Tag Archive for New York City

“Housing First” Approach is Saving Money and Providing Homes for the Most Vulnerable Homeless People

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)

In the early 1990s New York University School of Medicine prof Sam Tsemberis and the Gotham organization Pathways to Housing pioneered the “Housing First concept” which focuses on the chronically homeless, without requiring them to first give up alcohol or substance abuse.

Housing First is an alternative to a system of emergency shelter/transitional housing progression. Rather than moving homeless individuals from the streets to a public shelter, from a public shelter to a transitional housing program, and then to their own apartment in the community, Housing First moves the homeless individual or household immediately from the streets or homeless shelter into their own apartments.

Housing First, when supported by HUD, does not only offer housing but also provides wraparound case management services to the tenants. This provides stability for homeless individuals, increasing their success, accountability and self-sufficiency. The housing provided through government supported Housing First programs is permanent and “affordable,” meaning that tenants pay only 30% of their income towards rent.

With Obama Administration support (and 30% of HUD homelessness funds), Housing First resulted in an unprecedented 29.6% drop in the number of chronically homeless living on the streets (175,914 to 123,833 people)—from 2005 to 2007 alone. Today, Housing First programs successfully operate in New York City, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Denver, Seattle, Philadelphia, Chicago, Atlanta, Los Angeles and smaller cities, such as Anchorage AK, Plattsburgh NY and Quincy MA.

Housing First is currently endorsed by the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH) as a “best practice” for governments and service-agencies to use in their fight to end chronic homelessness. These programs are all parts of the communities’10-year plans to end chronic homelessness, as advocated by USICH.

In Los Angeles County, the Home For Good project hopes to house all the area’s chronic homeless by 2016. Robert Harper and Charles Miller of Americorps make daily rounds of LA’s Skid Row seeking the most vulnerable homeless and working with other agencies to find them housing fast.

Harper declares:

A person is out here about to die and you tell them ‘Sign a waiting list and wait for a year? Come on, now. We’re known as the 90-day people.

When Home For Good case managers meet someone on the street, they create a vulnerability score from items like income, medical history, substance abuse and usual whereabouts. That info is computerized and made available to all participating agencies.

Considerable research has shown that the Housing First approach can save lots of money by keeping the chronically homeless out of jails, shelters and emergency rooms.

Housing First is now growing in popularity in Canada and is in many communities’ ten year plans to end homelessness. In Calgary, fewer than 1% of existing clients return to shelters or rough sleeping, there are 76% fewer days in jail and there is a 35% decline in police interactions This demonstrates improved quality of lives for those in the program, along with a huge cost savings on police, corrections and shelters

The Denver Housing First Collaborative, serving 200 chronically homeless, found a drop of 34.3% in emergency room visits, a 66% decline in inpatient costs, an 82% plummet in detox visits and a 76% reduction in incarceration days. Two years after entering the program, 77% of participants were still housed through it.

In Seattle, the Housing First program for alcoholics saved taxpayers more than $4 million in its first year. Thanks to Housing First, Boston was able to close some homeless shelters and reduce the number of beds in others.

The US Congress appropriated $25 million in the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Grants for 2008 to show the effectiveness of Rapid Re-housing programs in reducing family homelessness. On May 20, 2009, President Obama signed the Homeless Emergency Assistance and Rapid Transition to Housing Act, which allows for the prevention of homelessness, rapid re-housing, consolidation of housing programs and new homeless categories.

The Housing First methodology is also being adapted to decreasing the larger segment of the homeless population, family homelessness, such as in the LA-based program Housing First for Homeless Families, which was established in 1988.

Dennis Culhane, a University of Pennsylvania homeless researcher, says:

There’s a lot of policy innovation going on around family homelessness, and it’s borrowing a page from the chronic handbook—the focus is on permanent housing and housing-first strategies.

 

 

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Columbia, Raleigh, Tampa, Portland and Six Other Cities Have Declared War on the Homeless

Homeless

Homeless (Photo credit: fotografar)

Recently 10 U.S. cities have passed laws banning the homeless from the city center, forcing them into a punitive suburban shelter or jail or threatening jail to those who feed the homeless. More business-controlled, heartless and backward-thinking municipalities are likely to follow.

