Stone Soup Station

Health Care for the Homeless Annual Conference in Kansas City, MO Kicks Off Today

noreply@blogger.com (Steve) — Wed, 16 May 2012 12:48:00 +0000

This morning kicks off the 25th??? annual Healthcare for the Homeless conference in Kansas City, MO and the event is a first-class affair that folks attending this conference have come to expect from John Lozier and crew.

This conference is one of two "must attend" events that folks in the world of homeless services try to make each year (the other being the fabulous National Alliance to End Homelessness conference) because not only are the networking opportunities damned near endless, the quality and selection of workshops and lecture sessions is both broad and comprehensive.

That the conference is held this year in Kansas City plays especially well with me, given that rumblings from providers working in what the east and west coast folks sometimes sneeringly refer to as the "flyover" states indicate perceptions of increasingly isolated and out of touch policy formation that doesn't jibe with the realities of life and poverty that are affecting and negatively impacting both client and service agency.

What is working in some of the bigger cities around the country on those coasts is either not working at all in the heartland, or is so challenging to implement that it might as well be asking providers to take people experiencing homelessness directly into their own homes as a way to end homelessness in their cities and towns.

Multiple reasons abound for this, including abject poverty within the provider community, ignorance about implementation and the systemic factors that contribute to homelessness, little or no training opportunities for direct service staff, siloed services with little or no agency collaboration and/or integration, frustration with community pushback that demoralizes the workforce, apathetic political involvement (if they're lucky enough to have political involvement), to name just a few. And while these challenges are certainly not restricted to folks in the flyover states, the situation appears to be pervasive in them.

Pockets of excellence appear, to be sure, but often the fight to reach excellence is so damned tough that it's hard to ask those examples to help lead others, although those individuals often jump at the chance. And of course, what works in Gary, Indiana may not work at all in Odessa, MO., so it renders the collaboration moot and ineffective even if it could happen.

We know homelessness is complex and as such, a cookie-cutter approach doesn't work so well. But as we begin to dig down into the idea of scalability, we're beginning to see some patterns of successful program pieces emerge. I think we're still a long way off from being able to promulgate generic approaches that bridge the challenges in a way that makes the chances of an agency's success in ending homelessness while treating mental illness and addiction higher, but that we're even looking for them as the precursor to an integrated approach is a giant step forward in the world of behavioral health.

Conferences like the Healthcare for the Homeless, the National Alliance to End Homelessness, the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans, and a host of other smaller but no less important events occurring each year bring us all together to talk about these challenges, barriers, and ways of overcoming them. This is critically important because for the remainder of every year, we return to our communities and often operate in isolation. While efforts are being made in earnest to change this as well, the fact remains that for much of each year, many do operate almost in a vacuum.

The cumulative trauma of providing services to those on the streets, coupled with the feeling of being alone and unsupported in the work we're doing, and constantly struggling for every penny in order to perform the most basic and rudimentary functions of the job wear heavily on the morale and chip away at one's initiative to do outstanding work. Subsistence wages, community scorn, and the constant battle to find sustaining funding round out the globe of gloom for those working in this field, and it's hard to remain optimistic and hopeful for clients and colleagues when it's a constant battle for survival and enough gas to get to work each week.

Add to this a perception that others seem to be enjoying substantial success, support and political will and you begin to understand the reasons for the rumblings of discontent within the flyover states. To those of you who continue the war against homelessness in these locales, know some of us hear you, loud and clear. Take at least a little comfort in the fact that you have an increasingly louder voice that reminds those on the coasts and in the big cities that all is not well in the many places they've never heard of.

To be continued....believe it.

Understanding A Complexity That Affects Us At Every Turn

noreply@blogger.com (Steve) — Wed, 02 May 2012 10:29:00 +0000

Long but worth the watch.....

Housing Regulation Revamp Required Regardless of Resources & Remedies

noreply@blogger.com (Steve) — Tue, 01 May 2012 10:57:00 +0000

I was Facebook-post chatting with my friend Diane Nilan, Founder and President of Hear Us, an advocacy and action/resources site for children and youths experiencing homelessness, after she'd posted a link to a story about families experiencing homelessness who were using storage sheds as an alternative to standard housing.

As our conversation progressed and a link to the petition supporting the proposed Homeless Children and Youth Act was posted (sign it here: Help Homeless Kids Now! | Tell Congress to Pass the Homeless Children and Youth Act) we began discussing the need to not only pressure HUD to increase its subsidies for housing vouchers, but also to begin exploring how best to remove the barriers from entering housing - especially public housing - that face folks after they've received HUD assistance.

This is an area of concern for every individual out there who has ever experienced any financial difficulties and/or an eviction in their life, as well as every single case manager and outreach specialist in the country, because a voucher is worthless if there are entry-restrictions in place that disqualify peeps before they ever get an opportunity to move in. Additionally, if you're a program administrator who must provide data to HUD (and/or anyone else you may have grants or funding from), you know that the trend is towards getting people housed and keeping them there. If you're operating a service funded by Federal grant funds and that discharges folks back onto the streets, chances are you've either seen your funding cut or the cut is coming soon because you're not reducing homelessness with your program.

Barriers to housing are in place both by HUD's regulations as well as state and local restrictions, which are often more stringent than HUD's and end up disqualifying large numbers of individuals for things that are often the result of spiraling into homelessness in the first place. These barriers include (but are certainly not limited to):

Bad or non-existent credit
Outstanding utility bills (most public housing requires all utilities to be on and may cause an eviction if they lapse during the course of tenancy)
No income source
Criminal convictions
Prior evictions
Lack of references
Lack of recent rental history
Pet restrictions
Lack of complete identification documentation including a government issued ID, Social Security card, Birth Certificate, and recent TB test (for public housing)

These of course are some of the "official" reasons for refusal of a rental application. You can rest assured that even though it's not supposed to, discrimination does occur around race, ethnicity, prior housing status (eg being "homeless"), general appearance, inappropriate social media posts (I know a landlord that ALWAYS looks up the applicant's name on Facebook and Twitter to get a more fuller profile of the individual) and word of mouth from other landlords and connections in the community. Discrimination also happens as a result of fear around an applicant's perceived mental status, especially if the landlord believes the individual is "untreated" and/or has no local agency working in conjunction with them. One landlord I heard talking stated that he "want's to be able to contact someone if Joe Doe lights his hair on fire at 3 in the morning.")

Diane and I began contemplating forming some type of national advocacy group that would work to promote "second chance" opportunities for folks who have these barriers, and are considering how best to initiate the effort. At about the same time our discussion was occurring, I found a copy of the newly released Advocate's Guide to Housing and Community Development Policy, thanks to the National Low Income Housing Coalition. After reviewing the guide and then re-visiting their website, I threw some support behind the Coalition, since they're organized, powerful and recognized. They're also well aware of the problems facing folks attempting to access housing, so this issue is definitely on their radar.

I have learned over the years however that the more voices singing in unison, the louder the message is to those who hear it. It may still be worthwhile to set up an advocacy group around the removal of barriers because this particular aspect often gets lost or diminished as we fight for funding crumbs to assist through vouchers and the building of affordable housing units. I say again that it doesn't mean squat to have vouchers and units available if restrictions are so severe as to ban folks before they ever get near the door.

I've set up a recurring donation to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, because not only do I fervently believe in their mission, priorities and agenda for 2012, I know Board member Mark Allison personally, having worked with him for the past year, and know him to be one of the most ardent advocates of the idea that housing is a basic human right. If that man's voice is helping to steer policy at the board level, I know that the organization will always be committed to fair, affordable, accessible housing for everyone.

Check out the National Low Income Housing Coalition when you have a sec, and let them know you support their efforts with a donation. The work they're doing is not just important, it's crucial to those who remain chained to the streets in homelessness and to those who struggle every single day just to have a roof over their heads.

Diane and I will be doing some additional talking around this issue, and I may reach out to Mark Allison to get his input as well, since I know of no one better to help us come to some decision on whether we're heading in the right direction. The advocacy guide appears to have enough info in it to allow us to get off the ground, so if we decide to go forward, I think we're in good shape already to make some noise.

At the end of the day, the only thing we really have to remember and strive toward is this fact: housing ends homelessness.
Housing is a basic human right.
Everyone should be housed.
Period.

The Finest Advocacy Guide For Affordable Housing I've Ever Seen

noreply@blogger.com (Steve) — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 18:51:00 +0000

Colleague and friend Mark Allison has some long-term experience ensuring that Housing is considered a basic human right. Along with his job at the Center for Social Innovation, Mark is also a Board member for the National Low Income Housing Coalition and has been working with the group for a very long time. The Coalition recently published the 2012 Advocates Guide to Housing and Community Development Policy, and I have to say, they hit a Grand Slam with this and it couldn't have been more timely, or more needed.

The document is about 255 pages long and if you have any interest at all in helping to end homelessness in our country but don't have a clue where to start, what the priorities are, what is available, or all of the above, this guide should be required reading.

I've copied just the 2012 Policy Agenda for the Coalition below to give you a taste of what they're up to, and I encourage you to download the pdf, print it out, and read it cover to cover. Then get busy, because there is a lot of work to be done.

There work is so important, and this guide is so valuable, that I immediately sent them a contribution. If you can, please send the Coalition a donation of $10 or more dollars. They need it, they earn it every day, and the work they are doing is critical to ending homelessness in our country.

National Low Income Housing Coalition
2012 Policy Agenda
NLIHC supports all policy initiatives that advance our mission and our goals.
Mission:
NLIHC is dedicated solely to achieving socially just public policy that assures people with the lowest incomes in the
United States have affordable and decent homes.
Our three goals are:
• To preserve existing federally assisted homes and housing resources.
• To expand the supply of low income housing.
• To establish housing stability as the primary purpose of federal low income housing policy.

In 2012, NLIHC will focus its resources proactively on the policy objectives listed below, while monitoring the policy environment and responding to emerging issues as needed.
National Housing Trust Fund (NHTF)
• Obtain funding for the NHTF of at least $5 billion a year, with a goal of $30 billion a year for 10 years.
• Advance Ellison bill on Mortgage Interest Deduction reform and funding for the NHTF.
• Monitor and influence federal housing finance reform legislation to protect the statutory authority for the NHTF and to emsure that dedicated funding for NHTF is in final bill.
• Develop and advance legislation to direct 20% of profits of Federal Home Loan Banks into NHTF after they have reached required levels of reserves.
• Develop and advance legislation to 1) move statutory authority for NHTF to more compatible and less vulnerable section of the federal code, and 2) ensure rents for NHTF units are affordable for all extremely low income (ELI) households.
• Advance S. 489 and H.R. 1477 to fund NHTF through proceeds of Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).
• Advocate for publication of NHTF rule in timely manner.

Balanced Housing Policy
• Advance Ellison bill on Mortgage Interest Deduction reform to create mortgage interest credit and funding for NHTF.
• Monitor and influence federal housing finance reform legislation to ensure balanced attention to both rental housing and mortgaged housing.

Housing Choice Vouchers
• Advance Section 8 Savings Act without Moving to Work (MTW), time limits, or minimum rent increases.
• Develop and advance legislation to incentivize state and regional voucher administration.
• Advocate for increase in incremental vouchers and ensure full funding for all current vouchers in FY13 HUD budget.
• Monitor Small Area Fair Market Rent demonstration.

Preservation of Public and Assisted Housing
• Advocate for full funding of project-based Section 8 contracts and the operating accounts. Advocate for sufficient funding to meet annual capital costs of public housing and increased funding to address the public housing capital needs backlog.
• Advocate for enactment of Rental Assistance Demonstration program.
• Oppose expansion of MTW in absence of resident protections.
• Advance legislation to require unique identifier for each and every federally assisted housing property, and to establish a national preservation inventory.
• Advocate for tools and resources for residents and advocates to work on preservation of public and assisted housing.
• Support administrative reforms to protect existing units.

Federal Budget
• Advocate for the highest possible FY13 appropriations for HUD and USDA Rural Housing, while ensuring sufficient funding to preserve all existing low income housing resources and prevent loss of units affordable to or rental assistance
for ELI households.
• Advocate for sufficient funding for U.S. Census.
• Explore moving all rent assistance programs to mandatory side of budget.
• Oppose deficit reduction plans that do not include increased revenues.
• Oppose cuts to discretionary and mandatory programs that will cause harm to low income people.
• Oppose across-the-board cuts.
• Advance Ellison bill on Mortgage Interest Deduction reform and funding for the NHTF.

Foreclosure Intervention
• Advance legislation to make permanent the Protecting Tenants in Foreclosure Act (PTFA).
• Monitor and influence implementation of PTFA by federal agencies and GSEs.
Disaster Housing
• Advance S. 1630, the Disaster Recovery Act of 2011 (Stafford Act reform).
Planning for Just Communities
• Monitor and influence improvements to the Consolidated Plan process.
• Monitor and influence the regulations to Affirmatively Further Fair Housing.
• Develop and advance legislation to incentivize state and regional voucher administration.

Housing Plus Services
• Monitor and influence implementation of HEARTH Act.
• Monitor and influence implementation of Section 811 and Section 202 legislation.
• Advance H.R. 3254, Affordable Communities Employment Act of 2011 (Section 3).

30% for the 30% Low Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC)
• Develop and advance legislation to require that a minimum 30% of units subsidized by LIHTC be affordable to and occupied by ELI households.
• Protect LIHTC in context of any tax reform and deficit reduction legislation.

HOME
• Develop and advance legislation to require that a minimum of 30% of units subsidized by HOME funds be affordable to and occupied by ELI households.
• Advocate for HOME funding of at least $2 billion.

Federal Home Loan Banks
• Develop and advance legislation to require that a minimum of 30% of units subsidized by Affordable Housing Program funds be affordable to and occupied by ELI households.

The time is NOW to let your voice be heard. Read the Advocate's Guide, support the Coalition, and get busy. Thousands of people are depending on it.

Bold Faces of Truth Brings Profound Impact

noreply@blogger.com (Steve) — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 10:45:00 +0000

“The hair represents the loss of having it pulled out.
The choker represents strangulation.
The wire on the mouth represents being forced to keep quiet.
The words on the back of the head represent what I’m leaving behind.
The words on the front of the head represent where I’m going in my journey through life.
I...look forward to good things in the future.”

Returning from a highly stressful but wildly successful week of coordinating a three-day policy academy in Washington DC, I deplaned in Nashville exhausted, running on empty, and looking forward to seeing my wife and my dogs, my desk, a cup of good coffee, and an early bedtime. Two 16 hour days, one 14 hour day, the intense pressure of being "on" and in "customer service is paramount" mode, and working closely with some of the top leaders in our field on some particularly thorny issues had taken about every last ounce of my energy and brainpower, leaving me shellacked, burnt and crispy, in a good way for sure, but definitely running on reserve.

So I'm moseying through the A terminal on my way to the exit when I saw this image in a display case along the wall:

The image stopped me in my tracks. I read the small description of the piece and was immediately captivated, repulsed and traumatized all at once. I slowly went from one figure to another, completely pulled into the trauma, the fear, but most importantly perhaps, the recovery of the women who had shared their stories and driven home through this provocative visual tyranny the anguish and incredible hardships they'd endured.

