Tag Archive for homelessness

| January 16, 2013
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Homeless in the New Hampshire Winter

Harrisville, New Hampshire

Harrisville, New Hampshire (Photo credit: Dougtone)

The stereotypical image of a homeless person is usually portrayed in a highly urbanized setting. Just as population is spread across the country, filling both urban and rural niches, so is the chronic problem of homelessness. Small towns and the countryside have more than their fair share of people sleeping rough, and sleeping rough at this time of year can be deadly.

Look at Cheshire County, New Hampshire. Homelessness is a rising problem, fueled by many factors. For one thing, according to Chris Sterndale, executive director of Cross Roads House, the state and local budgets have cut back extensively on mental health funding. The effects can be seen not only in rising homeless numbers but also in a rise in the proportion of them suffering mental illness. Ten years ago the mentally ill comprised one-third of the homeless population, not its one-half.

The biggest factor is hardly surprising – economics. The New Hampshire Union Leader reports:

Overall, though, mental illness is not the driving cause of homelessness; low wages mixed with the lack of affordable housing are the biggest factors.

“In many cases, it’s the working poor. Just because they don’t have a place to sleep this month, it doesn’t mean they are that much different from the other low-income people around us,” Sterndale said. “A lot of these are families that have young kids, and if you can’t earn enough for rent, child care and transportation, something’s gonna give.”

Housing costs in the Seacoast area have only gone up despite the recession, he said. “In a lot of places around the country, rent came down as we went through this first part of the recession, but that didn’t happen here.”

After the Seacoast area, Nashua has the highest rent prices in the state, Brady said, because of its proximity to Massachusetts.

People working in the Bay State who are making higher wages move into Nashua for the lower cost of living compared with that in Massachusetts, pushing the working poor out of housing.

On top of that, northern New Hampshire residents are moving to the area looking for work.

These are not the type of concerns that come immediately to mind when most people think about homelessness, but they are still valid. Every child, every person, left without shelter in the snow is important.

The texture of the problem changes from community to community, although many things remain constant. For instance, rehabilitative approaches are proven effective, and with the rising percentage of mentally ill among New Hampshire’s homeless they make an obvious tactic to embrace. Even so, most of the affected rural areas lack the density of resources larger cities possess.

None of the problems we seek to address is simple. Each one exists in a complex web of community, economic factors, and opportunity. While we seek big picture solutions we also need to keep in mind that each area has slightly different needs, requiring that those approaches be tailored on the local level in order to achieve maximum effect.

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Category: Homelessness | Tags: , , , ,
| January 10, 2013
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The Cost of Homelessness

The Campaign to End Child Homelessness, an initiative of The National Center on Family Homelessness, is at the forefront of the battle to ensure stable housing and well-being for families and children. The National Center is a well known source of state-of-the-art research in this field.

Between the Great Depression and the 1980s, family homelessness was nearly non-existent. Since the ’80s it has become epidemic. Organizations like the National Center are vital for helping us acquire the best possible information from which to proceed.

Speaking of information, their new brief covers a subject we bring up frequently here on the blog: the cost of homelessness. Let’s take a look at these latest numbers, shall we?

Housing
Emergency shelters provide temporary housing for people who have no other place to stay. For families with children, however, emergency shelters are often more expensive than permanent supportive housing.

• Emergency shelter beds funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Emergency Shelter Grant Program cost approximately $8,000 more than the average annual cost of a Section 8 Housing Certificate.
• The prevalence rate of childhood foster care among children experiencing homelessness is 34 times the childhood foster care prevalence rate among all U.S. children.18 The adjusted marginal cost associated with foster care is $60,422/child annually.

Health and Mental Health Care
Emergency rooms are often the primary place where families experiencing homelessness go to receive health care. Lack of regular preventive care results in repeated emergency room visits, higher rates of hospitalization, and more costly treatment.

• Hospital stays for people experiencing homelessness average four days longer than their stably housed peers, for an additional cost of approximately $2,414 per stay.
• By the age of 12, 83 percent of children experiencing homelessness have been exposed to at least one violent event. These children are 15 percent more likely to need mental health services to recover from the impact of trauma when compared to their peers. The average annual cost for mental health services for children is $2,865 per episode.