The list of homeless-hating cities: Columbia SC, Raleigh NC, Portland OR, Philadelphia PA, Kalamazoo MI, Nevada City, CA and Tampa, Orlando and St. Petersburg FL, while Miami is working on a law to criminalize the homeless.

During the 1990s, New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani planned to remove homeless people from shelters if they refused to work. New York City police also started handing out $76 citations to the homeless who “camped in public.”

Los Angeles city officials appropriated homeless people’s property and destroyed it, with no due process, until the courts smacked them silly with a couple of little-known laws called the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments.

On Aug. 13, the Columbia SC City Council approved a plan

that effectively makes homelessness illegal in parts of the city. It forces those who sleep outdoors downtown to be sent to a small, prison-like shelter on the outskirts of town. Those people who fail to comply are to be rounded up and forced to leave town or sent to the slammer on a range of public nuisance laws.

Jake Maguire, spokesman for Community Solutions’ “100,000 Homes Campaign” said:

It’s basically a choice between two kinds of incarceration. There’s jail and then there’s the shelter. Once you get to the shelter, 15 miles from downtown, you can’t come and go. You are basically brought to a place where you are expected to stay. If you want to go back downtown, you have to get approval for them to shuttle you back.

To make sure the homeless don’t return, a police officer will be stationed on the road leading to the downtown district to keep them away. The plan has major support from Columbia’s business leaders.

In addition to its cruelty, Columbia’s plan is flawed, because it does not address the causes of homelessness, tackle permanent solutions or accurately weigh the economic impacts of shuttling the homeless to shelters, instead of securing permanent housing. On average, permanent supportive housing―which includes an apartment and services like rehabilitation―costs about $16,000-$18,000 a year, whereas keeping a person at a shelter for a year costs $22,000.

Another flaw in Columbia’s plan is its assumption that all unhoused people have the capacity to make rational choices, even if both alternatives stink. For the one-third of homeless people who have untreated mental illnesses, however, there will be no choice—just the nightmare of arrest and jail without understanding why or how to help themselves.

The homeless can avoid arrest only by either fleeing the area (which is exactly what Columbia would like) or by surrendering themselves to an overcrowded shelter guarded by police who ensure they don’t escape on foot. Columbia has 1,518 homeless, and the distant approved shelter only has 240 beds. Once in the shelter, the only way to leave is by scheduling a ride on a shuttle van to a specific appointment. The only way to stay is by complying with all prescribed services, like mental health treatment. Otherwise, it’s off to the pokey.

Cops will now be assigned to patrol the city center and keep homeless people out. They will be instructed to strictly enforce the city’s “quality of life” laws, including bans on loitering, public urination and other violations. And just to ensure that no one slips through the cracks, the city will set up a hotline so local businesses and residents can report the presence of a homeless person to police.

Think Progress senior reporter Scott Keyes wrote:

The Columbia City Council wants police to arrest every homeless person and encourages residents to report each other just for looking homeless, to ensure the removal of all undesirables from the downtown area.

Fortunately, Columbia Interim Police Chief Ruben Santiago doesn’t believe homelessness is a crime and refuses to round up these unfortunate people.

Wake County NC (which includes Raleigh) currently has 1,150 homeless people, including 176 mentally ill,91 veterans, 68 domestic violence victims, five people with AIDS, three unaccompanied children and 494 unfortunates with substance abuse disorder. Raleigh police have threatened to arrest people who distribute food to the homeless near Moore Square Park (which they have done for the past six years).

In addition to these atrocities, Philadelphia has banned feeding homeless people outdoors to “prevent food-borne illness.” Orlando, FL, went the extra mile, not caring who got caught in its dragnet, by outlawing the providing of food to all groups of people, homeless or not. California’s Nevada City prohibits sleeping anywhere but in a proper building. Kalamazoo MI made sleeping on park benches a criminal offense that goes on the vagrant’s permanent record. St. Petersburg FL rules that people who sleep outside must, when caught, either go to any shelter—and there are lots of good reasons to avoid shelters—or go to jail.
Miami is looking to get on the criminalization bandwagon too. It is working towards a law that would make “homeless people who sat down, made themselves a meal or relieved themselves” criminals.

