interview that he thinks he misinterpreted what 'ex-gay' homosexuals he interviewed for the purpose of the study told him. There was a big outcry over this. Spitzer claimed that he tried to retract his study but the Archives of Sexual Behavior where he published his work allegedly refused to do so. The Editor of said journal says that that ain't exactly how it happened, but be that as it may, in today's New York Times Spitzer declares in an interview that he has written a Letter to the Editor of the Archives of Sexual Behavior denouncing his own work and that this letter would be published in said journal. A draft of the letter has been leaked some time ago. It ends with an apology to the gay community for the harm done to the gay community by his study's baseless support of 'reparative therapy' for homosexuality.
It takes courage to admit that one is mistaken.
Canadian Supreme Court reaches sensible decision on HIV transmission
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Today the Canadian Supreme Court reached a sensible verdict on the tricky issue of the criminalisation of HIV transmission. It found - essentially - that folks who are HIV infected, on HIV medicine, and who have a low viral load (note, it is not a requirement that there is an undetectable viral load) and who use condoms, are under no obligation to disclose their HIV status to their sexual partners.
The main logic of the Court's decision is that if there is no significant risk of bodily harm (as is the case if the above mentioned conditions are met) the legal requirement to inform one's sexual partners of one's infection falls by the wayside.
Of course, many AIDS activists will be annoyed by this decision as it maintains the criminalisation of non-disclosure in cases where someone's viral load is not low, or where someone is not using a condom at the same time that his or her viral load is low, etc.
However, this decision makes a powerful, and sensible case to people at significant risk of HIV infection to get tested, and to get on HIV medication (both to protect their health and that of people they choose to have sexual intercourse with), as well as to use condoms each time they have sex with people they have not disclosed their HIV status to. In fact, this line of reasoning was developed in a paper I published in 2011. You can find it here, the argument runs from p. 310ff.
It might be worth noting that this decision by the Court was unanimous, something quite remarkable, considering the Harper government's recent appointment of four judges to the Court.
The main logic of the Court's decision is that if there is no significant risk of bodily harm (as is the case if the above mentioned conditions are met) the legal requirement to inform one's sexual partners of one's infection falls by the wayside.
Of course, many AIDS activists will be annoyed by this decision as it maintains the criminalisation of non-disclosure in cases where someone's viral load is not low, or where someone is not using a condom at the same time that his or her viral load is low, etc.
However, this decision makes a powerful, and sensible case to people at significant risk of HIV infection to get tested, and to get on HIV medication (both to protect their health and that of people they choose to have sexual intercourse with), as well as to use condoms each time they have sex with people they have not disclosed their HIV status to. In fact, this line of reasoning was developed in a paper I published in 2011. You can find it here, the argument runs from p. 310ff.
It might be worth noting that this decision by the Court was unanimous, something quite remarkable, considering the Harper government's recent appointment of four judges to the Court.
12 Ekim 2012 Cuma
"Social media like Twitter and Facebook tear down economic and geographic barriers to help homeless people connect to their families and support networks"
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This information comes as no surprise to people like Mark Horvath or Carey Fuller, since they've been using social media for years now to connect people experiencing homelessness to each other, support services, and family members who'd like to find out what's happening with a loved one.
Even the Federal government, typically far behind the curve of everyone else on most things related to the public, is beginning to realize the enormous potential of social media in helping raise awareness, put access to services at the fingertips of those who need them, and provide information and resources that help improve the odds that a person will be able to extricate themselves from the street and the poverty -however that may be induced - that keeps them there.
One point I'd like to make in order to help dispel some ignorance around this issue that I see crop up with frightening regularity is the idea that those on the street are somehow either too dumb or too poor to be able to have a phone, and especially a smartphone. Typically these kinds of comments arise when there is a photo somewhere - in a newspaper, for example - that shows someone experiencing homelessness talking on or holding a phone. Generally, the comments are something along the lines of "if they've got a phone, then they should have a job and home," or "if they've got a phone then they can't be too poor."
So here's the deal. First, there are several programs available in certain areas and regions of the US that provide free phones to people in poverty, homeless or not. These phones, while generally low-end devices, come with a set level of minutes (between 70 and 300, typically)and those minutes renewed each month. Contrary to the grossly ignorant complaints about these phones being a "luxury, not a necessity," phones are hugely important for folks in dire, sometimes critical need for survival and help them connect with available services; locate employment; provide a callback number to potential employers that isn't immediately suspect (local mission and shelter numbers are usually quickly recognized and when used to on applications, which are then roundfiled); connect them with family and friends who may be able to help, offer hope, or offer assistance; and connect with emergency services when situations become dangerous or untenable due to inclement weather.
Two quick examples that help dispel the myth and smash the ignorance: 1. "JoJo" earns about $670 a month on SSDI, far too little for him to remain housed for any length of time, so he lives in the woods near Nashville. He's well known in the areas he treks, and does odd jobs at various shops and stores to earn a little extra cash and some favors (one gas station gives him a pack of cigarettes if he sweeps off the area around the pumps, another opens a storage room when the weather is bad so he has a place to ride it out). Folks often find JoJo hanging at the local McDonalds or Waffle House charging his smartphone and sipping coffee, and If ever there was a person who "looks" homeless, JoJo fits the stereotypical image, as he hasn't shaved in probably two decades, doesn't care much about the condition of his clothes and replaces them by purchasing new stuff at Goodwill or the Salvation Army Thrift when his current clothes are either so dirty or in such tatters that he can't stand them any longer. I can almost guarantee you that when the ignorant and uninformed see him sitting in a booth at MickyD's, sipping his coffee and surfing away on his T-Mobile powered smartphone, they immediately jump to the wrong conclusions, since most of the time, JoJo is either dealing with his numerous health issues, finding places to work part-time, or chatting with friends and family around the region, from Tennessee to Florida. He pays his own bill, buys the phone he wants, and if you know anything at all about SSDI, you know he's using the money he earned himself.
"Jimmy" is a Gulf War veteran who has been struggling with a number of combat-related health conditions for years. He has been fighting with an increase in his benefits with the VA - not an uncommon situation for many veterans - and has been surviving on a pittance while living in a cubbyhole near some railroad tracks in South Nashville. He works day labor 2-3 days a week and gets most of his supplies from a veteran service center that provides clothing and basic necessities/toiletries. Jimmy also looks like the stereotypical person many of the uninformed think of when they think of someone homeless, yet Jimmy is fiercely independent, a Godfearing and honest man to a fault, and lives in shame every day that he is unable to take care of himself due to his multiple injuries and illnesses suffered while defending his country. I helped Jimmy get a free phone after he missed an opportunity for an early appointment at the VA, and he missed it because although the VA caseworker had a cancellation that created an early opening for him, we all were unable to notify him in time to make the appointment.
So the next time you see someone you think is homeless standing on a corner using their phone, rather than become righteously indignant, be thankful, because the fact is, the more we connect our folks on the street with the community, the more likely it is we'll be able to get them back into the community, and the less likely it is we'll have to continue paying for the costs incurred from a life on the streets.
A new study finds social media like Twitter and Facebook tear down economic and geographic barriers to help homeless people connect to their families and support networks.
The study was conducted by Art Jipson, a sociologist and criminologist at the University of Dayton, a Catholic school. Jipson says the findings present a new potential for Catholic social teaching.
“Catholic social teaching expresses a concern about’a communal, social nature’ where’we are called to reach out and build relationships of love and justice,’” Jipson said.
He cites “Rerum Novarum,” Pope Leo XIII’s 1891 encyclical on the duties of government and citizens in creating a just society, as the context and foundation of his work.
Jipson’s study, “Shall I Paint You a Protest: Marxist Analysis of Social Media,” was presented August 17 at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association in Denver.
He found that homeless people leverage free services like Facebook and Twitter to find food, shelter and job services, and to keep up with family and friends. All they need is a smart phone or public library with Internet access.
“People think of Facebook as this billion-dollar entity with stock offerings that sells gobs of advertising,” Jipson said. “But, on Facebook, the’least of our brothers,’ as it says in the Bible, have equal access to all of Facebook’s offerings and establish a sense of belonging that is based on more than possessions.”
Jipson created his study after a homeless man won a prize on Jipson’s weekly radio show. When Jipson hand-delivered the prize, a CD, he discovered the man used his smart phone to stream radio and connect with people on Facebook.
For the study, Jipson spoke with 14 homeless people about their social media usage.
“Why can’t I be on Facebook?” asked one subject in the study. “I have as much right to that as anyone else. Just because I am homeless does not mean that I don’t care about this stuff, you know? My family is on Facebook. My friends are on Facebook. People who care about me are on Facebook.”Another interviewee said social media offered a judgment-free place to connect: “No one on the’net cares if I didn’t get a shower yesterday or smell some. They don’t judge me, you know? … I feel accepted. I am accepted.”
Sister Mary Ann Walsh, director of media relations for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, noted that advances in communications technology have created a more equitable sharing of the world’s resources, from the invention of the printing press to radio and television to the Internet.
Along the way, religion has made its mark on each platform, she said. The first book off Johannes Guttenberg’s press was the Bible. Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen hosted “The Catholic Hour” radio show and went on to host television programs.
New generations of Catholics can watch Sheen’s sermons on YouTube or download his radio addresses as podcasts. Or they can hear them over the USCCB website.
All these experiences, Jipson said, foster community.
“We assume that we have nothing in common with people who are different from us — by whatever means we might measure that difference,” Jipson said. “But a study like this demonstrates that we have more in common than we do in difference.”
Even the Federal government, typically far behind the curve of everyone else on most things related to the public, is beginning to realize the enormous potential of social media in helping raise awareness, put access to services at the fingertips of those who need them, and provide information and resources that help improve the odds that a person will be able to extricate themselves from the street and the poverty -however that may be induced - that keeps them there.
One point I'd like to make in order to help dispel some ignorance around this issue that I see crop up with frightening regularity is the idea that those on the street are somehow either too dumb or too poor to be able to have a phone, and especially a smartphone. Typically these kinds of comments arise when there is a photo somewhere - in a newspaper, for example - that shows someone experiencing homelessness talking on or holding a phone. Generally, the comments are something along the lines of "if they've got a phone, then they should have a job and home," or "if they've got a phone then they can't be too poor."
So here's the deal. First, there are several programs available in certain areas and regions of the US that provide free phones to people in poverty, homeless or not. These phones, while generally low-end devices, come with a set level of minutes (between 70 and 300, typically)and those minutes renewed each month. Contrary to the grossly ignorant complaints about these phones being a "luxury, not a necessity," phones are hugely important for folks in dire, sometimes critical need for survival and help them connect with available services; locate employment; provide a callback number to potential employers that isn't immediately suspect (local mission and shelter numbers are usually quickly recognized and when used to on applications, which are then roundfiled); connect them with family and friends who may be able to help, offer hope, or offer assistance; and connect with emergency services when situations become dangerous or untenable due to inclement weather.
Two quick examples that help dispel the myth and smash the ignorance: 1. "JoJo" earns about $670 a month on SSDI, far too little for him to remain housed for any length of time, so he lives in the woods near Nashville. He's well known in the areas he treks, and does odd jobs at various shops and stores to earn a little extra cash and some favors (one gas station gives him a pack of cigarettes if he sweeps off the area around the pumps, another opens a storage room when the weather is bad so he has a place to ride it out). Folks often find JoJo hanging at the local McDonalds or Waffle House charging his smartphone and sipping coffee, and If ever there was a person who "looks" homeless, JoJo fits the stereotypical image, as he hasn't shaved in probably two decades, doesn't care much about the condition of his clothes and replaces them by purchasing new stuff at Goodwill or the Salvation Army Thrift when his current clothes are either so dirty or in such tatters that he can't stand them any longer. I can almost guarantee you that when the ignorant and uninformed see him sitting in a booth at MickyD's, sipping his coffee and surfing away on his T-Mobile powered smartphone, they immediately jump to the wrong conclusions, since most of the time, JoJo is either dealing with his numerous health issues, finding places to work part-time, or chatting with friends and family around the region, from Tennessee to Florida. He pays his own bill, buys the phone he wants, and if you know anything at all about SSDI, you know he's using the money he earned himself.