I immediately realized that as we in the Behavioral Health world grapple with defining "recovery" in a way that integrates the conceptual framework of both Addiction and Mental Health, we could be missing something important around trauma in this effort to construct a working definition.

I think most of us in the field are acutely aware of the impact of trauma and its connection to both mental health and addiction. But I'm not so sure we've sufficiently included the effects of trauma from outside these two realms into the discussion and it seems a critically important aspect if we're to have a real and inclusive definition of Recovery. I could be wrong here, and NCTIC may indeed be addressing this in their effort to help shape the working definition. However, because I don't hear it mentioned - very much at all - in the conversations I've been involved in around the recovery definition, it's worrisome to me that it's not on our collective radar in a big enough way as to help further shape the elucidation and understanding.

Bold Faces of Truth II

The Bold Faces of Truth art will continue to be on display in the board room of the YWCA
Monday - Friday from 8:30am - 5:00pm for public viewing. Please call (615) 983-5136 to book a group viewing.

Bold Faces of Truth II, produced by the YWCA of Nashville & Middle Tennessee and funded through Metro Arts Commission and The Mary Wester Foundation, presents a provocative art collection created by survivors of domestic violence. These faces took shape in a two-day workshop that partnered survivors with local, professional artists. Guided by a licensed clinical social worker, these artists helped the women express both verbally and artistically their journey from victim to victorious. Accompanying each piece are the words of the survivor who created it. Bold Faces of Truth acts not only as part of the personal healing process for these women, but also as a universal statement on domestic violence and the triumph of moving beyond its grip.
Learn more about the background of this art project.

   Nine, 13, 17 and 45 are the ages when traumatic events forever changed the flower I was supposed to be.
   Now, I am planting seeds for a new flower bed that will remember my past but also welcome my future.
   When I began this (head) project I was nervous, but I let my emotions speak to me. I listened to what they had to say. I feel wonderful now that this head tells my story and holds hope for my journey forward.

   The first thing I did for myself was trust in the Lord. The abuse I put up with for so long was more than my mind and body could bear. I chose the path of spiritual healing.
   The straw hair represents the loss of my own hair when it was pulled out. The choke represents my strangulation. The wire on the mouth represents my forced silence.
   The words on the back of the head are what I am leaving behind, and the words on the front are where I am headed in my journey through life. Thank you, Thomas Bandy, for showing me how to heal. Rest in peace, my dear friend.

Thank you to the artists who donated their time and resources to this project. You may read about each of them below:

Margaret (Peg) Williams, a native Nashvillian and art instructor for 37 years, teaches middle school drawing and painting and high school art history at University School of Nashville. As a teacher, she delights in devising artistic projects and watching her students come up with a wide variety of solutions.
In addition to her participation in Bold Faces of Truth, Peg has volunteered for the past four years at the YWCA’s Weaver Domestic Violence Shelter. She brings along her English setter, Mosey, who is a trained pet-partner. Together, they work as part of the healing process for children who are residents at the shelter.

Stacey Pierce-Nickle, a Nashvilian for over 20 years, returned to her true love of painting after a multi-faceted career that included marketing, graphic design and owning her own East Nashville gallery, The King’s Witt. Her years in graphic design have given her a unique painting perspective and technique. Her belief that we are all intertwined in life not only by nature, but by our own experiences gave her the idea to see if we could look past what is in front of our eyes and peel back each layer to see what lies beneath.
Stacey’s branching out into three-dimensional textile art therapy was born out of a very personal need to connect to the survivors of abuse, not only to assist in identifying the detrimental effects, but also to give hope and acknowledge the incredible power these women have.
Her art is in galleries throughout the South and Southwest. She recently won a national juried show in Austin, TX, for her piece "Birdczar."
www.drawablankart.com

After earning her Bachelors Degree in Fine Arts from Middle Tennessee State University, Tarri Driver decided to focus on the therapeutic value of the process of artmaking and earned a Masters Degree in Education at the University of Louisville, focusing on Expressive Therapies, specifically Art Therapy. After graduate school, Tarri returned to Tennessee and works with children and adolescents in school settings, helping them to express themselves through art. She continues to make art in a variety of media including, but not limited to, painting, collage and community beautification murals. She happily resides with her husband and is finishing a children’s book composed of haiku, collage and watercolor.
www.lunarmoonerlula.com

Using fabric, needle-and-thread and "pieces of the past," Kathleen Madigan's mixed media works examine inner landscapes, often focusing on a woman's work, a woman's "place" and the value society places on women themselves, their inner lives, dreams and journeys.
Her work has exhibited in Spain, Senegal, Chicago and Washington, D.C., among other places. Selected works appeared in Art From Found Objects at the Monmouth Museum, and several are included in the Feminist Art Base at the Brooklyn Museum in New York. Her solo exhibition, titled Tales From Inside, is currently showing at the University of North Carolina and features works highlighting domestic issues. She hopes to see it in several more universities over the next year to promote awareness of domestic violence.

www.madigankathleen.com

Bold Faces of Truth 2

“The hair represents the loss of having it pulled out.

The choker represents strangulation.

The wire on the mouth represents being forced to keep quiet.

The words on the back of the head represent what I’m leaving behind.

The words on the front of the head represent where I’m going in my journey through life.

I...look forward to good things in the future.”

-- Bold Faces of Truth participant

At the YWCA, we dedicate ourselves to finding new and profound ways to help victims of domestic violence heal and move forward to better lives.

One such avenue is through art. In 2007, we began a program pairing professional artists with survivors willing to explore their journeys from abuse to wholeness. A licensed clinical social worker helps guide the artists through the process.

That first program produced not only affirming experiences for the survivors, but also powerful images. Their combination of darkness and light literally put a face on domestic violence. We found the collection of sculptures at once strong and vulnerable, disturbing and reassuring.

In 2011, the YWCA again called on local artists to resume the

Bold Faces of Truth project. Thanks to funding by Metro Arts Commission, seven artists paired with seven survivors. Their collaborations are on view here. These faces took shape in a two-day workshop during which the artists helped the women express both verbally and artistically their journey from victim to victorious. Accompanying each sculpture are the words of the survivor who created it.

In these sculptures, we see a way to share with the community an often private plague that cries for public awareness. One in four women will be a victim of domestic violence during her lifetime. Tennessee ranks 5^th in the nation for most homicides associated with domestic violence.

In 2010, the YWCA’s Weaver Domestic Violence Center -- the largest domestic violence shelter in the state -- served 233 women and 187 children for a total of 15,753 bed-nights. Our crisis line answered 3,791 calls, and our Transitional Housing program helped 33 women and 46 children establish safe, productive lives in the community.

“All of the art is powerful, some of the pieces represent the artist’s experience of the journey from victim to survivor with the YWCA by her side,” says Pat Shea, President and CEO of the YWCA of Nashville and Middle Tennessee

We hope you find these works of art moving and important. The YWCA wishes to thank the artists who selflessly volunteered their time and talents and the survivors who bravely shared their stories. Bold Faces of Truth acts not only as part of the personal healing process for these women, but also as a universal statement on domestic violence and the triumph of moving beyond its grip.

IDIQ Wins Bring Relief, Joy & Incredible Opportunity

noreply@blogger.com (Steve) — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 11:02:00 +0000

Back in December of 2011, I received a call from my CEO, mentor and friend Jeff Olivet. Jeff informed me during that call that our company had been invited to present our proposal for IDIQ (indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity) status after their review teams had scoped our written proposal.

Jeff wanted to know whether I was interested in being a part of the presentation team and frankly, if Jeff invites you to present with him and the senior staff of our organization, it's pretty much a no-brainer, yer gonna say yes.

So several weeks later, I found myself wandering Washington DC with my Domain 4 team, prepping for perhaps one of the most important presentations I'd be making for a very long time. This is because while in most presentations I do, if I screw it up or it goes over badly, I get the bad review, but the company doesn't get a black eye, since anyone can have a bad day and we're pretty good at damage control that supports the customer rather than to cover our own butts, and most likely we'd refund the money spent for the session and probably even offer them another training with different trainers, gratis.

But the IDIQ presentation was different. Screw up here and you could cost the company a 5 year opportunity at applying for grants under a system that limits the competition to those who have IDIQ status. Suddenly, the livelihoods of 40+ peeps become a responsibility on your shoulders and the thought of hurting my colleagues through a poor performance would be something I'd find very hard to deal with. I'm sure I'd get through it, but it is NOT something I'd like to have to deal with in the first place. This is where the unique pressure of the presentation arose, and the best thing for this kind of worry and pressure is to be prepared.

So that's what we all did. And we then prepared some more. And still more. When we were all done, we prepared again. Then someone said we should prepare, so we did again.

And again.

By the time we walked into the building where these oral presentations were happening, I think we could've recited each other's slides and lines while unconscious.

But it paid off and we have now obtained IDIQ status with the Feds. Hard to say what this will eventually translate into for the company, but that we're now able to bid on IDIQ contracts means that we can go in as the Prime and control the contract the way we want to, choose the partners we'd like to work with, and do the work at a level of quality we demand.

It's all about the substance and the rigor, and we have just one person to thank for ensuring these remain our top priorities, our founder and owner, the amazing Dr. Ellen Bassuk.

I'd read Ellen's work as I was an up-n-coming outreach worker some years ago now, and knew that she came at the issues from a perspective of "doing something about it" rather than just talking about it. I've had tremendous respect for her since my early introduction via her published work, but working for her has provided me with some insight that one can only get when one works closely with another.

A week or two ago, Ellen was on a call I was participating in and we were grappling with an issue around stigma. We were all collectively traveling along some thought-road on the topic when Ellen stopped us dead in our tracks with an analysis that turned us 180 degrees and helped us see the issue in a different light. I have to tell you though, when Ellen framed the subject in terms of the impact on the individual, her statement, which I won't even attempt to capture here - was so moving and powerful, so important to me and resonated so deeply with me - I cried, because she'd just described how I'd felt for many many years. I jokingly told the group that I'd just fallen in love with Ellen for her input, but what really happened was that I knew in that instant, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that Ellen "got it" in a way few do. It forever changed my perception and feelings for her, and while I was already one of her strong supporters, I knew she understood me, us, the agony of our suffering, and she cared. She deeply cared. It was a transformative moment for me and forever changed how I viewed C4 and the people working to help fulfill Ellen's commitment to superior service delivery that had as an overarching goal the ultimate end of the need for our services at all.

A Whirlwind Month In Washington DC

noreply@blogger.com (Steve) — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 10:55:00 +0000

Well hell, it seems like I'm rarely able to find enough time to even post here anymore, and that is beginning to suck for me.

Some time ago, when my ol friend, mentor and former boss Will "Big Willy C" Connelly informed me that he would be leaving his position as supervisor of an outreach team for a training gig, I told him that the farther up the chain he climbed in the administration world, the less connected he'd actually be to those that the administration actually served. BWC has come full circle today, as he has left that administrative/training position to take over a Street Outreach team for Pathways to Housing here in Washington DC!

But I digress.

My point above was just to illustrate how easy it is to get sucked into the paper pushing portion of the work we do and lose sight of what all that paper, all those meetings, all the phone conferences, all the travel, all the political wrangling, all the collaboration (and efforts to get peeps together to collaborate), and all the strange hours one spends trying to get it all together in a coherent way is actually for.

So for the past couple of weeks, I've been in DC with those who are actually doing work. Not that I'm not doing work, but, as so many of my colleagues say, the folks we're working with here this week and the last are where the "rubber meets the road."

Last week, it was working with the 20 grantees of the Mental Health Transformation Grant (MHTG) program at their annual Grantee meeting hosted by Policy Research Associates. Have to say, the folks at PRA are some outstanding pros who approach what they do with more professionalism and passion than just about any other group I've met at this level, and my respect for them and what they bring to the table is off the charts.

Most noteworthy of that meeting however, was the 3rd day session that the BRSS TACS MHTG Consumer Advisor, Ray Bridge, coordinated and led. This opportunity allowed the Consumer Leaders of each grant recipient to bring their suggestions and ideas for our annual Consumer Leadership Forum. These are some very smart, very passionate, and very energized folks who know what we're trying to do is not simply transform the Behavioral Health community; they see it as a civil rights movement as well. A comment in a session with the Leaders continues to stand out in my mind (I'm paraphrasing a bit here, but you'll get the jist): "Unlike previous civil rights battles, we are the first group of people who've been oppressed by the larger community through a label of oppression placed upon us by them, rather than by some physical trait that immediately stands us apart, such as color."

Give it a sec and let that sink in. She's saying here that we've been oppressed through stigma based on the labeling of the community, rather than because we are noticeably "different" than they are at first glance. Hadn't ever thought about it this way before, and it was a stunning realization for me.

We left that meeting last Friday with enough consensus and detail to begin planning in earnest for the upcoming Consumer Leadership Forum, and jetted back to our humble locales for the weekend.

This week, the C4 gang has been in Reston, a subbie of the DC area, to host the first annual Policy Academy under the BRSS TACS contract. This year, we've brought 8 state teams together from around the country to devise a plan for integrating mental health and addiction services within their communities, and work together to help transform behavioral health in their respective states. One bright spot of many for me was to see Tennessee at this academy, and this is particularly important given that for many of the state's most marginalized, services are damned hard to find, let alone come by. So it is with a lot of personal commitment and passion that I work with my colleagues on the execution side to do whatever I can to ensure that the folks from TN, as well as Texas, Ohio, Vermont, and the others all have what they need to get immediately down to work with no distractions typical in most start-up efforts.

This week has had some very long days as we've worked to make it happen, but those long hours appear to have paid off based on the comments we've been receiving as feedback. One thing I've discovered as I've worked with my company to make system transformation more than just a dream is that the task itself is enormous, for reasons frankly mostly unrelated to providing the actual services to folks in an integrated fashion. There's a philosophical divide that permeates these efforts, and there's a tremendous amount of ignorance on both sides as to what the other is doing, saying, and defining. Finding common ground and commonalities between Addiction and Mental Health is a priority, but it ain't easy.

Perhaps most problematic is the definition of Recovery itself. This is not a new dispute, and to its credit, SAMHSA has spent years trying to find something that works for everyone. Their current working definition, "A process of change through which individuals improve their health and wellness, live a self-directed life, and strive to reach their full potential," seems to capture the essence, but I have to warn you that by the time you read this, it's possible that it may have changed, so I wouldn't quote this definition unless you confirm it at their site.

Now, you'd think, if you were on the outside looking in and didn't actually have to really invest a lot of time on one side of the issue or the other in the finesse of the definition, that this would cover it. But the understanding of Recovery is different depending on which group - Addiction or Mental Health - you ask, and the reason for that is...well...because recovery is viewed through lenses unique to each cohort and there's no simple bridge because of the philosophical divide between them.

So just trying to come up with an understanding of what it means to be "in recovery" versus "recovered" versus "recovery" becomes not only a monumental task, but also a challenge to get folks aligned enough to move forward beyond it. If ya can't define it, it's pretty hard to create policies around it.