Education
Children experiencing homelessness have higher drop-out rates than their stably housed peers. Only one in four students who have experienced homelessness graduate from high school.

• Students who drop out of high school earn on average $200,000 less over their lifetime than high school graduates.
• The net lifetime contributions lost to society after accounting for the costs that would be incurred to improve education are $127,000 per non-graduating student.

There you have it, more clear cut numbers that show how much public money is getting squandered. That alone should be enough of an argument– even for those whose compassion is not engaged on the subject. Even the most “business only” perspective must accede that the bottom line demands action.

One reason that we focus on the cost angle so much is because of all the budget tightening going on across the country. While things are improving, there are still misguided politicians pushing short-term cuts that produce massive long-term debt. Many of the measures we endorse may be slightly higher in up-front costs, but they produce massive savings that increase the longer they are in effect.

There are people on both sides of the political aisle who get it wrong, and people on both sides who get it right. It is not a partisan issue. Just look at the numbers I shared above; they are simple facts and non-partisan by nature.

It is far more expensive to do nothing!

Category: Homelessness, Humane Exposures | Tags: , , ,
| January 2, 2013
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Homelessness, ideals, and profit margins

Homeless

Homeless (Photo credit: Niklas)

Last month the Department of Housing and Urban Development made an announcement that slipped by mostly unnoticed in the holiday furor. The department reported that the number of homeless people in the U.S. declined slightly in 2012, a drop of 0.4 percent to 633,782. The numbers show a continuous five year trend during which the U.S. has reduced homelessness by 5.7 percent even as the poverty rate grew by 20 percent. It should be noted that this announcement is based on a count on a single night last January.

The editors over at Bloomberg seem confident that they have isolated the cause:

The solution, it seems, lies not in publicly sheltering the homeless for sustained periods but in ensuring that they quickly secure their own places to live.

This approach was first applied to the chronically homeless, who made up 16 percent of all cases in 2012. These individuals almost always have disabilities such as mental or physical health problems or addictions. As a result, they fare poorly in conventional homeless programs, which may require compliance with the rules of an emergency shelter — such as sobriety — before allowing them entrance to a transitional shelter. Further compliance, including treatment for substance abuse, for instance, may be required before they can qualify for permanent housing support.

The alternative strategy places the chronically homeless directly into permanent housing while also connecting them to services to address their other challenges. Most will need this support, at government expense, for life. Yet such comprehensive assistance is probably cheaper than leaving the chronically homeless on the streets, because they often end up in hospitals, detox centers or jails, all on the taxpayer’s dime. Those services cost the public $2,897 per individual per month, according to one study in Los Angeles County, versus $605 for supportive housing.

Once more we see the comparison between short-term expense and long-term savings thrown into sharp relief. There is certainly a lot of public money to be saved in finding more effective ways to combat homelessness, but it also brings up another chronic issue: service providers.

No matter what sort of program gets implemented, it all comes down to how efficiently it is done. Within the for-profit prison system we see justice take a sideline to occupancy quotas and profitability. When talking about homeless issues it is likewise important to remember that many of the service providers seeking public money would be out of business if the homeless problem got solved.

I started thinking about this after an interaction with a homeless blogger named Thomas Armstrong in our Google community about homelessness. Here are the paragraphs that stuck with me:

I am increasingly concerned, and am hearing that others’ concerns are increasing, about a lack of help for mentally ill people in Homeless World Sacramento.

There is a feeling that all the public agencies and nonprofits are shirking responsibility to help those who suffer most and are most in need of help. Instead, the homeless-help industry’s interest is turned near-entirely to getting disability incomes for veterans and chronically homeless persons, which sounds more laudable than it is. The reason vets and the chronically homeless are getting so much attention has everything to do with MONEY — that is so the charities can get buck from these homeless people in exchange for services and so that charities can do their crocodile-tears donations-seeking dance.

The state and county remain in fiscal trouble. It is known that services they provide or fund to help poor or mentally-ill people were among the first to be severely cut or ended in response to the budget crisis beginning three or four years ago. Advocates for the mentally ill and families that include a mentally ill member are not politically powerful.