"Jimmy" is a Gulf War veteran who has been struggling with a number of combat-related health conditions for years. He has been fighting with an increase in his benefits with the VA - not an uncommon situation for many veterans - and has been surviving on a pittance while living in a cubbyhole near some railroad tracks in South Nashville. He works day labor 2-3 days a week and gets most of his supplies from a veteran service center that provides clothing and basic necessities/toiletries. Jimmy also looks like the stereotypical person many of the uninformed think of when they think of someone homeless, yet Jimmy is fiercely independent, a Godfearing and honest man to a fault, and lives in shame every day that he is unable to take care of himself due to his multiple injuries and illnesses suffered while defending his country. I helped Jimmy get a free phone after he missed an opportunity for an early appointment at the VA, and he missed it because although the VA caseworker had a cancellation that created an early opening for him, we all were unable to notify him in time to make the appointment.
So the next time you see someone you think is homeless standing on a corner using their phone, rather than become righteously indignant, be thankful, because the fact is, the more we connect our folks on the street with the community, the more likely it is we'll be able to get them back into the community, and the less likely it is we'll have to continue paying for the costs incurred from a life on the streets.
Homeless find support on Facebook, Twitter
7:57 PM, Aug 26, 2012
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USA TODAY
Here’s something everyone can “like”: Social media fosters community, even for those who don’t have a home.A new study finds social media like Twitter and Facebook tear down economic and geographic barriers to help homeless people connect to their families and support networks.
The study was conducted by Art Jipson, a sociologist and criminologist at the University of Dayton, a Catholic school. Jipson says the findings present a new potential for Catholic social teaching.
“Catholic social teaching expresses a concern about’a communal, social nature’ where’we are called to reach out and build relationships of love and justice,’” Jipson said.
He cites “Rerum Novarum,” Pope Leo XIII’s 1891 encyclical on the duties of government and citizens in creating a just society, as the context and foundation of his work.
Jipson’s study, “Shall I Paint You a Protest: Marxist Analysis of Social Media,” was presented August 17 at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association in Denver.
He found that homeless people leverage free services like Facebook and Twitter to find food, shelter and job services, and to keep up with family and friends. All they need is a smart phone or public library with Internet access.
“People think of Facebook as this billion-dollar entity with stock offerings that sells gobs of advertising,” Jipson said. “But, on Facebook, the’least of our brothers,’ as it says in the Bible, have equal access to all of Facebook’s offerings and establish a sense of belonging that is based on more than possessions.”
Jipson created his study after a homeless man won a prize on Jipson’s weekly radio show. When Jipson hand-delivered the prize, a CD, he discovered the man used his smart phone to stream radio and connect with people on Facebook.
For the study, Jipson spoke with 14 homeless people about their social media usage.
“Why can’t I be on Facebook?” asked one subject in the study. “I have as much right to that as anyone else. Just because I am homeless does not mean that I don’t care about this stuff, you know? My family is on Facebook. My friends are on Facebook. People who care about me are on Facebook.”Another interviewee said social media offered a judgment-free place to connect: “No one on the’net cares if I didn’t get a shower yesterday or smell some. They don’t judge me, you know? … I feel accepted. I am accepted.”
Sister Mary Ann Walsh, director of media relations for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, noted that advances in communications technology have created a more equitable sharing of the world’s resources, from the invention of the printing press to radio and television to the Internet.
Along the way, religion has made its mark on each platform, she said. The first book off Johannes Guttenberg’s press was the Bible. Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen hosted “The Catholic Hour” radio show and went on to host television programs.
New generations of Catholics can watch Sheen’s sermons on YouTube or download his radio addresses as podcasts. Or they can hear them over the USCCB website.
All these experiences, Jipson said, foster community.
“We assume that we have nothing in common with people who are different from us — by whatever means we might measure that difference,” Jipson said. “But a study like this demonstrates that we have more in common than we do in difference.”
Dispelling the Myth: "it often seems that placing homeless people in shelters is the most inexpensive way to meet the basic needs of people experiencing homelessness; some may even believe that shelters are an ideal solution." WRONG
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I've been butting up against a familiar situation for anyone who works with people experiencing homelessness; a low or fixed income person or family who was once homeless received some sort of income or assistance through SSDI or SSI, obtained housing because they were homeless and as such received "priority" status for that housing, and now needs to find new housing for some reason (in my most recent case, the owner is selling the property for commercial development).
But the game rules have changed for them because the person(s) who need to find a place to go aren't considered "homeless" so have no priority attached to their status. Because waiting lists are beyond ridiculously long, they won't see an option to move into an affordable unit until somewhere around 2015, and I'm not kidding, here. I can also tell you that readers of this post in some cities will be wishing they lived here in order to take advantage of the short (relatively speaking, of course) wait times we're "enjoying" in the Nashville area. I kid you not about this, either. You can rest assured that even the most compassionate and understanding landlord will be unable to accommodate a request to wait years for the current resident to find another place.
Many of the folks who find themselves trapped in this conundrum will wind up homeless - again. And many in our communities will complain that they're tired of supporting those who are homeless. And many charged with ending homelessness in those communities are now conditioned to ignore the fact that a human being is living without the most basic and necessary need a human can have, shelter, and quote the federal regs related to who qualifies - and who doesn't - as "homeless," using that rationale to deny the person from access to an affordable housing unit.
This is the "status quo" of homelessness and the housing situation as we know it today for a very large number of people and cities. My point in bringing this all to your attention is to also call attention to a couple of things related to this, the very first being a response (articulately crafted by the National Alliance to End Homelessness, [NAEH] - thank you so much guys!) to those who are "tired of supporting" those on trying to exist on the streets - please read the short but important piece below by the good folks at NAEH.
My second response is to my fellow direct service providers and the administrative team that leads the organization they are a part of. I know that money is an issue for all of us. I know too that often our hands are tied and we are required to follow federal (as well as any state and local) regulations when we're working to provide options to those requesting our services. But something else I know is that after we do this kind of work day in, day out, for years, we become immune, hardened, often cynical to the stories we hear from those who are desperate for housing.
Because we've had to deliver bad news so many times to those who had their hopes up when they first walked through the door, we've had to learn to turn off our emotional connection to the fact that we're dealing with human beings or risk our own health and sanity in the process. This slide down the callousness slope is easier than one might think, unfortunately, and it's not that unusual, either. It's a protective mechanism that kicks in when those charged with ending the misery of homelessness find out that more often than not they really can't do much for the person sitting across from them. It's a terrible position to put otherwise compassionate humans into, because I can almost guarantee that when they first sat down at their desk and began their jobs, they came to the job committed and convinced that they would be able to make a difference. Very few people I know are working in this field "for the money" because frankly, most of us who're working are not much better off than the clientele we serve if we're solely reliant on the income we earn from our jobs.
My two points collide here, into a neat little piece of enlightenment. Those complaining about the costs associated with getting folks off the street should join forces with those who are charged with finding affordable housing - as well as those who make the rules related to who gets affordable housing - and work together to put the money we're spending on homelessness in general to better use. We've definitely got solutions and approaches that are far superior to the current style of "managing homelessness" so many cities and towns currently employ.
By combining forces and focusing our efforts, we all get what we need. The truth is, it doesn't really matter to the folks who're eking out their existence on the streets what the motives are behind those who're trying to remove them from the bricks, it only matters where they are going when they are forced to "move along." By collaborating and refocusing the priorities to the best use of our increasingly limited tax dollars, everyone - and especially those who are currently homeless - goes home happy at the end of the day.
What more could we all ask for?
For many city officials, community leaders, and even direct service providers, it often seems that placing homeless people in shelters is the most inexpensive way to meet the basic needs of people experiencing homelessness; some may even believe that shelters are an ideal solution.
Research, however, has shown something surprisingly different.
The cost of homelessness can be quite high. Hospitalization, medical treatment, incarceration, police intervention, and emergency shelter expenses can add up quickly, making homelessness surprisingly expensive for municipalities and taxpayers.
Hospitalization and Medical Treatment
People experiencing homelessness are more likely to access the most costly health care services.
As an example, physician and health care expert Michael Siegel found that the average cost to cure an alcohol-related illness is approximately $10,660. Another study found that the average cost to California hospitals of treating a substance abuser is about $8,360 for those in treatment, and $14,740 for those who are not.
Prisons and Jails
People who are homeless spend more time in jail or prison, which is tremendously costly to the state and locality. Often, time served is a result of laws specifically targeting the homeless population, including regulations against loitering, sleeping in cars, and begging.
Emergency shelter is a costly alternative to permanent housing. While it is sometimes necessary for short-term crises, too often it serves as long-term housing. The cost of an emergency shelter bed funded by HUD's Emergency Shelter Grants program is approximately $8,067 more than the average annual cost of a federal housing subsidy (Section 8 Housing Certificate). A recent HUD study found that the cost of providing emergency shelter to families is generally as much or more than the cost of placing them in transitional or permanent housing.
Cost Studies
Studies have shown that – in practice, and not just in theory – providing people experiencing chronic homelessness with permanent supportive housing saves taxpayers money.
Permanent supportive housing refers to permanent housing coupled with supportive services.
While seemingly counterintuitive, these examples clearly demonstrate that a housing-based approach to homelessness is not only more cost-effective than a shelter-based approach, but more effective in the long term. By focusing our resources on ending homelessness, we can make real progress toward eradicating the social problem while helping the country's most vulnerable residents.
References
But the game rules have changed for them because the person(s) who need to find a place to go aren't considered "homeless" so have no priority attached to their status. Because waiting lists are beyond ridiculously long, they won't see an option to move into an affordable unit until somewhere around 2015, and I'm not kidding, here. I can also tell you that readers of this post in some cities will be wishing they lived here in order to take advantage of the short (relatively speaking, of course) wait times we're "enjoying" in the Nashville area. I kid you not about this, either. You can rest assured that even the most compassionate and understanding landlord will be unable to accommodate a request to wait years for the current resident to find another place.
Many of the folks who find themselves trapped in this conundrum will wind up homeless - again. And many in our communities will complain that they're tired of supporting those who are homeless. And many charged with ending homelessness in those communities are now conditioned to ignore the fact that a human being is living without the most basic and necessary need a human can have, shelter, and quote the federal regs related to who qualifies - and who doesn't - as "homeless," using that rationale to deny the person from access to an affordable housing unit.
This is the "status quo" of homelessness and the housing situation as we know it today for a very large number of people and cities. My point in bringing this all to your attention is to also call attention to a couple of things related to this, the very first being a response (articulately crafted by the National Alliance to End Homelessness, [NAEH] - thank you so much guys!) to those who are "tired of supporting" those on trying to exist on the streets - please read the short but important piece below by the good folks at NAEH.
My second response is to my fellow direct service providers and the administrative team that leads the organization they are a part of. I know that money is an issue for all of us. I know too that often our hands are tied and we are required to follow federal (as well as any state and local) regulations when we're working to provide options to those requesting our services. But something else I know is that after we do this kind of work day in, day out, for years, we become immune, hardened, often cynical to the stories we hear from those who are desperate for housing.
Because we've had to deliver bad news so many times to those who had their hopes up when they first walked through the door, we've had to learn to turn off our emotional connection to the fact that we're dealing with human beings or risk our own health and sanity in the process. This slide down the callousness slope is easier than one might think, unfortunately, and it's not that unusual, either. It's a protective mechanism that kicks in when those charged with ending the misery of homelessness find out that more often than not they really can't do much for the person sitting across from them. It's a terrible position to put otherwise compassionate humans into, because I can almost guarantee that when they first sat down at their desk and began their jobs, they came to the job committed and convinced that they would be able to make a difference. Very few people I know are working in this field "for the money" because frankly, most of us who're working are not much better off than the clientele we serve if we're solely reliant on the income we earn from our jobs.