I've been sprouting gray hairs by the hundreds over the past several months around things like this, and adding hundreds more on a weekly - and sometimes daily - basis just trying to race around the corners of my learning curves on literally dozens of topics. This of course does not take into account a role as a Project Director that demands skillsets not yet necessarily locked down by yours truly.

It's a rare time indeed when I have the luxury of putting down random synaptic firings here on ye ol Stone Soup Station, and that I've deviated so far from the "Homelessness" focus of this blog doesn't help incentivize me to continue writing.

So I may have to redefine the parameters of this blog, even though ultimately the conditions and symptoms and situations of mental illness and addiction often underlie homelessness. The sheer scope of my involvement in ending homelessness has become so large as to almost remove the issue of homelessness per se from the picture.

The words I spoke to Big Willy C years ago seem to be more appropriate for me now than for him.....

Dr. Dan Fisher: "when we are disconnected and lose touch with our feelings, we die inside."

noreply@blogger.com (Steve) — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 11:46:00 +0000

The work that I do today provides me with a unique and incredible opportunity to work with some of the greatest minds in the Behavioral Health field. That in itself is humbling enough, but some of the folks I get to work alongside are preeminent leaders in various specialties within the field, and the opportunity for learning is frankly endless.

(Left: Dr. Fisher, 3rd from left: lauren Spiro
Image courtesy: http://ncmhr.org/ )

Take Dr. Daniel "Dan" Fisher and Lauren Spiro as examples. I first heard of Dan a few years ago while attending an Alternatives conference out in sunny California. Dan is the Executive Director of the National Empowerment Center (NEC) and is a key subcontractor on many of the tasks associated with the Bringing Recovery Supports to Scale, Technical Assistance Center Strategy (BRSS TACS) contract I currently help to direct for the Center for Social Innovation.

I heard of Lauren Spiro around the same time - which is no surprise once you know both of them as they're like brother and sister fighting together against common challenges in our work- and I have been an avid supporter of them both since I discovered them. I also work closely with Lauren, (who is the Director of the National Coalition for Mental Health Recovery,) on the BRSS TACS contract, and am continually impressed not only with her incredible knowledge around peer involvement in the mental health field, but with her joyous yet consummately professional approach to everything she is involved in.

Okay, enough of my starry eyed gushing, but you have to understand, from my perspective, Dan and Lauren are people who have not only brought gargantuan change to the way in which we peers are viewed and involved in our recovery, but they continue to battle every day against political, social and medical forces (not to mention trying to have a life somewhere in the middle of all that), in order to provide those of us who are coming after them with a solid foundation upon which we are able to continue building. This is no easy task, folks, you can believe that, and to make matters worse, there ain't a lot of money being tossed our way, either. Think of the Peer movement as the flea on the flea that is Behavioral Health that is living on the ass of the elephant that is Primary Health. That Dan and Lauren have been even modestly successful in such an environment is phenomenal. That they've been able to help motivate change in the field is monumental.

On to my reason for writing this in the first place; Dan and I were chatting by phone the other day and were discussing community dialogue and the Dialogical approach as a method to increase the ability of connection and success in working with our peers, our clients, our colleagues and our community.

Dan went on to write a brilliant piece on his own understanding and evolution towards the use of Dialogical recovery and I not only enjoyed it immensely, it resonated so loudly with my own experiences, both my personal recovery journey and the journeys I've helped others embark upon, that I wanted to share an excerpt here. I encourage you to check it out in its entirety when you can spare 5 minutes, because I think it's applicable for everyone. And if you work with folks dealing with substance use and/or mental health challenges, you'll definitely want to hear what Dan has to say, as it may change the way you engage with your clients and those supporting your clients:

From Dialogical Recovery of Life (Dr. Dan Fisher)

It seems that all of us in this society need to recover from the constricting effect of isolation and the black and white thinking that separates us from our feelings. Implementing recovery needs to occur beyond the clinical context. Recovery principles and culture needs to be adopted throughout society because every relationship we engage in has the capacity to enhance or degrade our recovery by nourishing or smothering our life force.
I think that a major aspect of bringing recovery to society is through understanding and practicing dialogical relationships in every day life. This might be considered a type of community dialogue. I have carried out several training programs here in Mass. based on six basic principles of dialogue (the first 4 come from Isaacs, 1999, the 5th from my own experience and the sixth from Yankolivich, 1999):
1. Listening deeply together
2. Suspending our own beliefs, going beyond categorical thinking
3. Respecting and valuing differences and the wholeness of each of us
4. Speaking from our deepest truth, from our heart
5. Connecting on a heart to heart level
6. Valuing each other’s humanity deeply enough to see we are all equals
But why are these principles of dialogue so important. Because they create a space that we all want and need. A psychological space in which we experience our life more fully. On the other hand, the top down monological world of everyday life in the present is killing our life forces within and between us. To this degree, the green movement, the recovery movement in mental health , and the dialogue movement have a common unifying goal: to create a society which nourishes the life force in each and every living being through dialogical relationships.

(Read the entire piece here)

SAMHSA May Just Have Nailed It With Latest Iteration: A Working Definition Of Recovery

noreply@blogger.com (Steve) — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 16:07:00 +0000

It has been a long, challenging road for SAMHSA to travel to reach the point where a definition of "Recovery" was at a point that it could be shared and it's conceivable that there will be additional changes in the future. The reason for this is that the term "recovery" means different things to different people and groups, depending upon which field you are seeking to define it in. It's a difficult definition to nail down and if you notice, what you'll find here are a set of principles that just about everyone in fields where Recovery is something individuals strive for can agree upon.

The latest iteration has encompassed everything I could possibly think of around my own recovery and I cannot thank SAMHSA enough for having the courage and the ability to share it in a way that helps everyone align with a set of governing principles. But SAMHSA didn't arrive at this alone, and a another heartfelt "Thank You" goes out to the thousands of individuals like me, who struggled with a personal challenge and were able to move beyond it, then shared the most harrowing parts of the journey with the rest of us so that we too could overcome, find strength and courage in the story and the journey, and embark upon our own road to recovery as well.

Thanks to every single one of you who helped me help myself to a new lease on life, love, and the pursuit of my own happiness and fulfillment.

SAMHSA’s Working Definition of Recovery Updated

23 MARCH 2012 4 COMMENTS

Written By: Paolo del Vecchio, Acting Lead, Recovery Support Strategic Initiative, Acting Director CMHS

In December 2011, SAMHSA released a working definition of recovery and a set of guiding principles. The December release of this definition represented the culmination of a lengthy process that began with an August 2010 Dialogue Meeting and ended with a formal public engagement process (via the SAMHSA Feedback Forum) in August 2011. At the time SAMHSA released the working definition, we indicated that we would continue dialogue with the field to refine the definition and principles. Based on additional stakeholder input, SAMHSA is now issuing a slightly revised working definition and principles.

The revised working definition and principles give more emphasis to the role of abstinence in recovery from addictions, and indicate that an individual may be in recovery from a mental disorder, a substance use disorder, or both. The revised definition is below.

SAMHSA appreciates the many thoughtful comments and suggestions received throughout the period of developing and vetting the definition and principles. SAMHSA will disseminate the working definition and principles as a resource to policy-makers, systems administrators, providers, practitioners, consumers, peers, family members, advocates, and others. The definition and principles are intended to help with the design, measurement, and reimbursement of services and supports to meet the individualized needs of those with mental disorders and substance use disorders.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

SAMHSA’s Working Definition of Recovery from

Mental Disorders and/or Substance Use Disorders

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services (SAMHSA) recognizes there are many different pathways to recovery and each individual determines his or her own way. SAMHSA engaged in a dialogue with consumers, persons in recovery, family members, advocates, policy-makers, administrators, providers, and others to develop the following definition and guiding principles for recovery. The urgency of health reform compels SAMHSA to define recovery and to promote the availability, quality, and financing of vital services and supports that facilitate recovery for individuals. In addition, the integration mandate in title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Supreme Court’s decision in Olmstead v. L.C., 527 U.S. 581 (1999) provide legal requirements that are consistent with SAMHSA’s mission to promote a high-quality and satisfying life in the community for all Americans.

Recovery from Mental Disorders and/or Substance Use Disorders: A process of change through which individuals improve their health and wellness, live a self-directed life, and strive to reach their full potential.

Through the Recovery Support Strategic Initiative, SAMHSA has delineated four major dimensions that support a life in recovery:

Health: overcoming or managing one’s disease(s) or symptoms—for example, abstaining from use of alcohol, illicit drugs, and non-prescribed medications if one has an addiction problem—and for everyone in recovery, making informed, healthy choices that support physical and emotional wellbeing.
Home: a stable and safe place to live;
Purpose: meaningful daily activities, such as a job, school, volunteerism, family caretaking, or creative endeavors, and the independence, income and resources to participate in society; and
Community: relationships and social networks that provide support, friendship, love, and hope.

Guiding Principles of Recovery

Recovery emerges from hope: The belief that recovery is real provides the essential and motivating message of a better future – that people can and do overcome the internal and external challenges, barriers, and obstacles that confront them. Hope is internalized and can be fostered by peers, families, providers, allies, and others. Hope is the catalyst of the recovery process.

Recovery is person-driven: Self-determination and self-direction are the foundations for recovery as individuals define their own life goals and design their unique path(s) towards those goals. Individuals optimize their autonomy and independence to the greatest extent possible by leading, controlling, and exercising choice over the services and supports that assist their recovery and resilience. In so doing, they are empowered and provided the resources to make informed decisions, initiate recovery, build on their strengths, and gain or regain control over their lives.

Recovery occurs via many pathways: Individuals are unique with distinct needs, strengths, preferences, goals, culture, and backgrounds  including trauma experiences  that affect and determine their pathway(s) to recovery. Recovery is built on the multiple capacities, strengths, talents, coping abilities, resources, and inherent value of each individual. Recovery pathways are highly personalized. They may include professional clinical treatment; use of medications; support from families and in schools; faith-based approaches; peer support; and other approaches. Recovery is non-linear, characterized by continual growth and improved functioning that may involve setbacks. Because setbacks are a natural, though not inevitable, part of the recovery process, it is essential to foster resilience for all individuals and families. Abstinence from the use of alcohol, illicit drugs, and non-prescribed medications is the goal for those with addictions. Use of tobacco and non-prescribed or illicit drugs is not safe for anyone. In some cases, recovery pathways can be enabled by creating a supportive environment. This is especially true for children, who may not have the legal or developmental capacity to set their own course.

Recovery is holistic: Recovery encompasses an individual’s whole life, including mind, body, spirit, and community. This includes addressing: self-care practices, family, housing, employment, education, clinical treatment for mental disorders and substance use disorders, services and supports, primary healthcare, dental care, complementary and alternative services, faith, spirituality, creativity, social networks, transportation, and community participation. The array of services and supports available should be integrated and coordinated.

Recovery is supported by peers and allies: Mutual support and mutual aid groups, including the sharing of experiential knowledge and skills, as well as social learning, play an invaluable role in recovery. Peers encourage and engage other peers and provide each other with a vital sense of belonging, supportive relationships, valued roles, and community. Through helping others and giving back to the community, one helps one’s self. Peer-operated supports and services provide important resources to assist people along their journeys of recovery and wellness. Professionals can also play an important role in the recovery process by providing clinical treatment and other services that support individuals in their chosen recovery paths. While peers and allies play an important role for many in recovery, their role for children and youth may be slightly different. Peer supports for families are very important for children with behavioral health problems and can also play a supportive role for youth in recovery.

Recovery is supported through relationship and social networks: An important factor in the recovery process is the presence and involvement of people who believe in the person’s ability to recover; who offer hope, support, and encouragement; and who also suggest strategies and resources for change. Family members, peers, providers, faith groups, community members, and other allies form vital support networks. Through these relationships, people leave unhealthy and/or unfulfilling life roles behind and engage in new roles (e.g., partner, caregiver, friend, student, employee) that lead to a greater sense of belonging, personhood, empowerment, autonomy, social inclusion, and community participation.

Recovery is culturally-based and influenced: Culture and cultural background in all of its diverse representations  including values, traditions, and beliefs  are keys in determining a person’s journey and unique pathway to recovery. Services should be culturally grounded, attuned, sensitive, congruent, and competent, as well as personalized to meet each individual’s unique needs.

Recovery is supported by addressing trauma: The experience of trauma (such as physical or sexual abuse, domestic violence, war, disaster, and others) is often a precursor to or associated with alcohol and drug use, mental health problems, and related issues. Services and supports should be trauma-informed to foster safety (physical and emotional) and trust, as well as promote choice, empowerment, and collaboration.

Recovery involves individual, family, and community strengths and responsibility: Individuals, families, and communities have strengths and resources that serve as a foundation for recovery. In addition, individuals have a personal responsibility for their own self-care and journeys of recovery. Individuals should be supported in speaking for themselves. Families and significant others have responsibilities to support their loved ones, especially for children and youth in recovery. Communities have responsibilities to provide opportunities and resources to address discrimination and to foster social inclusion and recovery. Individuals in recovery also have a social responsibility and should have the ability to join with peers to speak collectively about their strengths, needs, wants, desires, and aspirations.

Recovery is based on respect: Community, systems, and societal acceptance and appreciation for people affected by mental health and substance use problems – including protecting their rights and eliminating discrimination – are crucial in achieving recovery. There is a need to acknowledge that taking steps towards recovery may require great courage. Self-acceptance, developing a positive and meaningful sense of identity, and regaining belief in one’s self are particularly important.

SAMHSA has developed this working definition of recovery to help policy makers, providers, funders, peers/consumers, and others design, measure, and reimburse for integrated and holistic services and supports to more effectively meet the individualized needs of those served.

Many advances have been made to promote recovery concepts and practices. There are a variety of effective models and practices that States, communities, providers, and others can use to promote recovery. However, much work remains to ensure that recovery-oriented behavioral health services and systems are adopted and implemented in every state and community. Drawing on research, practice, and personal experience of recovering individuals, within the context of health reform, SAMHSA will lead efforts to advance the understanding of recovery and ensure that vital recovery supports and services are available and accessible to all who need and want them.

Rental Housing Is Increasingly Becoming "Out of Reach" for More And More Americans

noreply@blogger.com (Steve) — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 13:53:00 +0000

Back in 2008 I wrote about Vanderbilt professor Dr. Melissa Snarr's study in the Nashville area that determined an individual would need to earn somewhere in the neighborhood of $10.50/hr as the minimum "living wage" in order to be able to afford the most basic of necessities for survival; shelter, food, and basic living expenses. I chided her a bit back then by asking her to try and live on that wage, but I need to point out here that her purpose was to underscore the bare minimum and provide a reference point when talking about what a living wage should begin to look like for the citizens in our community. Her work and effort was invaluable in raising awareness in the Nashville area and I greatly appreciate her attention and dedication to this critically important issue.

