Out For The Count

In case you missed it, the New York Times covered the homeless definitions issue that is at the heart of the national legislative debate right now. The article is odd. Somehow, the reporter managed to write 1,100 words on the subject and still miss the point.

This year's renewal of $1.7 billion in federal legislation to fund homeless programs has centered on the issue of whether those who are considered homeless under the Department of Education definition and thus able to attend public school — those doubled up or living vulnerably in poverty motels — should also be eligible for homeless assistance from HUD.

One position is that homeless is homeless, and the nation needs to step up and deal with reality. The other, which is supported by President Bush and the National Alliance to End Homelessness, argues that in a time of limited resources, we need to focus on those who are most desperate.

Several advocacy groups, including the National Coalition for the Homeless, argue that the HUD definition should more closely mirror the Education Department’s. ... These advocates note that many families live in communities where shelters are full or nonexistent. In other places, some say, shelters sometimes bar large families, families with two parents or those with boys older than 10.

“I think we have to take care of our most vulnerable,” Ms. Biggert said. “Shouldn’t children as well as the others be a priority?”

Barbara Duffield, policy director at the National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth, echoed those concerns. “This is really about our nation acknowledging the extent of the housing crisis and the devastation it wreaks on children, youth and family,” she said. “The housing crisis is bigger than the emergency system put in place to address it 20 years ago.”

Opponents of a broad expansion of the definition counter that demand for shelter beds already exceeds supply. About 700,000 people live in shelters or on the streets on any given day, housing officials say. But federal dollars finance only 170,000 beds.

Some advocates also fear that communities would shift resources from single, mentally ill or addicted people to doubled-up families who were newly classified as homeless. Such families are typically easier to serve and politically more appealing.

“Nobody thinks that these families are having an easy time of it,” said Steve Berg, vice president for programs and policy at the National Alliance to End Homelessness. “But when push comes to shove, when you’ve got people in apartments and people in shelters and on the streets, the people in the latter group need the help more.” ...

Whatever the number, “we need to deal with the most desperate the best that we can and keep working” toward greater expansion, said Representative Maxine Waters, the California Democrat who heads the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity. “We don’t want to create competition and have people at each other’s throats for limited space.”

OK. So let's review. Less than 25% of current shelter receives any federal support. This shelter, numbered at 700,000 or so beds, does not include those who lack housing but are not literally on the street or in a homeless shelter already. Counting these, worry some, would stretch already scarce federal support even more thinly, leading to some sort of ugly Darwinian competition for shelter beds that don't exist. Regardless of which version of the expanded definition gets passed, no new resources will be made available.

When it comes to poor people, the feds are officially out of money. Large badly-run financial institutions, on the other hand, are always a good public investment

Which means this debate, for now, isn't about whether the numbers of homeless people who get help gets expanded. It's more about how accurately we account for the various ways in which poor people are being fucked.

Once upon a time, in the not too distant past, homeless advocates routinely took great pains to point out that families with children make up the great majority of those who are homeless. Those who look homeless — the mentally ill, drunk, and addicted — were the red headed step children of homeless advocacy. These two categories — sympathetic families with kids and somewhat frightening single men — divided neatly across the lines of deserving and undeserving poor. Homeless families got shelter and transitional housing, and single homeless men with problems got hot soup, a mat on the floor if they were lucky, and a bus ticket out of town.

Then came the glitzification (I just made that word up) of our downtown areas and the national preoccupation with ending chronic (read visible) homelessness. Suddenly, homelessness became all about the most dysfunctional: the drunk, the addicted, the mentally ill. These problematic but relative few have become the focus of our concern, and the cure usually resembles small servings of carrot paired with liberal helpings of stick.

"Homeless advocacy" became the new found passion of hundreds of instant experts. Quasi-governmental public/private planning bodies erupted across the country to manage the growing contradiction of growing affluence and poverty in a changing urban landscape. Ending chronic homelessness through ten year plans became the driving paradigm as desperate localities uncritically followed the money that trickled down from the feds. The definition of "chronically homeless" itself began to narrow. The numbers went down. Success was declared.

To now broaden the definition would be to undermine the illusion that means so much to so many. This we cannot do.

The federally imposed Ten Year Plan To End Homelessness template has reduced our scope of concern to the homeless that are bad for business. As for the others, if we don't see them, they don't exist. We can pretend, along with the NAEH's Steve Berg, that raising kids in an exhorbitantly priced, crack-infested transient hotel is the same thing as having "an apartment."