My two points collide here, into a neat little piece of enlightenment. Those complaining about the costs associated with getting folks off the street should join forces with those who are charged with finding affordable housing - as well as those who make the rules related to who gets affordable housing - and work together to put the money we're spending on homelessness in general to better use. We've definitely got solutions and approaches that are far superior to the current style of "managing homelessness" so many cities and towns currently employ.
By combining forces and focusing our efforts, we all get what we need. The truth is, it doesn't really matter to the folks who're eking out their existence on the streets what the motives are behind those who're trying to remove them from the bricks, it only matters where they are going when they are forced to "move along." By collaborating and refocusing the priorities to the best use of our increasingly limited tax dollars, everyone - and especially those who are currently homeless - goes home happy at the end of the day.
What more could we all ask for?
Cost of Homelessness
 | Homelessness can be surprisingly costly for taxpayers. Fortunately, socially-responsible, cost-effective solutions exist. |
Research, however, has shown something surprisingly different.
The cost of homelessness can be quite high. Hospitalization, medical treatment, incarceration, police intervention, and emergency shelter expenses can add up quickly, making homelessness surprisingly expensive for municipalities and taxpayers.
Hospitalization and Medical Treatment
People experiencing homelessness are more likely to access the most costly health care services.
- According to a report in the New England Journal of Medicine, homeless people spent an average of four days longer per hospital visit than comparable non-homeless people. This extra cost, approximately $2,414 per hospitalization, is attributable to homelessness.
- A study of hospital admissions of homeless people in Hawaii revealed that 1,751 adults were responsible for 564 hospitalizations and $4 million in admission costs. Their rate of psychiatric hospitalization was over 100 times higher than their non-homeless cohort. The researchers conducting the study estimate that the excess cost for treating these homeless individuals was $3.5 million or about $2,000 per person.
As an example, physician and health care expert Michael Siegel found that the average cost to cure an alcohol-related illness is approximately $10,660. Another study found that the average cost to California hospitals of treating a substance abuser is about $8,360 for those in treatment, and $14,740 for those who are not.
Prisons and Jails
People who are homeless spend more time in jail or prison, which is tremendously costly to the state and locality. Often, time served is a result of laws specifically targeting the homeless population, including regulations against loitering, sleeping in cars, and begging.
- According to a University of Texas two-year survey of homeless individuals, each person cost the taxpayers $14,480 per year, primarily for overnight jail.
- A typical cost of a prison bed in a state or federal prison is $20,000 per year.
Emergency shelter is a costly alternative to permanent housing. While it is sometimes necessary for short-term crises, too often it serves as long-term housing. The cost of an emergency shelter bed funded by HUD's Emergency Shelter Grants program is approximately $8,067 more than the average annual cost of a federal housing subsidy (Section 8 Housing Certificate). A recent HUD study found that the cost of providing emergency shelter to families is generally as much or more than the cost of placing them in transitional or permanent housing.
Cost Studies
Studies have shown that – in practice, and not just in theory – providing people experiencing chronic homelessness with permanent supportive housing saves taxpayers money.
Permanent supportive housing refers to permanent housing coupled with supportive services.
- A study recent study followed the progress of the Downtown Emergency Service Center (DESC) in Seattle, WA. All the residents at this Housing First-styled residence had severe alcohol problems and varying medical and mental health conditions. When taking into account all costs – including housing costs – the participants in the 1811 Eastlake program cost $2,449 less per person per month than those who were in conventional city shelters, as described in the article from the Journal of American Medical Association.
- A cost study of rural homelessness from Portland, ME found significant cost reductions when providing permanent supportive housing as opposed to serving the people while they remain homeless. The study specifically noted a 57 percent reduction in the cost of mental health services over a six-month period, partly due to a 79 percent drop in the cost of psychiatric hospitalization.
- A study from Los Angeles, CA – home to ten percent of the entire homeless population – found that placing four chronically homeless people into permanent supportive housing saved the city more than $80,000 per year.
While seemingly counterintuitive, these examples clearly demonstrate that a housing-based approach to homelessness is not only more cost-effective than a shelter-based approach, but more effective in the long term. By focusing our resources on ending homelessness, we can make real progress toward eradicating the social problem while helping the country's most vulnerable residents.
References
- Salit S.A., Kuhn E.M., Hartz A.J., Vu J.M., Mosso A.L. Hospitalization costs associated with homelessness in New York City. New England Journal of Medicine 1998; 338: 1734-1740.
- Martell J.V., Seitz R.S., Harada J.K., Kobayashi J., Sasaki V.K., Wong C. Hospitalization in an urban homeless population: the Honolulu Urban Homeless Project. Annals of Internal Medicine 1992; 116:299-303.
- Rosenheck, R., Bassuk, E., Salomon, A., Special Populations of Homeless Americans, Practical Lessons: The 1998 National Symposium on Homelessness Research, US Department of Housing and Urban Development, US Department of Health and Human Services, August, 1999.
- From the website of the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, May 8, 2000.
- Diamond, Pamela and Steven B. Schneed, Lives in the Shadows: Some of the Costs and Consequences of a "Non-System" of Care. Hogg Foundation for Mental Health, University of Texas, Austin, TX, 1991. 6Slevin, Peter, Life After Prison: Lack of Services Has High Price. The Washington Post, April 24, 2000.
- Office of Policy Development and Research, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Evaluation of the Emergency Shelter Grants Program, Volume 1: Findings September 1994. p 91.
- Abt Assocaites, et al, Costs Associated With First-Time Homelessness For Families and Individuals, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, March 23, 2010.
"new face of homelessness in a deepening foreclosure and economic crisis: the American family"...And the Elderly
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My friend and colleague Diane Nilan and I recently shared a brief discussion on the issue of family homelessness and that discussion reminded me of my own experience with the "new faces of homelessness," especially during time time I was the Veteran Services Coordinator at Operation Stand Down Nasvhille, Inc(OSDN).
Prior to working for OSDN, I was providing street outreach for a co-occuring service provider and in that capacity, was working primarily with the folks most people immediately think of when they think of the stereotypical image of someone experiencing homelessness. Since I would certainly have been considered one of those "stereotypical" individuals prior to entering my own recovery back in 1999, I know first-hand that they are far from the stigmatized view so many have, since each one of those individuals comes to the table with a life, loved ones who care or at least once cared, and none ever saw their lives travel the course that left them destitute, homeless, and broken on a city street.
To be sure, plenty of the veterans experiencing homelessness I worked with at OSDN would have- and have been - inappropriately "stereotyped" and as a result stigmatized because of their appearance. But something else was happening at OSDN as we moved into 2010 that provoked emotions of fear and trepidation among many who had for a long time been working with those experiencing homelessness and had seen a lot of misery and heard a lot of sad stories.
That "something else" was a frighteningly large wave of couples and families who, to the very last one, would always start their client intake with, "I've worked all my life and never thought this would happen to me." This "wave" continues crashing down upon direct service providers across all areas of our community, but what made it particularly powerful to those of us at OSDN was that we were dealing with veterans, and veterans who'd been actively engaged in work, community and family for their entire lives.
That these veterans, who were well connected, had well established networks of support and employment resources, and even qualified to receive preferential hiring status in some jobs were suddenly out of work and desperately seeking jobs that were non-existent, was a very scary wake-up call for all of us, indeed.
In 2012, the entire nation has awakened to the new face of homelessness, although ignorance and stigma still abound within many communities and continues to hamper even the most herculean efforts put forth by those currently homeless and struggling to get back on their feet and regain some sense of normalcy in their lives again.
To make matters worse, the federal government has been unable to change policy fast enough to be able to provide critical early assistance to people, exacerbating further the plight of those stuck on the streets as a direct result of a slowed economy and a housing foreclosure crisis.
What this means to them - and to those who provide direct services - is that when families, couples or individuals finally set aside their pride and their longstanding, inculcated sense of self reliance to humble themselves enough to ask for help, they discover that there is very little help available to them beyond some time at a typically filled to capacity shelter. That shelter often splits up the men and women, and can even split up children - especially male children - who reach a particular age and are then regulated out of the shelter with their mom and into the men's shelter.
For most families, this is simply unacceptable, since they've been clinging to each other for strength and comfort since they began experiencing problems.
For single parent women faced with more time on the streets together or sending their oldest son into a men's shelter, just about any mother out there will tell you what the decision is going to be, since mom needs the kids close at hand as they cope and overcome the challenges together.
All of these new faces realize early on that something is horribly wrong with a system that can't step in with a small level of assistance before they end up homeless on the streets, and then force some of them to wait for months while homeless before they even qualify as 'homeless." To its credit, HUD has worked to change the definition of "homelessness" and has tried to be more inclusive and proactive by making it slightly easier to intervene earlier.
But the truth is, by the time most of these families reach the point of qualifying for help, they've left a trail of debt, eviction and default in their wake, which makes extricating themselves from the systemic issues that bring about homelessness that much more challenging to overcome.
Think for a moment about your own response to a job loss; most likely, you'd first go through your savings trying to stay on top of the basic bills (rent, utilities, car payment) as you desperately hunt for a job, and the "non-essential" things would start to fall behind (cable bills, insurance premiums for health and vehicle, healthier foodstuffs, etc). As the month ends with no job offer in sight and your savings starts showing severe signs of depletion, you begin trying to work deals with your creditors, only to find that because you haven't yet received eviction or turnoff notices, you don't yet qualify. At about the three month mark, the eviction and turnoff notices arrive, and if you're unaware of the timing of application for local community assistance sources, chances are that by the time you learn they are available to assist you, they're out of funds for the month.
Now, with credit ruined, turnoff notices for essential utilities stacked on the table, and forced removal from your residence imminent, you begin to consider government social services. But even if you're lucky enough to actually qualify, the application period can take up to 90 days to begin receiving food stamps, and the days of big welfare checks are long gone, so this is not going to help you catch up on your utility bills and your rent.
Finally the day comes, the Sheriff arrives and sets you, your family and the possessions you have left after you've pawned and yard-saled everything you had of value, onto the curb, destitute, terrified, and trying to keep some dignity and hope alive for the rest of your family. With all pride long since stripped away, you humbly try to find someone - anyone - that might be able to help you, because surely that lavish safety net we hear the politicians saying needs to be reduced further has some help available to you.
Unfortunately, there's not a lot we as providers can offer you yet. Your efforts to sustain yourself, you discover, have worked against you, and you discover that the safety net you thought protected those who'd hit bottom has been so gutted that the only assistance available is typically for the most vulnerable, the "chronically" homeless, the addicted, the severely mental ill. To reach this eligibility, you realize that things are going to have to get worse, much worse, before you have a chance at making them better, and for many, this is the last straw.
If there is any bright spot to any of this, it is that many of these people will succeed in spite of the challenges they face, because they are inculcated and determined and motivated to do so. And what they will remember about this experience is that we as a nation have failed to ensure that our safety net works for everyone, and not just the very worst of the worst. These people traditionally vote, and they also speak out, both of which they will be doing as they recover their dignity and their lives over the next several years. And they will remember how hard it was for them, and I'm counting on the fact that these people will be the ones who help drive our public policy in the proper direction, so that anyone who finds themselves facing homelessness has options long before they ever have to begin the slide into it.
GUY RAZ, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Guy Raz.
If you look at the year in economic statistics, you could tell two different stories of two different Americas. The Dow Jones Industrial Average reached a two-year high this week: retail sales, industrial production, factory orders, all are up. And the biggest corporations are posting healthy profits. And yet, hidden among all these trends is one that was released this past week by the U.S. Conference of Mayors.