This summer Portland OR and Tampa FL also initiated steps to boot out their homeless. Portland prohibits “camping” on public property, and quite recently five homeless residents were rounded up and arrested, and the mayor’s office says that’s just the beginning. The Tampa City Council passed a new ordinance in July that would allow police officers to arrest anyone they see sleeping in public or “storing personal property in public.”

Despite the Recession, the U.S. homeless population declined 17% from 2005 to 2012. Both the George W. Bush and Obama administrations conducted major anti-homelessness initiatives, including a $1.5-billion program which President Obama launched with stimulus funds in 2009. But the Sequester could reverse that. Tragically, the Department of Housing and Urban Development says mandated budget cuts from housing and shelter programs could expel 100,000 people this year—nearly one-sixth of the homeless population.

 

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Some Programs Help Mothers in Prison Increase Contact With their Children, But Too Many Prisons Have No Such Programs.

Prison Cell

Prison Cell (Photo credit: danielkoehlersfotos)

When a mother is arrested, there is no specific public policy or routine process to coordinate what happens to her children, even immediately after childbirth. Many women in prison believe that separation from their children is the most difficult part of their punishment.

Although six percent of women are pregnant when they enter prison, most states make no special arrangements for the care of newborns. Pregnant inmates are often required to be shackled while giving birth, and after delivery mothers and babies are sometimes separated within a few hours. The infant is then sent to live with a family member or is placed in the foster care system.

Extended families usually assume childcare responsibilities, though many states don’t recognize family relations as legitimate foster care and deny them financial support and social services. Ten percent of children with mothers in prison are sent to foster homes, while the majority of these children live with grandparents. The Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 will certainly send even more children into foster care in the future, as it allows courts to terminate parental rights if a child is in foster care for 15 months out of any 22-month period.

Dana Simas, spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation says:

Women who give birth in prison usually have to hand over their newborn to a relative or for adoption within 48 hours, or whenever the doctor releases her from the hospital.

That narrow window deprives new mothers of the option of breastfeeding their babies, says Karen van de Laat, the southern California regional director for Get on the Bus, a group that organized a special Mother’s Day visit to a women’s prison for 240 kids this year. She says:

Being able to hug your mom should be a right. Some of these kids would rather live here with their mom than go home. Most of the women in this prison are drug offenders or have been incarcerated for check or welfare fraud.

Nearly 900,000 youngsters in California have a parent in the criminal justice system, comprising nearly ten percent of California’s children.

A child’s chances of delinquency increase dramatically when visits to their incarcerated parents are denied. Kids with incarcerated mothers are more likely to wet their beds, do poorly in school and refuse to eat, studies show. These children often experience financial hardship, the shame and social stigma that prison carries, loss of emotional support and fear for their mother’s safety. Children with imprisoned parents are at increased risk for poor academic performance, truancy, dropping out of school, gang involvement, early pregnancy, drug abuse and delinquency. These at-risk kids are most often overlooked by mainstream children’s advocates.

The female prison population has exploded in the past 20 years, mainly due to mandatory-sentencing laws for drug offenses. Three times the number of women have been put behind bars in the last 10 years, over 75 percent of whom have children. Most of these inmates are young, unmarried women of color with few job skills and significant substance abuse problems.

According to a recent article, children of incarcerated parents differ from their peers in three main ways: inadequate quality of care, mainly due to poverty; lack of family support; and enduring childhood trauma.

Sadly, prisons are most often located in remote rural areas and are inaccessible to families without cars. An incarcerated woman is usually much further away from her home and is therefore much harder to visit, making the separation even more agonizing for both parent and child. Sixty percent of parents in California state prisons are held over 100 miles from their children, making visits impossible for many.

Too little attention has been paid to the plight of children with incarcerated parents, so too little is known about how to assist them. There is no procedure or policy to inquire about dependent children when a mother is arrested. If a child is persistently truant in school, there is no protocol to consider the disruption that maternal imprisonment causes at home. If a child is in the care of family services, too little about their emotional history is explored before they are placed in foster care. So there is a gap in policy and in routine communication between the public agencies established to protect all innocent children.

