0 Deep Hole of Homelessness Swallows Homeless Families

[Kansas City, KS] Friday was payday for Crystal, a fast food employee. She cashed her check and then bought a few, too few for her way of thinking, birthday presents for her son whose 8th birthday was Valentine’s Day.

She, her husband and other child, Brittany and her boyfriend and her 2 children, and Tyler and his partner, a motley community that shared this rundown but affordable house in Kansas City, Kansas, celebrated “Danny’s” birthday Saturday. 

On Sunday, they were picking through the ashes of their rental house. Everything was destroyed in an electrical fire caused by, they surmise, shoddy repairs done by a dubious “handyman” hired by their landlord. 

The Red Cross gave them 2 rooms in a motel for 3 nights and a promise of first month’s rent and security deposit if they found housing within the week. 

Crystal’s family hugged their yellow lab as they left him with a friend, then they made their possession-less way to the motel. 

They went from housed and self-sufficient to homeless and desperate in a flash. It wasn’t their fault. One might be tempted to blame the landlord for neglect. According to Crystal, he didn’t have insurance, so he told them not to expect anything from him—like their security deposit or unused rent. Without that money they had nothing.

One of their stops Tuesday morning was the KC School Board building, where I happened to be on my HEAR US Inc. quest to film stories of families experiencing homelessness, doubling (or tripling or worse) up with others, families not considered “homeless enough” by HUD. (READ this EXCELLENT article on doubled up from the Educational Leadership Journal.)

They enthusiastically said I could share their story to let others know how easy it is to slide from independence to scraping through the rubble of our shattered safety net. 

Fortunately for the two moms, their school board stop netted them more help than they could have imagined. Thanks to the McKinney-Vento Homeless Education Act, federal legislation removing barriers to school stability, their kids would be transported to/from the motel to their same schools. 

Staff gave the moms uniforms, backpacks, school supplies, toiletries, food and a few books. The families were connected with resources to stay in the motel for another week, only possible because they could stagger back on their feet with a little more time.

 But I must clarify a few crucial points:

• These families, though tripled up due to economic hardship prior to the fire, and figuring to be doubled up (or more) again after leaving the motel next week, will not be eligible for HUD assistance because they’re not homeless by HUD’s definition. 
• Besides the fact that they wouldn't have been able to find room in area shelters because every shelter across the land is at capacity thanks to this beastly winter weather, they would not be able to stay together because few shelters take intact families. 
• And with Crystal’s work schedule, overnights, she would have to choose between work and staying with her family at the shelter, a damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you don’t choice.
• Public (subsidized) housing in KC, and mostly everywhere else, has 3-years or more waiting lists. 
• The only way they can afford the $700 mo. rent and utilities is with 3-4 adults working, the others chip in by providing childcare. Even then it’s dicey.  

If they’re “lucky,” they’ll find another landlord—likely to be a slumlord because they don’t have sufficient income and lack good credit records—who will rent to them, dog and all. If not, they’ll tumble deeper into the hole of homelessness, finding that it’s hard to be self-sufficient when you have nowhere to go. And their lovable labrador will also be homeless.

The campaign to get HUD’s definition in line with the more realistic US Department of Education’s definition—which includes those doubled up and in motels— continues. It takes but a moment, and your zip code, to nudge your federal lawmakers to cosponsor the Homeless Children and Youth Act. www.helphomelesskidsnow.org TAKE ACTION!

(HEAR US is looking for KS families and youth with nowhere to go who are willing to share their stories for the Worn Out Welcome Mat - KS documentary in the making, Spring 2015. Contact Diane for more info.)

Detail: Deep Hole of Homelessness Swallows Homeless Families

0 HUD’s Seven Big Homelessness Fails

I’m a nomad-by-choice. For the past 10 years, under the banner of HEAR US Inc., my nonprofit organization, I’ve traveled over 200,000 miles of mostly backroads travel chronicling homeless families and youth across the country. I live full-time in a van converted into a motorhome/workspace. I used to run the largest shelter in Illinois outside Chicago. I’ve been working on the issue of homelessness for 3 decades.