In 2010, cities across America saw a 9 percent increase in the number of families seeking emergency shelter. One out of 200 people in America slept in a homeless shelter this past year. The homeless crisis now affects more families, people who just a year or two ago had jobs, apartments, relatively stable lives that affects more families in that any other time in recent history.
And so on this Christmas Day, we bring you the stories of three of those families: the Gibsons from Washington, D.C.; the Stewarts from Salt Lake City, Utah; and the Browns, also from Utah.
We start with the story of Jamie Stewart(ph).
Ms. JAMIE STEWART: I have to be here with my daughter and grandson. I mean, not being able to have our own house and - because I know I'm better - well, not better than that, but I mean, I know I can do it. It's just - the work is just hard after hard. You know, you go to an (unintelligible), there's 15 people there. And (unintelligible) always is to having my own place and being able to provide for my family, which I can't right now.
RAZ: Jamie Stewart lives in the shelter for homeless families with her 18-year-old daughter Emilia(ph) and Emilia's 3-month-old son in Salt Lake City. You just heard Emilia patting his back in that clip.
Jamie left Arizona earlier this year with Emilia and the baby to tend to her dying father in Utah. They lived with her sister for a few weeks; eventually in a car for another week. Jamie thought she'd find a job pretty quickly. She's a nurse, and maybe getting apartment. But she hasn't, except for some seasonal work with UPS.
Ms. STEWART: It's sad. In the first place, I don't have, you know, we don't have our own place. We don't have it free. I just haven't really even thought about the holidays. I haven't. I'm not shopping. I'm not buying for anybody. I'm not - because, of course, I'm saving my money to get a place and to...
Ms. EMILIA STEWART: It's definitely hard just because it's my son's first Christmas and we can't really celebrate out. We can't really buy him the things that we need for him. And so definitely makes it a lot harder knowing and having to look at my mom and not watch her open Christmas presents, Christmas morning and (unintelligible) people say that they know how it is. They - but they don't.
So I tend to ask them, have you ever looked down at your 3-month-year-old son not knowing where you're going to be next, or if you're going to have a roof over your head, or diapers to put on him, or a bottle to feed him? It's hard.
RAZ: That's Jamie and Emilia Stewart in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Mr. DAVID BROWN: My name is David Brown. I'm 31. I'm living currently out here in Magna, Utah.
RAZ: Exactly a year ago, David Brown lost his job at Wal-Mart. And for most of this year, David and his wife Nicole and their four kids, 11-year-old Chloe, 9-year-old Seth, 5-year-old Cameron, and J.J.(ph) who's 2, have been homeless.
Mr. BROWN: You know, we were avoiding the actual shelter itself at all cost. You know, staying with family member here or family member there, ending up staying in the pop-up trailer in your friend's driveway. You know, we were doing pretty much everything we had to to avoid the shelter.
RAZ: At one point, the whole family slept in their van.
Mr. BROWN: You know, when you're in that type of situation, it's not easy to sleep because, you know, kids are scared, of course, and, you know, that's who you're there for, is you're there to let the children know that everything is going to be okay and you're not going to let anything happen.
So, you know, constant cars driving by, you never know what's about to happen. If, you know, someone's looking the brake into a car and they'd stop in the pit the wrong one, you know? So I'd remember there was like very little to no sleep at all. I think I slept maybe a total of 45 minutes.
RAZ: The family did end up in the shelter for sometime. Luckily, David Brown found a job a few months ago, and the family now lives in an apartment in Magna, Utah.
Mr. BROWN: You know, there's a lot of things you look at in life and there's a lot of times in life where you would look at a situation, and that's the first thing that comes in your head, and that happened to me, you know? And I can honestly say that as far as being homeless, I was one of those skeptics that believed it will never happen to me.
You just never know where life's going to take you. And you may think that everything is fine and great one day and wake up the next and have everything passed down around you. And it's possible to (unintelligible).
Mr. ANTONIO GIBSON: My name is Antonio Gibson. I'm 28 years old. And I reside in Washington, D.C.
RAZ: Statistically, Antonio Gibson doesn't even exist. It's not often academic studies or towering speeches are devoted to single black fathers. Antonio raises his two kids, 9-year-old Navia(ph) and 3-year-old Antonio Jr., by himself.
Last year, the mother of his two kids left after she lost her job at Bank of America. At the time, Antonio was a part-time janitor. He cleaned floors at NASA headquarters at night.
Mr. GIBSON: I tried to, with my part-time job, maintain the bills and the household and all the other necessities. But after a while, I guess it became a little bit too much, and we've gotten debt with the rent and with other bills and everything and we received our very first eviction threat.
RAZ: That was last November. And for most of the past 13 months, Antonio, Navia and Antonio Jr. lived in a car. He would tell Navia that they were camping or that the house was being renovated. He tried to find temporary housing, but all of them were full. And each time, he was turned away.
So at night, Antonio would park the car in the garage of an abandoned house. He'd crack the windows for ventilation and say goodnight to his kids.
Mr. GIBSON: Looking in the backseat while they were sleeping in the car, it was just breaking me down, emotionally and mentally, you know? And I can also see a change in my daughter, you know, like she didn't talk no more. She was afraid to go to school, you know? And she always loves school since she was like 5 years old. So I just saw their big change, and then I knew that that's where it was coming from.
I would wake up at 7 a.m. in the morning and (unintelligible) tap water to (unintelligible), wash our face, brush our teeth or try to change their clothes. And I'll first drop my daughter off to her school at 8 o'clock. And drop my son off the daycare around 8, 8:30.
You know, I used to read them a story in the car, little books. They have this thing at my son's school called lending library, where you can get a book every day, bring it back every day. So, and we get a different book every day, and it was cool because they would go to sleep real easy with that, you know? So that was my daily routine.
RAZ: After 11 months in the car, the Gibsons finally managed to get a place through the city's Housing Authority. He's on food stamps now and paying rent with help from a local church.
Now, a moment ago, I mentioned new figures that show a 9 percent increase in homeless families in cities across America this year.
Maria Foscarinis with the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty says as dramatic as that number sounds, it's probably even higher.
Ms. MARIA FOSCARINIS (Founder/Executive Director, National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty): Because what they are measuring is numbers of families who are seeking emergency shelter.
RAZ: Showing up at shelters.
Ms. FOSCARINIS: Yes. And so by definition, that number is limited by existing shelter capacity, which we know is grossly insufficient to meet a need. The national estimate is that only about half of all homeless people are actually sheltered, and that's due to lack of shelter capacity.
RAZ: How do budget cuts in states and municipalities begin to make the problem worse? Because, of course, we haven't really seen the full impact of this budget cuts yet.
Ms. FOSCARINIS: Exactly. Just this week, the D.C. City Council, since we're here in Washington, the local government passed a law that limits services here in Washington to people who can prove that they're D.C. residents. And this is supremely ironic and misconceived in our view because a big problem when you're homeless is you don't have ID, or it becomes very difficult to prove residency. But it's an indicator of the city trying to conserve its own resources.
RAZ: You're hearing reports of homeless shelters having to turn people away very, very frequently.
Ms. FOSCARINIS: Absolutely. And the U.S. Conference of Mayors report that was just released earlier this week show - said that 27 percent of requests for emergency shelter on average were turned away.
RAZ: Twenty-seven percent.
Ms. FOSCARINIS: On average. And again, this is likely understating the problem, because at a certain point, people just give up.
RAZ: I mean, realistically, what could be done over the next two years? I mean, you're well aware that Congress is on a budget-cutting kick, the American public is demanding this. What can be done to begin to tackle this issue?
Ms. FOSCARINIS: Budget is obviously critical and it's really a matter of where our priorities are as a nation. So I think we know that if something is considered important, money can be found and money can be spent.
Banks were considered too big to fail. Well, I think we have to start thinking that in a country, such as the United States, that allowing people to be homeless, allowing children to go without a place to lay their heads at night is not something we will tolerate, and we have to be able to find the money to stop that, to ensure that everybody has a place to live.
RAZ: That's Maria Foscarinis. She is the executive director of the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty here in Washington, D.C.
Maria, thank you for being here.
Ms. FOSCARINIS: Thank you, Guy.
RAZ: If you're interested in finding out more about the groups that have helped the families we heard from earlier in the segment, here are a few websites: The Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless helped Antonio Gibson find public housing. They're at legalclinic.org. Family Promise helped the Browns and Stewarts. They're at fpsl.org. And thanks to Catholic Charities in Washington, D.C., for helping us this week with the story. You can find their website at catholiccharitiesdc.org.
You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
Copyright © 2010 National Public Radio. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to National Public Radio. This transcript is provided for personal, noncommercial use only, pursuant to our Terms of Use. Any other use requires NPR's prior permission. Visit our permissions page for further information.NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio.
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Photo credit: Donna Grethen / Tribune Media Services | "These days poverty is less and less a remote phenomenon," writes Nicolaus Mills.
She has picked the perfect spot to be noticed -- right between a subway stop and an upscale deli on New York's Upper West Side. But she seems to crave privacy. Never does she initiate eye contact. Never does she start a conversation. Her preference is to sit quietly on a foot stool reading a book.
Yet more often than not, the aluminum beverage cup that sits in front of her stool has dollar bills in it.
I have given her some of those dollars. "God bless you," she said once. Another time, it was simply "Thank you."
MORE: Analysis and discussion from Viewsday | Newsday columnists | More opinion
CARTOONS: Walt Handelsman's Cartoons | National Cartoon Roundup
The homeless men who in the past asked for handouts on the same block did not do so well. They rarely got more quarters than nickels. Even holding the door open for the customers of a nearby bagel shop rarely worked for them.
The woman to whom I and others walking along this Upper West Side sidewalk having been giving dollar bills looks different from the homeless men she has replaced. She is tastefully dressed. Her gray hair is clean. She doesn't talk to herself. She is white.
She is the new face of homelessness, and from what I can tell, her presence frightens passersby. They see themselves in her, and they are right to do so. "Homeless, Scared, and Hungry" she wrote one day on a cardboard sign she put next to her stool. It was easy to believe her.
These days poverty is less and less a remote phenomenon. In the last decade, those living under the poverty line in the suburbs grew by 66 percent while the overall suburban population barely changed. Even having a job is no guarantee of staying out of poverty any longer; 7.2 percent of those the government says are employed are living below the poverty line, and 150 million Americans are no more than two paychecks away from falling into poverty. In our high cost-of-living region, the stakes can be even higher.
In the case of the woman on the stool, it is hard to imagine that she became homeless through her own fault. Her neat appearance and visible shyness make it seem more likely that terrible luck, rather than a personal failing or mental illness, is the source of her trouble. She resembles a kindly aunt who has, for the moment, sat down to rest on a hot summer day.
I hope she keeps getting dollars rather than loose change. But I worry that the dollar donations I am talking about say something terrible about the way we have in the past stereotyped homelessness. It should not take a middle-class-appearing woman asking for money to jar us into giving.
During the Great Depression John Steinbeck in "The Grapes of Wrath" and James Agee and Walker Evans in "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men" took us inside the heads of the poor, making sure we didn't just see them as anonymous Okies or faceless sharecroppers. We have lost that egalitarian sensibility, and we need to get it back. If it takes a woman who looks as if she has always had a roof over her head to help accelerate that change, so be it.
Anything is better than the quiet racism that let so many passersby pay scant attention to the African-American homeless people who, in the past, dominated this small New York block.
Prior to working for OSDN, I was providing street outreach for a co-occuring service provider and in that capacity, was working primarily with the folks most people immediately think of when they think of the stereotypical image of someone experiencing homelessness. Since I would certainly have been considered one of those "stereotypical" individuals prior to entering my own recovery back in 1999, I know first-hand that they are far from the stigmatized view so many have, since each one of those individuals comes to the table with a life, loved ones who care or at least once cared, and none ever saw their lives travel the course that left them destitute, homeless, and broken on a city street.
