By Adrienne Lauby, Homeless Action! member
Thank you to the Santa Rosa Collective, Catholic Charities.
St. Joseph’s and anyone else who helped produce this 2-day workshop.
Thank you for making it possible for low and no-income people to attend
and eat lunch. Thank you for giving Homeless Action! one of the break-out
sessions. Thank you for providing an intellectually stimulating couple of days.
Thank you all for attending and being part of our ongoing attempt to do
something ‘awesome’ to end homelessness in Sonoma County and Santa Rosa.
My four recommendations from this Summit are at the end of this essay.
LET'S HOUSE PEOPLE; NOT FIX THEM
Before the Summit, my understanding of “Housing First” was
that we would stop trying to fix people until we get them into housing. I
support that. As someone who has been poor and someone who knows and
works with many homeless people, I see how varied and how strong many homeless
people are. I’ve seen the ineffective and humiliating programs many
homeless people are channeled into “for their own good.” This theory rang
a large brass bell of jubilation for me.
I also liked Iain’s focus on radical acceptance, allowing
people to be the people they are rather than trying to figure out what is wrong
with them and putting together a path for their improvement.
We don’t know what any individual is capable of; we don’t
know what they need. As we all know from our own life, improvement is a
complex and personal thing. Iain said that a helper’s job is to 1) get
people into housing and 2) walk alongside them in a non-judgmental,
constructive, consistent and intensive way.
Hearing him discuss this in detail was not only validating
but a good refresher course for my own behavior. For much of the Summit, I felt we were advocating Housing as
a Human Right and challenging the idea that only those who meet standards set
from above should have a community that includes food, shelter and healthcare.
I deeply believe that food, shelter and healthcare should be shared and
not be doled out, as it is so often, as punishment or reward.
All of this rang a sweet-toned bell, a bell of long-term and
ongoing hope.
MOVING SOCIAL SERVICE RESOURCES
I learned that, in Iain’s version of Housing First, nearly
all of the available resources would be shifted from helping people who are
homeless into 1) housing location and 2) extensive case management after people
get into a house. I believe this is the Federal government’s version of
Housing First as well.
Which is more important, to feed people once a week or to
get them a house with a kitchen? To teach parenting skills or get a
parent a home for their children? Put this way, it seems obvious that
housing is the most important goal.
Homeless people would largely agree. When I ask
homeless people how Homeless Action! can help them, the number one answer is,
“I need a place to live.” Homeless people also say that the agency staff who
are supposed to be helping them don’t do the things they need most. They
say the agencies have their own agendas and spend too much time either trying
to improve their characters and/or enforce unnecessary rules.
Iain said that we could house people even in high rent, low
vacancy areas like Sonoma County. He said that most poor people, most
people living with mental illness, most people who drink, do drugs or have
other problems do not become homeless. All these people, he said, find
homes in the current rental market. We just need to work harder and be
more focused. He said we could find homes for the homeless people who
live here.
Iain gave two categories of housing that we may be missing,
1) owners who rent informally, only to people recommended by current tenants
and 2) corporate owners who might welcome less vacancies and turn over.
Is there housing for the homeless available in Sonoma County if we look
in these two areas? We don’t know. But, the hope that
there are rental openings we don’t know about, don’t work hard enough to find,
or don’t have the skills to locate is exciting.
More resources should be devoted to testing this theory.
The Rent Sonoma Committee of the Continuum of Care began doing this work.
There is also a group in West County starting to forge links with landlords.
Their efforts and other work in this area should be encouraged and
provided with resources.
The Santa Rosa City Council and the Sonoma County Board of
Supervisors through the Continuum of Care should ask for monthly data from each
agency to track their success in locating apartments and getting homeless
people into them. Shelter providers should also report their capacity and
wait list numbers. These reports could be very simple but should be on
each website.
The idea that everyone who is working on homeless issues
would focus on housing people is alluring.
For funders, it’s particularly handy because, with simple
metrics, they can grade everyone from the individual staff member to entire
agencies. We only need to ask the question: What percentage of the people
who come through your door were you able to house last month?
This also set a bell to ringing and, this time, it was a
warning bell.
WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?
Iain presented himself as an expert and often referred to
research that proved his point. He painted people who might object as people
who are resistant to change or people who want to protect their agencies.
The proactive silencing of those who may disagree is bad behavior and
should be ignored.