Last night I relented and paid for a campground in Asheville, NC instead of sleeping in my van in the ubiquitous Walmart parking lot because temps were down to 20 and I don’t like to freeze. One of my neighbors, I learned today, was a homeless family staying there because they have nowhere to go. Their school-age children were on the bus and off to school before I stuck my nose outside.

Last night in this funky and wonderful western NC city, motels provided some semblance of shelter for dozens of families who use up their meager earnings to keep a roof over their heads. Others cobbled together a spot on the couch or begged for an empty corner in someone’s basement so they could stay warm and safe.

The meager family shelter options don’t begin to meet the needs of hundreds of families and youth in the county in need of assistance. I learned of one mother, a former school social worker whose loss of housing kicked her and her 8-year-old son to the street. The challenging conditions at the local rescue mission are too stressful for the boy, so he’s staying at a children’s emergency shelter while his mom bunks at the mission.

Family and youth shelter options in Asheville, as with most communities, are horrifically inadequate, forcing homeless families and youth to desperately turn to makeshift options, typically on a night-by-night, or less, basis.  But they’re not “homeless enough” to meet HUD’s standard of homelessness according to Amy Hobson, program coordinator at Trinity Place, a local emergency shelter for kids on their own.

During this, the last week of January, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, HUD, has mandated that communities across the land send out teams of social workers and volunteers, armed with clipboards, to count homeless persons. The diligent effort of these census-takers does not make up for serious failures on the part of HUD when it comes to addressing homelessness because they don’t count the bulk of their community’s homeless population—the invisible families and youth that desperately need HUD’s housing assistance.

 Last year, HUD reported 578,424homeless persons, an alleged 11% reduction since 2007. Their count chillingly ignores millions of homeless persons, including babies and toddlers.

The US Department of Education’s (DOE) 2012-13 report indicates 1,258,182 identified homeless students (not including younger/older siblings or parents), a whopping 85% increase since the 2006-07 school year. Even worse, a recent report, America’s Youngest Outcasts, states that the number of homeless children/youth exceeds 2.5 million (not including parents or single adults). My official HEAR US estimate is 3 million.

HUD maintains their narrow definition of homelessness, the hallmark of their fizzled-out 10 Year Plan To End Homelessness.   The Baltimore Sun editorialopines, “The central principle of the city's 10-year plan to end homelessness was that it would prioritize finding housing first and services second for those living on the streets. Events like today's clean-up are a reminder of just how far we remain from realizing that promise.”

HUD’s “point-in-time” count skips millions of vulnerable children, youth and adults, a potentially deadly omission. “HUD’s policy excludes children and youth who face real harm, including negative emotional, educational, and health outcomes; it also increases their risk of physical and sexual abuse and trafficking,” according to the coalition pushing for the expanded definition of homelessness, Help Homeless Kids Now.

This confused, grossly under-counted data gets presented to Congress, perpetuating the lack adequate funding to address housing needs of millions of people with nowhere to go.

HUD’s dismal failures include:

1.     “Homeless” to HUD means staying in a shelter or living on the streets. If you lost housing due to crisis and can’t get into a shelter, and you turn to family, friends, acquaintances or motels, you're not considered homeless no matter how fragile those arrangements are. 

2.     HUD demands proof of homelessness (yup, you’ve gotta prove you're deserving of the shelter bed). Such proof might mean an eviction notice, or a letter from a landlord, or your mother-in-law’s note that explains that she kicked you and your kids out. Pity the person who cannot document their situation.

3.     HUD makes it confusing and time consuming for both the shelter provider and the shelter seeker when it comes to proving homelessness (see the chart beginning pg. 3 of this PDF doc). “Arbitrary and unworkably burdensome eligibility rules” now govern our homeless shelter system. It doesn't matter if you’ve got the most desperate family sitting in front of you, HUD’s rules rule.

4.     If you’re a vulnerable (think sex trafficking, sex-for-bed, gang-bait, etc.) homeless youth on your own, but not seen sleeping in an alley, HUD won’t count you. One of the main reasons we have such an abysmal system for serving youth on their own who are homeless is because HUD’s definition of homelessness doesn’t include them, so they’re not counted.

