Bridget Deschenes Bridget Deschenes

Greater Gifts

As you read this, non-profit organizations – especially homeless service providers – are busy collecting money from people and organizations that like to give in this season. This “season” is the period between (American) Thanksgiving and Christmas. There is no doubt that the general populace likes to give at this time of year to homelessness related causes. I suspect if you have been to a mall or thriving downtown or near a large public transportation hub you have heard the chime of bells and seen the red kettle or had a service organization knock on your door or read or seen a news report.

Give, if you like, your money.

But know that your charitable donation is not going to solve the issues that caused homelessness in the first place. It will, however, give someone a meal or a bed or access to a shower – all of which are necessary things. Giving away some of your money will probably make you feel pretty good too. However, that same person that benefited from your donation today is likely to need a meal, bed and/or shower the day after and the day after that and the day after that. And should they disappear, someone else will eat their meal, sleep in that bed or need a shower.

Charity begets more charity. It is a band-aid. It is an immediate and short-term approach to dealing with need. There will always be a place for charity, but needs will grow and more will be needed. Why? Because we are not getting to the root of the issue.

I respectfully challenge you or your friends and family to try different things this year:

  • Start an advocacy campaign with your elected officials. Write letters. Lots of them. Send emails. Weekly. Visit them in their offices. Do not accept the prepared responses and double-speak. They represent you and make decisions on your tax dollars. Demand they listen to you and the group you represent. You are not a special interest group. You are reality.

  • Educate yourselves. Ask a non-profit to come to your office and educate you and colleagues on the issue. This isn’t a fundraising pitch. This is an education opportunity. People don’t know what they don’t know. If you are on the other side of the coin – working in a non-profit – offer to do “lunch and learns” in the new year to educate people on the issues and don’t ask for a cent when you are done. It changes the paradigm and historical type of relationships that non-profits have had with for-profit companies.

  • Suggest to anyone that will listen that you want your taxes to go up. Just a little. What? We can’t get better services at less cost. There are no more efficiencies to be found. If your taxes went up to increase the amount of housing, or the availability of case management supports, or improved government benefit rates – would that be a bad thing?

  • Do something awesome and unexpected not for the people that use the services at the non-profit, but the staff that support them day in and day out. They do incredible work in conditions that are rarely understood by people not immersed in it daily. They are underpaid. They are over worked. Give the staff and incredible meal or a night out or even comfortable insoles because they are on their feet all day. “Help us practice self-care” sounds like a legitimate holiday fundraising campaign to me.

  • Re-think the “Turkey Drive”. Many communities have this down to a science now, ensuring that low-income families receive a turkey and the fixings to go with it to prepare at home, and that homeless individuals and families receiving turkey on Thanksgiving and/or Christmas day. This is good media. It is a “feel good” story. I suspect they will even interview a person or two glowing with thanks for the generosity of the donors. And for what? Imagine if the same energy that went into the turkey drive was applied to another single-moment event like combating NIMBY at a City Council meeting related to an affordable housing development. Or imagine if the same energy was spread out over a long period of time to support a Permanent Supportive Housing campaign or something similar to that? Imagine the long-term benefits to the kids of the families volunteering when they learn that social change comes from a prolonged strategy and effort to combat injustice, not a single day of turkeys.

 

There are skills and resources and excellent ideas in the general population. Charitable giving has become the default. I would assert that we can do more and better – that there are greater gifts to give than money.

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Bridget Deschenes Bridget Deschenes

White Privilege & Housing and Homelessness

Last week I was in St. Louis. The tension was palpable. It was a community on edge, awaiting the grand jury decision regarding Officer Wilson in the shooting of Michael Brown. This week, with the decision in Ferguson making world headlines, the result has been many talking about reforms, righting injustices, addressing inequities, making adjustments in society so that complex social issues that involve race are considered differently.

