The Simple Answer Isn't Really Simple

How to end homelessness

The simple answer:

Find a homeless person. Give them a place to live. Tell them, "This is your place. As long as you don't harm anyone, you are welcome to stay here. No one will take it away from you." Then give them time. They will find out how to thrive on their own, because that's what they want to do. It just takes time.

Then, do that with all other homeless people.

The more complicated answer:

-Not all homeless people are ready for a place.  They have been abused and thrown into addiction and harmed and experienced trauma that they might not trust any place that you give them.  It will take time.  And they may not stay.  But in time, if they feel safe, they will heal and grow and become ready to give back.

-Not all homeless people are safe.  If you have an extra room and you want to host a homeless person, that's fantastic.  But in reality, unless you know them, they may not be safe.  NEVER, NEVER take in a homeless person unless you really know them.  This means spending time with them on the street.  Listening to them.  Understanding them.  And then deciding if they would fit into your housing situation.

Value

The funny thing is that money has the value we give it. A few years ago Brazil changed their currency to give greater value to their dollar, called the Real. Today, Bitcoin is a real currency, in certain areas (like kidnapping ransoms) because people give it imaginary value.

We place that same kind of imaginary value on people. When a person becomes a celebrity or makes a huge salary, or becomes a successful politician, they haven't changed as a person, but their value increases dramatically. They gain opportunities they would never have had before their increased value, and they obtain economic opportunities with little effort that they never could have dreamed of.

The opposite also happens. When a family member becomes homeless, it is frequent that their family trusts them less. When a person is diagnosed with a mental illness, like schizophrenia, a person may not change but they are seen as less trustworthy. When a person moves into a nursing home, they become an object to be pushed around instead of a human being to be heard.

All people are equally valuable. Some may be more important than others, but no one is more valuable than another. Each human being is a society, and each human life is priceless. Perhaps media may treat one person over another (which usually means they have greater entertainment value than others), and insurance rates values certain people higher than others. But our cities and nations have a responsibility to treat each citizen equally, no matter what their wealth, power or fame. Each citizen should be given an equal right to live, to exist in their community. No one should be harassed or harmed in any way unless they are proven to be a criminal.

May God have mercy on our nation.

Calling the Police

The police, many times a day, receives a call or tweet about how the homeless are disturbing their neighborhood, committing crimes, and leaving drug paraphernalia and trash. When the police get there, they see a crime scene or trash, and they see homeless folks, but they don't see any direct evidence between the two subjects. But they move the homeless along, because offended housed people are more important than homeless people trying to survive.

Yes, there are homeless people who commit crimes. So when you see them do crimes, go ahead and call the police. Otherwise, don't make assumptions, and don't call the police because you don't like homeless people in your neighborhood. The police have better things to do than to harass the poor.

And so, might I suggest, do you.

Society and the End of Homelessness

In many cities of the US, the homeless are obvious.  They can’t be hidden, there aren’t enough services or shelters to keep them from the public eye.  They are a part of our landscape.  However, this is unacceptable.  It might be upsetting because it stirs one’s pity, perhaps because it is a display of the failure of our society.  Or it might be upsetting because these homeless are failures to themselves and to their society and they are now littering up the landscape with their own persons.

In determining what, as a city or a society, we are to do with the homeless, we need to remember a few things. 

·         First, that no homeless person chose homelessness as a long term lifestyle.  Some people like camping, but a lifestyle of camping, especially in winter, is only for a few rugged individuals that the far majority of homeless do have the resources or temperament to endure.   

·         The term “transient” is a misnomer. Most homeless do not move around, but they stay in the place where they were living when they became homeless, especially if it is their hometown where they grew up.

·         Addiction, criminal behavior and severe mental illness among the homeless is, more often than not, a result of chronic homelessness, not a cause of it.  Most homelessness is caused by the loss of a job, eviction, abuse or broken relationships.

The “homeless problem” is not the homeless themselves.  The problem is that society is of multiple mindsets about the homeless, and so the solution to homeless individuals evades us.   The general attitude that the homeless need to pick themselves up and solve their own problem is impractical, especially as long as society increases punishment on people for being without a space to live.  If camping is made illegal, if the homeless are forced to regularly move, if they are forced to have police contact multiple times a week for just being in a space, if they are ticketed for sleeping, then they are living as if they are in an abusive relationship with society.  They will never succeed to escaping their place, even if they will want to.  And why would they want to?  To accept their place in society is to admit that their treatment in society is correct. 