Four years later, the National Low Income Housing Coalition has released a disturbing study that sheds light on the declining availability of rental units for everyone, and for those at the bottom of the earnings ladder, is downright frightening. For example, in one "map," states are ranked from most to least expensive; Tennessee is ranked 41 out of 52, which sounds good until you discover that in our state you'd need to earn$12.56/hr to afford the average fair market value (fmv) rent of $949 on a two bedroom apartment. This amount should represent 30% of your total income spent on housing, the typical standard used to determine whether you're even eligible for a unit.

I don't have to tell you that if you're earning $12.56 an hour and paying a grand a month for housing, you're eating beans and ramen and praying you don;t have any 'out of the ordinary" expenses each month. Thankfully, rents are a smidgen cheaper in the Nashville area but the secondary issue here is shrinking availability due to increasing demand for rental units brought on by the housing crisis.

I've shared the conclusions of the report below to provide you with a quick reference, but if you're a renter, you should read this. If you're a renter earning less than $18/hr, this should be in your "top ten" things to read this week. If you earn less than $12/hr, this should be mandatory reading. You can check out the full article here.

When you finish reading, please consider letting your voice be heard by writing a letter to the editor, or donating to the NLIHC. The need is tremendous and it's not going to get better anytime soon. WE will have to force a priority adjustment if we expect to see anything done.

Permanent shelter is a basic human right and the number one priority for every human being. We need to make sure that everyone realizes this.

From "Out of Reach:"

CONCLUSIONS
h is year, as in years past, Out of Reach speaks to a fundamental truth: a mismatch exists
between the cost of living, the availability of rental assistance and the wages people earn
day to day across the country.
With the number of low income renters on the rise, the argument for sustaining
af ordable housing assistance is timely.
• In 2012, a household must earn the equivalent of $37,960 in annual income to af ord
the national average two-bedroom FMR of $949 per month.
18
• Assuming full-time, year-round employment, this translates into a national Housing
Wage of $18.25 in 2012.
• h is year the housing wage exceeds the average renter wage, $14.15, by over four
dollars and is nearly three times the minimum wage.
Despite the great need for af ordable housing units, subsidies for critical af ordable
housing programs continue to face the threat of cuts, as do many social safety net
programs. For FY12, HUD suf ered cuts of $3.7 billion dollars, 9% below FY11 funding
levels. Although HUD estimates that its public housing capital needs are in excess of $25
billion, the Public Housing Capital Fund received 8% lower funding for FY12.
19
h e HOME
program, key to the production of many new af ordable units at the local level, suf ered
a cut of 38% between FY11 and FY12, a cut that is estimated to result in 31,000 fewer
af ordable rental homes. Meanwhile, the National Housing Trust Fund (NHTF), which
Congress authorized in 2008, remains unfunded. h e NHTF would fund the production
and preservation of homes af ordable to the lowest income households. Funding the
NHTF is NLIHC’s top priority.
An af ordable home, providing stability and shelter, is a basic human need. Expanding
the availability of af ordable housing to address the unmet need of so many low income
Americans should be a top public policy priority.
THE NUMBERS IN THIS REPORT
As in past years, Out of Reach 2012 relies on data from HUD, the U.S. Census Bureau,
the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Department of Labor, and the Social Security
Administration to make its case. See Appendix A for a detailed explanation of data sources
and methodologies.
h e FMR on which the Housing Wage is based is HUD’s best estimate of what a household
seeking a modest rental unit in a short amount of time can expect to pay for rent and
utilities in the current market. h us, the FMR is an estimate of what a family moving
today can expect to pay for a modest rental home, not what current renters are paying on
average. See Appendix B for information on how HUD calculates the FMR.
Readers are cautioned against comparing statistics in one edition of Out of Reach with
those in another. In recent years, HUD has changed its methodology for calculating FMRs
and incomes. In 2012, the FMR estimates were developed using American Community
Survey (ACS) data as base rents, rather than data from the Decennial Survey. h e new
methodology is thought to be an improvement on past practices, but it can introduce
more year-to-year variability into the data. For this reason and others (e.g., changes to the
metropolitan area dei nitions), readers should not compare this year’s data to previous
editions of Out of Reach and assume that dif erences rel ect actual market dynamics.
Please consult the appendices and NLIHC research staf for assistance interpreting
changes in the data.
h e data in this report and the additional materials and data can be found online at:
WWW.NLIHC.ORG/OOR/2012

Where Were Recovery Schools When I Needed Them?

noreply@blogger.com (Steve) — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 08:54:00 +0000

One of the most important things I've learned in my recovery is that if you want to recover, you have to get the hell out of the environment you used in. That isn't always easy for a lot of us, and whenever there's a chance, every one of the addicts friends and family - assuming he/she has any left - ought to be encouraging the addict to change that physical environment.

Boston's Association of Recovery Schools (ARS) has discovered this, and they are on to something very important, as far as I'm concerned. We addicts desperately need to have other things that are trenchant to us - clear cut and keenly focused - in order to combat the allure of using. We need to have structure, a purpose, direction, guidance, and we also need some kind of impetus for something better. We need role models, we need people in recovery to continually remind us that we too can do it, and most of all, we need something that motivates us more than filling our heads with fog. Learning about addiction, both from a scientific perspective as well as from a personal perspective, helps us to understand the dangers of the path we were on and provides us with still more reason to find a better road.

To the folks who are behind this program, you have my respect and my gratitude because I know you will help a child avoid the road I traveled. To the students who are able to attend this school, I cannot stress how fortunate you are to have this option. I hope you'll use it to its fullest capacity because the alternative can be so terrible that most of us never recover from it, and those of us who do discover far too late the damage we've done to our minds, bodies, souls, friends, and families.

Home | About Us | Contact Us

MISSION CONTACTS APPLY FOR MEMBERSHIP SCHOOLS CRITERIA SUPPORT RESOURCES PRODUCTS

Mission

The Association of Recovery Schools advocates for the promotion, strengthening, and expansion of secondary and post-secondary programs designed for students and families committed to achieving success in both education and recovery.

ARS exists to support such schools which, as components of the recovery continuum of care, enroll students committed to being abstinent from alcohol and other drugs and working a program of recovery.

Vision

All secondary and post-secondary students have access to a recovery high school or collegiate recovery community.

Standards of academic and recovery practices are identified and implemented.

All eligible recovery schools are ARS members.

Recovery schools are seen as valued, necessary, and adequately funded parts of both the education and treatment systems.

ARS operates as a financially viable and autonomous organization.

Project Homeless Connect Returns to Nashville on WEDNESDAY, MARCH 28

noreply@blogger.com (Steve) — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 10:32:00 +0000

Will be down there for part of the day and I hope if you have some time you'll consider volunteering or donating to the effort.

Project Homeless Connect

Project Homeless Connect is a one-day event where nonprofit social services providers, government agencies, medical providers, and businesses come together to offer an array of services to Nashville's homeless population as well as individuals and families on the brink of homelessness.
It is a true collaboration of the community and will take place this year on
MARCH 28, 2012, at the Tennessee State Fairgrounds.
A kick-off to the event for volunteers will start at 8 a.m. with the doors opening for services at 9 a.m. The event will run until 3 p.m.
We need 500-700 volunteers to make the fourth Project Homeless Connect Nashville a success by ensuring we deliver services efficiently to our guests. Help us spread the word and recruit a group of friends from your work, from your neighborhood, and from your congregation. Please, sign up through Hands on Nashville to volunteer.
Last year, we served about 1,500 individuals including families with children. With the help of our volunteers and more than 70 service providers, we were able to deliver over 10,000 services to our guests. Our volunteers guide guests through the event. Each guest will go through registration where they will choose the services they are seeking. Volunteers will be trained, so they know how to read the registration papers and where to find the requested services. Volunteer training information will be sent out closer to the event. We will encourage each volunteer to participate in one of the onsite training sessions.
This year's event is hosted by the Metropolitan Homelessness Commission in partnership with The Key Alliance. To learn more about Project Homeless Connect, click here. For sponsorship opportunities or to sign up as a service provider, call 862-6401.
Thank you so much for AkzoNobel, which is one of our main sponsors again this year! AkzoNobel also allowed its employees to put a volunteer team together. Thank you for your community spirit!
If you signed up to volunteer, please download our VOLUNTEER PACKET here.
If you are a service provider, please invite your clients who struggle with homelessness to the event. As soon as we have our pick-up bus route ready, we will post the information in PDF format here, so you can print it out for them. If you know of individuals or families struggling with homelessness, please print out this flyer and invite them to attend Project Homeless Connect on March 28 at the Tennessee State Fairgrounds.

Nashville Metro Homeless Commissioners: Rhode Island Is Doing it, So Can We

noreply@blogger.com (Steve) — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 10:20:00 +0000

"The aim is to completely shift how the state’s homeless population is served: In 2010, 95 percent of long-term homeless adults in Rhode Island were in shelters, and just 5 percent in housing. By 2016, the plan would have 98 percent in housing and 2 percent in shelters. "

Smart, for a variety of reasons, but two very important ones stand out; this shift from managing those experiencing homelessness to ending it will save lives and is cost effective, even if it doesn't seem like it when you see the price tag. It's the price tag that sends most folks running to the band aid kit rather than remaining resolved and finding the full funding needed to implement the comprehensive effort.

Homelessness is damned expensive for cities and states to deal with, so much so that those charged with finding solutions often put the best ideas at the bottom of the stack because the cost causes swoons around the room. And because the costs of homelessness are so diffused throughout the community, it's hard to get one's mind around the idea of spending such a large sum to end it. The problem here is that it's often not a clear-cut set of expenses one can examine and compare, so when a proposal to spend large sums to combat homelessness comes across the desks of those who hold the purse strings, it's a hard pill to both swallow and pass on to the rest of us. Add to this the stigma, misconceptions and outright ignorance around homelessness, and that box of band aids looks better and better. Responses ranging from righteous indignation about giving someone something for nothing to those who think if the homeless just "pulled themselves up by the bootstraps" they'd be back in a home in no time create a constant stream of push-back, making the band aid all the more attractive.

It takes a lot of resolve to push through these kinds of barriers and rhetoric and it's much easier to follow the path of least resistance.

The problem with that is that the path of least resistance happens to be circular, so you're never addressing the root problem and putting an end to the oval track chase. If you were to put a marker on the track that indicated the point at which the annual band aid expenditure surpasses the overall cost of simply moving folks into housing, chances are that it has been lapped by several times already, and because a circular track never ends, well....you get the picture.

Bottom line: If your goal as a public steward is to serve the greatest good with the least amount of resources, you've suffered what's become known as the "epic fail."

RI plan moves homeless from shelters to housing

March 25, 2012|Erika Niedowski, Associated Press

A new state homelessness plan is upending the focus on temporary shelters in favor of more permanent housing, an approach advocates say is more cost-effective and could help Rhode Island become the first state to end homelessness among some groups.

The ambitious plan — with a price tag of about $130 million — seeks to end homelessness among veterans and those chronically without shelter in the next five years, in part by creating nearly 900 new units of “supportive’’ and affordable housing. The units would most likely be apartments and a mix of new construction and renovated existing properties.

The aim is to completely shift how the state’s homeless population is served: In 2010, 95 percent of long-term homeless adults in Rhode Island were in shelters, and just 5 percent in housing. By 2016, the plan would have 98 percent in housing and 2 percent in shelters.

“It’s moving from a shelter to a housing state, with a permanent solution to homelessness rather than increased shelters,’’ said Mike Tondra, head of the state Office of Housing and Community Development. “It’s really changing the system to respond to homelessness differently.’’

The Housing Resources Commission is expected to vote Friday to adopt the plan. It then heads to the Interagency Council on Homelessness, re-launched last year by Gov. Lincoln Chafee to create a more unified, interdisciplinary response to the problem.

The Rhode Island Coalition for the Homeless estimates that more than 4,400 people experienced homelessness in the state at some point last year; 60 percent were single adults and one-quarter were children. About 13.5 percent of Rhode Island’s approximately 1 million residents were living in poverty in 2010 — slightly less than the national average — with about one in 10 living in extreme poverty.

But officials say the numbers are manageable here. In Rhode Island, there are between 250 and 300 homeless veterans and an estimated 875 chronically homeless who access the system of shelters operated by nonprofits, community development corporations and other service providers. Men and women stay a few nights at a time, sometimes for years.

One key part of the state’s plan is Housing First, a model used in more than 40 U.S. cities that diverts people from night-by-night shelters and puts them in subsidized supportive housing units. Housing comes first, as the program name suggests, but it’s linked with critical services to address substance abuse, mental health, education and employment.

Housing, of course, doesn’t solve the problems that often accompany homelessness, and some critics maintain that “treatment first’’ is a better approach. But the model has been successful in keeping people housed — for years.

Privacy Becoming A Disposable Right For People With Low/No/Fixed Incomes

noreply@blogger.com (Steve) — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 11:20:00 +0000

I was speaking w one of my old clients I'd worked with years ago to help obtain SSDI and housing. He's an old-school tramp with a long history of rail-riding, substance use, homelessness, serious criminal involvement and more recently some pretty significant physical disabilities.

Much has changed for him since we first met, and he's healthier, happier and stabler than he has been in decades, thanks in large part to the work we did together several years ago.

About a year ago, he moved into a public housing unit under a section 8 voucher that provides housing to folks with disabilities and/or who are considered senior citizens. He's got a very nice one bedroom apartment and he couldn't have been happier at his home until a recent apartment complex meeting called by the management.

During that meeting, the management stated that they were concerned the local police would designate the complex with the dreaded "nuisance" status, which would then kick in a number of draconian steps designed to put an end to the nuisance.

Tennessee law states that:

the District Attorney General has authority to bring a civil action against any establishment deemed a nuisance. The statute defines a nuisance, in part, as “any place in or upon which… unlawful sale of any regulated legend drug, narcotic or other controlled substance…quarrelling, drunkenness, fighting, or breaches of the peace are carried on or permitted.”

I'm not exactly sure how local authorities determine what makes one place versus another a public nuisance, but logic tells me it's in the number of police and ambulance responses to the complex in question.

Now, this public nuisance law isn't by itself a terrible thing, and it has been used effectively to shut down permanently some of the more egregious examples of a public nuisance, like crack houses and apartment complexes so overflowing with weapons and thugs only a gang member or a complete moron would try to visit someone there.

What can become a terrible thing is how an apartment manager may begin to deal with the problems causing the public nuisance in the first place.

Some of the ideas put forth, my buddy tells me, included armed security, locked gates, ID checks upon entry, facial recognition lockouts on the elevators and cameras monitoring every public area (all things that are now standard in many low income housing units). However, his complex is also considering "room checks" after 10PM by off-duty Metro police who are hired at the complex to provide the security.

HUH?

This plan, modeled after one that is currently in place in at least one of the seedier hotels in the downtown Nashville area, has police wandering the premises, knocking on doors after 10pm and entering units to "look around" to make sure they're not up to anything scandalous or trying to hide more folks in the room than what were registered (spelled PAID FOR).

Okay, so I get the need to keep the peace, and I understand the need to control access to some of these places so that residents can live in peace. But when cops start knocking on my door at bedtime and come in snooping around my apartment without a warrant, I gotta draw the line with that.