Fortunately, some states have begun to acknowledge the importance of mother-child relationships by introducing pioneering programs. In a few U.S. cities, the Girl Scouts Beyond Bars program brings mothers and daughters together in jail or prison, two Saturdays each month. Mothers spend supervised time working with their daughters on troop projects, and discuss issues such as avoiding drug abuse, coping with family crises and preventing teenage pregnancy.

Family Foundations, is a community-based residential drug treatment program based in Santa Fe Springs, California, where female inmates live in a converted school building with their children up to the age of six. The Mothers With Infants Together program allows eligible pregnant offenders to reside in a community-based program for two months prior to delivery and three months after delivery, thereby empowering women to participate in prenatal and postnatal programs on childbirth, parenting and family support skills programs.

The Mothers and Children Together program in St. Louis provides cost-free bus rides to prison four times a year for families without transportation. They also organize former inmates and volunteers to lobby at the state capital towards the improvement of visiting opportunities, and they hold support groups for recently released mothers, children and caregivers. New York’s Bedford Hills Correctional Facility opened the nation’s first nursery prison 100 years ago and continues to offer a range of services to inmates and their children, including a well-equipped playroom that is open all year. Run by Catholic Charities, it is designed to teach women parenting and life skills through classes and by allowing them to receive visits from their children as often as possible in a nurturing atmosphere. Only ten percent of women who successfully completed the program returned to prison, in contrast to 52 percent of inmates overall.

Inmates who do not receive child visits are six times more likely to be re-offenders. Simas says:

We encourage visiting and we try to make it as positive an experience as possible. We understand that family relationships are a big contribution to someone’s successful rehabilitation. Unfortunately, they are still incarcerated, so there are safety measures we need to follow, but we try to make it as family-friendly as possible.

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If Congress Passes these Four Bills It Could Lower LGBT Homelessness

Although lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) youth comprise 5 percent to 7 percent

English: Rainbow flag flapping in the wind wit...

English: Rainbow flag flapping in the wind with blue skies and the sun. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

of overall young people, an overwhelming 40 percent of all homeless youth are LGBT. Family rejection is the leading cause of homelessness among them, but an additional 26 percent leave home because they feel they have nowhere else to turn, because their schools and peers are hostile to LGBT students. Moreover, discrimination and harassment in schools exacerbate family conflicts over a youth’s sexual orientation or gender identity and increase the chance of homelessness.

Senators Tom Harkin and Al Franken are now pushing an education bill that includes a number of reforms to the Student Nondiscrimination Act (SNDA), which are designed to reduce incidents of bullying in schools. Modeled after Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, SNDA would establish the right to an education free of harassment on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in primary and secondary schools. If signed into law, the bill would allow students who have been bullied to seek legal recourse, and it would authorize the federal government to withhold federal funds from schools that condone the bullying of LGBT students. It would be an important first step to ending LGBT youth homelessness.

Earlier this year, Senators Casey and Kirk introduced a bill in the Senate (which Rep. Linda Sanchez introduced in the House), the Safe Schools Improvement Act (SSIA), which would require schools receiving federal funding to implement policies to ban bullying, including on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. It would also require states to report bullying and harassment data to the U.S. Department of Education.

Importantly, SSIA also explicitly states that schools cannot allow the threat of bullying and harassment to deter students from participating in school programs and extracurricular activities. In-school and afterschool programs have the potential to prevent homelessness for LGBT youth by providing a positive environment and deterring them from turning to substance abuse and engaging in other risky behaviors to cope with peer rejection. Discouraging youth from engaging in these behaviors alone reduces the risk that these youth will become homeless at some point in their lives.

Research from the Family Acceptance Project found that:

Abstaining from risky behaviors and performing well at school can reduce family conflict at home, which is the primary reason that LGBT youth experience homelessness. Among LGBT students, 30 percent report missing at least one day of school in the past month because of safety concerns, and students who are bullied frequently report lower grade-point averages..