What I'm saying here is this: One can't understand why the federal definition of homelessness should be expanded without first understanding how and why it has been narrowed. The HUD press releases focus on reductions in chronic homelessness. When family homelessness increases, the media is seldom alerted.

Poverty in America isn't news anymore. Not unless it pisses on your sidewalk.

What Zero Tolerance for Camping Means

I have it on good authority that Seattle has a zero tolerance policy for homeless encampments. This is not a policy that, so far as I know, has officially been acknowledged. Here's how it looks. An encampment is discovered. Police or some other functionaries are quietly dispatched. Belongings are disposed of. Warnings are given to not return. Most people never see it or notice

But stop a moment to consider the meaning of "zero." Not one. Zero.

The reality of this came home this morning when a vendor stopped me as we passed each other outside of Real Change. This guy is around sixty. Quiet. Gentle. Built strong. The city is his home. Literally. He beds down outside every night.

"The police came up to me in my sleeping bag last night and told me I needed to get into a shelter," he said. " Apparently this happened near midnight in some out of the way spot in Queen Anne.

The joke here, in case you're not laughing yet, is that the shelters are full and are turning people away each night.

"They said they wouldn't ticket me this time," he said, "but I needed to go. Are the shelters federally funded."

This vendor believes that if he goes to a shelter, the people who are watching him will know, and he'll lose his social security benefits. He's eligible in another five years.

"I've darn near lost everything," he said. "I can't afford to lose that too."

This was a guy who can take care of himself, but he still reminded me of a frightened child.

It was just the thing I needed to renew my feelings of rage for the day.

It's almost always something.

I tried to reassure him that there was no relationship between shelter and his benefits, but he looked dubious. If you've ever tried to reason with schizophrenia you know that I mean.

Afterwards, I considered his odds of living to collect social security and decided they weren't all that great.

This is how Seattle will eventually achieve that twenty percent decrease in "chronic homelessness" that they presently need to lie about. If you set things up so that contacts with police are more frequent and threats of arrest, ticketing, and fines follow, people will eventually get the idea and go somewhere else. Somewhere not quite so urban, where they're not being counted with quite the same meticulous precision. In LA, the police go out to the urban camps to ostentatiously wake people up and count them every two week, and then feed the GPS data into a GIS system, This has to be seen to be believed. While some locales are more extreme than others, the pattern is similar everywhere.

City goes upscale to reinvent itself as a center of affluent consumption and convenient enviro-friendly urban living in these challenging times of sink or swim capitalism, and the authorities are enlisted in helping the homeless learn that they're no longer welcome. Meanwhile, business, philanthropy, government, human service providers and others are focused on solving chronic homelessness through Housing First.

The cops provide the stick when no one's looking. We all congratulate ourselves on our ability to offer carrots. End result: they go away. We declare victory over homelessness. Woo-hoo!

I've actually noticed a new phrase entering the lexicon alongside ending "chronic homelessness" and "street homelessness." We are now out to "reduce visible homelessness."

This, at least, is refreshing in its honesty. Here it crops up near the end of a City of San Diego press release. Here's a guy running for office in San Fransisco with an anti-visible homeless plank in his platform.

Here, as well, is a fascinating bit I found in a summary of a Law School journal article.

Part Two describes the evolution of homeless legal advocacy. First, it looks at the initial wave of litigation during the 1980s over the right to emergency shelter for the homeless. It then examines the second phase of litigation during the 1990s that challenged the attempts by municipalities to reduce the visible homeless population through various measures, such as anti-vagrancy, anti-camping, and "quality of life" ordinances. While this litigation has led to important victories and captured the public's attention (though not always its wholehearted support), it remains only a part of the picture. Suing over the right to emergency shelter or the right to panhandle on streets or sleep in parks is critical to many homeless people, but it does not address the underlying causes of homelessness, such as the crisis of affordable housing, decreasing income and public benefit levels, and lack of access to other needed services.

Here's a good one. The US Interagency Council on Homelessness' Philip Mangano, the man for whom my contempt know no bounds, met with the National Coalition for the Homeless and the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty last August and agreed to work with them to end the criminalization of homeless people.

How the hell is he gonna do that? That's half of his strategy.

According to the agreement letter that the first meeting produced, there should be a follow-up meeting happening right around now. Can't wait to hear how that's working out.