What can we as society agree on?  That we want the homeless to live inside, have a job, pull their own weight.  Why hasn’t this happened?  Because for every hand offered out to the homeless to help them, there are five that slap them down through bureaucracy, tickets, high rent, background checks and stress that leads to depression and despair.

There is no one step paths out of homelessness.  One can’t just “get a job” and so escape their economic collapse.  To get the homeless off the street is a complex set of opportunities, helps and encouragement to self-sustainability that requires a society’s will to be focused clearly on this accomplishment.  This is especially when society as a whole is constantly affirming their own self-fulfilling prophecy that the homeless are failures who can never amount to anything when they see program after program fail on their own without support from other programs.

After helping the homeless get off the street through a variety of means the last twenty years, I have seen that there is a minimum of programs that must be offered in order for the homeless to successfully get off the street.

1.       A political voice

Before any solutions are made for a minority group (whether racial or economic), that group must be listened to for any solution to be successful.  Every group must take ownership of any solution for them to buy into the solution.  The easiest way for a group to buy into a solution is to be the main part of forming the solution.  In every level of political solutions to homelessness, the homeless must be involved.

2.       Safety
The major issue that a homeless person has to endure everyday are issues that most housed people consider only briefly—How will I eat?  How will I keep my possessions secure?  How will I keep my person safe?   How will I be able to sleep without being disturbed?  These questions, focused on survival, cause the homeless person to not thrive.  If they are solved, they can then focus on the next economic levels.  Some solutions for this are 24-hour shelters, community living (like organized camps), or a combination of day shelters and overnight shelters.

3.       Self-reliant relief
To help the homeless deal with their survival issues, community centers can be provided to help.  However, the community centers don’t have to be giving centers.  Instead of providing cooked food, a center can provide a kitchen for one to cook food obtained from EBT cards.   Instead of giving sleeping bags or clothes, there can be an exchange program or work-for-help.   Homeless camps can be provided with trash bags and pick ups to keep their camps clean.

4.       Support network

Even if a homeless person obtains a job and a home, they need a network of people to assist them when crises happen.  If a person lives in their car a hundred dollar car repair can cause a person to lose their home.  If a person has a tent stolen from them, they are in crisis.  Support groups, especially over social media, can be developed to assist the homeless in moments of crisis.  They can also provide necessary transportation, contacts and relationships to survival.

5.       Crisis management/counselling

The homeless, by necessity, develop a moment-by-moment focus.  However, to thrive in our society we must be more forward thinking, planning for the inevitabilities of the future and setting goals and plans in place.  To be assisted to switch one’s focus, trusted counselors, possibly of the ranks or formerly of the ranks of the homeless, are necessary to help one survive in this world.

6.       Flexible housing

Housing, of course, is a main component to escape homelessness.  It could be an apartment, a shelter or a transitional housing.  But the housing must be flexible enough to actually survive in real-life society.   When one gets a job, it will often be outside normal shelter hours, often legitimate survival activity cannot be limited to certain hours and curfews.  Any housing, to be successful must take the needs of the individual into account.

7.       Job opportunities

A person without an address is not offered a job which would be enough for them to survive.  To obtain a job, one must have an address, a resume, a work history, and references.  The best programs provide these for the homeless so they can get a job, which is the best means to economic survival in our society.

A multi-faceted approach must be seriously established if homelessness is to be seen as a means to a solution, and not just the end of one’s economic life.

More than a Fence: What Gresham, Oregon is doing to the Homeless

Amber lives on the streets of Gresham, and she is tired of being harassed. She has been told to move four times in the last three days. She is a good worker, preparing meals at a local church for the hungry two times this week, and working in their clothing room every week.

"They are telling us, 'You know that camping is illegal in Gresham, don't you?' They told me that next time they see me they will arrest me for camping. Were are we supposed to go? I'm tired of being forced to move every day."