5.     If you’re a family that’s scotch-taped together a flimsy plan to stay with family, friends or acquaintances after you lost housing (doubled up video, Worn Out Welcome Mat), HUD won’t count you. Christine Craft, the Homeless Education Liaison for Buncombe County Schools, told me that 75% of the students she serves don’t fall under the HUD definition, doubling or tripling up in many cases.

6.     If you’re a family staying in a motel on your own thin dime because you have nowhere to go, HUD won’t count you. Most of the families that Ms. Craft works with have someone working, but the motels eat up most of their meager pay, giving them no option to save for a security deposit to move out.

7.     HUD pits single adults against families and youth by forcing communities to prioritize adults in order to get funding. While HUD pays lip service to serving families (not so much youth), their funding decisions tell the story.

The dire realities most people don’t know until they experience homelessness: Many communities don’t have shelters. Some shelters turn away boys in families, don’t accept intact families, same-sex parents, those with criminal records, substance users, or parents with work schedules conflicting with shelter curfews.

First Focus, a children’s advocacy group, estimates  over 1 million homeless children and youth are ineligible for HUD assistance because of not being homeless enough to satisfy HUD guidelines.

And HUD continues to push “Housing First,” a way to pop people into housing and then offer services to help them., although HUD has shifted away from funding services. Housing First was used mostly for those deemed “chronically homeless” by HUD’s parlance with mixed results. Even this approach is doomed,with funding a major issue, hello Congress! And HUD’s one-size-fits-all approach to homelessness doesn’t work, as this short video by the Institute of Children, Poverty and Homelessness points out. 

Especially in light of the latest blizzards and Arctic cold spells, people of compassion would like to think that the federal agency charged with housing the housing-challenged, especially families and youth, was under control. Not so. But hope is on the horizon!

Bipartisan legislation aimed at expanding HUD’s definition of homelessness has been introduced, with growing support making it likely that soon HUD will have to face the brutal reality that they need to help millions of kids and adults with nowhere to go. 

To help homeless kids, urge your lawmakers to pass the new(old) legislation simply by going to www.helphomelesskidsnow.org  and sign the petition. Takes just seconds!

If nothing else, HUD is guilty of a big logic FAIL. How do you justify claiming reduced  homelessness in light of a shattered economy, massive foreclosures and evictions, slashed affordable housing stock, pathetic wages for the bulk of the working class, inadequate health care and child care, and more? Oh yeah, just don’t count them.

Detail: HUD’s Seven Big Homelessness Fails

0 Perverted Reality: Shelter ‘System’ Is No System

Homeless people have shelters to go to, a common belief comforting those who don’t know better. 

Having just come from Carlisle Cares, the community-based shelter where my friend and colleague Pat LaMarche works, having run shelters for 15 years myself, having seen shelters across the country for the past 9 years of my HEAR US traveling, I find myself seething at the perverted reality of what our shelter “system” is in this affluent country.

Pat’s shelter is probably average (no offense!). It’s in a middle-income borough in sort of central PA. Hundreds of similar communities dot the Keystone State. This community is quite unusual, with 3 shelters—one in a fixed site, this one which rotates to different places of worship—and a Salvation Army shelter for families. Shari Bellish, the shelter founder, fights hard to keep this meager operation going, knowing that 55 people a night will have a safe place to sleep. 

I listened as Pat answered one of many phone calls she and other staff get during the day. “I’m sorry, we’re full,” was the gist of it. The caller, a woman staying in her car. It’s below freezing tonight. Pat referred her to a neighboring community’s rotating site “shelter” program. At least she has a car, and gas is cheaper. Maybe she’ll get a spot to sleep.

Many shelters operate on paltry budgets, forcing them to creatively get around the lack of space and staff by setting hours that minimize the operations’ expenses. Pat’s shelter busses people to the night site which opens at 9:30 p.m. Everyone has to be out by 7 a.m., bussed back to this modest base so everyone can go on their way.

Imagine life for school kids—to bed by 10 if they’re lucky, up at 6:30, on a bus at 7 to go back to shelter headquarters to wash up and grab breakfast before heading out to school. Not a lot of quality time for homework, much less sleep and normalcy. The pads on the floor squeezed together don’t allow for privacy, or sleep. 