And please, spare me the argument that if a potential resident "doesn't like the regulation, they can find another place," because most of these folks wait months and sometimes years on the streets, with friends and/or family, and in shelters for housing, and when openings occur in these public housing units, they're few and far between. If an individual turns down a unit with these Constitution-offensive stipulations, chances are they won't see another "choice" for years. Most of the folks in these situations take whatever they can get out of desperation and fear.

Folks with their backs against the wall (or on the cold, hard ground under the local freeway viaduct) will agree to a lot of things they don't like in order to improve their current situation, but dangling housing in front of them while simultaneously stripping them of their right to privacy and unreasonable search and seizure is an offensive and disgusting way of manipulating them and taking advantage of their desperation.

I'm not sure this is going to fly at this particular complex, but I can tell you that if it does, we'll be looking for a lawyer to address the Constitutionality of it. This is beyond reprehensible and if it occurs, watch for it to arrive in a city near you, soon. Frankly, I suspect it's already happening elsewhere, it just hasn't been brought into the light of day (no pun intended).

We aim to change that.

TIME SENSITIVE URGENT INFORMATION FOR ANYONE WANTING TO FILE FOR A SECTION 8 VOUCHER IN NASHVILLE, TN

noreply@blogger.com (Steve) — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 15:14:00 +0000

PLEASE SHARE THIS WITH ANYONE INTERESTED IN FILING FOR HOUSING ASSISTANCE IN THE NASHVILLE/DAVIDSON COUNTY AREA:

The Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher program will open its waitlist registration process for one week starting Monday, March 26 @ 7:30 a.m. until Friday, March 30 @ 4 p.m.

On Monday morning, March 26, you will be able to find the application form on MDHA’s website:

http://www.nashville-mdha.org/

For the first time, interested folks will be able to register online. This type of online application is highly encouraged- AND avoids having to wait in long lines at our Rental Assistance Dept. offices on Dew Street. This online process should take roughly 10 minutes.

Generally, this process involves completing a registration form with basic information; an email address, street address, phone number, Social Security # are among the required info. for online registration. Later (after all the registration forms have been entered into a database), individuals will be contacted to schedule an actual appointment. Showing up early in the week/registering early will not guarantee an earlier appointment, as names from the registration forms will be selected by lottery and not time/date stamped as in the past.

In addition to the online method, applications may be mailed (postmarked by March 31, 2012) or hand-delivered to 620 Dew Street. You can print out the online application, and complete the hard copy. Map to 620 Dew Street is attached.

Applications that are emailed or faxed to MDHA will NOT be considered.

Nashville Metro Homelessness Commission Has A Big Responsibility In Front Of Them

noreply@blogger.com (Steve) — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 11:35:00 +0000

March's bimonthly Nashville Metro Commission meeting had, I believe, every Commissioner at the table, which is often a rarity for a couple of reasons, the least of which is the fact that just about all of us have full time + jobs and volunteer our uncompensated time on the Commission. This of course isn't a reason to treat the position with less commitment than you would a "paid" position, but the Commission does then become the secondary responsibility in one's life when that primary responsibility (spelled J O B) demands your presence.

Many Commission members (all of whom are uncompensated)
often play integral roles in the annual Project Homeless Connect event,
in addition to their regular duties on the Commission
and their primary jobs

So to have a full table is not only a great thing, it's not often a common thing and we needed a full slate of Commissioners as we discussed the critical need for, and large absence of, street outreach specialists here in the Nashville area.

For this meeting, I led a panel discussion on outreach, with strong support from Park Center's Corey Gephart, who oversee's the famous (made so by Big Willy Connelly) and wildly successful SOAR program and its street outreach component. Also a panelist was Carolyn Grossley (Cooper), who spent more than a decade on the street performing outreach while employed with the Mental Health Cooperative, one of Nashville's largest service providers. Carolyn now works for the Key Alliance as the Housing Coordinator, and toils (I chose that word carefully) building relationships with local area landlords in order to procure additional housing resources for the city's most vulnerable.

We were slated for 30 minutes but the discussion was so robust and spirited among Commissioners that it went for over an hour; time well spent as far as I'm concerned, since for many on the Commission, the understanding of "street outreach" was vague, at best.

I won't bore you all with the minutae of the discussion but instead can summarize several key points that I think the Commissioners are currently grappling with:

Defining what "outreach" actually is and who would appropriately be designated as "outreach workers" within our community
Ensuring that street outreach specialists are properly trained and compensated to ensure longevity in the position and long-term success with the population of homeless individuals
Recognizing the value of a trained street outreach specialist (moving just one chronically homeless individual from the street into housing, pays for the outreach in terms of salary/benefits for one year, since a chronically homeless individual on average costs the city $40K annually. If that individual is also connected with an income source such as SSDI, the city recognizes an increase in spending and tax revenue once the individual is approved and begins receiving benefits)
Coordinating the move from the street into housing
Understanding the importance of "wrap-around" services once an individual enters housing
Exploring sustainability and funding options for both outreach and affordable housing units AND the longterm need of a housing fund to assist with 0-income candidates for housing

So where do we go from here?

It should be noted loudly and clearly that the Commission really has no authority to enact legislation and/or policy. We are more a fact-finding body that researches the issues at hand, makes recommendations to the Mayor, provides an opportunity for public comment and input, and attempts to both raise awareness around the complexities of homelessness while working with others to coordinate service delivery around the city.

We are uncompensated volunteers for these efforts and each of us has our own personal and/or professional reasons for serving the community and the homeless population. We come to the position passionate about ending homelessness and each of us also know that we operate in an environment traditionally either ignorant of, and/or unconcerned with the issue of homelessness.

We know too that there are some who harbor hostility to those experiencing homelessness ("if they'd just find a job, they wouldn't be homeless," "They all oughta just pull themselves up by the bootstraps," "they want to be homeless," "they deserve to be homeless," "don't put that shelter/soup kitchen/housing complex/service agency in my back yard," etc, etc, etc) and we are occasionally castigated - and at times vehemently disliked - by a fractional cadre of individuals within the homeless community.

Most folks with any sense don't typically stick around long when doing work few care about or approve of and those suffering from the impact the work addresses think they can do better. Nowhere is this more true than in working to end homelessness. But as each person arrives at the table with his/her own personal reasons for serving, the commitment to serve stands as a testament to the passion each of us brings to the role of Commissioner, as it is often a thankless job filled with a variety of folks who work to find fault with whatever you may be proposing, suggesting, or hoping to implement/create. Because of this, I often say during training's that "if a person has been in this field longer than six months and is still employed and passionate about the work, they ain't here for the money."

One of the more interesting and insightful aspects of serving on the commission is listening to the public comments towards the end of the meetings. These sessions provide an opportunity for citizens of the community to present their own views, ideas, comments, and complaints about a host of issues related to homelessness and life in the city while living homeless.

Over the years that I have been attending Commission meetings, I have heard from a wide variety of individuals on an even wider variety of topics. But I would say that the vast majority of individuals who comment are people experiencing homelessness or who are formerly homeless. Many of these individuals come angry, frustrated, and disheartened by their perceived lack of progress the Commission is making in executing the ten year plan for the city.

I feel their pain, and have since I began attending the meetings back in 2008. I also know that for many who comment, the three-minute time limit is not enough for them to share what they want to say, and typically what ends up happening is that...well, here, let me share a post I placed here back in November as an explanation. I think understanding why some of the folks feel discounted and/or ignored by some members of the Commission will be enhanced as a result of a quick perusal of this post.

I can tell you that whatever some folks may feel, their comments are valued and respected. Most of us realize that folks living day to day on the streets have some immediate need that, when goes unmet, causes tremendous frustration, hopelessness and anger. For a very long time, folks battling against the scourge of homelessness have been ignored, marginalized....invisible. That someone might actually be listening to them as they speak provides perhaps the greatest opportunity to be heard they've had in a very very long time, and there is a lot they would like to say.

Trying to summarize a longterm traumatic event like homelessness is akin to asking a war veteran to explain his/her experience of an extended tour of duty in a combat zone in three minutes or less. It's almost insulting. And usually, by the time an individual actually makes it to a Commission meeting, the blood is near boiling, since just their trip to a meeting is far different, and much more challenging, than those of us on the other side of the table.

I think Commissioners on the whole understand all this, and don't take personally some of the personal attacks that occur to them by frustrated individuals during those public comments. They take in stride calls for the resignation of some members, the disbanding of the Commission, the occasional scorn and derision that comes in some of those comments, because they know that folks are suffering, and lashing out is a symptom of the condition, rather than a personal attack on any one of the members. They also know that it is because of the Commission that folks even have a place to come complain, for without the Commission, the most marginalized and vulnerable among us would fade back into total obscurity, and would have no public voice, anywhere.

Returning to the question "where do we go from here," I believe the answer hinges on the next meeting, which will hopefully have some recommendations around a potential city-wide outreach training being considered here in Nashville, as well as some additional discussion around the lack of housing and ways in which we as Commissioners are able to positively influence a major increase in availability and funding to help those on the street access it.

This is our overarching goal and I think at times we get sidetracked by acute and transitory issues, arising often from public comments that alert us all to egregious conduct and/or conditions facing those experiencing homelessness. Nothing wrong with wanting to help mitigate some of the more pressing problems facing folks, but if we want to end homelessness instead of managing it, we've simply got to provide housing.

Perhaps our litmus test for new business for the Commission should be whether, at the conclusion of the intervention/assistance/effort, we have created new housing opportunities for folks. If the answer is no, then maybe we ought to try and pass the particular issue on to another group, organization or committee that can provide assistance so that we are able to return to our primary focus, housing. It is my humble opinion that this should always be our bottom line and we should always be laser-focused on providing safe, affordable housing - lots of it.

Hope you'll join us at the next Commission meeting, occurring the first Friday in May, and beginning at 9am at the Howard School in downtown Nashville. We need your input, your support, and your physical presence to help impress upon those still on the streets that we as a community care about everyone in our community.

When penalties for laying down bedding on state property are greater than or equal to penalties for assault, driving under the influence...our criminal justice system is not upholding justice — it is creating criminals.

noreply@blogger.com (Steve) — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 11:23:00 +0000

Many thanks to friend and colleague Lindsey Krinks for a well constructed and thoughtful opinion on HB 2638/SB 2508. This law was clearly constructed and enacted to thwart the efforts of community members who, sick of being powerless in a government that is supposedly "governed" by "We the People," stood together and demanded accountability and responsibility from their legislators and policy makers.

However, with this new legislation in effect, police and community "leaders" have yet another way in which to criminalize the behavior of those who are simply trying to find a place to lay their heads at night without fear of attack or exposure to the natural elements. This law will have serious repercussions across the state, and you can believe that it will be used with scalpel-like precision against those experiencing homelessness to persecute them further in the hopes of either driving them farther out of the city or locking them up; either way reducing the perception of homelessness upon our city streets.

This "band aid" solution, crafted as a knee jerk response to rid the glaring spotlight shined by Occupiers onto the reality of the poverty they experience as a direct result of the mismanagement, complicity, ignorance and arrogance by government officials on both sides of the aisle, will suffer from the law of unintended consequences. As these results begin to materialize, anyone who has suffered a conviction for "sleeping" on state property (the absurdity of this is beyond comprehension) will find the path off the street that much more difficult, now saddled with a misdemeanor.

In a city continually touted as the Buckle of the Bible Belt, there appears to be some mighty unchristianlike behavior happening at the hands of local legislators and public servants.

Kudos to Governor Haslam, who this morning stated that he wanted police to act only in "flagrant violations" of the law. Unfortunately, one thing I've learned about police is that when they are given an inch, they often take a mile, and become very creative in how they interpret the laws. While many police act honorably and compassionately when conditions warrant, many also do not. Those cops are the ones I'm most concerned with as they patrol with yet another way to harass and badger those least able to defend themselves against police misconduct.

I hope that state legislators recognize the error of their ways, but it's always easier to put a law on the books than to remove one. I'm afraid the stage has been set, time will tell how the actors will interpret their new lines...

New legislation criminalizes homelessness

1:19 AM, Mar. 12, 2012

Written by

Lindsey Krinks

On March 2, Gov. Bill Haslam signed HB 2638/SB 2508 into law, making camping, sleeping and cooking on state property a Class A misdemeanor punishable by up to 11 months and 29 days in jail and a $2,500 fine. While this law was targeted at Occupy Nashville, it has devastating consequences for our unhoused neighbors — the thousands of men, women and children across Tennessee who are left to live and die on our streets.

Many are unable to find refuge because on any given night, there are not enough shelter beds or affordable housing units to accommodate everyone in need. They have nowhere else to go but the streets and public spaces, yet this law further victimizes them for doing so. With the passage of this law, the state of Tennessee is criminalizing the right to exist as a human being. This law is not only unconstitutional and disproportionate — it is morally unacceptable.

When penalties for laying down bedding on state property are greater than or equal to penalties for assault, driving under the influence, trespassing on private property, destruction of private property, leaving the scene of an accident, shoplifting, reckless driving and many other crimes that have real victims, our criminal justice system is not upholding justice — it is creating criminals.

We stand with the American Bar Association, the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty, the Interagency Council on Homelessness, the National Coalition for the Homeless, National Health Care for the Homeless, the Western Regional Advocacy Project and many others who oppose the enactment of laws that punish people experiencing homelessness for carrying out non-criminal life-sustaining acts in public spaces like sleeping, eating or camping when no alternative private spaces are available.

Instead of criminalizing homelessness, local governments and law enforcement officials should work with service providers, advocates and those who are unhoused to prevent, lessen and end homelessness. To address street homelessness, our state should dedicate more resources to creating more affordable housing, permanent supportive housing, emergency shelters, outreach programs and mental health and addiction services.

Homelessness and human suffering cannot be swept under the rug with legislation. We cannot lock people away — out of sight, out of mind — and declare success. Criminalization is not the answer.

We, the undersigned, call for this law to be repealed immediately before it has a chilling effect on our most vulnerable citizens and creates a greater cost burden on our local governments:
Charles Strobel; John Lozier, National Health Care for the Homeless; the Rev. Don Beisswenger; Lindsey Krinks, Autumn Dennis, Lauren Plummer, Jennifer Ward and Ingrid McIntyre, all of Open Table Nashville; Andrew Krinks, The Contributor; Father Bill Dennler; Bill Friskics-Warren, United Neighborhood Health Services; Rusty Lawrence, Urban Housing Solutions; Laurie Green, Southern Alliance for People & Animal Welfare; Dr. Beth Shinn, Vanderbilt University; Paul Boden, Western Regional Advocacy Project; Steve Reiter, Committee on Police/Homeless Issues; Darria Hudson, Matt Frierdich and Greg Gardener, all of Vanderbilt Divinity School; Brett Flener, Lipscomb’s Institute for Law, Justice, and Society; Katie Knies, Vanderbilt University Law School; Clemmie Greenlee, Nashville Peacemakers; Matt Preston, Urban Housing Solutions; Jeannie Alexander; Randy Goodman; Keith Caldwell; Megan Macaraeg; Ben Morton; Sarah Wilson; David Wilson; Michael Custer; Alesandra Bellos; Rachel Davies; Darlene Neal; Dr. Dana Carpenter, Preston Shipp, Megan Inman, De’Yuna Bailey, Michelle Sanchez, Andrea E. Yancey, Sequina Caro, Jill Schiely, Kayleigh Butterfield, Eric Heath, Tyler M. Conger, Timothy Wills and Tim Talley, all of Lipscomb University; Cecil Burnley, Michael Mooney and Grant Winter, all of Lipscomb University and Room in the Inn.

