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.

Ending Homelessness: The Basic Structure

Over the world, there are three general paths to helping the poor:

A. Relief-- This is help with the intent of helping the poor survive, day to day, like soup kitchens or emergency weather shelters. This is essential, but doesn't lead to ending poverty.

B. Opportunities-- This is giving someone a step up but with the responsibility equal upon them, like giving someone a job or an apartment. Not all the poor are ready for opportunities, but for those who are, it is a great boon, life-changing.

C. Development-- This is organizing a community of the poor to create their own solutions, with their own leadership, and then providing the funds for them to accomplish these goals.

This third method is the one that best works among the poor throughout the world. Community development is seen as the most effective way to end poverty. Yet it is the method never used by local governments in the United States among the homeless. Because the local governments aren't aware of homeless communities or leadership. So when tent cities pop up, led and organized by homeless communities, local governments are unpleasantly surprised and want to force their plans upon the homeless who already created their own plans.

Does the United States really want to "end homelessness"? Then stop planning and start asking. Stop telling the homeless what you will do for them and start asking what the homeless can do for themselves with a little help.

What Does It Mean To Be Homeless?

This question seems obvious. Clearly, homelessness is being without a home. But what is a “home”? And what does it mean that someone doesn’t have one? The problem with using a term like “homeless” is that it means so many different things. And one must solve the problem of what a thing is before we can begin discussing how to solve it. If you have five people and they all mean something different about homelessness, then how can they agree how to solve it?

Homelessness is inadequate shelter
The broadest way the term “homeless” is used is for those who have inadequate shelter. These are people who may have a family taking care of them and a roof over their head. But they are considered homeless because they don’t have adequate shelter. These are folks who have a job or is physically and mentally able to get a job, but perhaps they sleep on a couch, or they live in a shelter or they sleep in a vehicle with a bed. Many of these people may not consider themselves “homeless” because of the stigma attached to it, but they are technically homeless because they don’t have even a room to live in.

Homelessness is no shelter
A more precise use of the term “homeless” is for those who have no permanent shelter whatsoever. These are folks who may sleep on the street, in a park, in the forest, in a tent, under a bridge, in a car or wherever else they can sleep. Some of these homeless are without shelter for a week, some for a month, some for years. Some of the homeless are young, some are families, some are women, and about half are single men. More than seventy percent of these homeless get off the street in a matter of months. But the important characteristic of these folks is that they have no where else to go. A very small percentage may have chosen homelessness as a lifestyle, but most were forced on the street because they had no other choice.

Homelessness is a culture
What is often forgotten by most is that homelessness describes not only a physical condition, but a social reality. Over the years, a distinct set of cultures emerged for those who have lived on the street in a long term capacity. Others, especially youth, have participated in homeless culture, while not actually being without a place to live, dressing like the homeless and participating in the homeless community. Some of the characteristics of homeless culture is: dependence on others, especially other homeless, to meet one’s needs; alternative labor such as dumpster diving or canning; not participating in the social structures of broader society, such as many holidays or formal religion; and open sharing with those in need. To be homeless, for many on the street, means a participation with the community of the homeless, a subculture and a family for those without family.

Homelessness represents extreme poverty in the West
In the West, especially the United States, homelessness is a symbol. It is a representation of extreme poverty in the West. Even as the famine-starved child is a symbol for the poverty of developing countries, so the haggard homeless man is the symbol in the United States. Homelessness is seen as the lowest one can hit in the West. If one becomes homeless, they are at the end of their rope—there is no where else to go but up.

Homelessness is rejection
Because the homeless are the symbol of extreme poverty, they also represent failure. Either homelessness is a failure of society, or it is the failure of an individual. Because many do not believe in the failure of their society, they choose to believe in the failure of every single individual who became homeless. Thus, because poverty is often seen as a failure as a person in the West, the homeless are rejected as inadequate people. The homeless can be seen as an object of pity or an object of scorn, and either response lessens them as equal human beings.