Legacies of injustice continue. In the United States it is the painful history of slavery and the treatment of African-Americans and maltreatment of Native Americans too. (A “civilized” nation that celebrates Columbus Day?) In Canada and Australia it is the painful history of colonization of indigenous peoples and failed, unjust attempts at assimilation through the likes of residential schools. (In Canada there is still something called the Indian Act – legislation that governs engagement between the state and what is allowed for a group of people, to put it over-simply).

If you are not white, you are disproportionately going to be represented in a homeless population in the United States, Canada and Australia. This isn’t a coincidence.

If you are not white, you are less likely to be a homeowner. You are less likely to have financial assistance from family to purchase into the homeownership market. If you are not white you are less likely to meet financial risk assessment thresholds to purchase a home. If you are not white and you do own a home, the value of your home is, on average, less than that of a white person. This isn’t a coincidence.

If you are not white, you will be incarcerated at a disproportionately higher rate. The biggest investment made in housing is the “big house”. This is not a coincidence.

If you are not white, you are less likely to get appropriate mental health assistance or assistance with a substance use disorder. This is not a coincidence.

If you are not white, you are more likely to make less money than white counterparts, unless you are working in a unionized environment. If you are not white, you are more likely to not be in a management position. This is not a coincidence.

If you are not white, you are less likely to finish high school and less likely to complete a post high school degree. This is not a coincidence.

Did I – a white, educated, straight, male – make more not white people homeless or decrease their homeownership rates or incarcerate people in a disproportionate manner, deprive others of mental health assistance or substance use recovery, pay an unequal wage or decrease educational attainment of people that are not white? No. But that doesn’t mean I am not part of the problem.

If I want to be part of the solution, I have to acknowledge that I am definitely part of the problem. Try as I might, my white privilege makes it impossible for me to truly empathize beyond a cerebral exercise in our current society because the likelihood of success is stacked heavily in my favor. I didn’t ask for any of this. It is a privilege bestowed upon me solely by being white, and I will never know what it is like to be not white. Do I give up in trying to understand wholeheartedly? No.

I need an education different than what multiple university degrees have provided me. I need to ensure that all I do is rooted firmly in the tenets of justice, and not one of pity or sympathy or charity. I need to speak truth to power and talk about the thing that others sometimes don’t want to talk about, beyond just “Have you noticed that most of the people in your shelter are African-American?” (or aboriginal) to “What are we going to do about the disproportionate number of African-American (or aboriginal) people needing housing?”

When I have half-heartedly attempted these discussions in the past it is usually met with responses like, “It took generations to get to the point where things are this bad, and it is going to take generations to get out of this situation.” Or, “I know bad things happened in the past. I didn’t do it. It wasn’t my fault. When are they going to get over it?” Or, “The problem is that they don’t have fathers in their life or role models to set them straight on how to make a living and take care of themselves.” Or, “I almost feel better for them when they are incarcerated, because at least then you know they are getting fed and access to health care.” Or, “You know it’s because they really can’t handle alcohol.” Or, “They’ve never had an apartment because of how their people are. We are just setting them up for failure.” Or, “Of course there are more of them homeless” – as if all of these statements normalize reality so that no action can be taken – and are accepted on face value as truths.

I will take these inflammatory comments head on from now on in all situations.

See, these aren’t African-American problems. They are American problems. These aren’t Native Canadian problems. They are Canadian problems. These aren’t Indigenous Australian problems. They are Australian problems. It isn’t someone else’s problem. It is our collective problem.

I am not against discussion, but we aren’t going to talk our way out of this. I am not against education, but we aren’t going to train our way out of this. What I am for is action.

I have said many times that it is pointless to gather race or ethnic data if you aren’t going to do anything with it – if it is just an academic exercise or to gather descriptive data then it is pointless. Maybe it is time that we find the point and act on the point.

Economic injustice and racism are siblings…perhaps even twins. I am opposed to anti-poverty strategies. I am all for increased wealth strategies. I will not pity people for their poverty. I will not advocate just to increase benefit rates. I will rally against why it exists in the first place.