Many seemingly laudable programs can develop tunnel-vision as they seek funding, becoming out of touch with the reality on the streets. Groups like this can often be identified by their avoidance of discussions about how often the new residents are followed up and/or assisted with in-place operators wanting to see them succeed. That they need homeless people in order to keep their doors open makes their operations deserving of scrutiny.

So, how do we make this arrangement more effective? Long-term solutions are certainly proving to be far more effective at getting people off the streets and into homes, but the human element is of grave concern.

What do you think? Is there a way to deploy funding into effective programs while ensuring that it is employed both strategically and effectively? It is a thorny problem and worthy of discussion, so please share your thoughts.

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Category: Homelessness, Humane Exposures | Tags: , , , , , , ,
| November 29, 2012
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Special Federal Homeless Effort Coming to California

English: A homeless man in New York with the A...

A homeless man in New York with the American flag in the background. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

According to the California Housing Finance Agency the number of homeless in California is almost equal to the number of people that live in the Central Valley city if Visalia.

To anyone who is paying attention, the number of people living on the streets has gotten out of hand. Their already sizable numbers have been swelled by victims of the housing implosion and the economic downturn. More faces every day join the ranks of those sleeping under bridges, in tents and worse.

Now some federal assistance is on the way. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, has chosen six states across the union to participate in their new “Policy Academy” program to help combat homelessness.

The Central Valley Business Times brings us some details about the program:

As part of the Policy Academy, California will receive technical assistance to reduce chronic homelessness. About one of every 280 Californians is homeless, according to an annual report to Congress.

“We must push forward with aggressive, forward-looking, coordinated programs to fight homelessness in the state and the country,” says Ms. Cappio. “We cannot look the other way. It affects so many of our most vulnerable residents.”

The Policy Academy will include a comparison with other programs and practices that have worked across the nation. The effort is intended to reduce fragmentation, increase community education and leadership, and provide a framework to best use available resources.

The approach seems laudable. The Policy Academy will focus on identifying how programs across the state and federal levels can be coordinated into a multidisciplinary assault on homelessness.

Various programs already exist, but they operate independently creating a scatter-shot approach to the issue. The Policy Academy will, if things go according to plan, allow efforts like the Affordable Care Act, CalFresh, CalWORKs and Medi-Cal funds to make more of an impact by working in a synergistic fashion.

The range of agencies runs from non-profits to law enforcement, including:

  • Mental Health Services Oversight & Accountability Commission
  • Department of State Hospitals
  • Department of Alcohol & Drug Programs
  • Department of Health Care Services
  • Health & Human Services Agency

We have often pointed out the complexity of these issues, and the need for coordinated, cross-disciplinary action. Let us hope that this is a step forward in that regard.

 

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| September 25, 2012
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It’s More Expensive To Do Nothing About Homelessness in Canada

There is a very interesting study that was recently released in Canada. The findings may provide some insight into the issues of homelessness we face here in the US.

The substantive report (150 pages of it) analyzed the costs of homelessness, including oft-forgotten peripherals like emergency medical expenses and policing. It then compared them to the cost of implementing services and programs designed to combat the problem.

Via The Vancouver Sun:

The estimated annual cost of $55,000 per homeless person takes into consideration the high risk of infectious diseases. The study says some individuals can be slow to accept treatment because they don’t recognize their mental illness, and may circulate through the court system because of a need to get drugs and food.

The study argues that if housing and support were offered to these people, it would cost the system much less – just $37,000 a year.

The report calculated that a capital investment of $784 million is needed to provide adequate housing to the 11,750 homeless people, and a further $148 million per year is required for housing-related support services.

But the study argues that after removing what the province is paying for health care, jail and shelters, and by spreading the capital costs out over several years, taxpayers could ultimately stand to save nearly $33 million annually.

The interesting part is how well these findings complement the research already done on juvenile incarceration and the incarceration of women. In our documentary, It’s More Expensive to Do Nothing, we examined the fiscal and societal gains that can be attained by implementing rehabilitative programs. They are substantive and invite and obvious parallel to the Canadian study’s findings on homelessness.