What does it Mean to End Homelessness?
All of a sudden there are a number of goals to realize. It is not just about getting people housing. Rather, it is putting a potion of a fractured society back into a proper place. Not only does there need to be healing of the homeless, but a healing of society. Not only do physical needs need to be met, but we need to learn to be more culturally inclusive. Ending homelessness is not as simple as it seems on the surface. Instead, it seems that how we end homelessness is a test for our society. How we approach the homeless is a test of just how broad and intelligent our compassion is. Keep reading this blog to discover possibly the most inclusive plan to end homelessness ever. I think.

Teach A Man To Fish?

Commentary on the famous proverb by Pam Wilson of Operation Mercy:

Teaching fishing and other myths
"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day….
Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."
On an international scale, this poignant proverb has moved hearts, opened wallets and enjoyed widespread popularity in relief and development literature. It correctly identifies the temporal quality of much aid work and demonstrates the need for development beyond the limits of most projects in relief situations. However, this little proverb carries with it inherent assumptions that need to be examined more closely:1

1. It assumes that education is the solution to the problem.
On 17th August 1999, tens of thousands of people lost their lives in Western Turkey as the result of a devastating earthquake. The devastation was not caused so much by the physical impact as it was by poor building construction in the earthquake area. The fact that San Francisco suffered an earthquake of a similar magnitude during the same time period and without loss of life was a painful contrast. Once the initial stage of relief ended, development organisations and foreign governments rushed to provide seminars and training on how to build earthquake proof buildings. These were poorly attended and met with lethargy and even scorn. Why? Turkish contractors know how to build earthquake-proof
buildings. A glance at the provincial building code in the earthquake region reveals a set of rules and regulations equal to that of California's strict codes. The problem is not lack of education - the problem is one of corruption. Profit has became a stronger value than safety.


2. It assumes that it is the outsider who knows the solution to the problem.
Servants in Asia is an organisation born out of a dream that the gospel could truly become good news to the poor. They are brutally honest in their report of their medical work in Manila, Philippines: "The poor asked us to stop our mercy ministries. They argued that much of what we
were doing for them was in fact causing relational and communal breakdown. In other words, the social effect of all our programmes was proving harmful. Our individual approach to health care, in choosing one person over another, was creating jealousy and misunderstandings in the community. Our top down approach was alienating the poor. They did not feel an active part of the health care in the community. They were simply beneficiaries of the process, not managers of the process. They had little to do with its implementation. This demeaned their spirit. So in healing some aspects of the body we made their spirits sick." (Nicholls&Wood 1996:183)

3. It assumes that the man can't live in his environment.
Obviously in this proverb, the fishing teacher has observed a body of water that houses fish and with it the possibility of fishing. By deciding that the man must be taught fishing, the fishing teacher has made the assumption that the man has been unwilling to adapt to his environment.
A similar situation happened in Kenya, where the Masai love to tell the story of Lord Delamare. While visiting in Kenya, he observed the rich grasslands north of Nakuru but couldn't understand why the Masai didn't graze their cattle there. Deciding to kindly provide an example, rather than patronisingly teach them, he spent a significant sum importing English cattle and turning them loose on those grasslands. It was only then that he discovered that the grass in that part of the Rift Valley lacks a key nutrient that results in poor milk production, resulting in the death of most of the calves. This, of course, was something that every Masai boy knew but was never asked. (Myers 1999:144)

4. It assumes that the supply of fish is sustainable.
There was a time in South America when nearly every family grew its own food. If a family went hungry, it was usually due to laziness or carelessness or possibly social evils such as alcoholism. But with the arrival of Western capitalism, the lure of possible wealth has drawn many of these families into growing cash crops such as coffee, cocoa or tea. When the international price of their crop goes down, these people go hungry. Much starvation in parts of the nonwestern world today is due to this phenomenon. Even though this example comes courtesy of multinational corporations, aid workers can produce the same result by the introduction of non-sustainable forms of economic projects.

5. It assumes that those who will be taught fishing (probably already the most poor and
disadvantaged of society) will have fishing rights.
As we have seen in the earthquake example above, corruption is likely a stronger force in a society than justice. And in an even more general sense, powerlessness is a key root of poverty. In urban situations in particular, the poor suffer not so much for lack of cash or goods but from marginalisation and economic exploitation. Because there is only a finite amount of wealth in any country, the powerful can monopolize a majority of it only by denying it to the poor. (Linthicum 1991:37) Development workers cannot assume that providing skills to the disadvantaged opens a door to economic freedom.