I will work to reform any system that calls itself a “justice system” when it systemically removes people’s access to employment and housing, and does so in many instances for a lifetime. If we can’t agree that time served is, um, time served – then maybe we need to start calling it the racially unjust punishment system.

I will advocate that we intentionally work to decrease stigma of mental illness and substance addiction with people of color. I will no longer accept the narrative of “it’s cultural” thrown around by white people in avoiding getting people the assistance they deserve.

And one more thing.

I will never vote for the candidate wanting to lower my taxes. Why? Because this is the manifestation of white privilege at its finest. We can’t have less money in the coffers of government and expect more or better interventions to address these systemic and systematic issues. Lowering taxes will not decrease homelessness. Lowering taxes will not increase available housing. Lowering taxes will not result in better education. Lowering taxes will not improve human services. A vote for the candidate wanting to lower taxes – who will give you the mantra of better service at less cost or efficiencies as propaganda – is a vote for ongoing injustice, more racial inequity, and more white privilege.

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Bridget Deschenes Bridget Deschenes

Coordinated Access, Common Assessment and Rural Communities

I really enjoy working in smaller communities and towns as well as vast county areas. I appreciate the pace of life in most instances, the work ethic, and a work-life balance that sometimes seems lost when I am in larger urban centres. I also appreciate that homelessness can look and feel different in locations such as these.

One of the earliest adopters of the full SPDAT was a rural community in Michigan. It was intriguing to me, and I applaud the leadership of the organization for wanting to give it a try. She was dedicated to continuous improvement in her organization as a whole, and this seemed to be the next step in the evolution of performance excellence.

Up to that point in time, services were delivered solely based upon eligibility. The implementation of a common assessment tool meant that prioritization based upon acuity also entered the mix. The result? An incredible transformation for the organization. They became focused on who needed service the most, not just who was eligible for service. It changed how staff did their jobs.

This was affirmed when another adopter of SPDAT with a lot of rural and even remote environments took on the tool. This was the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador. There are some urban areas in the province, but look at a map and population data and you see it is a HUGE area with smaller populations in most communities. Sure enough, the SPDAT changed the conversation and worked there as well.

In many smaller communities and rural counties there aren’t a lot of services. So coordination can look different. Sometimes there is more than one organization working  with homeless people. Sometimes not. Sometimes coordination is with mainstream services more than other non-profits. The introduction of the tool changed those discussions too.

There were similarities to more urban and metropolitan environments too that were being discovered in rural environments. For example, some of the people that organizations thought would have higher acuity did not and some people that the organizations thought would have lower acuity ended up with much more complex needs once the tool was put into place. Leaders of homeless services in the communities came to understand strengths of services and some gaps in services in a manner that was driven by data. And like larger urban settings, the tool resulted in much more informed case management supports and better housing stability.

Taking the lessons learned from this experience, I have found that coordinated access and common assessment has been powerful in many other rural communities as well. Some use the full SPDAT. Some use the VI-SPDAT. I am talking about places like Nebraska – outside of Lincoln and Omaha – and West Virginia and the areas of Arizona outside of Phoenix and other smaller communities in Michigan and smaller communities in North Dakota – and other places like that. Time and again, it has been successful and transformative.

But there is no doubt that implementing in some communities that are rural there is a resistance and opinion about the tool that is different than what is experienced in some other more urban environments. Here are some examples:

  • people think that coordination is not required because there are so few services anyway. But, clearly coordination can be improved on any scale when there is more than one entity (government, non-profit, faith groups, etc.) involved in the issues.

  • people think that asking questions about drugs, sex work, or other higher risk behaviour is offensive in rural areas because there can be a perception that such activity does not exist. The truth is, as the data shows from other rural environments, that it does, in fact, exist. Drug use and drug dealing, involvement in exploitative activities, etc. also exist in rural environments. It may, however, look different than how it manifests itself in other places.

  • people think that they should be able to serve everyone because they are a small agency in a smaller community. However, while they think they should be able to (and stressing the word should would be an ideal utopia in a community of any size) given the nature of how resources are allocated, smaller towns and rural environments often have a small amount of funding to work with. Prioritizing the use of these resources makes sense in smaller communities too.