People should not be forced to leave unless they have a place to go. Sixty five percent of the homeless in Gresham come from Gresham. It is time for Gresham to take care of their own, and provide solutions, not abuse.

What else are Gresham and their services doing?
-Ticketing the homeless for sleeping (Gresham Police)

-Threatening arrests for camping (Gresham police)

-Verbally excluding people from the city (Gresham police)

-Telling the homeless to go to Portland (Gresham police)

-Refusing to put out a fire on a homeless camp (Gresham Fire)

-Refusing to allow shelters to be built in Gresham (City Hall didn't allow Human Solutions to build a family shelter in city limits)

-Bulldozing homeless camps (Troutdale)

-Fencing all of Gresham's part of Springwater Trail (Mayor of Gresham)

-Severe fines (over a thousand dollars) for those who camp there (Gresham City Council)

-Claiming to rely on JOIN, when they know that JOIN has no money until June 

-Denying their responsibility to help with any kind of social services (Gresham City Council) 

-Telling the homeless to move to the RedBarn (a church service for the homeless) which will be penalized if they allow camping on their property (Gresham Police)

-Sending monthly code violations/penalties to the RedBarn, without clarifying what should be fixed (Gresham Code Department)

-Claiming that RedBarn is responsible for the homeless in Gresham (Gresham police)

-Offering 30 days to pick up possessions, but throwing them away ("Unauthorized campsite" notice)

-Leaving notices to contact 211 for services, then claiming that Gresham has no overnight shelters, thus forcing campers to leave the city. ("Unauthorized campsite" notice)

Sending officers to the homeless who have been penalized for attacking the homeless (Officer Durbin of the Gresham Police)

Most of these happened this last week.

Tough Love

Marcine grew up abused by her father. She left home early, got a job and worked hard. Someone had lied about her and so she lost that job. The stress of her life was too overwhelming, so she sat in her apartment, unable to seek another job. “They won’t hire me because I was fired from my last job.” Soon she was evicted. She wouldn’t go home to her father, so she was homeless.

She went to a local church and obtained a tent, a sleeping bag and a tarp. A homeless man showed her a safe place to stay. She didn’t feel safe, so she got a boyfriend who would protect her. After a while, when his trauma showed through, he would beat her. She left him with her tent and sleeping bag, leaving her only with a blanket.

She slept in a park, under a bench. She stayed there all day except when there was a meal going on. She had no energy to do anything. A neighbor found her and said, “You are so lazy! Look at the trash under the bench! Get up and find a job!” She rolled over and stayed under the table.
The first neighbor told a second that there was a homeless person under the park table. The second said, “But there are children that play in that park! Homeless people use drugs! And are thieves! This person is dangerous!” And they called the police.

The police came over and looked at her under the table. There wasn’t much trash there, just a small pile. There were no needles, and one empty beer can. But she couldn’t stay there. “This is a park. You aren’t allowed to stay here.” She was so exhausted, she ignored him. “Ma’am, you will have to leave. Now.” She just laid there. “If you don’t get up, I’ll have no choice but to arrest you.” In the end, that’s what he did. Arrested her for trespassing on city property. As he was driving her in, he said, “I hope this teaches you a lesson. You are a good girl. You just need some tough love.”

Ninety-five percent of all homeless men have experienced trauma and PTSD. One hundred percent of all homeless women have experienced trauma. The homeless have experienced enough tough love. They need solutions.

War on the Homeless

The city of Gresham, Oregon has declared war on their homeless.

They have said that their homeless comes from Portland, but a recent survey found that 65 percent of the homeless in Gresham came from Gresham.

They have denied permission for the Human Solutions family shelter to be located in Gresham.

They have blocked 60 acres of property where the homeless were camped for "environmental" reasons, but offered no services or help for those forced out.

Saturday night at 7pm they went through another area and gave the homeless one hour to pack up their camps and move. One woman came to her camp in the middle of their sweep, they gave her twenty minutes to move.

Mayor Shane said that Gresham would be "compassionate" to their homeless. Where is the compassion?

It seems like they just want to move all the homeless to Portland. Take responsibility for your own, Gresham.