Volunteers and a skeleton staff make this emergency arrangement possible. And it’s much better than everyone cuddling up on the street. In Phoenix, the county is contemplating shutting down their overflow shelter—a bleak warehouse that offers nothing but a place on the floor for hundreds of desperate men.

Reading Bill Moyer’s post on homelessness, I found myself torn. His valid perspective is tainted by the use of wildly-delusional statistics provided by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. HUD’s official report to Congress, which determines funding for homelessness programs, was that 578,424 people were homeless last year.  

This extremely narrow enumeration hardly counts homelessness at all. It’s a one-night point-in-time count that, despite sincerely stalwart efforts by professionals and volunteers, documents a mere drop in the vast sea of people—adults and kids, oldsters and babies and those in between—with no place to go.

Case in point, the U.S. Department of Education reported that almost 1.3 million students without homes were identified in the 2013 school year, a staggering 72% increase since 2006. T America’s Youngest Outcasts reports over 2.5 million CHILDREN are homeless, not including parents or single adults. So, HUD’s report…just a tad under-representing the crisis.

I left as Pat headed down the garbage bag-lined hallway, holiday clothing donations. Folks were quietly waiting at tables. If you’d could ask, you’d hear about boredom, frustration finding housing or jobs, regrets about burned bridges and family alienation, and gratitude that at least they have some place to turn to on this cold Pennsylvania night where they’ll be safe. 

It’s perverted that they should feel grateful. It’s perverted that many communities have no shelters. It’s perverted that HUD is pushing “Housing First” with inadequate resources to help those who need it, and we’ll see the perverted action of the 114th Congress, which doesn’t begin to have a clue as to the staggering scope homeless Americans, as they likely slash spending for human needs.

Detail: Perverted Reality: Shelter ‘System’ Is No System

0 American Christmas Celebrations, Not (Homeless) Family Friendly

Christmas spoiler alert: I am not a fan of what Christmas seems to have become here in America.

Beyond that, I'm not a fan of what this country continues to do to millions of families who are homeless or at-risk of homelessness.

Like Tina. Here's my latest AlterNet post on her holiday-hell. If you're not going to read it--the bottom line is this gallant mother of 7 children is right now scrambling around to move her family into a small house trailer before Jan. 1.

The kicker--she's got to wait for the local housing authority to inspect the 3-BR trailer she's located to move into to make sure it's up to the HUD (US Dept. of Housing and Urban Development) standards. Factor in double holidays at the end of this month and she'll be lucky to make this all happen. If she doesn't, her family will be on the streets in a city without a family shelter.

She didn't procrastinate. Her landlord gave her exactly 30 days notice as required. She jumped right into the search, list of potential housing units in hand. When they weren't panning out, she pleaded for an extension but no go. Speculation is that he's losing the house where her family's lived for this past year. They've gotta go.

I don't know, but I'm thinking Tina and her kids probably aren't enjoying this commercially-motivated Christmas season. And I know they're not the only families suffering from house-lessness, hunger and other maladies during this time of year when most of us are involved in parties, time off from work with pay, shopping and ripping into presents. Scant media attention is given to these unfortunate millions, with a smattering of feel-good stories about Christmas cookies and Barbie dolls being shared with shelter kids.

Here's stuff most people don't know about how millions of our nation's most vulnerable families are housed:

• Subsidized housing, which pays the balance of rent after 30%, using our tax dollars, is only available for about 25% of those who really need it.
• Tenants must pay utilities and deposits, often hundreds of dollars.
• Strict rules govern tenants' behavior--and being kicked out of housing or falling behind on rent can blemish their record to the point of banning them from this program.
• Family/friends who need a place to stay can't bunk with their subsidized housing friend/family member. Guests are limited to 10 days...and pushing that can get everyone tossed to the streets.
• Family/friends with felony records are typically banned from subsidized housing properties.
• With 30 days notice, at the end of the lease period, the owner can tell the tenant to move. No recourse. 