To be sure, plenty of the veterans experiencing homelessness I worked with at OSDN would have- and have been - inappropriately "stereotyped" and as a result stigmatized because of their appearance. But something else was happening at OSDN as we moved into 2010 that provoked emotions of fear and trepidation among many who had for a long time been working with those experiencing homelessness and had seen a lot of misery and heard a lot of sad stories.
That "something else" was a frighteningly large wave of couples and families who, to the very last one, would always start their client intake with, "I've worked all my life and never thought this would happen to me." This "wave" continues crashing down upon direct service providers across all areas of our community, but what made it particularly powerful to those of us at OSDN was that we were dealing with veterans, and veterans who'd been actively engaged in work, community and family for their entire lives.
That these veterans, who were well connected, had well established networks of support and employment resources, and even qualified to receive preferential hiring status in some jobs were suddenly out of work and desperately seeking jobs that were non-existent, was a very scary wake-up call for all of us, indeed.
In 2012, the entire nation has awakened to the new face of homelessness, although ignorance and stigma still abound within many communities and continues to hamper even the most herculean efforts put forth by those currently homeless and struggling to get back on their feet and regain some sense of normalcy in their lives again.
To make matters worse, the federal government has been unable to change policy fast enough to be able to provide critical early assistance to people, exacerbating further the plight of those stuck on the streets as a direct result of a slowed economy and a housing foreclosure crisis.
What this means to them - and to those who provide direct services - is that when families, couples or individuals finally set aside their pride and their longstanding, inculcated sense of self reliance to humble themselves enough to ask for help, they discover that there is very little help available to them beyond some time at a typically filled to capacity shelter. That shelter often splits up the men and women, and can even split up children - especially male children - who reach a particular age and are then regulated out of the shelter with their mom and into the men's shelter.
For most families, this is simply unacceptable, since they've been clinging to each other for strength and comfort since they began experiencing problems.
For single parent women faced with more time on the streets together or sending their oldest son into a men's shelter, just about any mother out there will tell you what the decision is going to be, since mom needs the kids close at hand as they cope and overcome the challenges together.
All of these new faces realize early on that something is horribly wrong with a system that can't step in with a small level of assistance before they end up homeless on the streets, and then force some of them to wait for months while homeless before they even qualify as 'homeless." To its credit, HUD has worked to change the definition of "homelessness" and has tried to be more inclusive and proactive by making it slightly easier to intervene earlier.
But the truth is, by the time most of these families reach the point of qualifying for help, they've left a trail of debt, eviction and default in their wake, which makes extricating themselves from the systemic issues that bring about homelessness that much more challenging to overcome.
Think for a moment about your own response to a job loss; most likely, you'd first go through your savings trying to stay on top of the basic bills (rent, utilities, car payment) as you desperately hunt for a job, and the "non-essential" things would start to fall behind (cable bills, insurance premiums for health and vehicle, healthier foodstuffs, etc). As the month ends with no job offer in sight and your savings starts showing severe signs of depletion, you begin trying to work deals with your creditors, only to find that because you haven't yet received eviction or turnoff notices, you don't yet qualify. At about the three month mark, the eviction and turnoff notices arrive, and if you're unaware of the timing of application for local community assistance sources, chances are that by the time you learn they are available to assist you, they're out of funds for the month.
Now, with credit ruined, turnoff notices for essential utilities stacked on the table, and forced removal from your residence imminent, you begin to consider government social services. But even if you're lucky enough to actually qualify, the application period can take up to 90 days to begin receiving food stamps, and the days of big welfare checks are long gone, so this is not going to help you catch up on your utility bills and your rent.
Finally the day comes, the Sheriff arrives and sets you, your family and the possessions you have left after you've pawned and yard-saled everything you had of value, onto the curb, destitute, terrified, and trying to keep some dignity and hope alive for the rest of your family. With all pride long since stripped away, you humbly try to find someone - anyone - that might be able to help you, because surely that lavish safety net we hear the politicians saying needs to be reduced further has some help available to you.
Unfortunately, there's not a lot we as providers can offer you yet. Your efforts to sustain yourself, you discover, have worked against you, and you discover that the safety net you thought protected those who'd hit bottom has been so gutted that the only assistance available is typically for the most vulnerable, the "chronically" homeless, the addicted, the severely mental ill. To reach this eligibility, you realize that things are going to have to get worse, much worse, before you have a chance at making them better, and for many, this is the last straw.
If there is any bright spot to any of this, it is that many of these people will succeed in spite of the challenges they face, because they are inculcated and determined and motivated to do so. And what they will remember about this experience is that we as a nation have failed to ensure that our safety net works for everyone, and not just the very worst of the worst. These people traditionally vote, and they also speak out, both of which they will be doing as they recover their dignity and their lives over the next several years. And they will remember how hard it was for them, and I'm counting on the fact that these people will be the ones who help drive our public policy in the proper direction, so that anyone who finds themselves facing homelessness has options long before they ever have to begin the slide into it.
New Face Of Homelessness: The American Family
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From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Guy Raz.
If you look at the year in economic statistics, you could tell two different stories of two different Americas. The Dow Jones Industrial Average reached a two-year high this week: retail sales, industrial production, factory orders, all are up. And the biggest corporations are posting healthy profits. And yet, hidden among all these trends is one that was released this past week by the U.S. Conference of Mayors.
In 2010, cities across America saw a 9 percent increase in the number of families seeking emergency shelter. One out of 200 people in America slept in a homeless shelter this past year. The homeless crisis now affects more families, people who just a year or two ago had jobs, apartments, relatively stable lives that affects more families in that any other time in recent history.
And so on this Christmas Day, we bring you the stories of three of those families: the Gibsons from Washington, D.C.; the Stewarts from Salt Lake City, Utah; and the Browns, also from Utah.
We start with the story of Jamie Stewart(ph).
Ms. JAMIE STEWART: I have to be here with my daughter and grandson. I mean, not being able to have our own house and - because I know I'm better - well, not better than that, but I mean, I know I can do it. It's just - the work is just hard after hard. You know, you go to an (unintelligible), there's 15 people there. And (unintelligible) always is to having my own place and being able to provide for my family, which I can't right now.
RAZ: Jamie Stewart lives in the shelter for homeless families with her 18-year-old daughter Emilia(ph) and Emilia's 3-month-old son in Salt Lake City. You just heard Emilia patting his back in that clip.
Jamie left Arizona earlier this year with Emilia and the baby to tend to her dying father in Utah. They lived with her sister for a few weeks; eventually in a car for another week. Jamie thought she'd find a job pretty quickly. She's a nurse, and maybe getting apartment. But she hasn't, except for some seasonal work with UPS.
Ms. STEWART: It's sad. In the first place, I don't have, you know, we don't have our own place. We don't have it free. I just haven't really even thought about the holidays. I haven't. I'm not shopping. I'm not buying for anybody. I'm not - because, of course, I'm saving my money to get a place and to...
Ms. EMILIA STEWART: It's definitely hard just because it's my son's first Christmas and we can't really celebrate out. We can't really buy him the things that we need for him. And so definitely makes it a lot harder knowing and having to look at my mom and not watch her open Christmas presents, Christmas morning and (unintelligible) people say that they know how it is. They - but they don't.
So I tend to ask them, have you ever looked down at your 3-month-year-old son not knowing where you're going to be next, or if you're going to have a roof over your head, or diapers to put on him, or a bottle to feed him? It's hard.
RAZ: That's Jamie and Emilia Stewart in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Mr. DAVID BROWN: My name is David Brown. I'm 31. I'm living currently out here in Magna, Utah.
RAZ: Exactly a year ago, David Brown lost his job at Wal-Mart. And for most of this year, David and his wife Nicole and their four kids, 11-year-old Chloe, 9-year-old Seth, 5-year-old Cameron, and J.J.(ph) who's 2, have been homeless.
Mr. BROWN: You know, we were avoiding the actual shelter itself at all cost. You know, staying with family member here or family member there, ending up staying in the pop-up trailer in your friend's driveway. You know, we were doing pretty much everything we had to to avoid the shelter.
RAZ: At one point, the whole family slept in their van.
Mr. BROWN: You know, when you're in that type of situation, it's not easy to sleep because, you know, kids are scared, of course, and, you know, that's who you're there for, is you're there to let the children know that everything is going to be okay and you're not going to let anything happen.
So, you know, constant cars driving by, you never know what's about to happen. If, you know, someone's looking the brake into a car and they'd stop in the pit the wrong one, you know? So I'd remember there was like very little to no sleep at all. I think I slept maybe a total of 45 minutes.
RAZ: The family did end up in the shelter for sometime. Luckily, David Brown found a job a few months ago, and the family now lives in an apartment in Magna, Utah.
Mr. BROWN: You know, there's a lot of things you look at in life and there's a lot of times in life where you would look at a situation, and that's the first thing that comes in your head, and that happened to me, you know? And I can honestly say that as far as being homeless, I was one of those skeptics that believed it will never happen to me.
You just never know where life's going to take you. And you may think that everything is fine and great one day and wake up the next and have everything passed down around you. And it's possible to (unintelligible).
Mr. ANTONIO GIBSON: My name is Antonio Gibson. I'm 28 years old. And I reside in Washington, D.C.
RAZ: Statistically, Antonio Gibson doesn't even exist. It's not often academic studies or towering speeches are devoted to single black fathers. Antonio raises his two kids, 9-year-old Navia(ph) and 3-year-old Antonio Jr., by himself.
Last year, the mother of his two kids left after she lost her job at Bank of America. At the time, Antonio was a part-time janitor. He cleaned floors at NASA headquarters at night.
Mr. GIBSON: I tried to, with my part-time job, maintain the bills and the household and all the other necessities. But after a while, I guess it became a little bit too much, and we've gotten debt with the rent and with other bills and everything and we received our very first eviction threat.
RAZ: That was last November. And for most of the past 13 months, Antonio, Navia and Antonio Jr. lived in a car. He would tell Navia that they were camping or that the house was being renovated. He tried to find temporary housing, but all of them were full. And each time, he was turned away.
So at night, Antonio would park the car in the garage of an abandoned house. He'd crack the windows for ventilation and say goodnight to his kids.
Mr. GIBSON: Looking in the backseat while they were sleeping in the car, it was just breaking me down, emotionally and mentally, you know? And I can also see a change in my daughter, you know, like she didn't talk no more. She was afraid to go to school, you know? And she always loves school since she was like 5 years old. So I just saw their big change, and then I knew that that's where it was coming from.
I would wake up at 7 a.m. in the morning and (unintelligible) tap water to (unintelligible), wash our face, brush our teeth or try to change their clothes. And I'll first drop my daughter off to her school at 8 o'clock. And drop my son off the daycare around 8, 8:30.
You know, I used to read them a story in the car, little books. They have this thing at my son's school called lending library, where you can get a book every day, bring it back every day. So, and we get a different book every day, and it was cool because they would go to sleep real easy with that, you know? So that was my daily routine.
RAZ: After 11 months in the car, the Gibsons finally managed to get a place through the city's Housing Authority. He's on food stamps now and paying rent with help from a local church.
Now, a moment ago, I mentioned new figures that show a 9 percent increase in homeless families in cities across America this year.
Maria Foscarinis with the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty says as dramatic as that number sounds, it's probably even higher.
Ms. MARIA FOSCARINIS (Founder/Executive Director, National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty): Because what they are measuring is numbers of families who are seeking emergency shelter.
RAZ: Showing up at shelters.
Ms. FOSCARINIS: Yes. And so by definition, that number is limited by existing shelter capacity, which we know is grossly insufficient to meet a need. The national estimate is that only about half of all homeless people are actually sheltered, and that's due to lack of shelter capacity.
RAZ: How do budget cuts in states and municipalities begin to make the problem worse? Because, of course, we haven't really seen the full impact of this budget cuts yet.