In the Mayor's "State of the City" speech, he mentions Our Father's House and JOIN as organizations they are partnering with to help the homeless in the city. This is true. Our Father's House is a great organization, helping certain families get on their feet. But the majority of the homeless are without children. And Human Solutions shelters more of Gresham's homeless families than OFH does, because OFH rightly focuses on only some homeless so they can better help them. JOIN is out of funding, and they are housing no one right now until more funding is released. Even then, they were able to house 75 people last year, most of which later became homeless through lack of support. JOIN is also a great organization but they are a small group compared to the size of the issue.

So Mayor Shane is depending on two groups who can help only a hundred of the many hundreds of homeless in the city. For everyone else, he uses the police to force them out of the city. It is time to offer real help, real compassion. It is time to listen to the majority of citizens who attended the Listening Session on the Homeless last year, who said that the homeless needs a place to sleep, there should be shelters. There should be real solutions, in Gresham, for the Gresham homeless.

Transcript of a portion of Mayor Shane Bemis' State of the City speech: I’ll be perfectly clear: homelessness is a bigger issue in the greater Portland area than it has been since the pioneers on the Oregon Trail moved from their Conestoga wagons into wooden structures. That’s not hyperbole; unfortunately, it is reality. It is unconscionable to me that we let our homeless subsist in shantytowns.

That is not the Gresham ethic. For years, Gresham has greeted this issue with compassion and solutions, in an environment that is short on both. This is the city where My Father’s House built a family shelter without a single dime of public money. This is a community that has consistently supported Human Solutions in their efforts to rehabilitate people to employment and self-sufficiency. Unfortunately, there are those who would sit back and believe that, for some people, camping out on our trails and in our open spaces is the best they can do. For context, let me show you what some of these “solutions” look like.

[photo montage]

Now, I feel like I shouldn’t have to say that there is obviously nothing humane or acceptable about those images. I have deeply admired Multnomah County Chair Deborah Kafoury’s interest in, and leadership on, this issue. She has put the County’s money where her mouth is and has pledged a substantial increase in the funding available to tackle homelessness. She has also set aside a modest appropriation for Gresham, which we will use to provide a balance of social work, vocational rehabilitation, clean-up and law enforcement services, starting next month. Chair Kafoury and Commissioner McKeel, once again, thank you for your partnership. 9

This new program will add to our existing relationship with JOIN, which we have increased in recent years to move people out of homelessness. If you aren’t familiar with their work, JOIN is an organization that takes some of the toughest cases and resolves them through a housing-first model. With this combination of efforts, I am confident that we will continue to make progress in getting people housed. Now, that said, we also absolutely will not sit idly by and watch the fallout of this issue destroy our natural resources and threaten our neighborhood livability. Starting this week, we have implemented a natural resource exclusion along the Springwater Trail, just to the north of Gresham’s Southwest Neighborhood. For too long we’ve watched habitat investments in the millions be threatened by a small group of self-proclaimed “homeless constitutionalists”–whatever that means. Well, that stops now. We will be restricting a 60-acre area to any and all human activity, homeless or not, until such time as the environment can rebound. Hopefully this course of action will provide some relief for the environment, the neighborhood and provide an opportunity to get some of our most society-resistant individuals into stable housing and opportunity.

Homelessness is an overwhelmingly broad societal issue impacting communities across the nation, especially up and down the west coast. As a nation, we have a lot of work to do to change the economic, substance abuse and mental health circumstances that too often lead to homelessness, and we also need to take a close look at some of the legal restrictions that too often tie the hands of local governments to maintain health, safety and order in their communities.

Once again, I don’t want to sound uncompassionate on this issue, because I am not. I spent part of my childhood in a mobile home, and many people have it even worse than me. To be clear, my roots are modest. At the same time, I am beyond exasperated by the absurd notion that pitching tents under freeway overpasses or occupying our parks and trails is any sort of solution whatsoever. Those who believe so need to do some deep soul searching and reconnect with the sensible people they represent.

Our approach to homelessness in Gresham is, and will continue to be, compassionate, but it will not be delusional. Our Neighborhood Enforcement Team, very popular already amongst our residents, will get an extra boost, and become the Neighborhood Enhancement Action Team, or NEAT, if you will.