Housing authorities oversee subsidized housing. They get federal funds. HUD's budget, now about $45 billion, despite the increased population and soaring poverty and homelessness, has been drastically slashed by the housed Members of Congress over the past 3 decades. That doesn't take into account The Sequester, when HUD's budget took an additional and devastating 10% hit.

Imagine--please--what Tina's family is going through now. No tree or Christmas celebration for the kids. Her truck's axle broke the other day, adding to her fiscal duress. She's scrambling around gathering boxes, shoving stuff in it, and getting her older kids (14 YO) to help. Stress, stress and more stress. 

Before you label Tina's family as freeloaders, dependent on government assistance, swallow this bitter pill:

According to WRAP, the recent big corporate bailout cost taxpayers over $800 BILLION, far exceeding the entire homelessness/housing assistance budget for 3 decades.

In the spirit of anti-commercial-Christmas, I'd call on a boycott of this carnage called "Christmas" until the most vulnerable families in this country have what they need to (at least) humanly survive. I'm guessing that even Jesus would approve.

Detail: American Christmas Celebrations, Not (Homeless) Family Friendly

0 Don’t Like Family and Youth Homelessness? Deny It!

Twenty-five years after the massive “Housing NOW!” march for housing equality in October 1989, the beginning of a (paltry) venture to address homelessness in America, millions of families and youth with nowhere to go are still being mostly ignored.

How can the federal agency responsible for addressing the housing needs of adults and children with nowhere to go continue to deny their vulnerability and needs?

Members of Congress, criticized by Left, Right and in-between, hold the solution to this growing crisis in their hands. The Homeless Children and Youth Act, a bipartisan bill that requires no funding, would seismically change the way our nation views homelessness by inserting a dose of reality into HUD’s (US Dept. of Housing and Urban Development) inadequate definition of homelessness. 

This issue sounds so obscure that it baffles most people. But changing how HUD defines homelessness threatens status quo so much that a major national nonprofit is fighting it tooth and nail. And, because this cause lacks slick lobbyists, this major paradigm shift could fade into oblivion, an unacceptable result. But a strong grass roots effort continues to push for the change.

Homelessness, to most people, is manifested by raggedly dressed, addicted grizzled men on the street corner. Dubbed “chronically homeless” by HUD, meager federal resources have aimed at removing those considered eyesores from urban landscapes. Whether or not this endeavor has succeeded is a topic for another time. 

Those who call the streets home deserve a home. No doubt. But their numbers pale to the skyrocketing numbers of families and youth with nowhere to go. HUD reports a census of about 600,000 homeless people to Congress. Most elected officials likely picture the above-mentioned adults, causing a bare flicker of attention and even less resources. 

In reality, schools have identified almost 1.3 million students experiencing homelessness, appalling enough, but that count doesn’t including younger/older siblings or parents. Included in this count, over 100,000 student-athletes, as recently--and poignantly--portrayed by Sports Illustrated.

Census methodologies vary, true. But the untold story of the shoving homeless families and youth under the federal rug deserves scrutiny. 

The key difference between HUD’s drastic undercount and the US Dept. of Education census is how homelessness is defined. 

HUD doesn’t consider “doubled up” as homeless despite the reality that 70% or more families/youth escape sleeping literally on the streets by staying temporarily with family, friends or acquaintances. HUD also doesn’t consider those staying in motels to be homeless. Not homeless, no matter how tenuous or precarious these arrangements may be. This denies the bleak reality of millions of vulnerable kids and adults. It clearly endangers them. And it keeps our country from making any progress addressing the massive and ever-growing issue of homelessness and housing-poverty. 

The Homeless Children and Youth Act cracks open the process of how we define homelessness, injecting a huge dose of reality that needs to be addressed—the unmet needs of families and youth. Unlike now, local communities would have the option of directing HUD resources to families/youth. It opens the doors to counting families/youth in motels and doubled up for HUD’s Point-in-Time count. 

URGENT ACTION! Keep this bill from swirling down the drain of Congressional inaction. Your congressional delegation needs to hear from you, urging them to co-sponsor this bill, a quick process on our website, www.helphomelesskidsnow.org. 