As I said above, the simplicity of this version of “Housing
First” is very alluring and, I believe, particularly alluring for funders.
But, its simplicity is also its flaw. Human societies are not simple
and homelessness is not a single-issue problem.
Iain spoke of the many people who are ‘able to find housing
even in a tight housing market.’ But homelessness is primarily a result
of poverty and, in Sonoma County poor people, elders, those on fixed income,
mentally disabled people, and people with addiction or other problems are not
doing so well.
Despite ObamaCare, many people with mental illnesses cannot
access routine health care. Rental insecurity is exacerbating mental and
physical illnesses. There is a pathetic lack of treatment available for
addicts, and the quality of life for many elders and youth continues to slide.
According to the Sonoma County Department of Health
Services’ 2014 “Portrait of Sonoma County,” huge disparities along the lines of
race, ethnicity, and gender persist in levels of health, education, and standard
of living. Many people have already had to leave the county because they could
not find a way to support, shelter and feed themselves in Santa Rosa. All
of this is likely to get even worse under the Trump administration. When
30% of households spend more than 50% of their income on rent, as they do here,
we have a problem that can not be measured by the number of homeless people we
house.
Will finding available apartments for homeless people shrink
the number of apartments available for other low and no-income people?
That seems likely.
Both the City of Santa Rosa and the CDC efforts have the
homeless issue as a primary focus. As they seek solutions and work for
success, we must ensure that they do not ignore the wider problems and solutions.
Both the business and the advocacy community recognize that the
financial burden of paying 50% of income for rent is impossible in the long
term.
I asked Kris Freed, one of the Summit presenters, to explain
how this model of Housing First works in her organization, the L.A. Family
Housing. She said that her LFH once had both transitional housing and
shelter housing and they had 300 person waiting lists. They closed the
transitional housing, made the shelter bare bones and put all their money into
finding housing and helping people stay in their houses. Now she can
guarantee that people who come to her can have a house within 60 days. Who
wouldn’t want that?
But, when I ask more questions, I got a picture of many
people squeezed into crowded, stressful living conditions. LFH offers
some help with the initial rent but there were no ongoing rental subsidies.
They do the kind of casework Iain recommended but for even the most
troubling conditions, it ends after two years. This was very disturbing
information and we need to learn the details of those who have “succeeded” via
Housing First. Are these successes successful by our community standards?
What are the trade-offs in health and well being both for the homeless
and for the low-income communities?
If we select only the outcome of “stable housing for the
chronically homeless”, we are setting our goals too narrowly. And, we are
allowing the larger community to ignore their role in providing a reasonable
quality of life for all its residents.
The U.S. homeless population skyrocketed beginning with
Ronald Reagan’s 50% cuts to HUD (Housing and Urban Development), the agency
that had historically been tasked with building low income housing stock.
In each decade since, those low-income houses have not been built.
If we apply the model of Housing First that we heard at the Summit, we
don’t need the Federal government to help house the people of the U.S.
But, this is patently untrue.
Locally, both the City of Santa Rosa and the County of
Sonoma have committed to building housing dedicated to homeless and other low
or no-income people. Their efforts need to be encouraged and supported.
The “boomerang funds” which returned from Redevelopment should be tracked
and we must assure they are dedicated to housing, rather than just lament the
loss of Redevelopment. And, the State of California also needs to step up to
their obligations to provide for community housing needs.
Finally, and this may be the most important thing I am
saying, if resources are to be redirected, we must ask homeless people which
services are the most important to them. Any funding changes, whether within an
agency or from outside funders, must only be made after a rigorous survey of
the most important people, the homeless people themselves.
RECOMMENDATIONS:
1. Test the theory that there are rental openings we
don’t know about, don’t work hard enough to find, or don’t have the skills to
locate. Encourage and provide resources to those who are working to
locate housing for homeless people through direct contact with landlords,
property managers and owners. Track their progress carefully.
2. Ask for public monthly reports from each
agency on their success in housing homeless people as well as the capacity and
wait list at each shelter.
3. Support, but assure transparency from, the
City of Santa Rosa and the County of Sonoma’s commitment to building housing
dedicated to homeless and other low or no-income people.
4. Redirect funding only in response to and as guided
by a rigorous survey of homeless people who currently use the services (agency
level changes) or homeless people as a whole (city and county-wide changes).