  • people think that because some of the people they are assisting have been doubled up or sleeping in shifts or staying in a heated barn or garage that a tool that looks for acuity does not apply because the folks in their community are not sleeping on the streets or in a large shelter. But what they fail to appreciate is that the SPDAT considers ALL types of homelessness.

Rural environments have a lot to teach large urban centres. I find it encouraging to see innovation in data collection, services, funding decisions, training, and performance excellence that comes from smaller communities. But so long as the “we’re different…we’re unique…we’re rural” card is played, it pushes the knowledge transfer backwards, not forwards. Housing is the only known cure to homelessness whether that is a hamlet or a metropolis. Not assessing for and matching to resources based upon need is ludicrous whether that is a city of one million or a town of a thousand.

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Bridget Deschenes Bridget Deschenes

Homelessness Has Never Been Ended in a Committee

On more than a few occasions lately I have been in meetings with Coordinated Entry Committees, Community Advisory Committees, Assessment Committees, Steering Committees, Executive Committees, Implementation Committees, Evaluation Committees, etc. that have a local responsibility for providing direction to ending homelessness. I am at the end of my patience with committees.

Let me say this again as clearly as I possibly can: homelessness has never been ended in a committee.

There is an awesome website called www.despair.com that creates de-motivational posters. If you understand my sarcasm and humor, you’ll appreciate why I love this website so much. Here is my favorite poster on the website:

 

 

(In fairness, they also say this about blogging.) The point? I am amazed how much energy goes into committees when the same energy does not go into implementation.

In my mind there is good process and dumb-ass process.

Good process is people rapidly figuring out how to do something, try it, make mistakes, learn, tweak, improve, evaluate, tweak some more, make more mistakes, learn, improve, etc. Good process is the art of doing.

Dumb-ass process is people trying to figure out how to keep everyone happy without making any decisions. When push comes to shove there is another committee to be formed. And every decision made in a committee (if there are any decisions made) have to come back to the Committee of the Whole where they can be rejected and sent back to committee again. Dumb-ass process is reinventing the wheel instead of using evidence and data already available. Dumb-ass process is thinking you need another study to prove what has already been proven time and time again. Dumb-ass process is confusing consultation with consensus. Dumb-ass process is seeking perfection on paper before ever doing anything.

Next time someone suggests another committee demand that you have an action-team instead of a committee. Be charged with the task of execution because that is the discipline of getting things done. Refuse to accept that sitting around a table will end homelessness.

If you do not focus more time on action than committees you might as well just announce that you have much work to do before you can announce your total failure to make any progress. And then form a committee to figure out why that happened.

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Bridget Deschenes Bridget Deschenes

20,000 Homes – A Guest Blog from Jeff

This is a guest blog from Jeff Standell. Last time he wrote a guest blog he was employed elsewhere. A couple months back he joined OrgCode full time. Every now and then, Jeff is going to contribute to this space as well, now that he is with OrgCode. Every time he does, given I (Iain) am the usual blog author, you will be told that it is a contribution from Jeff. 

I like ambitious targets. I like lofty goals. I like feeling a little freaked out by the scale of what has been committed to.

A small and most likely manageable target doesn’t inspire the same type of creativity and all hands on deck type of thinking that drives innovation and makes the impossible to achieve not only possible, but impossible not to achieve.

I sat at a pre-conference session last week at the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness National Conference listening to Paul Howard, Jessica Venegas, and LoriAnn Girvan from Community Solutions talk about how they are sharing their expertise from the 100K Homes Campaign to inspire the Canadian 20K Homes Campaign. I got excited. Excited in the ‘holy crap is this even possible but I don’t care because I want to help make this happen’ sense.

The next morning the 20K Homes Campaign (not sure if that is or will be the official name yet) was launched. Within a day and a half 27 communities from across Canada had already signed on.