“Researchers have also found that LGBT youth are more likely than other youth to use tobacco products than their heterosexual peers, largely to cope with rejection from their families and peers. By adopting and enforcing antibullying policies, schools can help alleviate behaviors associated with family conflict and rejection such as substance abuse and poor academic performance, thereby decreasing the odds of a child becoming homeless.

Another way Congress could help LGBT homeless youth is by directing existing homeless-youth programs to specifically target them. The Runaway and Homeless Youth Act (RHYA) awards grants to public and private organizations assisting homeless youth. It is reauthorized every five years, yet makes no mention of LGBT youth, despite their disproportionate representation among the homeless-youth population. This year, Congress should include them in RHYA.

Congress should adopt a general statement of nondiscrimination for the bill that includes sexual orientation and gender identity. This would prohibit grant recipients using RHYA funds from discriminating against gay and transgender youth, who are frequently mistreated or turned away when they seek help from these organizations, simply because they identify as LGBT.

The Runaway and Homeless Youth Act is up for reauthorization this year, and the House and Senate are expected to introduce their respective funding bills for fiscal year 2014 in the coming weeks.

In addition to battling bullying in schools and improving existing programs for homeless youth, Congress should also seek new solutions to end LGBT youth homelessness. The bulk of the Reconnecting Youth to Prevent Homelessness Act aims to improve training, educational opportunities and permanency planning for older foster-care youth and reduce homelessness of all young people, LGBT or not. One part of the bill in particular calls on the secretary of health and human services to establish a demonstration project that develops programs that improve family relationships and reduce homelessness specifically for LGBT youth. A growing body of research from the Family Acceptance Project suggests that this family-centered approach is one of the best ways to support LGBT homeless youth, so targeted support for these programs has the potential to significantly decrease rates of homelessness.

The Reconnecting Youth to Prevent Homelessness Act was introduced in an earlier session of Congress by then-Sen. John Kerry, but has not yet been reintroduced into the 113th Congress.

For the first time, researchers have established a clear link between accepting family attitudes and behaviors towards their LGBT children and significantly decreased risk and better overall health in adulthood. The study shows that specific parental and caregiver behaviors—such as advocating for their children when they are mistreated because of their LGBT identity or supporting their gender expression—protect against depression, substance abuse, suicidal thoughts and suicide attempts in early adulthood. In addition, LGBT youth with highly accepting families have significantly higher levels of self-esteem and social support in young adulthood. No prior research had examined the relationship between family acceptance of LGBT adolescents and health and mental health concerns in emerging adulthood.

Caitlin Ryan, PhD, Director of the Family Acceptance Project at San Francisco State University. states:

At a time when the media and families are becoming acutely aware of the risk that many LGBT youth experience, our findings that family acceptance protects against suicidal thoughts and behaviors, depression and substance abuse offer a gateway to hope for LGBT youth and families that struggle with how to balance deeply held religious and personal values with love for their LGBT children.

The study, published in the Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Nursing, also learned that LGBT young adults who reported low levels of family acceptance during adolescence were over three times more likely to have suicidal thoughts and to report suicide attempts, compared to those with high levels of family acceptance. It also found that high religious involvement in families was strongly associated with low acceptance of LGBT children.

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Decline in Number of Youths in Secure Detention and Residential Placement in 44 States is Reducing Cost and Recidivism

Black Down Arrow

Black Down Arrow (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

National data show that 44 states have reduced the number of youth in residential placement and secure detention and are increasing community-based programs because they cost less, decrease reoffending and improve youth and family well-being.

A study authored by Kristen Staley and Michelle Weemhof, staffers at the Michigan Council on Crime and Delinquency (MCCD), titled There’s No Place Like Home: Making the Case for Wise Investment in Juvenile Justice, declares:

Within the past decade, the state has transformed its juvenile justice system away from harsh, punitive treatment into one celebrated for innovation and effectiveness. Large, overcrowded public institutions have closed, and the responsibility of treating and placing delinquent youth was shifted away from the Michigan Department of Human Services and put onto the counties—a change most states are striving to achieve.

