NEWSGOVERNMENT ANTI-HOMELESSNESS PROGRAMS

Fulfilling the wishes and happiness of children is at the heart of the holiday season. So, now seems particularly timely for Mississippi to launch a new plan to end child homelessness (pdf) in the state.  What better way to set the season of giving in motion than by committing to finding safe and stable homes for the roughly 12,000 homeless children and youth of Mississippi?

The shocking number homeless youth in the state has steadily increased in recent years, according to the Campaign to End Child Homelessness and National Center on Family Homelessness, and can no longer be overlooked. The newly announced plan is considered the first coordinated effort in Mississippi to talk about family homelessness, as well as solutions. The campaign aims to increase public awareness of the issue, improve state and local policies to address homelessness, and perhaps most importantly, improve programs and services to prevent and ultimately end child and family homelessness. Reports can be studied all day long, but the key is putting those words into action.

This week, the Chicago City Council's Housing and Finance committees voted 13 to 8 to send an affordable housing bill to lame-duck mayor Richard Daley. Can it make the windy city a bit more hospitable to low-income people?

The measure, known as the Sweet Home Chicago bill, would require that 20 percent of the city's TIF (tax increment financing) funds be set aside for affordable housing within TIF districts. It will go to a vote of the full council as soon as Wednesday.

Alderman Walter Burnett is the chief sponsor of the bill, which was held up in the Housing and Finance committee for months, causing protests by community organizers such as the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless.

The Mayor opposes the bill, and some — like Progress Illinois — expect a contentious vote. Opponents say the bill could tie the hands of city planners, and city attorneys say the bill's pooling of TIF money across areas for a single use may be illegal.

TIF funds are a portion of tax money collected on the difference in property values over time in designated zones of blight, set specifically aside for reinvestment and redevelopment. The concept is in wide use across the country, but rarely is it as controversial as in Chicago, where oversight and transparency has long been questioned.

Activists do a great job advocating for change. We should also pause to celebrate when change happens. Here's a great example of a victory on the fronts of homelessness and domestic violence.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) recently announced its plans for stronger affordable housing regulations that will better protect survivors of domestic violence and abuse. The requirements fall under the Violence Against Women Act (VAMA). This vital piece of legislation provides legal protections for victims of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault and stalking. Up until now, there wasn't consistent enforcement of VAMA by landlords and other housing authorities and often families would be forced into homelessness as an only means to escape abuse.

Advocates have been working to educate housing authorities and make them more aware and sensitive to the nature of domestic abuse to protect victims. New rules now regulate owners to exhaust all protective measures prior to starting eviction proceedings. Now owners and housing authorities are held more accountable to take actions that will reduce or eliminate the threat to the victim and family before resorting to actions that could lead to eviction and homelessness.

Another important note in the new rule is the fact that it "broadens the definitions of 'actual and imminent threat', to help housing or subsidy providers understand that to use 'imminent threat' of harm to other residents as a reason for eviction of the victim, the evidence must be real and objective — not hypothetical, presumed or speculative."

The nation's Department of Veterans Affairs serves about 92,000 homeless veterans. Veteran homelessness is a difficult task to tackle, and the VA is no doubt making a commendable effort, no matter how short the scope of its assistance may fall of the ideal. Unfortunately, there are still another 15,000 homeless veterans on the streets of America, according to the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans.

While all homelessness is something we ought to be ashamed of, veteran homelessness — 23 percent of the homeless population, according to United States Interagency Council on Homelessness — is unique. Veterans have contributed to our country in a way no other citizens have. They have offered up their lives, their safety, and often times their sanity, for our freedoms and way of life.

Tell the Senate to pass the End Veteran Homelessness Act!

We can disagree about foreign policy or the justness of certain wars, but when a young person decides that the best or only way he or she can individually give back to this country is to risk everything — and everything bears repeating here — we need to honor him or her.

What, in this instance, does honor include? Our productivity and our excesses, our freedoms and our transgressions are all predicated on the work of veterans. Like the unseen cells that form the organs with which we fight disease, our lifestyles are guarded by our soldiers. The least we owe them is our full guardianship.

