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.

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.

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.

Your Best Intentions of Promoting Your Work May Be Having Devastating Long-Term Consequences on Some of Your Service Users

People served by your programs may be eager to tell the world how amazing you are or enthusiastically proclaim the awesomeness of your organization.

If you ask, they will be in agreement to have their story and experience focused on your website. If you ask, they will be profiled in your Annual Report. If you ask, they will come and talk at your Annual General Meeting. If you ask, they will speak to media. If you ask, they will come and share at fundraising events. If you ask, they will agree that guests from out of town or other organizations that are visiting your program can come and visit them too.

Let’s break this down a bit, though, and really analyze what is going on.

First of all, which type of person/family does your organization choose for these moments? It isn’t the person that was not served well by your program. It likely isn’t the person that did mediocre after being served by your program. You pick the superstar – the person/family that did unbelievably well, so much so that it is outside the norm. That “superstar” presents well and you would be happy to have them as the face of your programs. Problem is, you are presenting a false image. You are presenting the exception.

Related to this, you are often setting up a sample size of one or the sample size of a few. Politicians often do this:

“I met Jimmy on my way here today and he told me how the NewDawn Community Services provided him the skills to be good at financial management for the rest of his life. Now he has a job and manages his income without any help from others. We need to help other people become just like Jimmy and fund more programs like NewDawn Community Services.”

Is Jimmy’s experience typical? People confuse anecdotes like this with data. For all we know, Jimmy experienced success because of his own skills and attributes, completely independent of anything NewDawn did. We just don’t know. Understanding the effectiveness of any program is not determined by the one exception or only by one story.

Secondly, why would a person be eager to be profiled? They may want to share their story with peers and provide an example to others. Let’s, however, consider the alternative, though, which I have heard many, many times: they feel they owe you (your organization or a specific worker) for all that they have done for them. In other words, they feel they are reciprocating. The reciprocation mindset can have poor long-term impacts on people. They are not, therefore, doing it for themselves – they are doing it as payback.

When someone engages out of obligation or payback, they may not have been in a place where they are emotionally or psychologically ready to share. Perhaps, like me, you have seen these people break down into tears as they regale others with their life story and relive the sorry of the experience. Perhaps, like me, you may have seen these folks do well during an event like a promotion video for your website, and then a few months later they return to homelessness and feel even worse shame because they were held up in front of others with such high expectations. (I have been guilty of the latter and it haunts me to this day.)

Every time you bring someone out into a forum such as an Annual General Meeting, Fundraising Event, media event, etc. you create an environment where they can relive their trauma and experience of homelessness or the surrounding issues of her/his homelessness. You are not letting them recover from the experience if you bring them back into the experience. If your programs are intended to help people achieve greater independence and stability into community, then it is foolish and disingenuous to bring someone back to your organization for your own purposes that contradict your program’s intention.

“We help people achieve independence in their life and reintegrate into community.”

Follow that with trotting people back to your program to speak at events or to media and they are not reintegrating into community or achieving the fullness of independence? Instead of doing what you claimed to do, you are making them beholden to you.

Your organization probably claims to be trauma-informed. You likely claim to be person-centered. It wouldn’t surprise me to hear you say you provide services in a non-judgmental manner. And yet you potentially contradict all of that by asking service participants to have their story profiled or come and speak. There is nothing trauma-informed about creating an environment that is non-therapeutic for people to share their traumatic story – especially without intensive supports and preparation first. There is nothing person-centered about an approach that is really organization-centered or system-centered because you are trying to profile the work of your organization, not the achievements, per se, of all the persons supported by your organization. When you have the person’s story out in the public realm, you are asking people to judge them as successful and to deem your programs to be a success.

Want people to recover from homelessness? Let them work on recovery in housing. People want to share their story or give back? Make sure they have been supported through proper peer-support training, preparation and debriefing first, as well as after. And even then, create a forum where service participants have an equal opportunity to share her/his story, not the select few asked by your organization to come out and be involved.

Want to still provide a human face to your work and your organization’s accomplishments? Provide an opportunity for everyone to have their picture taken and present those photos in the likes of a collage, not just individuals. Tell real stories in your reports using stock photos, changing names, and even presenting cases as an amalgam, not an individual story. Put these accounts of success in context of the data of all people served so the audience can decide for herself how representative the story is of all people served. If you are going to engage people with media, while not recommended, it can be better if people are briefed before and when there is someone with extensive media training in the interview that can tell the reporter that certain questions are out of bounds or reminding the service participant they are not required to answer anything. Instead of having someone tell their story live in front of a room full of people at a fundraising event or Annual General Meeting, consider having a short play performed that weaves together the stories of various people served by the organization. Or consider a video montage of many different people that have been housed with many stories coming together and showing a broad range of experiences.

You don’t intend to harm your service participants further. Let them move forward in their life as a housed person. Stop bringing them back to tell their story of homelessness.

The Homeless Service System Was Never Intended to Solve All Housing Problems

The homeless service delivery system in your community was never intended to solve ALL housing problems.