Ms. FOSCARINIS: Exactly. Just this week, the D.C. City Council, since we're here in Washington, the local government passed a law that limits services here in Washington to people who can prove that they're D.C. residents. And this is supremely ironic and misconceived in our view because a big problem when you're homeless is you don't have ID, or it becomes very difficult to prove residency. But it's an indicator of the city trying to conserve its own resources.
RAZ: You're hearing reports of homeless shelters having to turn people away very, very frequently.
Ms. FOSCARINIS: Absolutely. And the U.S. Conference of Mayors report that was just released earlier this week show - said that 27 percent of requests for emergency shelter on average were turned away.
RAZ: Twenty-seven percent.
Ms. FOSCARINIS: On average. And again, this is likely understating the problem, because at a certain point, people just give up.
RAZ: I mean, realistically, what could be done over the next two years? I mean, you're well aware that Congress is on a budget-cutting kick, the American public is demanding this. What can be done to begin to tackle this issue?
Ms. FOSCARINIS: Budget is obviously critical and it's really a matter of where our priorities are as a nation. So I think we know that if something is considered important, money can be found and money can be spent.
Banks were considered too big to fail. Well, I think we have to start thinking that in a country, such as the United States, that allowing people to be homeless, allowing children to go without a place to lay their heads at night is not something we will tolerate, and we have to be able to find the money to stop that, to ensure that everybody has a place to live.
RAZ: That's Maria Foscarinis. She is the executive director of the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty here in Washington, D.C.
Maria, thank you for being here.
Ms. FOSCARINIS: Thank you, Guy.
RAZ: If you're interested in finding out more about the groups that have helped the families we heard from earlier in the segment, here are a few websites: The Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless helped Antonio Gibson find public housing. They're at legalclinic.org. Family Promise helped the Browns and Stewarts. They're at fpsl.org. And thanks to Catholic Charities in Washington, D.C., for helping us this week with the story. You can find their website at catholiccharitiesdc.org.
You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
Copyright © 2010 National Public Radio. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to National Public Radio. This transcript is provided for personal, noncommercial use only, pursuant to our Terms of Use. Any other use requires NPR's prior permission. Visit our permissions page for further information.NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio.
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The Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless Family Promise Catholic CharitiesRelated NPR Stories
'Street Papers' Sold By Homeless Are Thriving Dec. 23, 2010 Advice From A Homeless Man: Holiday Givers Need To Coordinate Nov. 23,Mills: The new face of homelessness
Published: July 19, 2012 6:00 PMBy
Photo credit: Donna Grethen / Tribune Media Services | "These days poverty is less and less a remote phenomenon," writes Nicolaus Mills. She has picked the perfect spot to be noticed -- right between a subway stop and an upscale deli on New York's Upper West Side. But she seems to crave privacy. Never does she initiate eye contact. Never does she start a conversation. Her preference is to sit quietly on a foot stool reading a book.
Yet more often than not, the aluminum beverage cup that sits in front of her stool has dollar bills in it.
I have given her some of those dollars. "God bless you," she said once. Another time, it was simply "Thank you."
MORE: Analysis and discussion from Viewsday | Newsday columnists | More opinion
CARTOONS: Walt Handelsman's Cartoons | National Cartoon Roundup
The homeless men who in the past asked for handouts on the same block did not do so well. They rarely got more quarters than nickels. Even holding the door open for the customers of a nearby bagel shop rarely worked for them.
The woman to whom I and others walking along this Upper West Side sidewalk having been giving dollar bills looks different from the homeless men she has replaced. She is tastefully dressed. Her gray hair is clean. She doesn't talk to herself. She is white.
She is the new face of homelessness, and from what I can tell, her presence frightens passersby. They see themselves in her, and they are right to do so. "Homeless, Scared, and Hungry" she wrote one day on a cardboard sign she put next to her stool. It was easy to believe her.
These days poverty is less and less a remote phenomenon. In the last decade, those living under the poverty line in the suburbs grew by 66 percent while the overall suburban population barely changed. Even having a job is no guarantee of staying out of poverty any longer; 7.2 percent of those the government says are employed are living below the poverty line, and 150 million Americans are no more than two paychecks away from falling into poverty. In our high cost-of-living region, the stakes can be even higher.
In the case of the woman on the stool, it is hard to imagine that she became homeless through her own fault. Her neat appearance and visible shyness make it seem more likely that terrible luck, rather than a personal failing or mental illness, is the source of her trouble. She resembles a kindly aunt who has, for the moment, sat down to rest on a hot summer day.
I hope she keeps getting dollars rather than loose change. But I worry that the dollar donations I am talking about say something terrible about the way we have in the past stereotyped homelessness. It should not take a middle-class-appearing woman asking for money to jar us into giving.
During the Great Depression John Steinbeck in "The Grapes of Wrath" and James Agee and Walker Evans in "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men" took us inside the heads of the poor, making sure we didn't just see them as anonymous Okies or faceless sharecroppers. We have lost that egalitarian sensibility, and we need to get it back. If it takes a woman who looks as if she has always had a roof over her head to help accelerate that change, so be it.
Anything is better than the quiet racism that let so many passersby pay scant attention to the African-American homeless people who, in the past, dominated this small New York block.
" I totally understand the 'no money, no mission' paradigm. I also know that without collaboration and resource sharing, true, lasting change is not possible."
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Dr. Centrone elucidates a common situation those experiencing homelessness know all too well in just about every city in the country. It is certainly true that in some towns providers have more effectively collaborated to accomplish far more together than they ever could have individually, but the truth is that even in most of those places, increased collaboration among agencies, services and resource allocators continues to be elusive and below the level that is actually available.
Homeless services have never been at the top of the priorities list for funding opportunities from their local, state and federal purse-holders. They've always had to fight for very scarce resources and for a very long time, because so little was known about both the numbers of homeless in a given community and how best to serve them, oversight was....tepid; how does one provide oversight if one doesn't know the scope of - or the remedy(ies) needed to - correct the problem?
As a result, agencies have learned to be protective of their funding streams while at the same time figuring out for themselves how best to address the niche they carved out as a result of the funding stream.
Let me explain:
Because these funds originate at the Federal level (usually), it's challenging, to say the least, for Federal policy makers seeking to provide some help to local entities for their problems or issues to know exactly what this might entail. They work around this in a couple of ways; first, by providing "block grants" to states so that the state itself can decide what priorities it will set and then release RFPs for the available funds. Second, the feds put out federal RFPs (duh) targeting specific approaches known as Evidence Based Practices (EBPs) or Promising Practices.
Understand I'm being overly broad and vague myself on this as I don't want to put you to sleep, nor am I in any way, shape or form a Subject Matter Expert (SME) on grants and funding procurement. But I do know probably just enough about them to be dangerous to myself and others with it, and part of this danger I think many of us share when we apply for funding at the local level.
This is because as I mentioned earlier, we find ourselves tied to the requirements - and the restrictions - within the grant itself. And if the grant is disbursed over a period of years, as many of them can be, whole departments; hell, whole organizations may be built upon them.
This is a key point, because what then becomes an issue - sometimes the overarching issue - is keeping that funding in order to keep the staff employed in order to keep bringing the service(s) to the population being served; the “no money, no mission” paradigm.
There's little incentive to collaborate or to share resources because a. the requirements of the grant narrow the scope of what the agency is able to do, and b.the agency is already running on a shoestring and the last thing they want to do is to give a competitor for those scarce resources any of the goodies - or the inside info around the grant requirements - they worked their tails off to get for themselves. There's also little incentive to change funding streams, since winning a grant is always "iffy" and it used to be much easier to write a continuation application rather than a new RFP.
Let be LOUD and clear here; agencies DO want to collaborate, and they often DO SO even when they know it can be potentially harmful to the funding they receive for the job they're doing. It's just that for a very long time, there wasn't really a directive to find ways to to collaborate, nor was there a paradigm shift from - and this is a critically important point - managing homelessness to ending homelessness.
Over the last 5-7 years, the Federal government has ramped up their investigative efforts around homelessness and have begun to understand much more clearly the scope of the problem. This in turn has helped to identify the remedies needed to accomplish this shift.
What they've discovered is what most folks on the ground providing services have known for quite some time; the precursors leading to - as well as the issues chaining people to - homelessness are varied, complex, and there is no "one size fits all" answer.
And, s it is so often, when we figure out one thing, new challenges and barriers suddenly materialize or come more sharply into view as a result.
Now one of the bigger problems we're all facing is getting people to understand the need for the paradigm shift from management of homelessness to the idea of ending homelessness, and this is no easy task. People have some very deeply held beliefs around the causes and conditions of homelessness, and there are widely held stereotypical beliefs that, while often erroneous, continue to be pervasive and hard to eliminate.
All of this "discovery" and tactical shifting takes time, especially when it must come from something like the Federal government, who is as far removed from the realities of the daily life on the ground in Murfreesboro, TN or Round Rock, TX or Davenport, IA., as is a citizen of Zimbabwe.
The key here of course is to raise awareness, but it is also to ensure that as money flows from federal to state to local programs, those programs are evaluated based on outcomes tied tightly to ending - not managing - homelessness. If, as your program has contact with individuals experiencing homelessness, you are releasing them back onto the streets when your "treatment" is complete rather than being able to release them into housing, we need to rethink continuing funding to this organization under a homeless services grant.
Let me be crystal clear here; services to address the immediate needs of those experiencing homelessness are essential and must be continued. HOWEVER, these services should NOT be stand alone services, and we must begin to hold agencies accountable for helping to end homelessness with every individual they engage with who is currently experiencing homelessness. If your service is not directly connected in some way, shape or form in the measurable reduction of people experiencing homelessness in your community, funding for your program should come from some other source to allow the scarce dollars allocated to homelessness to be used solely to assist with ending it.
I know this sounds a little extreme, but if we want to reduce the costs associated with homelessness and bring an end to the scourge itself, there is only one real answer:
we must put people into houses.
At the end of our talk today at the San Diego, California Region IX Health Care for the Homeless Conference, I had an opportunity to speak with a service provider. He told me about his efforts to get organizations to build a coalition in his community. He told me about the six months it took him to schedule the first meeting of the homeless services agencies in his area.
He told me that he had not given up hope that the coalition will pay off with great dividends. I complimented him on his efforts and reassured him that his efforts would indeed pay off. I told him that he may never know the impact of his efforts, but, I told him, if his efforts led to ending the experience of chronic homelessness for one person, then it was worthwhile.
I enjoy speaking at these conferences. They are full of amazing people working in homeless services. I love to reconnect with old friends, inspiring thought leaders, and change agents. The people who work in homeless health clinics, supportive housing programs, mental health and substance use treatment programs around the country are gifted and courageous people.
I spoke at this conference with my colleague Steven Samra. We talked about our work on a new model of outreach we are calling “Housing-Focused Outreach” (HFO). Steven and I, along with the leadership and thoughtful intellect of Ken Kraybill, have been incubating the ideas of HFO for a few years. Our ideas are not unique. They are born from the work of Dr. Sam Tsemberis at Pathways to Housing, and the visionary work of the 100,000 Homes Project. Our ideas are also born from our years of experience in serving people experiencing homelessness and the work we have all been doing over recent years in visiting supportive housing programs around the United States.
The talk was about shifting the paradigm of service delivery. We are considering how to develop and operationalize a new model to impact agency level activities. A summary of our conversation, a work in progress, looks like this:
(1) In order to truly end chronic homelessness, we [homeless service providers, peers, and advocates] need to lead with housing and build effective bridges to supportive services.
(2) The only way to ensure adequate access to housing and supportive services is to build bridges of collaboration with a number of organizations and resources.
We talk about the fact that most communities around the country have the pieces to put together a really effective model to end chronic homelessness. The issue, however, is that these pieces are fractured and disjointed from one another. Our main predicate for the Housing Focused Outreach model is training service providers to be experts in building partnerships.