Oprah Winfrey Takes On Tent City

noreply@blogger.com (Steve) — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 11:35:00 +0000

The long awaited flick, commissioned by Nashville native Oprah Winfrey and done last year around the lives of the residents of Tent City, has finally been set to air.

I'm pleased to say that if the trailer is any indication, the documentary ought to have a powerful impact on folks around the country. Of course, it's almost certainly going to stir some controversy, as well, since the ignorance around the complexities of homelessness is rampant - still.

Tent City U.S.A. - Trailer

Due primarily to the economic recession, a growing number of people are finding themselves in a position they never imagined: homeless. Tent City U.S.A. explores a community in Nashville, Tennessee of nearly 100 homeless people who live under a downtown bridge. They work to stay together after a devastating flood destroys their land and forces them to evacuate.

Tent City U.S.A. premieres Thursday, April 5th at 9/8c only on OWN.

I do hope folks will watch with an open mind and a realization that they almost certainly will be coming at this video with their own ethnocentric baggage. You've got to suspend that when you enter this "world," just like you would when you enter any 3rd world country, because people, when forced to survive in abject, grinding poverty, often do things that the "well to do" would find not only distasteful but at times shocking.

Living conditions can also shock the conscience, as it should, but it should not in any way color the way you see the fellow human beings in this film, who are struggling at the very bottom of our society. Think of them in the context that, if the socioeconomic strata were spaced across rungs on a ladder, the folks in the camp aren't even within sight of the bottom rung.

Worse, those situated along the rungs don't often have a lot of sympathy for most folks languishing on the ground below them, and those that do are usually not in any position to be of much help, since they are struggling themselves to keep from falling to the ground with them. The folks in the camps, on the streets, living in dumpsters, doghouses, and under the viaducts of our country are similar in many ways I think, to India's "Untouchables" caste class (although India's Constitution was changed to eliminate this Caste ranking, change and acceptance has been extremely slow to occur), and extricating themselves from this social status in America is no easy task.

In any event, I hope that the documentary helps increase the knowledge around homelessness and helps people understand the critical need of the community support that folks in the camps get and give to each other.

This aspect I think is the most important lesson one can take away from any homeless encampment, and it drives home the critical importance of Peer support as individuals transition out of camps and into "standardized" housing. Without that peer support and wrap around help from the rest of us, the chances that folks will succeed in this transition decline considerably.

Thanks to Oprah for having the ovaries to shine a light on America's "Untouchables," the folks who shot the video, and those who worked tirelessly with members of the camp to help when the rest of the city was at their heels trying to shut them down.

But the biggest "Thanks" by far goes to the residents of the camp, many who I consider my friends to this day, for their willingness to allow the rest of the world to see them at some of their lowest points in life. It takes tremendous courage to allow a spotlight to be shined upon you when your life is in complete disarray and you're living in the depths of poverty most of us can't even begin to imagine.

Frankly, to let strangers come in and record some of the most challenging and at times devastating moments of your life is beyond courageous, and each and every member of the camp should be applauded for the strength and fortitude they exhibited by allowing the rest of us to catch a glimpse of what life is like for them.

Open Table Gets The Job Done

noreply@blogger.com (Steve) — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 12:06:00 +0000

As Nashville continues its struggle against lack of affordable housing, outreach specialists and critical services needed to serve the most vulnerable and marginalized in our community, some agencies and advocates stand out from the rest in their tireless effort to bring whatever they can to the table (no pun intended) in order to make life a little easier for those who must endure it homeless.
As I wandered the most recent camp facing closure last week and spoke with residents/friends I've known for many years now, a couple of things were immediately apparent. First, while there were a couple of folks down at the camp trying to provide some outreach, the lack of coordinated, skilled and full-time outreach specialists trained in MI and specializing in person-centered, trauma informed outreach with a housing focus means people will continue to suffer needlessly.
Second, the issue of housing, or more specifically the lack thereof, especially for people who present challenges to traditional units, continues as a glaring reality for us as a city. Most of the folks at this particular camp are transplants from the original Tent City, which closed on May 5th, 2010 when flood waters along the Cumberland River did what city officials could not; empty the camp completely and wipe out all standing structures. As the waters receded, police began enforcing the "no trespassing" order with a vengeance, arresting and jailing anyone who dared set up a camp site in the area.
The bad news, as far as I'm concerned, is that these two things - lack of outreach and resources - were also the same problems facing folks in the original camp back in the pre-flood days of 2009 and 2010. Unfortunately for those who remain on the streets, neither has improved and frankly both have worsened considerably since 2010.
I can unequivocally state here that if it had not been for Ingrid over at Open Table and Denis from Operation Stand Down, camp residents would have been in far worse shape than they were, since without them, no one would have even known the camp had been ordered to close.
Perhaps the most frustrating thing about this whole issue is that even with the confirmation that this camp was closing, the response I perceived from those who are charged with finding solutions to these kinds of issues was a hohum sense of resignation that the folks at the camp were "un-housable" and therefore did not warrant the expenditure of any resources whatsoever.
I don't mean to disparage anyone working in any one of these agencies because I know that for the most part, provider hearts are definitely in the work they're doing. But I know the sense of frustration many of them feel; not only are so many of the "available" programs out of reach for many of the area homeless because of the eligibility requirements, we've also been pushing this damned "affordable housing" boulder up a mountain that would embarrass Everest with our noses and we've been crushed so many times by the backward slide that many have simply given up pushing.
As governmental budgets shrivel and cuts to funding for agencies continue, we are forced to operate in crisis mode ourselves, reacting to the very worst of the cases instead of trying to proactively end homelessness before folks have so many challenges stacked up on their backs that it's neigh impossible to help them.
It's a never-ending battle that saps the strength, the commitment and the dedication of damned near everyone involved.
That Open Table continues to fight back tirelessly should stand as a testament to the rest of us that we cannot let the disinterest, the lack of funding, the ignorance. and the myriad other issues facing us destroy our own commitment to the cause as we work to end homelessness.
My deep appreciation goes out to Ingrid and the folks at Open Table for staying on course, no matter what everyone else may or may not be doing.
My colleague and current director of the SOAR program at Park Center Corey Gephart and I will be presenting a short piece on the need for outreach/services during our upcoming Nashville Metropolitan Homelessness Commission meeting (3/2 at 9a), I'm hoping to highlight the challenges facing us as service providers and then promote the return to the primary focus of the Commission: making affordable housing a reality for the people of Nashville. There's no doubt whatsoever that we are in desperate need of it and it cannot come too soon.

Nashville & Homeless Encampments: Here We Go Again

noreply@blogger.com (Steve) — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 14:32:00 +0000

Most folks around these parts will probably remember the protracted battle to first save the largest homeless encampment in Nashville, then to extend the closing deadline to try and provide services and resources to the 100+ residents living there, some for a decade or more.

Mother Nature did what police, city officials and the business community could not; the historic flood that occurred in May, 2010 put that camp some 20 feet under water, pushing out residents, who entered Red Cross emergency shelters as they waited for the flood waters to recede.

Those who could got out of Nashville, those who couldn't moved to where they believed they had the freedom from persecution and hassle by law enforcement.

Unfortunately, it didn't last, and now they are forced to move again. With each move, they are pushed further outward, into suburbs, away from services, and deeper into isolation.

There will be more to this story. Stay tuned...

PBS NewsHour: Wealth, Poverty and Politics Today

noreply@blogger.com (Steve) — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 12:28:00 +0000

On the basis that a well-informed citizenry is critical to choosing the right leader, I submit the following material addressing "safety nets" for the poor to you for your analysis. Unfortunately, I long ago recognized that whatever your analysis might determine, it will most likely make absolutely no difference.

There's very little action beyond occasional lip service those of us on the lower rungs of the socioeconomic ladder can count on from any of the current crop of "leaders" governing our country. It has become increasingly clear to me that this is because we don't really operate under a democracy, or a republic, although many continue trying to tell us we do. We are governed by a bastardized version of both, a "representative democracy," which ultimately ends up allowing those with deep pockets to receive substantially more "representative" involvement than those of us with shallow or empty pockets receive.

American politics, like just about all politics, has always been controlled by those with the means to control it. "Control" here is really just a codeword for M O N E Y.

Granted, it wasn't always as terrible as it is now, but the pendulum of big crumbs versus small crumbs given to those on the bottom has definitely swung back and forth over the last couple hundred years here in the US.

But I can also clearly remember when I felt like I had a shot at entering "middle class." This "feeling" remained with me all the way up until around the mid 80s, when something odd happened. From that period forward, my weekly wage didn't increase much at all, but prices for things did like crazy. From candy bars to chicken legs, dishsoap to gasoline, everything I needed to survive began an inexorable price climb that continues to this day. Unfortunately, wages that used to climb in some relation to the cost of living ceased their increase.

Meanwhile, it was somewhere in the early 90s that I recall strange things beginning to occur with our public institutions. Schools began telling us how hard it was for them to keep textbooks in the classroom. Libraries began closing or dramatically curtailing their operating hours. Police, fire and emergency services began to tell us they were laying people off, or couldn't afford new equipment to operate effectively.

Roads, bridges and transportation in general began falling into real disrepair right about the same time that gas prices began going through the roof.

Jobs were disappearing everywhere. Entire cities were on the verge of collapse. Those who could move did, leaving those who couldn't to fend for themselves while cash-starved municipalities struggled even more as they lost the biggest contributors to their tax base.

Conversely, jails and prisons were enjoying a boom-time, remaining packed to overflowing, while local and state governments spent lavishly on building more to address demand.

What the hell happened to my country I wondered as I struggled to hold down two minimum wage jobs I had to beg to obtain?

I began paying more attention to politics, naively thinking that by understanding the issues and voting for the right person to represent me, I could help change the disastrous course our big ol ship was on. Didn't take me long to realize I wasn't alone and that there were hundreds of thousands, then millions, who, like me, was wondering what in the hell happened to make life so damned miserable for so many of us?

Then I began to realize that most of the "candidates" available to us weren't "for" us at all. Even those who claimed to be representing us were so far away from what we thought was needed that those of us who did vote began to hold our noses when we stepped into the booth, figuring that we'd choose the lesser of two evils, since things were so bad that maybe by choosing the less less-palatable candidate, things would at least stabilize and we wouldn't continue a further slide into the poverty abyss.

As things got worse in our communities, people became very scared. Fear has a strange way of manifesting itself, and folks began looking for scapegoats, to "God," to emotional ties to potential candidates who, although not always aligned with their best economic interests, helped vindicate or support a particular point of view, such as the "right to life," or allowing gays to marry. By using these "hot-button" issues to garner support, views and individuals previously considered "extreme" became more "mainstream," at least to some.

Then some crazy bastards flew a couple of planes into one of the "symbols of America" and full-on insanity within the national political theater became the norm.

Things once thought never possible here in the "land of the free" became law as people willingly gave up the very rights our Founding Fathers tried desperately to clad in stone in the Constitution.

Folks with frankly ridiculous assumptions about how to run a country squandered the wealth of our nation, led us into wars with countries that had never done anything more than curse at us from their canoes on the shores of a distant ocean or sea, and ended up pissing off more than a billion people, all who now look at our shores with missiles and hate in their eyes.

Our "leaders" capitalized upon this hate by fearmongering to us on a daily basis, causing many to quiver in their shoes as they gave up more and more of the Rights our Founding Fathers fought so damned hard to provide them. Those "Leaders" funneled more than half of our collective wealth into a military machine, arguing vociferously that it "protects" us, provides magical jobs, and now that military has become our nation's largest employer. Coincidentally, it also provides the most benefits to the people of our nation. Think this through and you'll understand the point I'm trying to make, if you don't already.

Did the 80's really initiate these things, or were they in place and fomenting long before, with the 80s just being the catalyst needed to set it all into motion?

Thom Hartmann offers some insight:

"David Stockman bragged, back during the Reagan administration, that the goal of Republicans was to rack up such a huge federal debt that Democrats would never be able to push forward the "socialist" programs that Americans want, like stable Social Security and single-payer national health care. He called it "starving the beast." Grover Norquist suggested it would force government to become so small it could be'"drowned in a bathtub,' leaving the corporations in charge. George W. Bush actually, finally, made it happen."

I don't mean to single Reagan out as the initiator of the "Evil Empire" he so eloquently argued he was fighting, Yes, the finger is pointed at a Republican as the tipping point, but that Republican could never have succeeded without direct complicity from the "opposing" Party standing at their side.

This is not a Republican or Democrat issue, it is a Republican and Democrat conspiracy to remain in power by appeasing those who can ensure the status quo.

Since most of us will never reach the level of wealth needed to insert ourselves into the power structure, the pathetic fists pounding on a closed iron door to the Halls of Power are barely noticeable inside those halls, and would fall on deaf ears anyway, since we have nothing to offer but cannon fodder for the next war.

Doesn't mean I'll give up the fight, but I long ago long lost my Locke-inspired belief in the "Moral Code of Government," exchanging it for the much more appropriate Hobbesian "Materialist View of Human Nature" and his understanding of "fear as the determining factor in human life."

For my critics and the cynics of this particular piece, I applaud you for keeping the dream of a moral and compassionate government and society alive. I would greatly enjoy being proven wrong, and I'm thrilled you continue to have faith in the human race. I just wish there were more of you.

Lots more.