Michigan is among the states experiencing a decline in out-of-home placement, the report said. The state’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention estimates that, at its peak in 1997, Michigan sent 3,711 youth in residential placement, but as of 2011, the federal estimate hovered near 2,000 youth in placement

Michigan counties are focusing more on community-based options, like electronic monitoring and family therapies that treat youth while they stay at home.

Although the signs of progress are encouraging, the reconstruction of Michigan’s juvenile justice system is far from complete. Little statewide infrastructure exists to support counties as they implement and sustain their community-based models.

This systemic gap, coupled with Michigan’s recent economic downturn and drastic budget cuts, has begun to dismantle recent successes. Years of progressive reform are threatened, costs are driving up, and youth, their families and communities face increased risks if the system fails, the researchers say.

Youth treated with punitive, non-therapeutic programs are 70 to 80% more likely to be rearrested, and 60% of youth served out-of-home return to custody within three years of release.

In Michigan, community-based program costs range from $10 to $65 per day per youth, whereas out-of-home placement costs from $150 to $500 per day per youth.

Over the past three years, increased use of community-based programs, such as in Oakland County—has saved Michigan $33 million. Prioritizing community-based services can save an estimated $1.7 million to $2.3 million per child.

The study learned that 86% of families with youth in the juvenile justice system want to be more involved with their child’s treatment, but most experience barriers to participating when their children are placed out-of-home.

The Oakland County Youth Assistance group, which runs 26 county programs, conducted a study that found that 92% of its kids didn’t recidivate.

The OCYA’s chief, Mary Schusterbauer, found that despite county and local budget cuts:

The earlier you intervene, the better. Sometimes a shoplifter is not just a shoplifter, for example. Our whole mission is keeping kids out of the court system and into their own homes.

In neighboring Wayne County, which adopted the more localized system of juvenile justice and care in 2000, the MCCD study showed recidivism rates dropped from 56% in 1998 to 17.5% in 2012. The successes were also shown in other counties too, according to the study. The delinquency rate decreased 77% from 1998 to 2012 in Midland County and 38.5% in reoffense rates in Berrien County.

There are similar results in New York City, which has a population of more than 8 million, where Gov. Andrew Cuomo last year signed into law a program called Close to Home, aimed at keeping kids closer to their families instead of sending them to upstate detention facilities.

Related articles

The Michigan Youth Reentry Model

 

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NYC’s Doe Fund Houses, Trains and Helps 700 Homeless a Year Find Work

English: The western ramp and pylon of Brookly...

English: The western ramp and pylon of Brooklyn Bridge, New York City (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

New York City currently has about 50,000 homeless people (nearly 8% of the U.S. total), as well as considerable poverty and unemployment. But, quietly, for the last quarter-century, the non-profit group The Doe Fund has operated a highly effective one-year program to move them from despair on the streets to contentment and comfort in homes and at jobs.

A 2010 Harvard study found that people who spent a year in The Doe Fund program were far less likely to commit violent felonies than others just released from prison.

Hamilton Nolan, writing in Gawkr explains:

They take in homeless people, referred to them by places like Bellevue Hospital. Many of these people are fresh out of prison, with little safety net. They house them. They ensure they’re sober and make them abide by a schedule. They give them a job for starters—cleaning up trash around the city, for a month.

After that, the fund gives them classes in life skills and specific job training (they can choose between pest control, catering, building maintenance, and other specialties) for the next six months or so. There are mock job interviews, to get the pitch right. Then they send each one out to pound the pavement and find a job. When they find a job, they find them a place to live.

About 25 years ago, George McDonald (social activist turned politician who is running for mayor but unlikely to win) was shocked to learn of the winter death of a homeless woman in the heart of Manhattan, right outside Grand Central station. For the next two years he went to the corner of 43rd St. and Vanderbilt, at 10 p.m., to feed homeless people. This was during the massive mid-80s crack epidemic, when mounds of vials covered the streets. During the time McDonald ran his ad hoc and officially unsanctioned program, he was frequently arrested for being a nuisance (disorderly conduct).

He obtained a city contract for his homeless people to work on city-owned apartment buildings, and he arranged free city housing for 70 of them in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant district.