We cannot continue to ignore the babies, toddlers, kids, teens, youth with nowhere to go. Too many of these vulnerable kids will tumble onto street corners in communities across the country where those “chronically homeless” adults once stood, a self-fulfilling prophecy of what happens when we ignore a problem that we could fix. 

How to make this a compelling, viral message remains the challenge. Miley Cyrus and Miss Arizona have thrown their public reputations into the arena. Not sure that is enough, but it’s an appreciated gesture. But constituent action now is required.

Obviously our approach to this social crisis hasn’t worked well. It’s far past time to give up a losing strategy.

This bill won’t change this inequity overnight. But it is the first step in addressing the problem of so many people without addresses. Inequality in the U.S. has many shapes. Perhaps the most disturbing can be found in the eyes of a child with nowhere to go.

Detail: Don’t Like Family and Youth Homelessness? Deny It!

0 Homeless: What About ‘Nowhere To Go’ Does HUD Not Understand?

For the agency charged with “utilizing housing as a platform for improving quality of life,” assuming that includes those with nowhere to go, the U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development, HUD, has yet to step up to the task for millions of families and youth with nowhere to go. 

Peruse the stories of parents and kids with nowhere to go on www.helphomelesskidsnow.org.

• Heartbreaking accounts from courageous youth who shared their stories before a congressional committee.
• Brutal reality from compassionate frontline workers. 

For the past 3 decades, our country has abdicated its responsibility to those most vulnerable—children and youth, some with parents, some without, who have nowhere to go. "The most dramatic cut in domestic spending during the Reagan years was for low-income housing subsidies. In his first year in office, Reagan cut the budget for public housing and Section 8 rent subsidies in half," points out Peter Dreier in his Nation post.

When I say “nowhere to go” I mean nowhere. Most don't realize how little help is available for families and youth with nowhere to go.

Few communities have programs (not decimated by funding cuts) to help families/youth with nowhere to go. A frightening number of people seeking a place to stay are routinely turned away. 

During my 9 years of HEAR US travel, I’ve been to many communities with little or no assistance for families/youth. I’ve sat in sleazy motel rooms listening to desperate parents. I’ve stood on street corners talking to youth who didn’t know where they were going to sleep that night, much less do their homework. I've listened to kids describe their sucky lives (watch 4-min trailer). 

Having run a shelter for 15 years, only open 9 months of the year because we lacked volunteers and resources for a year round program, I dreaded answering phones in the summer when we weren’t open. Invariably I’d end up talking to a distraught mother with small children looking to escape abject poverty, violence and abuse. And I’d have to say, “Sorry, we can’t help and no other program in the area exists to help.”

No matter how kindly I delivered the bad news, it was bad. The family with nowhere to go ends up in a desperate situation beyond the imagination of many people. The youth with nowhere to go does what she/he can do to survive, at high risk of getting caught up in perilous circumstances. 

Knowing that millions of babies, toddlers, children, youth, young adults and parents of children have nowhere to go compels us to fight to change the way HUD defines homelessness. And a fight it has been.

But those of us fighting for homeless kids don’t just give up. We’ve heard and seen too much—kids and parents with nowhere to go, torn up by stress, hunger, sickness, despair, desolation. We’ve seen lives lost, promise turn into disaster.

HUD’s involvement with homeless families has always reminded me of the rigid bachelor uncle who is not used to being around kids. Paltry assistance. Insensitive involvement. Resentful when asked for more help. Clueless about what it means to have nowhere to go.

The bipartisan legislation recently introduced in Congress, the Homeless Children and Youth Act of 2014, will begin to turn things around for the way HUD deals with homelessness. 

• It frees up local communities to decide to create solutions and services for families/youth with nowhere to go, unlike the current approach. 

• It removes bizarre bureaucratic barriers that force families/youth to give up whatever precarious arrangements they have cobbled together—a shabby, budget-busting motel room, a cruel relative with unreasonable expectations, an abuser who knows the abused partner has no options—to become ‘more homeless’ to maybe qualify for admittance into a shelter. 

• It gives families/youth a shot at getting help from whatever agencies might offer shelter and services.