When we give this talk, we hear repeatedly how little collaboration actually occurs on the ground. I hear over and over again at talks like this: “Oh, that [collaborating with partner agencies] won’t work . . . we are all fighting for the same pot of money, and we can’t really collaborate or we will lose our agency level effectiveness.”
Don’t get me wrong, I totally understand the “no money, no mission” paradigm. I also know that without collaboration and resource sharing, true, lasting change is not possible. I am not sure how we can get more people invested in the idea that collaboration is one of greatest and most underutilized tools. One thing I do know: it will take some serious ego slaying and a strong commitment to service.
Dr. Centrone elucidates a common situation those experiencing homelessness know all too well in just about every city in the country. It is certainly true that in some towns providers have more effectively collaborated to accomplish far more together than they ever could have individually, but the truth is that even in most of those places, increased collaboration among agencies, services and resource allocators continues to be elusive and below the level that is actually available. Homeless services have never been at the top of the priorities list for funding opportunities from their local, state and federal purse-holders. They've always had to fight for very scarce resources and for a very long time, because so little was known about both the numbers of homeless in a given community and how best to serve them, oversight was....tepid; how does one provide oversight if one doesn't know the scope of - or the remedy(ies) needed to - correct the problem?
As a result, agencies have learned to be protective of their funding streams while at the same time figuring out for themselves how best to address the niche they carved out as a result of the funding stream.
Let me explain:
WARNING: BRAIN GLAZING FUNDING INFORMATION COMING!grants are narrowly targeted. It's not like an agency can send in a "proposal" with a vague and overly broad request to "help people who are homeless" to someone like Housing and Urban Development (HUD) or the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) That proposal must be pretty specific to the announcement of funding opportunity (a Request For Proposal/RFP. or Request for Application/RFA). As a result, organizations often find themselves building their approach around a specific RFP, which then also essentially ties their hands to remain within the parameters of the requirements laid out in the RFP.
Because these funds originate at the Federal level (usually), it's challenging, to say the least, for Federal policy makers seeking to provide some help to local entities for their problems or issues to know exactly what this might entail. They work around this in a couple of ways; first, by providing "block grants" to states so that the state itself can decide what priorities it will set and then release RFPs for the available funds. Second, the feds put out federal RFPs (duh) targeting specific approaches known as Evidence Based Practices (EBPs) or Promising Practices.
Understand I'm being overly broad and vague myself on this as I don't want to put you to sleep, nor am I in any way, shape or form a Subject Matter Expert (SME) on grants and funding procurement. But I do know probably just enough about them to be dangerous to myself and others with it, and part of this danger I think many of us share when we apply for funding at the local level.
This is because as I mentioned earlier, we find ourselves tied to the requirements - and the restrictions - within the grant itself. And if the grant is disbursed over a period of years, as many of them can be, whole departments; hell, whole organizations may be built upon them.
This is a key point, because what then becomes an issue - sometimes the overarching issue - is keeping that funding in order to keep the staff employed in order to keep bringing the service(s) to the population being served; the “no money, no mission” paradigm.
There's little incentive to collaborate or to share resources because a. the requirements of the grant narrow the scope of what the agency is able to do, and b.the agency is already running on a shoestring and the last thing they want to do is to give a competitor for those scarce resources any of the goodies - or the inside info around the grant requirements - they worked their tails off to get for themselves. There's also little incentive to change funding streams, since winning a grant is always "iffy" and it used to be much easier to write a continuation application rather than a new RFP.
Let be LOUD and clear here; agencies DO want to collaborate, and they often DO SO even when they know it can be potentially harmful to the funding they receive for the job they're doing. It's just that for a very long time, there wasn't really a directive to find ways to to collaborate, nor was there a paradigm shift from - and this is a critically important point - managing homelessness to ending homelessness.
Over the last 5-7 years, the Federal government has ramped up their investigative efforts around homelessness and have begun to understand much more clearly the scope of the problem. This in turn has helped to identify the remedies needed to accomplish this shift.
What they've discovered is what most folks on the ground providing services have known for quite some time; the precursors leading to - as well as the issues chaining people to - homelessness are varied, complex, and there is no "one size fits all" answer.
And, s it is so often, when we figure out one thing, new challenges and barriers suddenly materialize or come more sharply into view as a result.
Now one of the bigger problems we're all facing is getting people to understand the need for the paradigm shift from management of homelessness to the idea of ending homelessness, and this is no easy task. People have some very deeply held beliefs around the causes and conditions of homelessness, and there are widely held stereotypical beliefs that, while often erroneous, continue to be pervasive and hard to eliminate.
All of this "discovery" and tactical shifting takes time, especially when it must come from something like the Federal government, who is as far removed from the realities of the daily life on the ground in Murfreesboro, TN or Round Rock, TX or Davenport, IA., as is a citizen of Zimbabwe.
The key here of course is to raise awareness, but it is also to ensure that as money flows from federal to state to local programs, those programs are evaluated based on outcomes tied tightly to ending - not managing - homelessness. If, as your program has contact with individuals experiencing homelessness, you are releasing them back onto the streets when your "treatment" is complete rather than being able to release them into housing, we need to rethink continuing funding to this organization under a homeless services grant.
Let me be crystal clear here; services to address the immediate needs of those experiencing homelessness are essential and must be continued. HOWEVER, these services should NOT be stand alone services, and we must begin to hold agencies accountable for helping to end homelessness with every individual they engage with who is currently experiencing homelessness. If your service is not directly connected in some way, shape or form in the measurable reduction of people experiencing homelessness in your community, funding for your program should come from some other source to allow the scarce dollars allocated to homelessness to be used solely to assist with ending it.
I know this sounds a little extreme, but if we want to reduce the costs associated with homelessness and bring an end to the scourge itself, there is only one real answer:
we must put people into houses.
Slaying the Ego in Homeless Services Delivery by Wayne Centrone
Posted on September 11, 2012 by C4 ThoughtAt the end of our talk today at the San Diego, California Region IX Health Care for the Homeless Conference, I had an opportunity to speak with a service provider. He told me about his efforts to get organizations to build a coalition in his community. He told me about the six months it took him to schedule the first meeting of the homeless services agencies in his area.
He told me that he had not given up hope that the coalition will pay off with great dividends. I complimented him on his efforts and reassured him that his efforts would indeed pay off. I told him that he may never know the impact of his efforts, but, I told him, if his efforts led to ending the experience of chronic homelessness for one person, then it was worthwhile.
I enjoy speaking at these conferences. They are full of amazing people working in homeless services. I love to reconnect with old friends, inspiring thought leaders, and change agents. The people who work in homeless health clinics, supportive housing programs, mental health and substance use treatment programs around the country are gifted and courageous people.
I spoke at this conference with my colleague Steven Samra. We talked about our work on a new model of outreach we are calling “Housing-Focused Outreach” (HFO). Steven and I, along with the leadership and thoughtful intellect of Ken Kraybill, have been incubating the ideas of HFO for a few years. Our ideas are not unique. They are born from the work of Dr. Sam Tsemberis at Pathways to Housing, and the visionary work of the 100,000 Homes Project. Our ideas are also born from our years of experience in serving people experiencing homelessness and the work we have all been doing over recent years in visiting supportive housing programs around the United States.
The talk was about shifting the paradigm of service delivery. We are considering how to develop and operationalize a new model to impact agency level activities. A summary of our conversation, a work in progress, looks like this:
(1) In order to truly end chronic homelessness, we [homeless service providers, peers, and advocates] need to lead with housing and build effective bridges to supportive services.
(2) The only way to ensure adequate access to housing and supportive services is to build bridges of collaboration with a number of organizations and resources.
We talk about the fact that most communities around the country have the pieces to put together a really effective model to end chronic homelessness. The issue, however, is that these pieces are fractured and disjointed from one another. Our main predicate for the Housing Focused Outreach model is training service providers to be experts in building partnerships.
When we give this talk, we hear repeatedly how little collaboration actually occurs on the ground. I hear over and over again at talks like this: “Oh, that [collaborating with partner agencies] won’t work . . . we are all fighting for the same pot of money, and we can’t really collaborate or we will lose our agency level effectiveness.”
Don’t get me wrong, I totally understand the “no money, no mission” paradigm. I also know that without collaboration and resource sharing, true, lasting change is not possible. I am not sure how we can get more people invested in the idea that collaboration is one of greatest and most underutilized tools. One thing I do know: it will take some serious ego slaying and a strong commitment to service.
Stefanie DeLuca:"...tenants often avoid reporting their landlords for fear of eviction, the loss of their voucher, or having to endure yet another move"
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This second recommendation literally shouts the need for some form of city housing coordinator who: A. works with landlords to maintain and update regularly lists of available units. B. Knows the bus routes, walking distances to units from the nearest stops, as well as distances and access (or lack thereof) to available grocery stores in the areas housing units are available in. C. Advocates for affordable housing procurement, rehabilitation and expansion. D. Collaborates across agencies to ensure key personnel (outreach, case managers, VA homelessness services providers, etc) and stakeholders have easy access to the coordinator and are kept updated regularly of changes in policies, rental unit availability, and new units coming online in their service districts.
One of the biggest struggles I've seen with folks is the challenge they face in transportation from the unit to everything else. If they cannot access a nearby grocery store without having to walk a half mile from the store to their home, they cannot really rent the unit, no matter how nice it or the neighborhood may be. If the individual suffers from a physical disability, it makes the issue of transportation that much more important, and frankly rules out a large number of potential units simply because of the challenges faced in caring for basic needs within the community. And by the way, a gas station convenience store is NOT an acceptable substitute for a grocery store.
Researchers have offered several explanations for why voucher families, who are free to rent units in the private market in neighborhoods where greater opportunity for employment and education exist, are concentrated in poor, segregated areas.
These include cost, racial preferences, social ties, proximity to relatives, and fully informed decision making. Dissatisfied with these explanations, Stefanie DeLuca, associate professor of sociology at John Hopkins University, designed a study to understand the social contexts that influence low-income family mobility. DeLuca offered preliminary results from her field research in a recent presentation, “How Housing Policy Intersects With the Lives of Poor Families: Reflections on Recent Fieldwork in Mobile, Alabama, and Baltimore, Maryland.” The presentation was part of a speaker series hosted by HUD’s Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity.
Begun in 2009, the study tracked the fortunes of 100 families in Mobile, Alabama. By fully immersing themselves in the field and living among the families, DeLuca and her team of researchers developed in-depth residential biographies of participating families. Gathered through in-home interviews, community meetings, and informal interactions, these biographies chronicle the moves of each family. Although the study’s families used several types of assisted housing (including vouchers and public housing), all were low-income black families with children between the ages of 10 and 18. The study was expanded in 2010 to include low-income black families in Baltimore, Maryland.
A high percentage of participant families were subject to reactive moves, and several factors influenced the frequency of those moves and the families’ subsequent housing choices. Reactive moves are those resulting from events outside of a tenant’s control. More than 70 percent of study families had experienced a recent reactive move, with approximately 80 percent experiencing a reactive move at some point in their lives. The most common cause of reactive moves is unit failure, in which the tenant is exasperated by the landlord’s lack of proper maintenance or the unit fails a Section 8 inspection.
When a unit fails, the process of finding another unit is both pressing and challenging. Families are under intense pressure to find another unit before their voucher expires. Adding to the time crunch are other difficulties, such as those felt by single, employed mothers without a vehicle or the time to search for new housing. Compounding these logistical challenges is the high failure rate of units undergoing Section 8 inspections. In fact, one family recounted viewing 20 houses before finding a unit which passed the Section 8 inspection.
A family’s housing choice is also affected by landlords, the lists of available properties supplied by housing authorities, and their own low expectations for neighborhood and housing quality. For many families, landlords and the housing authority lists play a central role in their hunt for new homes. Landlord practices vary widely; whereas some are accommodating and flexible, more commonly, needed maintenance is not provided. Deferred maintenance results in substandard housing and inspection failures. An additional complication is that tenants often avoid reporting their landlords for fear of eviction, the loss of their voucher, or having to endure yet another move.