Today the program has 700 formerly homeless workers residing in its facilities in Harlem, Bed-Stuy and Brooklyn’s Bushwick neighborhood. They staff their own businesses, including a pest-control firm. At one point, during the Giuliani mayorship, their budget was cut in half, although today it has risen to $50 million/year.

Currently they are seeing many more military veterans and psychologically damaged adults who are former crack babies. The Doe fund has expanded and now operates a similar program in Philadelphia.

‘Doe Fund runs a deliberate, rule-based, common sense, step-by-step process that successfully solves society’s thorniest social and economic problems. At any given time, 700 people are making their way through this process, on a yearlong journey from Having Nothing to Having Something.

All of it exists because George McDonald—just some guy, really, not a radical revolutionary or professional camera-hogging pundit, just some guy who thought homelessness in his city was troubling—went out, with the help of some close friends and confidantes, and built it.’

One advantage of McDonald’s mayoral campaign is that it focuses public attention on homelessness, poverty, unemployment and related social ills. His approach should appeal both to both compassionate liberals and personal responsibility-conscious conservatives, since it provides a hand-up rather than a handout. In an ideal world, the Doe Fund’s services would be provided by government. Hopefully they will be expanded and will be attempted elsewhere.

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Disproportionate Minority Contact and the Slippery Slope

An attempt at a discrimination graphic.

An attempt at a discrimination graphic. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

African-American youth make up an absurd and out-of-proportion percentage of our prison population. The technical term is DMC – disproportionate minority contact.

Leah Varjacques of the Juvenile Justice Information Exchange gives us a breakdown of the disturbing percentages.

Black youth make up 17 percent of the overall youth population in the United States, but they make up 30 percent of arrested juveniles and 62 percent of minors prosecuted in the adult criminal system, according to the D.C.-based Campaign for Youth Justice.

A look at Illinois shows black youth represent 85 percent of the juvenile justice population, according to the Cook County Circuit Court, even though they only represent one-fifth of the state’s youth population.

As with so many other problems with modern American juvenile justice, we can find the roots of the issue are not merely based in poverty and lack of education, but also in the hysteria of the late 1980s.

The problem was accelerated by the high-crime decades of the 1980s and 1990s that introduced severe laws targeting minors to stem a suspected “superpredator” generation that never came to pass. Youth prisons were built. Now they’re empty. Schools placed more and more police officers or guards in schools, something that is now on the map again following Newtown. Now there are studies claiming the presence of more security in the schools has only worsened the problem.

As it is, about 250 youth are locked up in the Juvenile Temporary Detention Center. Roughly 80 percent of that population is black – and year-to-year stats put the black population in juvenile dentition at roughly 75 percent of the total, which includes about 15 percent to 18 percent Hispanics and 7 percent white.

Drugs, neglect, mental illness and other factors are often rightly invoked when looking at juvenile crime, but one factor beginning to get attention is the role of policing in the equation.

“Why,” asked the board president in Cook County, which covers Chicago, “is there a disproportionate number of black children in the JTDC and what does it say about the way we police our communities?”

Very often, police, called out to crime dens on Chicago’s South and West Sides, sweep streets or target large areas to clear them of crime and blunt the prospects of violent gang reprisals. In doing so, they snatch up a large percentage of black and Hispanic youth, who are most likely to be stuck in the cycle of poverty and poor education that so feeds the criminal justice system.

“It’s not necessarily true,” she said, “that the more people you arrest, the safer the community you have. And you’re more likely to end up in secure juvenile detention if you are African American and display the same behaviors as someone of another race.”

It creates a self-perpetuating cycle. As more youth are rolled through the mill of incarceration the pressure toward recidivism increases. In a recession like the current one jobs are scare enough without having to overcome a recorded juvenile offense. Not only that, but the initial “offenses” are often accused as simply being a way to get the kids “into the system.”

Many neighborhoods are starting to learn that community- and rehabilitation-based efforts can help short circuit this cycle of offense and recidivism.

In the New York City neighborhoods of Harlem, Jamaica and South Bronx, the New York Department of Probation is collaborating with residents, businesses and organizations in what is called the Neighborhood Opportunity Network.