Knowing the desperate need of families/youth with nowhere to go, I can’t help but be

dismazed at those who continue to oppose this bill. No explanation they throw out makes any sense when pitted against the devastating circumstances of having nowhere to go.

It’s up to us to break through this impasse. We need more legislative sponsors. We need to raise hell until sufficient pressure pushes Congress to insist on HUD creating a more effective way of helping families/youth with nowhere to go. 

ACTION! You can do something about this in mere moments. No money, just 30 or so seconds of your time. Picture what it would mean to have nowhere to go, then ACT (CLICK HERE)! If you’re really convinced that change needs to happen, share the action page with your friends.

HUD won’t change until we force the issue. Some Members of Congress are ready to act. But they need a push. That’s where we come in.

Detail: Homeless: What About ‘Nowhere To Go’ Does HUD Not Understand?

0 New Report Quantifies Challenges Facing Homeless Moms: Give 'Em A Break...or Help

As a former shelter director, I confess that big and little infractions by families staying at our shelter sometimes annoyed the snot out of me. If I knew then what I know now….

Homelessness has gained more awareness, but unfortunately the stereotypical guy begging on the street corner image prevails despite the reality that families and youth without homes far exceed HUD’s “chronically” homeless individuals,last reported as 610,043 (Jan. 2013).  And despite documentation that homelessness among children/youth has increased more than 70% since 2006, homeless kids don’t seem to count. Schools have identified 1,168,354 students, a record number that doesn’t include babies, toddlers and youth outside school systems. Congress hasn't learned that helping kids and families is cost effective, not to mention the right thing to do.

The families in our shelters taught me their circumstances were never simple. Sadly, family-unfriendly policies and practices prevail. In my book, Crossing the Line: Taking Steps to End Homelessness, I share stories of families and offer a multi-choice menu of causes of homelessness. Even that doesn’t cover the gamut.

Unenlightened shelter staff and bureaucrats can be quick to condemn the parent, typically a single mom, pointing out flaws in her behavior, choices and lifestyle. Too many shelters turn away hard-to-serve families.

A new report, Service and Housing Interventions for Families (SHIFT), produced by theWilson Foundation in collaboration with the National Center on Family Homelessness, documents needs of women with children experiencing homeless and explores effective approaches. In the process, it points to the common shortcomings of our family shelter “system.”

The report focuses on women and their children in emergency, transitional shelters and permanent supportive housing in the Rochester and western New York region, not in metro areas. From what I’ve seen in my 9 years of HEAR US Inc. travels, the NY findings appear to reflect homelessness among families similarly sized communities.

The report’s key findings:

• 93% mothers had a history of trauma.
• 81% experienced multiple traumatic events.
• 79% had experienced trauma in childhood.
• 56% had multiple childhood traumas.
• 82% experienced trauma in adulthood.
• 64% experienced multiple traumas in adulthood.

Other significant findings:

• Obviously “the most powerful predictor of residential stability for homeless and low-income families is vouchers or housing subsidies,” but Congress is poised to drastically cut the already inadequate vouchers.
• Doubled up was the 2nd most common option when families moved out of shelters.
• The average childhood traumas experienced, 3.2.
• Sexual assaults, often in childhood, were common. (Watch our film on the edge: Family Homelessness in America to hear from women with firsthand experiences.)
• Despite the high rate of women experiencing PTSD-inducing trauma, only 5% reported receiving treatment.
• A significant number, 20%, reported being homeless as a child, with even more, 24%, spending time in foster care.

The report gets even more valuable, pointing out often-ignored realities:

• Depression is common, yet tragically untreated.
• Women in permanent supportive housing reported higher rates of sexual abuse, bipolar and other mental illnesses, and psychiatric hospitalizations. The connection between PTSD, substance abuse, and depression is significant, and under-treated.
• The mother’s mental health was tied to the frequency of separation or the proximity of her children, commonly either removed by authorities or farmed out to survive unstable housing circumstances.

We need a better way of helping vulnerable women with kids. Kicking out or denying service to hard-to-serve women (likely depressed or experiencing other mental health issues), penalizing and incarcerating, or berating doesn’t work. Worst case example, the death of a mother who had been locked up for failure to pay school fees.