It is NOT the low-income housing system.

If the homeless service system tries to take care of affordable housing needs of low-income persons at the same time as addressing the housing needs of homeless persons, it is too much to handle. Prioritization of resources becomes difficult, if not impossible. Preference is likely to be given to those where their “only issue” is seen as their poverty. Waiting lists will become so large they will become meaningless and result in absolutely no meaningful action. Uproar and dissatisfaction will continue with the state of homelessness. The rate of economic poverty is always greater than the rate of homelessness, therefore homeless people are at a chronic disadvantage in this type of design.

It is NOT the seniors housing system.

If the homeless service system tries to take care of the housing needs of an ageing population – low or moderate income – at the same time as it takes care of homelessness, then expect homelessness to grow. I can’t think of one community that wouldn’t prefer to take care of the housing needs that remind them of their parents over the housing needs of people that do not resemble the majority of people they know in their life (homeless people). Politically, housing seniors is a win while housing homeless people is a loss. A prevalent argument is that society owns its oldest citizens for their contributions to our current life and welfare. What do homeless people owe us? They would argue nothing – or at least less.

There’s more.

Homeless service systems were never designed to take care of all of the housing needs of ex-offenders or persons discharged from hospitals or mental health facilities. Nor was the homeless service system ever designed to be the housing answer for youth ageing out of care.

But it continues to be.

First of all, we need to stop creating new fancy programs – at the expense of other homeless programs – to take care of shortcomings of other systems and start holding those other systems more accountable.

We need to rail against the injustice of a “justice” system that penalizes people even more with homelessness upon release unless that system is willing to provide resources to address the homelessness it creates. Otherwise it punishes not just the person that violated the law, but homeless service providers as well.

We need to make sure that people who become homeless as a result of longer stays in hospital or psychiatric facilities are not put onto the doorstep of homeless service providers to address. There is no reason why there cannot be further integration upstream between discharge planners and homeless service providers. Discharge planners can play a critical role in solving homelessness at the point of discharge.

We need youth services to stop making the graduation to adulthood a stepping-stone into homelessness where the homeless service delivery system is burdened with the cost and service demands..

It must be noted that some systems are doing a great job to take care of their responsibility. For example, across America the VA is investing in programs at a level suitable for ending homelessness amongst veterans, more or less. On the “more” side of the equation, there is money, a strong sense of prioritization, and a mission driving towards sustained change. On the “less” side, it has to be acknowledged that persons dishonourably discharged from service are not afforded the same opportunities to access resources for veterans, and it falls upon the “regular” homeless service delivery system to address these needs.

There is a strong focus on ending homelessness nowadays. This is a great thing as we shift from managing homelessness to ending homelessness. But we will never get there if we keep thinking the homeless service delivery system is responsible for addressing all of the housing needs of every person in community, or every shortcoming or creation of homelessness in other systems.

Marginalization and Homelessness

Most often, people experiencing homelessness – whether they be individuals or families – experience marginalization.

Where does this marginalization come from? It stems from a power differential between those that have housing and those that do not. Marginalization in this instance is the profound difference that exists across multiple aspects of life between those that have stable housing and those that do not. For example, those with housing are more likely to live longer, have better health, achieve better quality of life, feel more connected to others, achieve better education outcomes (comparing children in homeless families compared to housed families), etc.

One of the issues with marginalization is that we often see it as a result of the fault of an individual. It is not. A person having an addiction does not make that person a problem; addiction is the problem. A person experiencing unemployment is does not make that person a problem; unemployment is the problem. A person experiencing compromised mental wellness such as living with schizophrenia does not make that person a problem; mental health is the problem.

If our services and our supports are truly person-centered in our approach, we will find the strengths that exist in each person and look beyond labels. Services are then individually catered so that the person (family) informs the type, frequency, duration and intensity of services best suited to their specific needs. Options and choices so that informed decision-making can occur by the person experiencing marginalization becomes empowering – especially if we accept that mistakes will be made and it is not our job to prevent mistakes from occurring.

If our services and supports are more system-centered than person-centered in our approach, we will find a way to try and manage risk to programs, people and the community at large in the ways we determine who gets services and who does not. Quite often, a system-centered approach is implicitly social control – reinforcing expectations of how people should act, what is right and wrong, societal norms in a range of situations, what is taboo and what is acceptable, etc. A system approach places extreme limits on person decision-making and is generally intolerant of people making mistakes.

A person-centered approach helps people move beyond homelessness in a way that decreases or even allows for recovery from marginalization. A system-centered approach reinforces marginalization, especially if mistakes become punitive and result in longer homelessness or more marginalization.

If your approach to supports and services to people experiencing homelessness reinforces marginalization, dominance of service providers over the people it services, or subjects or exploits persons accessing services (up to and including using “graduates” to tell others how fabulous your programs were/are) then maybe it is time for a re-think of whether or not we truly want to support a structure were people are less peripheralized and more empowered.