6. It assumes that the new fishers have enough economic power to be able to sell their surplus fish.
After all, man does not live by fish alone. Clothing, housing and utility bills, medical costs and other nonperishable goods and services must be obtained, even by those in the most rural of environments. Before teaching fishing, has a market for fish been analysed? If a fisher cannot sell, trade or barter for the other services and goods that he requires, skill in fishing is only a partial solution to his economic problems.

7. It assumes that the environmental condition of the lake will remain constant.
For fishers to keep fishing, there need to be fish! A community whose survival strategy is dependent on a body of water to provide fish in the quanitites to which they have become accustomed is threatened when that body of water can no longer endure the demands placed on it. And when survival is threatened, people generally compromise their values to ensure their survival. One example of this is child prostitution. It is not a value for most parents to sell their daughters into prostitution. However, "when their very survival is threatened, they succumb to this practice as a way of navigating through the moral dilemmas which with survival confronts them." (Bradshaw 1998:68) Shortsighted development work moving into a situation such as this can pinpoint child prostitution as a community value that needs to be changed when the "value" can actually be the effect of the compromising of survival strategies or of poor development work in the first place.

8. It assumes that their traditions allow them to fish..
AIDS workers are learning in many cultures the power of tradition within a society. Is the continent of Africa dying of the AIDS virus because of immorality? Yes and no. In reality, in many places they are dying because of tradition. For example, the people in the Rakai district in northern Uganda believe that a woman is married to a clan, rather than to one man. Therefore, a bride in this culture has sexual intercourse with all of her husband's brothers before she appears in public as a married woman. Development workers who try to discourage this practice have been accused of imperialism and the attempted destruction of the Rakai culture. Unnecessarily so because everyone between the ages of 15 and 50 in the Rakai culture is now dead. Tradition has also preserved famine, discouraged well and dam building and encouraged the starvation of infants in many cultures around the world. Tradition and culture are powerful forces that must be considered before the implementation of any development programme.

9. It assumes that the male in the society is the one who provides food.
The story of the Yir Yoront is a classic example of Westerners ignoring the effect of gender and social hierarchy on culture. In the 1950's, a group of well-meaning Western missionaries introduced steel axes to the Yir Yoront, an Australian aboriginal society. As often happens, it was the powerless of the society - the women and the youth - who had made friends with the missionaries and so they were the initial beneficiaries of these choice tools. However, in Yir Yoront culture, it had not previously been the women and youth who were empowered. It was the elders who kept the stone axes for the communal use of the tribe. There were well-defined
social patterns defining the process of requesting the use of the ax. The authority structuring of the tribe was based on this tradition and this began to break down because of the good intentions of the missionaries. Not only was respect and social structuring affected, but the increased amount of free time resulted in an increase in promiscuity and alcoholism.

10. It assumes that participation is not an important goal.
"Without vision, the people perish." (Prov 29:18) The Hebrew word 'para' translated here as 'perish' means also to be set at naught, to be refused, to be uncovered. And without participation, training and development is hollow, short-lived and lacking in sustainability. What kind of participation? Certainly there is the kind of participation that involves listening to someone present their plan and syllabus for Fishing 101. Real participation, in contrast, begins within a community identifying its own needs, analyzing its own risks and resources and running their own programmes.

--Pam Wilson
Operation Mercy
International Relief Coordinator

Notes:
1Many thanks to Bruce Bradshaw of World Vision and Starbucks for good conversation on this topic, accompanied by good coffee. Much of this article is an augmentation of Bruce's ideas.

Bibliography:
Bradshaw, Bruce. "Empowering Communities to Enhance Survival Strategies." Taken from Sexually
Exploited Children: Working to Protect and Heal. Monrovia, CA: MARC, 1998.
Linthicum, Robert. Empowering the Poor. Monrovia, CA: MARC, 1991
Myers, Bryant. Walking With the Poor. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1999
Nicholls, Bruce J. and Wood, Beulah R. Sharing Good News with the Poor. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker
Book House and Carlisle, Cumbria: Paternoster Press, 1996