It is a task perhaps too much to ask of the government, which makes the work of organizations like Swords to Plowshares so important. Started in 1974, the non-profit provides a continuum-of-care approach to serving veterans in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Get this. Police didn't want an event full of services for the homeless to be held in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park because that would bring homeless people back to an area cops have been working to shoo them away from. Huh?

The event is the semi-regular Project Homeless Connect, spearheaded by Mayor Gavin Newsom, designed to provide homeless individuals with referrals to housing programs, medical care and substance abuse treatment, HIV testing, haircuts and more. It's a one-day, one-stop shop for services. Previously it has been held at an indoor location downtown, but providers decided to move this week's event to the park to try to connect with people who wouldn't come into an auditorium. Makes sense.

In expressing concerns about the event further entrenching homeless people who refuse to leave the park (about 50 people live there now, down from a peak of about 300), a police captain engaged in unhelpful stereotyping. "We're trying to get them out of the park and [the event is] bringing them back," Lt. Mark Solomon, acting captain at the Police Park Station, told the San Francisco Examiner. He was alarmed, or he said he was alarmed at least, by the event's proximity to a playground in the park. "We're dealing with people with mental health issues, and [sex offenders] and people who carry weapons, and we're bringing them to a children’s playground. It just doesn't make sense."

Actually, Officer Solomon, what doesn't make sense is foisting your own misinformed stereotypes on an entire group of people. I would think a member of law enforcement would know that homeless people don't often carry out crime sprees, and that most people arrested for sex crimes or weapons charges have permanent addresses.

Traditionally, caring for the have-nots has been left to governments that apply tax revenue to the needs of "the poor" while some charitable, usually religious, groups make up the difference (often with government grants).

This old model has served the political needs of government well and served the mission of church groups well. In many cases people have been helped in times of need by both government and the church-dominated charitable sector very well.

More recently, professional non-church service providers have emerged, often with the assistance of government funding but more significantly through charitable giving from the community and corporate sector. They have brought with them advancements in how to respond effectively to the more complex needs of homeless people, beyond food and shelter.

There have even been attempts by the for-profit sector to get in on the government dollars and provide services to homeless people, but their offerings, to my knowledge, have been very limited outside of fulfilling a contract to do A, B and C.

So which sector of support services has already and can in the future make the greatest difference in the lives of homeless people?

The numbers have been streaming in from all across the country and there's no ignoring it; poverty is on the rise. In 2009, almost 44 million Americans fell below the poverty line. Most tragically, more young people than ever are leaving for school in the morning not from home but from shelters, friends' couches or elsewhere. They are the estimated one million homeless students in this country.

As the mid-term elections near and we all begin demanding promises from politicians not known for keeping them, activists are asking how we're going to engage those seeking our votes on issues of poverty and homelessness.

In Oregon, the Rev. Chuck Currie noted that 19,000 children in the state's public school system were homeless, a 5.5 percent increase from the previous year and a 134 percent increase over the past seven.

"As the 2010 election campaign rages where are the politicians and how will they address growing poverty and homelessness, particularly the needs of homeless students?" he asked before offering some policy suggestions — expanding TANF funding (something we have also encouraged), certain tax credits, a realignment with the Half in Ten campaign to cut poverty by 50 percent in a decade.

In Loveland, Colorado, an anti-poverty group recently posed questions about poverty and homelessness and the role of government and the private sector in ameliorating problems to politicians running for local office. Some of the solutions offered: luring green-energy industries in to create more jobs; expand educational opportunities to create skilled workers; direct government action in keeping down the cost of living. So far, so good.

Of course, as the debate plays out everywhere, the main disagreement was where funding for poverty- and homeless-eradication programs ought to come from — the public or private sector. Unlike social justice issues like gay rights and environmental protection, few argue with ending poverty and homelessness. Still, no one can agree how to do it.

Raising money for the homeless has always been a trying endeavor. Throw a recession into the mix, and you've got a nightmare for people looking to fill budget gaps in both the public and private sector. In times like these, public officials and non-profit fundraisers alike are getting creative with their fundraising efforts.