But since our federal government has yet to prioritize, much less fund, efforts to end family homelessness, we’ll be hashing this issue around for years to come, wondering why kids fail to thrive, parents fail to parent, jails are filled, schools stumble, and poverty soars. That annoys the snot out of me the most.

Republished from AlterNet, 6/19/14 

Detail: New Report Quantifies Challenges Facing Homeless Moms: Give 'Em A Break...or Help

0 Brutal Cold + Brutal Reality For Homeless Families/Youth

Keynote speeches can be good or bad, stimulating or numbing. At the Beyond Housing conference put on by the venerable Institute of Children, Poverty and Homelessness in NYC last week, I could have danced on the table during Ralph da Costa Nunez’s opening salvo.

Ever the contrarian, this respected guru of all things to help homeless families took a major shot at the homelessness “cure” de jour, Housing First aka Rapid Rehousing. Nunez spared no words. It doesn’t work as a one-size-fits-all (underfunded) approach to ending homelessness. My dear friend and sister-blogger Pat LaMarche captured the sense of his proclamation.

Now, let me add my 2¢ worth: whatever well-intentioned approaches communities have to assist families and youth moving from the streets to sheets (and all the other essentials of home), far more communities have nothing. Read that again.

Maybe it’s the ivory tower syndrome:

• I’m doing good in my job helping homeless families and youth, so everyone else is probably doing the same. (Hello, organizations in big cities that have resources.) 
• I don’t see any homeless families/youth, so they’re all OK or we don’t have any here. 
• I’ve heard this isn’t a problem, so it’s not.

Or worse:

• I get HUD funding so I can’t say anything bad about this absurd policy that excludes million of homeless families/youth.
• I will agree with this policy of Housing First because I want it to work (and I get HUD funding so I can’t bite the hand that feeds me). 
• It would be too much work to change things to better serve homeless families/youth. 
• They should try harder to solve the problem on their own. I’ve got too much to do as it is.

Having spent many grueling years running shelters for individuals, families and youth over 18, I feel I’ve got skin in the game. (My bio) Having spent the past 9 years traversing the country listening to and chronicling families and youth in homeless situations (3-min YouTube vid), I feel obligated to bring their story to the table. Having spent 30+ years advocating ending homelessness (How’s that working? Not!), I can’t stay quiet when these rare discussions hit the media wave.

I wrote a book, Crossing the Line: Taking Steps to End Homelessness, because I was dismayed about the lack of understanding of homelessness among policymakers and the public. Here’s a 1-page excerpt from my missive that list some causes of family/youth homelessness. (You can order the e-book or real book at my HEAR US website.)

20+ years ago I astoundingly found myself fighting against so-called advocates in Illinois who said we didn’t need a state law to remove barriers commonly experienced by homeless students trying to get into school. Yes we did. We got it, and now it’s federal law. And millions of kids have had access to 6-hours a day of educational stability, meals (albeit not the greatest), and a shot at escaping poverty through education.

So I’m not backing down when it comes to demanding that our affordable-housing-destroying government steps up mightily to right the wrongs of the past 30 years of what doesn’t pass for viable housing policies. Here’s a 3-minute video critiquing  “Rapid Rehousing,” produced by Nunez’s organization, ICPH.

Housing First, the touted “solution” to homelessness, has been primarily directed at those derogatorily dubbed “chronic” homeless persons, and grossly inadequate funding has caused organizations to fight brutally. You should be a little suspicious when HUD and HUD-funded agencies fight to keep a narrow definition of homelessness that excludes most families, youth and non-chronic adults.

Ralph suggests Housing Second and Third. And funding these approaches. That would take us beyond our one-size-fits-all mentality to addressing this growing national scandal. Why we have to fight about this baffles me.

I’d suggest those who think we’re doing enough to help homeless families and youth to leave the comfort of their cozy work/home environments and spend a day or 2 (preferably with kids in tow) looking for a place to stay. Yeah, Housing First is a good slogan but a lousy blanket. 

 (Originally posted by me on my AlterNet blog)

Detail: Brutal Cold + Brutal Reality For Homeless Families/Youth