I feel the need to provide a little Canadian context to our American friends. They might be saying, “20,000, so what, we housed over 100,000”. Canada has roughly 10% of America’s population and we committed to hit 20% of your target. Our demographics are different, our geography is different, our government structures are different. Trust me, 20K is ambitious.

This was the first national conference on anything that I have ever attended. It was great to see past colleagues and catch up. It was better to meet new people from parts of the country I have yet to visit and hear about the awesome work that they are doing to end homelessness. That was the glue that brought us all there, we are all crazy enough to believe that we will end homelessness.

I got thinking during the conference and in the time since about what it will take to house 20,000 of our most vulnerable and difficult to house citizens. I want to share these thoughts here and hope that they can be part of the genesis of a larger conversation. I want to spread the ripples from my stone in the pond.

I believe, first and foremost, that we don’t need to re-invent the wheel, and that trying to do so is counter-productive. Here’s what we know, housing first works. It works in Canada. It works in the United States. I learned during the conference that it also works in Europe. It looks a little different in its structure depending on the community or country, but the notion of client driven housing choice, client driven service planning, and providing supports to people in their homes instead of trying to make them perfect before then bestowing housing on them, works. In Canada we have already fought that battle, and though there are still, and likely always will be, some holdouts, we don’t have to re-invent housing first.

How do we know it works?

Canada has some outstanding success stories, the At Home/Chez Soi project and accompanying research shows that housing first works. Cities like Saskatoon are seeing the very quick benefits of housing first. There are countless other success stories that I could share.

I will, however, share this. I live in Medicine Hat, Alberta. It was announced several times before and during the conference that we are poised to be the first city in North America to end homelessness. Some people want to reflexively attack when they hear this. Some people want to celebrate and start patting others on the back. Some people want to take that success and show it off. There are various reactions when someone says that Medicine Hat will end homelessness first.

I cringe whenever I hear that.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m incredibly proud of the work that I did while working in Medicine Hat. There are some incredibly passionate and remarkably skilled people working to end homelessness there. This next statement will make me very unpopular in my home town but it needs to be said.

 

Being the first city to end homelessness doesn’t matter.

 

What matters is which city is the last to end homelessness, and how long that takes is crucial. The homeless family in Kingston, Ontario doesn’t care. The homeless guy in Clark County, Nevada doesn’t care. The mom and kids fleeing domestic violence in Yellowknife, NWT don’t care. They care about ending their own homelessness. Every day they are homeless they are vulnerable to the risks of homelessness. Our goal is to help them end their homelessness.

It is important to recognize and celebrate success, but it is more important to recognize that homelessness is not a city by city issue. It is not okay to compete to ‘be better’ than the next guy. If we are really serious about housing 20,000 people, and further, to end homelessness, then the next thing we need to do is check our egos at the door.

I have learned in my brief time with OrgCode that we are in a very unique position. When we work and travel in the United States we are often questioned about how it is that as Canadians we think we can help them out. What could we possibly offer them that would be of benefit? Conversely, while in Canada, because we work in the U.S. we are often viewed as tainted and that whatever we have to say should be ignored because we are just trying to ‘Americanize’ the conversation.

Here’s the thing.

Ideas don’t have passports.

If we can take knowledge from the 100K Homes Campaign that will help us does it matter that the folks providing it have Social Security Numbers and not Social Insurance Numbers?

If we can learn from Camden Housing Project in London Borough things that will help us in Canada does it matter if the folks teaching us drive on the left side of the road?

As professionals and service providers it might, but it shouldn’t. As municipal, provincial, and federal funders it might, but it shouldn’t. Because to the 235,000 unique Canadians that experienced homelessness last year, they don’t care where the help comes from, as long as it comes. It is their lives at stake, and our egos be damned.

 

As Canadians we pride ourselves on being humble. Humility is defined as a modest or low view of one’s own importance. I thinks that this definition along with maple syrup in many ways sums us up, and I’m okay with that. I was fortunate to listen to a number of amazing Canadians during the conference.