Another common thread between the two subjects is the recurrence of mental illness and substance abuse as part of the equation. These factors, if not addressed, tend to spiral out of control. Those subject to them can find themselves on a downward path that can be counteracted with the correct therapy and support programs. (On a personal note I know two people who used programs like that to get a grip on things while fighting those battles. They are now well-respected professionals in our community.)

I don’t know of any studies of this nature going on stateside, but it might be worthwhile to encourage it. Our own look at similar fiscal waste, and the human impact it has, was presented in the documentary It’s More Expensive to Do Nothing.

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Category: Homelessness, Humane Exposures, It's More Expensive to Do Nothing | Tags: , , , , , , ,
| August 4, 2012
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Infographic: The Plight of Homeless Veterans

Homeless Veterans

Browse more data visualizations.

Category: Homeless Veterans, Homelessness | Tags: , , , ,
| July 30, 2012
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Cisco and Community Solutions: Fighting homelessness in NYC

cisco-logo
Cisco Systems, one of the giants in the computer field, is joining forces with Community Solutions in order to fight homelessness in New York City. The technology giant and it’s community partner are already four months into the process, and it looks like their results are decent enough to move forward in a larger fashion.

Antonio Pasolini, a Brazilian writer for JustMeans, gives us the rundown:

Community Solutions and Cisco created a proof of concept program that started in April and will run until September whereby Cisco engages at multiple levels, both corporate and local, with the opportunity for other Cisco offices to explore partnering with Community Solutions in their communities.

Nice words, but what do they mean from a practical standpoint?

Cisco employees initially will be engaged in four areas. They will be sharing their life experiences as mentors to disadvantaged youth from Brownsville, Brooklyn as part of the Youth Advisor Program. The area is one of New York‘s most challenged communities. They will also help Community Solutions use collaboration technologies to advance its work. Besides, they will take part of a Fundraising drive. One of the actions is the “$50K Challenge Grant,” whereby up to US$25,000 raised by employees will be matched by Corporate NY/NJ Civic Council support. Finally, through Corporate Support, the Cisco Foundation and Employee Relations are supporting the “$100K Homes Campaign” through matching and local grants. One of the initiatives to be benefitted with this program is “Housing Homeless Veterans Faster.” Veterans make up 12 percent of the homeless population.

This is a good thing. The more we can bring contemporary technology to bear on the problem the better off we will be. Collaborative technologies can allow people to mobilize more easily and efficiently as they attempt to implement solutions to these problems.

Additionally, mentoring is amazingly important. As we have often stated in our work, all it takes is “one good-enough adult,” to make all the difference to an at-risk kid. Mentors who can also teach digital skills are an extremely valuable resource, one that can provide the skills needed to be successful in our increasingly online society.

I’ve reached out to Cisco to see if I can get an interview with some of their people about the program. If things work out, we should have some more details for you soon!

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Category: Humane Exposures | Tags: , , , ,
| July 10, 2012
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The Homeless -Invisible or Ignored?

Homeless?There are many stereotypes about the homeless. To many people they are written off as alcoholics and drug addicts. Others barely register their existence. Despite the recent economic misadventures, events that have greatly swelled the ranks of the homeless, these stereotypes remain consistent.

Only someone oblivious to reality would say there is no substance abuse among the homeless. By the same token you cannot paint such a diverse group of people with a single brush.

Between the housing crash and the ailing national economy many thousands have become homeless over the past few years. Families that had opted for sub-prime mortgages suddenly found themselves on the streets. Families and parents pushed to the financial brink find themselves on the street. Across the United States people who have been living paycheck to paycheck are finding themselves sleeping under the stars.

A highly disturbing number of these these recent homeless are women, children and veterans. And still the pejorative stereotypes persist.

Cary Fuller, a homeless single mother, gave her thoughts on the subject in a recent post for the Huffington Post:

The first thing I asked him was this: “If the homeless had permanent housing and support services, would they be hanging around in parks and alleyways?” Give people something better to do and a better place to go and the majority will, I said. At this point he then said that many of these homeless could get welfare and a job to which I then said “Really? Where? How can you get a job without an address? If you’re mentally ill, who will hire you?” Once again, a blank stare from my ex-neighbor. That’s when I told him that if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem and the problem here is that too many people have the attitude that they don’t have to get involved with anything so long as they’re not affected. The truth is that everybody is affected by homelessness. When homeless people get sick to the point of having to be taken to the emergency room, who do you think foots the bill for that?