This model attempts to connect probation clients to community-based resources and services to avoid recidivism usually caused by ineffective, cyclical, punitive measures. Such initiatives are examples of what Barrows calls a “renaissance” of community engagement and partnership approaches in dealing with racial and ethnic disparities.

This is where the economic refrain once more enters the picture. Juvenile justice and racial disparity are hardly “sexy” topics in budget meetings, particularly as there is little immediate gratification in either issue.

As a result efforts like the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA) are seeing their resources slashed despite solid track records.

However, with today’s Congressional push for spending cuts – as well as ongoing budget deficits at the state level, especially in Illinois – juvenile justice funding has taken a back seat to other, more popular or welcome projects.

“Our big concern right now has to do with the cuts to juvenile justice funding, part of which gets used to make sure [states] comply with JJDPA,” said Benjamin Chambers, National Juvenile Justice Network spokesman. “Without those resources, they don’t have to comply. And that’s a slippery slope.”

Chambers is 100% correct in his concern. Without motivation to pursue the harder, yet more effective the easier road will often be taken. Most times this means incarceration that does little beyond providing a graduate course in criminal behavior at our society’s long-term expense.

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Common Ground: Housing the Most Vulnerable

downTown U.S.A.: A Personal Journey with the Homeless

So, what is Common Ground doing? How is it providing a roof to some of the most vulnerable homeless on the streets?

Kara A. Mergl, Director of Research and Evaluation at Common Ground, writes the following on the 100,000 Homes blog:

I guess you can say it all began back in 2003 when Common Ground began piloting its Street-to-Home method. West Midtown Manhattan and the Times Square area of NYC certainly did not look the same back then as they do now.  The program’s major strides were made between 2005, when Becky Kanis made her first NPR appearance, and 2007, when the number of homeless in Times Square decreased by 87%; from 55 street homeless down to just 7. Today, there is only one remaining homeless individual still sleeping on the streets. New York City’s Department of Homeless Services recognized the success of this method and in 2007 deployed it across all five boroughs. The question remained, however, if this method would succeed outside of New York City.

The ability to replicate results is important. Common Ground’s expanded efforts yeilded tangible and positive results in a variety of urban areas, including Los Angeles County:

Other communities, such as Denver, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., began to take notice. One of the first partnerships around this method was with Los Angeles County and Project 50. Project 50, championed by supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, brought together 24 public and private agencies with the shared goal of identifying and housing the 50 most vulnerable homeless individuals living on the streets of Skid Row. At the one-year anniversary of the initial registry, by all measures, Project 50 was a success; 49 individuals housed and an 88% retention rate.

The LA effort proceeded one person at a time. Maurice Lewis was the first people to be handed a key through the program. Aged 54, Lewis had been living on the streets for about a year when he was approached. He said he had spent years “drinkin’ and druggin’,” and also he had heard voices periodically.

The LA Times reporter Christopher Goffard did a great four-part series on these efforts, from which we glean the rundown — in plain English — on how the program works from the standpoint of someone being aided by it:

The terms of Project 50 were explained to him: We have a room for you, your very own. You don’t have to see a shrink. You don’t have to attend substance abuse counseling. All that’s required is that 30% of your income — in Lewis’ case, a $221 monthly general relief check from the county — go toward rent.

The effort is far from over. As the next stage begins, teams of volunteer with be registering the homeless in San Diego. Applying the Plan to End Chronic Homelessness, prepared by the United Way in 2006, is the next step. Training sessions will be held for almost 150 members of the community and civic leaders during the week of September 19.

This training will prepare them for the three consecutive days of pre-dawn excursions onto the streets, during which they will survey and talk with the homeless. The data collected will be used to ID the most vulnerable of that population and get them into housing over the weeks or months following the survey.

If you are interested in more information or in volunteering to assist with the survey, you can check out the San Diego Clean and Safe website.

Source: “Project 50: Four walls and a bed,” LA Times, 08/01-07/10
Image copyright Susan Madden Lankford, from the book “downTown USA: A Personal Journey with the Homeless.” Used with permission.

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