Watch How Strong Is Safety Net for Poor Americans? on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

Audio of debate

Transcript

JEFFREY BROWN: Now, wealth, poverty and politics today.
For several weeks, much of the Republican presidential campaign seemed to focus on the subject of wealth, specifically that of Mitt Romney and the taxes he did or didn't pay.
MITT ROMNEY (R): Will there will discussion? Sure. Will it be an article? Yeah. But is it entirely legal and fair? Absolutely. I'm proud of the fact that I pay a lot of taxes.
JEFFREY BROWN: The wealth focus came amid a national conversation prompted in part by the Occupy protest movement, which put a spotlight on economic inequality.
President Obama took up the theme in his State of the Union address last week.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: We can either settle for a country where a shrinking number of people do really well, while a growing number of Americans barely get by, or we can restore an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, and everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules.
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
JEFFREY BROWN: Now the dialogue may be shifting from wealth to poverty.
Romney drew fire yesterday after he said this on CNN, explaining his focus on the middle class.
MITT ROMNEY: I'm not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I'll fix it. I'm not concerned about the very rich. They're doing just fine. I'm concerned about the very heart of America, the 90, 95 percent of Americans who right now are struggling.
JEFFREY BROWN: In Las Vegas today, Romney's Republican rival, Newt Gingrich, accused him of dismissing the poor.
NEWT GINGRICH (R): I really believe that we should care about the very poor, unlike Gov. Romney.
(LAUGHTER)
NEWT GINGRICH: But I believe we should care differently than Barack Obama. Both Gov. Romney and Barack Obama seem to believe that a -- quote -- "safety net" is all the poor need. I don't believe that. What the poor need a trampoline, so they can spring up and quit being poor.
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
JEFFREY BROWN: And the president worked the issue into remarks at the annual National Prayer Breakfast in Washington.
BARACK OBAMA: It's also about the biblical call to care for the least of these, for the poor, for those at the margins of our society, to answer the responsibility we're given in Proverbs to speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute.
JEFFREY BROWN: The issue may resonate this election year more than most, as poverty numbers rise and millions of Americans remain unemployed.
And we explore some of these issues now with Angela Glover Blackwell. She's the founder and CEO of the advocacy group PolicyLink. Lawrence Mead is professor of politics and public policy at New York University. And Barbara Perry, a senior fellow in the Presidential Oral History Program at the University of Virginia's Miller Center.
Angela Glover Blackwell, I will start with you. A general question first: How serious a problem is poverty in America today?
ANGELA GLOVER BLACKWELL, PolicyLink: Poverty is a huge problem. It's a problem for the people who are in it and it's a problem for the nation -- 15 percent of Americans live below the poverty level, highest number since 1993.
And 44 percent of those live below half of the poverty level. That means for a woman with two children, that's less than $9,000 a year. On top of that, we have millions and millions of Americans, 127 million, who in three months of no job would live in poverty.
Poverty is a huge issue, it's getting worse, and it should be very troubling to all of the American people, not just those who are living in poverty.
JEFFREY BROWN: All right, well, Lawrence Mead, you were an opponent of the welfare reform in the '90s. You don't hear much about poverty in our politics today. How would you frame the problem?
LAWRENCE MEAD, New York University: Well, poverty is a different problem from those that have gotten most of the attention. It's not primarily due to unemployment or inequality.
Those are concerns that affect the bulk of the population and they affect some poor people. Poverty has grown largely due to economic conditions, but it doesn't follow that most of poverty is due to the economy. That's really not true. Most poor adults are outside the economy.
They're simply detached. And they don't say that the fact that they're not working is due to the fact that they can't find a job. That's seldom the case. It's usually other factors in their private lives that make it difficult for them to work.
Now, I don't give up. I think we should take steps to make sure that they, in fact, go to work. And that's what we did in welfare reform. I think we should also do it for non-working men of low income. Most of them are not employed either, and we need to do something about that. And certainly the economy makes it harder to do, but it's still quite possible.
Jobs are usually available. The main problem is to mobilize people to actually get up and work regularly.
JEFFREY BROWN: All right, so, Barbara Perry, there was that remark from Gov. Romney yesterday starting to bubble up into the political conversation. As someone who studies presidential history here, what strikes you about this moment as we think about poverty and politics?
BARBARA PERRY, University of Virginia: Well, I think it's a moment that in many ways repeats a cycle in our country's history that goes back to our very founding.
And that is that the founding fathers were aware of economic inequalities even at that time. And it has followed through and has often been kicked off, these various cycles, by traumatic upheavals. And certainly 2008 was a traumatic upheaval in our economy. And so I think the disparities that people see -- and I think the hearts are in the right place of both Lawrence and Angela -- they may have different approaches to the problem or see different political issues related to it.
But I think that it's certainly bubbled up into the conversation of our politics because of the upheaval of 2008, for sure.
JEFFREY BROWN: Well, Angela Glover Blackwell, I want to ask you, because you started by giving some very large numbers of people.
Do most Americans -- when a Mitt Romney or a politician talks about the great middle, because that's what we hear most often -- do most Americans feel themselves to be in the middle and not in poverty?
ANGELA GLOVER BLACKWELL: Most Americans like to think of themselves as being in the middle.
Many Americans understand that they're in a very vulnerable place right now. The notion that people in poverty really have a safety net is just wrong. And it's smacks of a "let them eat cake" posture, not really understanding the depth of the problem, not understanding how to get out of it, but not understanding the impacts on society.
The people who are being left behind now, white people in rural communities, Latinos, African-Americans, will make up the future population. Almost half of all children now are children of color -- they will be half by the end of this decade.
With high levels of poverty -- 39 percent of all black children are poor -- with high levels of poverty, the future is not right for America if we don't deal with poverty and the people who are being left behind. The American people think of themselves as being middle class, but they know they're vulnerable and they certainly don't want to fall into a needy position, and have the leaders not understand that the safety net is not broad enough, it's not strong enough, and it's not thoughtful enough about how to get people get out of poverty and stay out of poverty.
JEFFREY BROWN: Lawrence Mead, what do you think of this question, of the great middle, of the question of the safety net, of how people, how American voters see themselves and therefore how our politicians talk about these things?
LAWRENCE MEAD: Most Americans don't think they're poor, and they don't think they're at risk of poverty, but they are concerned about the poor.
We do have the safety net. There are about 46 million people on food stamps currently. That's a huge number. We're doing a lot to help people who are low-income. And we should do that. That isn't where we're failing, really. It has to do more with making sure that employment levels rise.
We have to make sure poor adults are regularly involved in the economy. We did that substantially for welfare mothers in the '90s. We need to do it again today, particularly for low-working men. That's the main thing we need to add to the safety net that we have.
JEFFREY BROWN: Well, Barbara Perry, what do we know about what resonates with voters as we watch politicians talking about these issues, a lot of concern, a lot of resentfulness about -- towards the wealthy, or still aspirational about getting out of poverty and out of middle class?
BARBARA PERRY: Well, Jeffrey, I think you've hit the nail squarely on the head. And that is indeed people want to have aspirations.
And that, I think, has been the beauty of our system and of our capitalistic system in this country for all of its history. And that is the great American dream, that each generation thought it could do better than the last.
And I know -- here I sit at the University of Virginia , where I did a Ph.D., and my parents, because they came up in the Depression, the Great Depression, could not get beyond high school. And their parents in turn, who were very working-class, couldn't get beyond sixth- or seventh-grade education.
But I think that what we see now and what will resonate with people is that politicians talk to them about the fear of losing those aspirations of the great American dream and the possibility that it's turning into the great American nightmare.
JEFFREY BROWN: Well, Angela Glover Blackwell, do you think the subject is getting enough attention? What encourages or discourages you about what you're hearing now?
ANGELA GLOVER BLACKWELL: I am so encouraged that we are talking about inequality in America. I'm pleased that we're now talking about poverty.
We need to stay on this topic, because this mobility that we have been so proud of in this nation is in jeopardy -- 47 percent of daughters who are poor will remain there, 35 percent of sons -- 45 percent of African-American children born into the middle class will end up poor, 16 percent of white children.
We need to restore this notion that you can move up, that children can do better than their parents. We need to stay on topic. This is a serious problem. We need to come to some conclusions about how to move forward.
JEFFREY BROWN: Are you hopeful about hearing those conclusions among -- from the . . .
ANGELA GLOVER BLACKWELL: I am.
JEFFREY BROWN: Yes?
ANGELA GLOVER BLACKWELL: I am hopeful. I'm hopeful because the conversation has opened up.
When the president did the State of the Union and he emphasized early education, K-12, strong community colleges, infrastructure investments, those were the right things to talk about. We need to really make sure that everything we do, including infrastructure investments, really can benefit those who are poor, they can get the jobs, their communities can be improved.
I am hopeful because the conversation we need to have is finally on the table.
JEFFREY BROWN: Lawrence Mead, are you hopeful about what we may hear on this, and is it getting -- is the subject getting as much attention as it deserves?
LAWRENCE MEAD: I think it needs even more attention. I agree that improving opportunity is absolutely crucial. We need to make sure that people who are less well-off now will be able to improve their lot.
I see that as a joint enterprise. Government has to do things to help people, but people also have to help themselves. And that is what we should focus on. We need to have a situation where there's a safety net, but also people go to work and they stay working, and they do other steps to advance themselves.
The ability to do that is still there in America, and we need to make sure that that's the case in the future.
JEFFREY BROWN: Barbara Perry, I just think back to some periods in our history where poverty was an intensely felt part of the political conversation. It seemed to fall off the map for a while there. What do you think about now and going forward?
BARBARA PERRY: Well, I think it'd be great if, as we say, we carry on this conversation and we continue to talk about some of these disparities and we have people from all sides of the spectrum, experts in the field giving us different possibilities of how to address it.
But I think that I maintain that positive outlook that we can do this, but I do believe that the situation since 2008 has caused people to feel personally that they're in a downward spiral, and we don't want a situation where we have the different political parties just coming at each other and feeling -- making people feel like the parties are spiraling downward as well on this particular topic, and not offering constructive possibilities.
JEFFREY BROWN: All right, we'll leave it there.
Barbara Perry, Lawrence Mead, Angela Glover Blackwell, thank you, all three, very much.
ANGELA GLOVER BLACKWELL: Thank you.
BARBARA PERRY: Thank you.
LAWRENCE MEAD: Thank you.

Cross Point Community Church Workers Bring Hope & Help To South Raleigh Homeless

noreply@blogger.com (Steve) — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 12:55:00 +0000

As soon as I saw the picture in the article below, my thoughts turned to days spent at Nashville's largest homeless encampment, Tent City, doing similar work on not just one or several but dozens of occasions. And it wasn't just me out there, Otter Creek Baptist Church Pastor Doug Sanders, students in droves from Lipscomb and Vanderbilt universities, concerned citizens who brought time, resources - including backhoes and dump trucks - with them, a whole community pitching in to help the "neighborhood" of Tent City clean up decades of dumping and trash in their little corner of the city.

Watching folks work for those who had nothing and were most of the time relegated to the "got nuthin comin" status by local officials and the community in general, I was - and continue to be, years later - struck by the amazing volunteer spirit of Nashville. I wrote about it back in 2009 and to this day remember how people rallied around the members of the camp, gave up their weekend to improve the living conditions of those less fortunate, and then returned periodically to help residents keep up with the maintenance and landscaping needs.

From PortaPotties to mulch for the trails, to gravel for the entryway into the camp, to customized "cottages" provided free of charge, people from as far away as Mena, Arkansas came to help, in whatever way they could.

That outpouring of selfless support changed how I saw my fellow man, changed how I viewed the world, and changed how I understood our responsibilities to the marginalized and ostracized within our communities. It was an incredible experience that made me feel part of something larger and something important. You could easily say that what folks did over that weekend not only made the ramshackle, hand-built "homes" for more than a hundred people tolerable, they almost certainly reduced the potential for disease, illness and even death by improving the conditions in that environment so markedly.

Finally, by coming into the encampment, many of the people who helped were able to humanize homelessness, understand the incredible diversity within a homeless camp, and smash stereotypes as they learned about the myriad ways in which an individual can end up experiencing homelessness.

Perhaps most importantly, however, those volunteers restored hope to the residents of the camp by showing that there were indeed people in the larger community that cared.

Sometimes, that means more to the residents than all other things combined.

Wheeler: Making friends of the homeless

Buy Photo

Burgetta Eplin Wheeler - bwheeler@newsobserver.com

Matt Sanderson, a senior at East Wake Academy in Zebulon, foreground, helps camp resident Nelson move an unwanted mattress from the camp.

By Burgetta Eplin Wheeler - STAFF WRITER

Tags: Raleigh | homeless | food

Feed the hungry, and help those in trouble. Then your light will shine out from the darkness, and the darkness around you will be as bright as noon.

Under a morning sky, these words from Isaiah 58 wash over a group of Cross Point Community Church workers as they hold hands during a departure prayer. Nearly 20 people have gathered at a Knightdale meeting spot bearing breakfast food and work gloves. A homeless camp in South Raleigh is the caravan's destination.
The plan is to feed the folks at the camp and to clean up the trash so that the property owner will be less likely to evict those who have built crude but elaborate living quarters amid a patch of trees off Tryon Road.

Bill Morris, founder of Community Outdoors Ministries, has forged relationships with many in Raleigh's homeless community and will guide the group.
"It's not for the government to fix this problem; it's for the churches to do," he says, explaining his nonprofit's motivation as I nod in agreement. "Too many people wear Christianity as a coat and don't live as if it's something inside of them."
On this day, what Morris hopes these Christians will do is make a friend of someone who has no home.
"It's easy to drop food or clothing and leave," he says to the group before the prayer. "These guys need someone to depend on."
Pulling up to a curb across from a business, it is surprising to see the campsite surrounded on all sides by development. The workers head off on a winding, overgrown trail and emerge, after traipsing over a manmade bridge, under an arch of intricately arranged sticks, some of which secure tarps.
Nelson, a homeless man from El Salvador, rises quickly from a picnic table to welcome his visitors. Other homeless people come and go here, but Nelson is the camp's constant resident. Under a tarp, his tent rests on a 4-inch slab of Styrofoam that has soaked up recent rain.
A huge, water-sodden mattress, bags and bags of discarded and soaked clothing, stained sofa cushions, shredded tarps, broken buckets, cooking utensils, pile upon pile of trash and, oddly, all manner of rusting, busted toys await the helping hands. Have children lived here?
"This is hard work" echoes several times through the mostly leafless trees as it becomes clear that no one really has thought past the picking-up part. The loaded trash bags are heavy, the mud is thick, and the trailers that will head to the dump later are parked on the road, at least 144 steps away.
Two boxes of heavy-duty trash bags are soon gone, and the church's youth pastor heads out to dump one load and to pick up more bags.
Fear of disclosure
In the interim, Melissa, a homeless woman who has come to visit Nelson from her own encampment, rocks in a recliner and talks of her love of animals, even snakes, with Missy Reilly, a Knightdale mother of a 2-year-old. On cold nights, Melissa's cats help keep her warm.
When Reilly asks Melissa - a South Carolina native who has been in Raleigh 35 years - where her camp is, Melissa runs fingers through gray-streaked, strawberry-blonde hair and won't say. Her fear of a homeless man who has burned all of her belongings in the past keeps her mute.
Soon after, Nelson, who has been helping with the cleaning, decides it's time to tackle the mattress. Matt Sanderson, a senior at East Wake Academy in Zebulon, heads over to help wrestle it over the bridge, up the path and out to the road.
"I love doing stuff where you can see happiness on people's faces," Matt said when asked earlier why he gave up a 65-degree winter day to help the homeless, "then having them go and pay it forward to other people, not pay you, but to help someone else later."
After two and a half hours of workers' bending, bagging and hauling, the remaining trash sits unreachable inside barriers of briers. Nelson, Melissa and Buddy, a formerly homeless man whom Morris helped into an apartment five months ago, join the group on the road for a departing prayer.
Before hands are joined, I see Reilly exchange phone numbers with Melissa.
She made a friend.

bwheeler@newsobserver.com or 919-829-4825

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2012/02/03/1826776/making-friends-of-the-homeless.html#storylink=cpy

UPDATE: Confirmed: Willie "the Mayor" Shoemaker Passed Away

noreply@blogger.com (Steve) — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 19:40:00 +0000

2/2/12: After asking around quite a bit, friend and colleague Tasha French helped me confirm that the news about Mayor Willie's death is correct. Many thanks to Tasha, as well as Rachel Hester & Jeff Moles, from Room In The Inn, for their help in separating fact from fiction. Can't tell you how sad I am to hear this.
_________________________________________________________________
To add to today's bad news about the loss of Contributor Vendor Andrew Owens, I was informed, although I haven't confirmed it yet, that one of my old clients has passed away after succumbing to an illness that materialized after he fractured his hip and spent time in the hospital. Don't know if it was a nosicomial infection, but I have a sneaking suspicion it was, since my source told me he thought Willie died from a "staph" infection and MRSA is about the number one hospital-connected infection.