Her last observation was particularly resonant. While people may well tune out the homeless they see on the streets, their pocketbooks cannot. (This is the reason we titled our documentary It’s More Expensive to do Nothing. The cost of rehabilitating these people back into mainstream society is far less than is currently being expended.)

To the vast majority of people the homeless remain faceless. As a result they fall back on images of the rum-soaked alcoholic snoring away the afternoon under an overpass – and other caricatures.

Take a moment and meet some of them. In our book downTown:USA our own Susan Madden Lankford takes you on a visual journey into their world, where she shares their narratives.

You see these people on your streets every day. Now take a moment and really look at them.

Category: downTown U.S.A., Homelessness, Humane Exposures | Tags: ,
| May 22, 2012
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The Real Faces of Homelessness

FaceNo matter what city you live in you will see homeless people on the streets. The man standing on the side of the road with a “Will work for food,” sign is a sight we all are familiar with, as is the huddled figure sleeping in a doorway somewhere near you.

My grandmother used to point out people living on the street and say, “There, but for the grace of god, go I”, She would then stop and give them some spare change.

My grandmother’s words truly resonate with me these days. Bobbie Ibarra, Executive Director of the Miami Coalition for the Homeless, recently noted a substantive change in the demographics of the homeless these days:

Families are a newer face to homelessness that run the gamut, due to situations regarding financial instabilities, not having access to health care, unemployment, lack of affordable housing and the recent trend of foreclosures. However, the youth have their own face to homelessness as well, such as those who either run away from home or age out of the foster care system with no guidance and resort to ‘couch surfing.’ This is a group that is blending in with their counterparts in our school systems, making their situation invisible.

These days more and more of the homeless defy the stereotypes we have adopted (as happens all too often with stereotypes). The economic chaos of the past few years has thrust many families and individuals onto the streets. The man shamefacedly asking for spare change on the corner could well have been living in a large suburban home a mere few weeks ago.

There are many others who have ended up, like the students Ms. Ibarra spoke of above, living with friends or family because they can no longer afford a home of their own. One small step away from the streets but lacking resources of their own, they are the invisible faces of the homeless problem, and their numbers are also growing.

Writer Stephen Smith recently wrote about the homlessness issue in the U.K. In his blog post he noted the fine line so many tread between having a roof and living on the streets:

In 1990, the late, great Bill Hicks said ‘anybody can be a bum; all it takes is the right girl, the right bar and the right friends’.

Hicks always had a hard core of truth in his humour, recognising here that people can – and do – go from affluence and security to poverty, homelessness and insecurity faster than you can say ‘austerity budget’.

How are people left homeless? Relationships breaking up, substance addictions, serious illness, escaping abusive relationships, severe debt, leaving the Services or coming out of prison can all bring homelessness, as well as something we can all relate to: losing your job. No job, run up debt, you can’t meet the mortgage or rent. Bang! Of course, you may be lucky enough to have friends and family who’d look out for you – but many people don’t.

Ask yourself how long you would be able to make your rent or mortgage if your income stopped tomorrow? That’s how close you are to being classed as homeless.

With unemployment numbers continuing at absurd levels there are many of us who know the fear of not being able to make the bills. Living on the street is a specter in the lives of every household that is living “paycheck-to-paycheck.” I personally know of five people who in the last week have been let go from their jobs with no warning, in one case because the entire university department was dissolved (20 jobs gone in a flash). Now they are wondering what their options are and how long they will make it.

Smith’s words cut to the core. Read them again and think about it.

Ask yourself how long you would be able to make your rent or mortgage if your income stopped tomorrow? That’s how close you are to being classed as homeless.

The homeless person on the street could be one of your friends or family. It could, indeed, be you. The truly horrible part is how many families and children are living on the streets, “sleeping rough” as they say in the U.K.