One idea that has come to the forefront in Nashville, Tennessee: parking meters. Inspired by similar programs in Denver and Miami, Nashville Mayor Karl Dean plans to set up five parking meters to collect donations for the homeless as part of the city's "Adopt A Meter" program. Each meter will have a corporate sponsor, and any change deposited will go to Key Alliance, a local Housing First group.

The recent popularity of programs like Nashville's has created a buzz among city governments trying to balance budgets and provide essential services at the same time. Orlando, too, has proposed using 15 recycled parking meters as "donation meters." Here's the catch: the plan allows cities to cut down on panhandling and raise money for homelessness prevention programs in one fell swoop. As homeless blogger SlumJack wrote here in April about the parking meter initiative in Santa Cruz, California: "This could be a fairly expensive and elaborate way to invest in mainly discouraging panhandlers that truly costs the public a lot more than just handing cash directly to those who need it." The problem is that the money collected might not go to those who are being displaced, leaving many homeless people singing the blues in Music City.

Well, election season is in full swing now. And though many people may be unaware, homeless people vote too, having won that right (or, the recognition of that right) thanks to myriad court cases. A federal judge in Ohio has even ruled that a homeless person may list a park bench as her address when registering to vote. The National Coalition for the Homeless has its own bi-annual election campaign — a campaign to get the homeless who have the right to vote to do so.

But getting the homeless to vote isn't easy and keeping them engaged in the political process after the candidate of their choice has won the election and then failed to deliver on his or her promises is even harder, as this only adds to the feelings of disenfranchisement that many homeless already feel. Some of the homeless laid aside their feelings of doubt and despair in the fall of 2008 and decided to cast their ballots, many of them voting for Barack Obama who ran on a platform of "hope" and "change." They seemed to be following the advice of Malcolm X who said, "A ballot is like a bullet. You don't throw your ballot until you see a target. And if that target is not within reach, keep your ballot in your pocket." They saw their target within reach in the person of Barack Obama — or so they thought.

Here in D.C., where we only have two levels of government (due to not being located in a state), the homeless community expressed the same sort of excitement about then-Councilman Adrian Fenty in 2006 that the nation expressed about Obama in 2008. Adrian Fenty had been the Ward 4 councilman and was also the chairperson for D.C. government's Committee on Human Services. It was his job to care for the underprivileged people of the District and he did his job well. He was accessible to the poor community when they had any complaints about services, even holding town hall meetings at shelters. As a matter of fact, Fenty's transition team hosted a meeting during which they heard the concerns of the homeless community. Much to the surprise of the organizers, more than eighty homeless people showed up.

You may remember the story: First Lady Michelle Obama spends a day serving food in a soup kitchen in the capital. An excited guest snaps a picture of her with a camera phone. The right wing media goes nuts asking, "How can a homeless guy have a cell phone?!," not realizing that cell phones are an affordable lifeline for many homeless individuals. A Department of Labor employee includes a photo of the man taking a photo in a disparaging email. Homeless advocates use that gaffe to forge a relationship with the Department. What do we want? Jobs! When do we want them? Now!

That saga that began with a homeless man photographing Michelle Obama and led to homeless advocates working with the Labor Department and D.C.'s Department of Human Services to create a job-training program for the homeless continues.

In May, the advocacy organization STREATS and DHS filed paperwork with DOL in order to get funding for the "Exit Strategy," a program that would train higher-functioning homeless people to do jobs that pay a living wage so that they wouldn't need to depend on the government for anything — not food stamps, help with rent or any other federal assistance. However, the paperwork was filed too close to the end of DOL's budgetary funding cycle, which means that now we must wait until the next fiscal year to be funded by DOL.

STREATS recently met with Human Services director Clarence Carter to discuss the development of this program and other funding options including the distinct possibility of funding from DHS. However, one of the basic rules of funding is that a program must be designed according to the preferences of those providing the funding. On the one hand, if the Exit Strategy were funded by the federal government, STREATS would have to do what is known in the homeless advocacy community as "creaming" — helping those who are easiest to help, who have the fewest issues and who are most likely to succeed (i.e. leave homelessness). This would mean that the program wouldn't help anyone with mental illness, physical impairments or chemical dependency. On the other hand, if the Exit Strategy were funded by DHS, we would have to do some "silting" — helping those who are hardest to help.