Although the lists housing authorities provide prospective tenants were intended to help low-income families find homes, evidence presented by DeLuca suggests that these lists actually channel low-income families into low-income neighborhoods. This prospect is particularly troublesome because many families view these lists as complete catalogs of available properties and rely heavily on them for their housing search. These lists, however, are often not updated and do not include all available properties.
Low expectations stemming from a lifetime of exposure to poverty and neighborhood violence affect how a family lives and participates in the community. The end result is often isolation motivated by concern for family safety. Families receiving housing assistance become used to retreating into their units. They often choose unit quality over neighborhood quality, rarely considering, for example, such factors as the quality of local schools and recreational facilities in their home search. In effect, these families tend to select units, not neighborhoods.
DeLuca shared several policy recommendations to improve mobility and housing options for low-income families. The first is to extend search times for families, especially for those who are interested in moving to low-poverty areas or are actively searching there. The second is to reform counseling programs and tools to focus on deconcentrating poverty. Her final recommendation is to provide families with the means to make fully informed housing choices, through up-to-date lists of available properties in safe neighborhoods with good schools and other community amenities.
Although the voucher program was intended to increase mobility for low-income families, its limited success speaks to the value of studies such as DeLuca’s, which demonstrate how the voucher program actually plays out in the lives of low-income families. Some of the unintended consequences that perpetuate urban poverty might be preventable if the right policy adjustments were made.
"Families receiving housing assistance become used to retreating into their units. They often choose unit quality over neighborhood quality, rarely considering, for example, such factors as the quality of local schools and recreational facilities in their home search. In effect, these families tend to select units, not neighborhoods."DeLuca raises some incredibly important points here around subsidized housing and offers a couple of recommendations that are of particular importance to those who work with individuals and families experiencing homelessness. Perhaps two of the most important of these recommendations, imho, are 1. extending the search times available to voucher holders so they are not forced into taking the first unit they find in order to ensure they don't lose the voucher; and 2. "providing families with the means to make fully informed housing choices, through up-to-date lists of available properties in safe neighborhoods with good schools and other community amenities."
This second recommendation literally shouts the need for some form of city housing coordinator who: A. works with landlords to maintain and update regularly lists of available units. B. Knows the bus routes, walking distances to units from the nearest stops, as well as distances and access (or lack thereof) to available grocery stores in the areas housing units are available in. C. Advocates for affordable housing procurement, rehabilitation and expansion. D. Collaborates across agencies to ensure key personnel (outreach, case managers, VA homelessness services providers, etc) and stakeholders have easy access to the coordinator and are kept updated regularly of changes in policies, rental unit availability, and new units coming online in their service districts.
One of the biggest struggles I've seen with folks is the challenge they face in transportation from the unit to everything else. If they cannot access a nearby grocery store without having to walk a half mile from the store to their home, they cannot really rent the unit, no matter how nice it or the neighborhood may be. If the individual suffers from a physical disability, it makes the issue of transportation that much more important, and frankly rules out a large number of potential units simply because of the challenges faced in caring for basic needs within the community. And by the way, a gas station convenience store is NOT an acceptable substitute for a grocery store.
Reflections on Recent Fieldwork in Mobile, Alabama, and Baltimore, Maryland
Researchers have offered several explanations for why voucher families, who are free to rent units in the private market in neighborhoods where greater opportunity for employment and education exist, are concentrated in poor, segregated areas. These include cost, racial preferences, social ties, proximity to relatives, and fully informed decision making. Dissatisfied with these explanations, Stefanie DeLuca, associate professor of sociology at John Hopkins University, designed a study to understand the social contexts that influence low-income family mobility. DeLuca offered preliminary results from her field research in a recent presentation, “How Housing Policy Intersects With the Lives of Poor Families: Reflections on Recent Fieldwork in Mobile, Alabama, and Baltimore, Maryland.” The presentation was part of a speaker series hosted by HUD’s Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity.
Begun in 2009, the study tracked the fortunes of 100 families in Mobile, Alabama. By fully immersing themselves in the field and living among the families, DeLuca and her team of researchers developed in-depth residential biographies of participating families. Gathered through in-home interviews, community meetings, and informal interactions, these biographies chronicle the moves of each family. Although the study’s families used several types of assisted housing (including vouchers and public housing), all were low-income black families with children between the ages of 10 and 18. The study was expanded in 2010 to include low-income black families in Baltimore, Maryland.
A high percentage of participant families were subject to reactive moves, and several factors influenced the frequency of those moves and the families’ subsequent housing choices. Reactive moves are those resulting from events outside of a tenant’s control. More than 70 percent of study families had experienced a recent reactive move, with approximately 80 percent experiencing a reactive move at some point in their lives. The most common cause of reactive moves is unit failure, in which the tenant is exasperated by the landlord’s lack of proper maintenance or the unit fails a Section 8 inspection.
When a unit fails, the process of finding another unit is both pressing and challenging. Families are under intense pressure to find another unit before their voucher expires. Adding to the time crunch are other difficulties, such as those felt by single, employed mothers without a vehicle or the time to search for new housing. Compounding these logistical challenges is the high failure rate of units undergoing Section 8 inspections. In fact, one family recounted viewing 20 houses before finding a unit which passed the Section 8 inspection.
A family’s housing choice is also affected by landlords, the lists of available properties supplied by housing authorities, and their own low expectations for neighborhood and housing quality. For many families, landlords and the housing authority lists play a central role in their hunt for new homes. Landlord practices vary widely; whereas some are accommodating and flexible, more commonly, needed maintenance is not provided. Deferred maintenance results in substandard housing and inspection failures. An additional complication is that tenants often avoid reporting their landlords for fear of eviction, the loss of their voucher, or having to endure yet another move.
Although the lists housing authorities provide prospective tenants were intended to help low-income families find homes, evidence presented by DeLuca suggests that these lists actually channel low-income families into low-income neighborhoods. This prospect is particularly troublesome because many families view these lists as complete catalogs of available properties and rely heavily on them for their housing search. These lists, however, are often not updated and do not include all available properties.
Low expectations stemming from a lifetime of exposure to poverty and neighborhood violence affect how a family lives and participates in the community. The end result is often isolation motivated by concern for family safety. Families receiving housing assistance become used to retreating into their units. They often choose unit quality over neighborhood quality, rarely considering, for example, such factors as the quality of local schools and recreational facilities in their home search. In effect, these families tend to select units, not neighborhoods.
DeLuca shared several policy recommendations to improve mobility and housing options for low-income families. The first is to extend search times for families, especially for those who are interested in moving to low-poverty areas or are actively searching there. The second is to reform counseling programs and tools to focus on deconcentrating poverty. Her final recommendation is to provide families with the means to make fully informed housing choices, through up-to-date lists of available properties in safe neighborhoods with good schools and other community amenities.
Although the voucher program was intended to increase mobility for low-income families, its limited success speaks to the value of studies such as DeLuca’s, which demonstrate how the voucher program actually plays out in the lives of low-income families. Some of the unintended consequences that perpetuate urban poverty might be preventable if the right policy adjustments were made.
11 Ekim 2012 Perşembe
Obama's 'Gutsy Call' - Not Even At The Table
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President Obama is once again using the killing of Osama Bin Laden as a prop in his reelection campaign. I have no problem with the President point to this as one of the accomplishments of his Presidency. After all, it is one of the few actual accomplishments that most Americans give him credit for. However, for some reason, the President's campaign staff are now suggesting that Presidential candidate Mitt Romney would not have given the go-ahead to kill Bin Laden, distorting a comment of his as their evidence. Mitt Romney's comment is so taken out of context as his actual statement is that killing any one terrorist is not not a strategy, but a starting point. Basically he is advocating a much stronger response than the assassination of one man.
Lets not forget that the President's 'Gutsy Call' was given only after sleeping on it, a full 16 hours after being asked. Now maybe Mitt Romney would have said no, but I seriously doubt he's take a nap first. (Mitt Romney in response to the Obama Campaign allegation notes that even Carter would have made the call to take out Osama.)
The Obama campaign's outright lying of the facts reminded me of the photo of President Obama in the Situation room observing the mission as it happened. For making such a 'Gutsy Call', the President does not even have a seat at the table. Why exactly is that? How many other White House photos have you seen where the President does not have a prominent place at the table? Any table? I am no fan of the President, but if I had him over for dinner, I'd give him the honor of my place at the table, if for no reason than one of respect.
Now take the following story that appeared on the internet shortly after this photo appeared that comments on the situation leading up to the photo, keeping in mind that there is nothing to back up the allegations made in the story:
Interestingly enough, the recent Times article on the raid, provides a copy of the mission order Leon Panetta issued (At least his note of it). This part of the official story just happens to fit into the storyline above.
Given that the President's campaign is all interested in discussing the raid on Bin Laden, perhaps they would like to explain why the President is sitting in the corner during one of the most important meetings of his Presidency. Perhaps, this was to give him easy access for the door in case the raid did not end so well. I wonder, are there any photos of this meeting where the President is not seated in the room...
I suspect that we will be returning to this photo before November's Election.
-------------------- 
--------------------
Lets not forget that the President's 'Gutsy Call' was given only after sleeping on it, a full 16 hours after being asked. Now maybe Mitt Romney would have said no, but I seriously doubt he's take a nap first. (Mitt Romney in response to the Obama Campaign allegation notes that even Carter would have made the call to take out Osama.)
The Obama campaign's outright lying of the facts reminded me of the photo of President Obama in the Situation room observing the mission as it happened. For making such a 'Gutsy Call', the President does not even have a seat at the table. Why exactly is that? How many other White House photos have you seen where the President does not have a prominent place at the table? Any table? I am no fan of the President, but if I had him over for dinner, I'd give him the honor of my place at the table, if for no reason than one of respect.
Now take the following story that appeared on the internet shortly after this photo appeared that comments on the situation leading up to the photo, keeping in mind that there is nothing to back up the allegations made in the story:
I have been told by more than one source that Leon Panetta was directing the operation with both his own CIA operatives, as well as direct contacts with military – both entities were reporting to Panetta only at this point, and not the President of the United States. There was not going to be another delay as had happened 24 hour earlier. The operation was at this time effectively unknown to President Barack Obama or Valerie Jarrett and it remained that way until AFTER it had already been initiated. President Obama was literally pulled from a golf outing and escorted back to the White House to be informed of the mission. Upon his arrival there was a briefing held which included Bill Daley, John Brennan, and a high ranking member of the military. When Obama emerged from the briefing, he was described as looking “very confused and uncertain.” The president was then placed in the situation room where several of the players in this event had already been watching the operation unfold. Another interesting tidbit regarding this is that the Vice President was already “up to speed” on the operation. A source indicated they believe Hillary Clinton had personally made certain the Vice President was made aware of that day’s events before the president was. The now famous photo released shows the particulars of that of that room and its occupants. What that photo does not communicate directly is that the military personnel present in that room during the operation unfolding, deferred to either Hillary Clinton or Robert Gates. The president’s role was minimal, including their acknowledging of his presence in the room. - Socyberty (White House Insider: Obama Hesitated – Panetta Issued Order to Kill Osama Bin Laden)Go read the entire article which notes how much of an obstacle Valerie Jarrett was on behalf of the President and how those interested in actually fighting a war on terrorism managed to work around the President. Providing that there is any truth to this story.
Interestingly enough, the recent Times article on the raid, provides a copy of the mission order Leon Panetta issued (At least his note of it). This part of the official story just happens to fit into the storyline above.
Given that the President's campaign is all interested in discussing the raid on Bin Laden, perhaps they would like to explain why the President is sitting in the corner during one of the most important meetings of his Presidency. Perhaps, this was to give him easy access for the door in case the raid did not end so well. I wonder, are there any photos of this meeting where the President is not seated in the room...
I suspect that we will be returning to this photo before November's Election.
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