Our first book, downTown:U.S.A.: A Personal Journey with the Homeless, focused on the people who suffer on our streets every day. Using their words and images, we have tried to show people the human depth behind the stereotypes in the hope of inciting change.

Image by Andrew Morrell Photography, used under its Creative Commons license

Category: downTown U.S.A., Homelessness | Tags: ,
| May 7, 2012
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Homelessness, NIMBY, and Perpetual Children

Today I’d like to share an article by Pat LaMarche that touches on aspects of the homeless problem that we have not yet examined in depth.

In her recent column on Common Dreams, None of the Poor Children Matter,  LaMarche comments on an increasingly common trend in US cities – the banishing from view of those in our society’s broken segments from the common view. This NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) mentality is one that we are seeing with increasing frequency, and its “out of sight, out of mind,” stance can only make an already intolerable situation worse.

Officials in Clearwater, Fla., are working diligently to put the hungry in their place. In this case that place is eight miles out of town at a facility near the county jail. The St. Vincent de Paul soup kitchen is — according to the well fed elitists running the town — ‘enabling’ the handout taking behavior of those just looking for a meal.

This practice of the ‘haves banishing the have-nots’ to the hinterland is just a part of a trend that is sweeping the country. Clearwater isn’t alone in Florida and the practice is spreading to other regions. Philadelphia, Pa., has been in the news recently for their cutting-edge political philosophy that feeding people not only enables them but downright insults them if done in the presence of those who don’t need assistance.

To shuffle off the homeless to a site eight miles out of town in this fashion is reprehensible, to say the least. This is especially true when you factor in the number of children counted among the homeless.

It is appalling to shunt aside starving kids like this. I think we can all agree that children are innocent and not responsible for their circumstances. Privation during formative years like this is a recipe for a lifetime of ills, both social and physical.

The point that LaMarche makes with poigniant personal narrative is that not all of these children are young. The developmentally disabled are effectively children all their lives, and are often thrust onto the streets when their parents or guardians pass away.

 Many of the single women I worked with were permanently and equivalently 10, 11 or 12 years of age. Bonita — none of the names I’ll use here are real — told me when she showed up homeless at our once majestic hotel-turned-shelter, that she’d always wanted to live in a great big house with high ceilings and long stairways, but she didn’t know it would have so many homeless people in it.

You laugh or you cry in that line of work. Some days you do both.

I strongly advise reading this article, particularly for the story of the woman referred to simply as “Joan.” Trust me, it is a story that you need to read.

Drew Harwell of The Tampa Bay Times notes the ongoing battle between the city of Tampa and its homeless population: battle that involves the homeless being pushed further and further out of sight, despite their overwhelming numbers.

With more than 15,000 homeless people, the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater area has the highest rate of homelessness among metropolitan areas in the country, according to a 2012 report by the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

But Clearwater’s offerings for the homeless have shrunk as officials have pushed for consolidating services in places like Safe Harbor or a nearby tent city named Pinellas Hope — a practice critics deride as ‘warehousing.’ The Clearwater Homeless Intervention Project, a shelter and day center next to the soup kitchen that offered a number of services, closed last year after the city withdrew a $100,000 grant.

Are they deliberately trying to create new criminals? Think about it: if all of your options were suddenly gone and you had to resort to crime to put food in your children’s mouths wouldn’t you do it? Be honest.

By relocating food assistance eight miles out of town, the city is placing unnecessary hardship on people who already have a mountain of woes. The solution is to find a way to reintegrate them with day to day life, not to push them away in a fashion reminiscent of the way feudal lords in the Middle Ages treated their peasantry.

This trend of warehousing is one we intend to watch closely, as it is antithetical to every reputable finding on the subject of homelessness.

LaMarche is host of Maine’s The Pulse Morning Show (available online at zoneradio.com) and is also the author of Left Out In America: The State of Homelessness in the United States. Ms. LaMarche was the Green Party’s vice-presidential candidate in the 2004 U.S. presidential election.

If you are interested in learning more about the homeless issue in the US, you might wish to check out downTown U.S.A.: A Personal Journey with The Homeless, the first in our trilogy of books about modern-day social ills.

Category: downTown U.S.A., Homelessness, Humane Exposures, Mental Health | Tags: , , ,
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