However, the most humble speaker I heard was a friend from the south. Becky Kanis Margiotta is a big thinker. I don’t think that she is an outside the box thinker, I think that she doesn’t believe that a box is there. She led a team that accomplished something truly inspirational and amazing. But she didn’t take credit, she didn’t talk about how great she was. She talked about her fears, she talked about asking others for help, and she talked about the possible consequences of failure. Despite doing something larger than life she was incredibly down to earth. She wrapped up by wishing us success and offering her encouragement and support.

I’m one of the Crazy Canucks that believes we will house 20,000 people by July 1, 2018. I’m crazy enough to think we will surpass this. I will do whatever I can to help my fellow Canadians from coast to coast to coast reach this goal.

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Bridget Deschenes Bridget Deschenes

The Privilege to Serve

Once upon a time, I would be frustrated by the lack of gratitude some service participants would show after we worked our butts off to get them housed and created an intensive support plan. Other times, I would wonder why my frontline staff failed to show thanks for all I did for them to make their lives easier. More than once I would want to quit what I was doing because neither my boss nor the elected powers that be seemed to appreciate all that we did.

My life changed the day I came to the realization that it is a privilege to serve. Before, I thought people should feel privileged to be served. And I was dead wrong. It was all about me. It was selfish. It was misguided.

The privilege to serve means each and every day I must provide my utmost attention to each interaction and situation where I may impact another person’s life.

The privilege to serve means that I don’t get to have outward bad days or make excuses for hard work. I need to find solutions. I cannot blame other people for barriers.

The privilege to serve means I have to treat each person as an individual with unique needs and talents.

The privilege to serve means I have to see the strengths and goodness in everyone.

The privilege to serve means I don’t do this work to be thanked, nor do I do it for money. I do it because of the value of service.

The privilege to serve means I cannot blame people for things beyond their ability to control or influence.

The privilege to serve means I have to accept the awesome responsibility to have a positive impact on the lives of others, while still respecting their uniqueness.

The privilege to serve means each person I encounter is not worse than I am, they are just different, and the more I respect that difference the more I can positively enter into an effective rapport with her/him.

The privilege to serve means each staff person is an asset to be nurtured and supported, not the means to an end.

The privilege to serve means I have to keep getting better and better and better. Some days this means making colossal mistakes to learn from. Other days this means burying myself in academic literature. Other days this means attending training. And other days still this means debriefing and learning from experiences to date.

The privilege to serve means learning how to listen and embracing the awkward silences awaiting for the other person to speak.

The privilege to serve means I must always find a position of empathy, not sympathy, and to never provide advice.

The privilege to serve means I cannot give up on people even when they use coarse language, reject offers of services, miss appointments, or act in a manner inconsistent with being supported and housed long-term.

The privilege to serve means I have to call bullshit when I hear it and not sit idly by while people serve in a manner not grounded in evidence of data. This isn’t a difference in ideology. If I take service seriously, I do not “agree to disagree” when the other person is flat out wrong.

The privilege to serve means I have to see everything from the viewpoint of the person I aim to serve.

The privilege to serve means I have to let go of things outside of my control and accept that there will always be some actions and decisions that are different than how I would have done the same thing.

The privilege to serve means I have to be active. I am not waiting for others to come to me. I have to be committed to engaging with them.

The privilege to serve means I will always be pressured – from on top and below. Service comes with pressures and demands. I need to take care of myself in order to manage those pressures. I need to communicate my needs within the context of those pressures and demands.

The privilege to serve means I have to be hopeful. I need to be present in the moment and planning for the future – and never stuck in the past.

The privilege to serve means that I will present options and choices to others, along with data and information to make informed decisions. Service does not mean I know best for others.

The privilege to serve comes with respecting that I am in a person’s life – a client, a staff member, a boss – and that I have to be responsible for what I say and do during the moments in that other person’s life.

The privilege to serve means I have to be committed with my whole being to have steadfast fixity of purpose to end homelessness and increase housing options, making each community more socially just and more inclusive.

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