Half, Half & Half: How Mayor Bowser Can Reduce (and Eventually End) DC Homelessness
It's clear to anyone that's paying
attention that DC mayor Muriel Bowser and her administration are
Hell- (or shall I say “Heaven”???) bent on ending homelessness in
the capital of the most poerful (though no longer the wealthiest)
nation on Earth. I won't bother speculating (here and now, anyway) as
to whether it's a “girl power” issue (which I'm not adverse to),
a genuine concern for the homeless, a matter of bowing to public and
media pressure or a matter of competing with the DC Council to deal
with a clossal failure that has become the scourge of DC Government
(with them having “tried” for over 10 years to end homelessness
while it only increased). However, I will address my gravest concern
and present a real solution.
“Homeless Czar(ina)” and ICH
Director Kristy Greenwalt has gone on the record multiple times as
realizing that there are systems that fall outside of the homeless
services continuum and create homelessness. She realizes that her
purview and those of some of her “sister” agencies are too narrow
to end homelessness in and of themselves. She knows that we need
affordable housing across the city – affordable housing that is not
part of a government program. Yet she hasn't articulated just who is
needed to make this happen – unless you consider that the mayor is
the default person for this matter. Fact of the matter is that I
personally have stood up in many Inter-agency Council on Homelessness
meetings since June 2006 and said pretty much the same things that
Kristy – who officially began her current post on April 28th,
2014 – is now saying.
Kristy is awesome and I have no
beef with her. Nonetheless, It's appalling that anyone – a mayor,
administrator or otherwise – would give greater credence to an idea
when it comes from an administration official than they would when it
comes from a directly-affected, homeless person. They should consider
the idea on its own merits – not be so caught up on who it came
from. In spite of me still loving her, I hold it against mayor Bowser
that she seems to value the opinions of administration officials and
non-profit personnel over the opinions of the unpaid homeless
advocates – even when an advocate is intelligent and articulate and
even though ending homelessness is her pet project.
On Wednesday, March 18th,
2015 there was a meeting about the mayor's five-year plan to end
homelessness. Presenters of the plan and administration officials who
fielded questions included Kristy Greenwalt, Ms Kelly
Sweeney-McShane, Laura Zeilinger, Polly Donaldson and a woman from
the DC Housing Authority. Girl Power. (Maybe the mayor is concerned
that people will assume that she's focused on ending homelessness in
order to appease my wrath and/or that she won't be seen as that
“woman apart” that she so longs to be seen as if people think
that she's being fed ideas by – of all people – a homeless man.
Oh well.) Dozens of attendees were divided into eight groups with each
having a facilitator. Due to the tight 90-minute schedule, only the
presenters, administrators and facilitators addressed the entire
room. Others spoke only within their small groups. Unfortunately, the
facilitator at my table – a woman (which I believe all facilitators
were, if memory serves) – failed to mention my “half, half &
half idea. But before I explain it here, I'll mention what I think is
the gravest concern when it comes to ending DC homelessness.
A failure to do conceptual
planning that considers the reasons for past failures will be the
downfall of my beloved Bowser administration. This is the only other
thing that I hold against her. I recently spoke with a man I know who
serves as a homeless advocate in San Jose, California. He told me of
a public official in Cali who had a good heart and wanted to end
homelessness in her jurisdiction but failed to look at why a previous
plan failed. She failed again. As he gave this account,
it sounded as though my alter ego were on the other end of the line
talking to me. Here in DC it will be, “Same song, Different verse,
A little bit louder, A little bit worse” if we aren't careful.
When I say that the plan must be
conceptual, I mean that we can't decide what ideas to use based on
what people are willing to do or feel good about. We must consider
matters of principle such as the fact that past administrations have
been willing to assist the most vulnerable due to them being helpless
(Fenty) or ostracized able-bodied homeless parents by presenting them
as lazy moochers (Gray) and we must tease out these thoughts instead
of merely dancing around them. I also mean that we should categorize
the types of things that need to be done to set able-bodied people
back on their feet rather than blaming them for their condition, as
the latter is a zero-sum statement that does nothing to solve the
problem. We must recognize that our effort to do this will set up a
major fight with employers, landlords and developers; but, we must
start and win this fight.
We must also ensure that we aren't
falsely defining the homeless problem as a disabled persons' issue in
order to justify steering city contracts to the non-profits and
funding relevant government agencies for yet another year. After all,
many non-profits are funded to assist the disabled – regardless of
how well or poorly they do this – and must draw a picture of
continuous need in order to justify the continued existence and
funding of the non-profit. We must also ensure that government
reports such as the one that was issued in response to the
disappearance and death of 8-year old Relisha Rudd from a homeless
shelter are not written in defense of government agencies but are
truly designed to solve and prevent systemic problems. Though Mayor
Bowser inherited a terribly flawed system, she now needs to fix the
aforementioned issues and incorporate these conceptual solutions.
That leads nicely into my half,
half & half idea. Simply put, if the mayor wants to cut
homelessness in half in one fell swoop, she needs to connect the
approximate half of DC's 9,000 homeless people who are currently
working to housing that they can currently afford by taking some or
all of the $10,000 that the city spends annually sheltering each
individual and using it to subsidize their rent. If a homeless person
has been working for at least half a year on the same job and can pay
at least half of the average $1,500/month rent, then the city should
house them and subsidize their rent. This would cut the homeless
population in half. Thus the name, “Half, Half & Half”.
When I mentioned the idea to Kristy
after the March 18th meeting, she said that about 10,000
people use DC homeless services each year. This means that about
1,000 people pass through city shelters and move on. It also means
that, a bed that's been vacated by a working homeless person who got
housed may still be needed by someone else. Then again, if the
mayor's recent conversation with Montgomery and Prince George County
officials leads to these counties creating homeless services that are
equally good to those of DC, that would reduce the influx from these
other jurisdictions and might completely eliminate Kristy's argument.
Another variation of the idea is
that homeless people who are working be encouraged to co-habitate. If
each person has worked on the same job for at least half a year, can
pay at least half of the rent and can get along with another homeless
person of their choosing who meets the same requirements, then they
can be placed in the same unit with continued city support for up to
a year.
My fellow homeless advocates would
not be happy about me offering an idea that might enable the city to
justify the reduction of shelter space. So, let's be clear: I'm
offering solutions to homelessness, irrespective of what happens to
the vacated beds. Even so, I can support the elimination of one bed
for every two people who move into housing, so long as the city has
suitable methods in place for increasing shelter space on demand.
That said, I'm glad the mayor wants to “do one thing and do it
well”, as we used to say. (Of course she has to do a lot more than
one thing; but, ending homelessness is her pet project, much to my
elation.) FULL STOP.
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