Willie "The Mayor" Shoemaker used to spend much of his time around the Church St library, and was known to damned near everyone. In fact, that's how he became known as "the Mayor;" he was downtown so much and was so well-known that folks just started calling him "mayor" whenever he was around.

Hoping to get confirmation on this soon, but if it's true, it's another big loss for those of us who work with the community of unhoused folks. Willie was a great and likeable guy with a LOT of friends. He'd had an apartment for quite a while now, ever since I worked with him to initiate his social security, but he still spent considerable time helping others still on the streets.

Sigh. Here today, gone tomorrow.

Life is short.

Tent City University: "Anyone can teach, everyone can learn"

noreply@blogger.com (Steve) — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 13:19:00 +0000

"If you're under the impulse to find greater support for what you're doing, you listen more closely and you question more vigorously."

"If you want to take it to a more mystical, spiritual level they're dreaming another world awake. That's the way some of them see it."

I love this idea, because having experienced "education" in public school systems and state universities here in America, I recognize the need for a more informal venue, a "learning community" that adjusts to the needs and demands of students in a way that simply cannot happen within the structure of the traditional system.

Additionally, while I owe a large part of my current success in the world to my "formal" education and the credentials it brings with it, the truth of the matter is that the knowledge I bring to the table most often is the knowledge of lived experience, and none of that came from a formal classroom, to be sure.

Perhaps the most exciting aspect of this "school" is the potential for a cross pollination and transference of seemingly unrelated topics; the pygmy hunter-gatherers discussion is a prime example.

This concept brings to mind the meetings we have at The Contributor around vendor issues and potential writing topics. The move from "meeting" to knowledge transference seems pretty straightforward with just a couple of easy tweaks to a format like this.

Here's hoping that even if Occupy London's current "classrooms" are evacuated due to circumstances beyond their control, they regroup quickly and find new digs. The idea is such a good one that I'd love to see similar "colleges" spring up in every city in America.

Tent City University – one of the most remarkable aspects of Occupy London

The facilities are basic, but the guest lecturers are impressive and the students are engaged and ferociously well informed

Peter Walker
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 19 January 2012 17.32 EST

The Bank of Ideas – the Occupy London educational establishment in a disused office block in the City of London. Photograph: Martin Godwin for the Guardian

When, as now seems likely, the Occupy London protesters are forced to pack up their tents outside St Paul's Cathedral the capital will be losing more than one of its newer and less likely tourist attractions.

Also facing eviction, following this week's high court decision, is the camp's innovative and vigorous educational arm which, according to academics who have spoken there, can often be a more intellectually stimulating environment than the universities that provide their day jobs.

Within a few days of the main camp setting up by St Paul's Cathedral in October, the grandly named Tent City University – in reality a draughty marquee a few metres from a busy road with few amenities beyond a ramshackle sound system and a sprinkling of elderly sofas – set up for business, offering lectures not just to activists but to anyone who happened to be passing by.

Since then a host of leading university academics have offered talks on subjects as varied as international banking, philosophy, theology, the Arab spring and central Africa's (very egalitarian) pygmy hunter-gatherers.

The activists later expanded their educational operation, taking over another site, a disused office block near Liverpool Street station in the City of London financial district. This was transformed into the even more grandly titled Bank of Ideas, which faces separate eviction proceedings from UBS bank, which owns the site.

All camp members can book speakers at either venue by adding them to a communal web-based calendar, said James Sevitt from Occupy.

"The Tent City University, by virtue of its location, gets a lot of people coming past – tourists are there, and people from the City," he said. "For some people it's almost become a part of their daily routine."

Giving a lecture at the Tent City University was an eye-opener for Richard Werner, who has a day job at Southampton University.

The professor of international banking said: "It's different in the sense that the questions were much more informed than those I get from my students. That was a bit of a surprise. Clearly, these are people who have read into things and already have some recognition of some of the problems, and they have thought about potential solutions. So there were much more details questions, more engaged questions."
Those attending talks are "not without self-interest", said Ted Honderich, emeritus professor of mind and logic at University College London (UCL).

"But that is the condition of the human race. It makes them much more interested than certain university lecture audiences. If you're under the impulse to find greater support for what you're doing, you listen more closely and you question more vigorously.

"There's a lot of places you can lecture but there are few that are more comfortable than that tent, in the sense that it's comfortable to be lecturing to people who have a proper sense of moral dignity. You can't say that of a general introduction to philosophy lecture at 10am in University College."

The marquee is a far from ideal lecture theatre, said Tim Gorringe, professor of theology at Exeter University. "It's noisy. I spoke on a windy day – the tent flapped like hell," he said. "The noise of traffic is unremitting. St Paul's bells sound in your ear.

"I had a microphone but the battery packed up a third of the way through and it took another third to replace it. Obviously there's no classroom discipline. People drift in and out. You're not clear who you're talking to.

"But people are asking fundamental questions which they may not be asking at the universities.

"At my session there was a good range of questioners, people from both southern and eastern Europe as well as Brits, and a wider class range than one encounters in universities."

One of the more apparently unusual lecturers was Jerome Lewis, a social anthropologist at UCL, whose expertise is pygmy hunter-gatherers.

According to Lewis, the connection, is that these societies are perhaps the most egalitarian on Earth, with no gender or age hierarchies and a central tenet called "demand sharing" in which it is assumed people will not keep resources for themselves, something mirrored at the camp.

"They've developed their own version of demand sharing, in effect," he said. "If you want to take it to a more mystical, spiritual level they're dreaming another world awake. That's the way some of them see it.

"Physically it's quite challenging to speak there. It's cold, noisy, you've got to keep a good volume going for 45 minutes. But what is nice is the range of different people in the audience, which made for some interesting questions."

The fascination went both ways, Lewis added, for someone of his discipline.

"They're trying to live very differently. There's one man there who has deliberately limited himself to owning just 32 possessions – and that includes his underpants."

In the University of Ideas, a talk had begun inside one of its classrooms, a vast, chilly office space made as comfortable as possible despite a stained blue carpet and a shopping trolley full of placards in a corner. A newly arrived group of Occupy supporters from Finland, identifiable by their suspiciously pressed-looking clothes, were listening to a man from the New Democracy Foundation thinktank expound on modern protest.

The audience members – arranged in a circle rather than facing him in rows – made their own points.

"It's very interesting, this idea that there's not just one way – a single conduit for information and then you maybe get to ask a few questions," said one of the Finns, Erkki Perälä. "You could call it a more multi-dimensional way of learning, and I think you get a lot more from it."

What's on the syllabus

With a motto of "Anyone can teach, everyone can learn", the Tent City University has a broad curriculum, if understandably biased towards the concerns of protesters against the global finance system. Recent lectures have included:
• The fashion designer Vivienne Westwood on the links between ecological and economic crisis.
• Understanding the Arab uprisings from above and below, by an academic from the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies.
• Revolution and creativity in the artist William Blake, by author and the poet Jeremy Reed.
• The case against usury (accompanied by ukelele), by Tom Hodgkinson, editor of the Idler.
• How to find social meaning in your dreams, by experts from the Tavistock Institute, a leading centre for psychoanalysis.
• How to start your own credit union.
• Lessons from a football tour of Egypt, Palestine and Jordan.
• Workshops on knitting and clowning.

Contractor Mary Forristall: "When was America all about everyone being equal?”

noreply@blogger.com (Steve) — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 03:20:00 +0000

Clearly, some folks have failed to understand what makes America the greatest place on earth, even with the passel of problems we face as a country today.

Come to think of it, it may very well be that ignorance like this is exactly why we have the problems in this country in the first place...

February 01, 2012 06:00 PM

The Great Debate: America and Equality

By Mike Lux

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal..." - Thomas Jefferson, July 4, 1776
"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." - Abraham Lincoln, Nov. 19, 1863
"When was America all about everyone being equal?” - Florida contractor and Gingrich fundraiser Mary Forristall, quoted in the Washington Post on Jan. 28, 2012
There you have it: America's great political debate summarized in three quotes. Forristall is not the first conservative, and definitely won't be the last, to dislike equality. Our history is littered with a surprising number of quotes just like it. Most of us think the ideas of Jefferson and Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. firmly planted equality in American soil and made it as apple-pie all-American as you could imagine, but the debate goes on. From Alexander Hamilton to John C. Calhoun to the Social Darwinists of the 1880s to Ayn Rand, William Buckley, and Jesse Helms of the last century and the tea partiers of this, there has been a long line of conservatives who are appalled and terrified by the idea of equality. There are a lot of remarkably blunt quotes on how absurd the idea of equality is from all kinds of conservatives which I featured in my book, "The Progressive Revolution: How the Best of America Came To Be."
When conservatives want to be a little less overt about their disdain for the notion of equality, they will say that, of course they believe in equality of opportunity, they just oppose equality of results. Besides being a ridiculous straw man (no one I have ever met has argued for absolute "equality of results,” or the idea that it isn't fine for people to get rewarded when they build and sell great products), they almost always immediately undercut their own argument by proposing cuts in student grants and loans, public education, Head Start and child health programs that get kids off to a better start in life. They are all for equality, they say, but never want to extend equal protections under the law to new classes of people being discriminated against. They support equality but don’t care if people with illnesses or pre-existing conditions can’t get health care coverage. They are for equal rights under the law but support eliminating funding for legal services, and allowing bankers who commit financial fraud to skate by without ever being investigated. They think equality is wonderful, but are indignant that progressives ask that millionaires and billionaires pay at least as high a tax rate as their secretaries.
Conservatives are on the defensive on equality issues to a degree they haven’t been in at least four decades, and they are flailing around pretty badly trying to defend their patrons in the 1 percent. More straw men are being created than in the Land of Oz. The Washington Post has had two big pieces in their editorial pages the last two days with conservative writers desperately trying to defend wealthy people from having to pay a fair share of taxes.
First up, with the lead editorial on the front page of The Washington Post Sunday Outlook section, was a piece by James Q. Wilson with the monster-sized headline “Don’t Blame the Rich.” The Post’s sub-headline was “Scholar James Q. Wilson argues that taxing the wealthy won’t end poverty.” Straw man number one: I’d be hard pressed to ascertain what progressives were blaming “the rich” for. I, appropriately, blame a lot of the big Wall Street bankers for crashing the economy through financial fraud, forcing the rest of us to bail them out, and then whining because we don’t love them anymore. Likewise, I blame oil and coal companies for polluting the air and threatening the earth with catastrophic climate change. I blame health insurance companies for dropping millions of people out of coverage when they get sick. I blame big business execs who outsource jobs from America so they can pay slave wages in China and Third World countries. But I have nothing against rich people generally.
If you are a manufacturer who has created a great product and employs a lot of people to make it while paying them a decent wage and making sure they have health benefits, and gets rich as a result, I have nothing but love for you. If you are a small business owner that provides amazing service for your community and gets rich as a result, that is tremendous. If you are a community banker who gives small business and home and auto loans to the people in your community, and make great money, God bless you. If you run a website that produces great content with a huge audience, and you reap the rewards, wonderful. I blame entrepreneurs like that for nothing, and am thrilled for their success. But I still want to see them, and everyone with the ability to, pay their fair share of taxes.
Straw man number two: I have never heard anyone say that taxing the wealthy, all by itself, would end poverty. There are many different ways we can attack the poverty problem, and a lot of them do require money, some of it private and some of it public, but poverty is not going to end overnight or be solved by any one policy measure. But what could taxing the wealthy more do? Help reduce the federal deficit, pay for more schools, repair the schools we have in so many places that are falling apart, hire more and better teachers. It could rebuild our roads, highways, sewer systems, bridges, and the rest of our crumbling infrastructure. It could make sure the entire nation has access to high speed broadband internet service, pay for more research and development, invest in more prenatal care, early childhood programs, Head Start, and quality child care. There are many other needs this country has, and taxing the wealthy at a fairer rate would definitely help us pay for all those things. But you know what else? It is also a matter of simple fairness and justice: People with wealth got wealthy in part because of the blessings of this country, and they ought to pay their fair share to support it.
Straw man number three: Progressives want to tax the rich only to help the poor. Now I will admit something here: Being the lefty freak that I am, I do actually care about helping poor people. Although I don’t believe all the theological teachings of my childhood, I do still believe that the Jesus of the Gospels was right when he said we would ultimately be judged on how we treated “the least of these,” and in general those with less than us. And I think it is also just good public policy: When you help lift poor people up, give them opportunities for a better life, you make our country stronger as a whole. But the conservatives’ goal in saying the only point of taxing the rich is to help the poor is to divide poor people from the middle class. The fact is that while the safety net for the poorest among us is tattered and in need of repair, there is very little safety net at all for the middle class. It is the middle class that built this country, and when the gap between us and the wealthiest keeps growing exponentially, the middle class gets crushed. Poor people are in trouble in this country but the middle class is as hard-pressed as it has been since the 1930s.Their wages are stagnant, their homes have crashed in value, and they have groceries, energy, health care, and college tuition costs rising. Their kids’ schools have been falling apart and seeing teacher layoffs, fire and police services keep getting pared back, roads have big potholes that never seem to get fixed and bridges are in danger of collapse because the wealthiest in society aren’t paying their fair share in taxes. This issue of fundamental fairness and vast economic inequality is not just about helping the poor; it really is about helping the entire 99 percent.
Wilson’s opinion piece ignores a wide range of recent research showing social mobility slowing down dramatically in America and being far worse than most industrialized countries, and he is remarkably selective about the data he does use—using statistics more than once that mysteriously only go up to 2006, before the collapse of the last few years, and ignoring data from more recent years that shows how income inequality has gone up in most Western countries, but by far the most here. He makes a special point, of course, in noting that inequality has gone down in Greece, while never mentioning how much stronger than ours the economies have been of several European countries (including Germany, Denmark, and Sweden) who have far better income inequality numbers.
Then there is Robert Samuelson’s piece. He adds a fourth straw man to Wilson’s big three: that passing the Buffett Tax wouldn’t solve the deficit problem. Well, no, Mr. Samuelson, but it would help. No one who supports the Buffett tax has argued that if we just passed that and did nothing else, all our federal deficit problems (or the deficit in public investment for education, infrastructure, and all the rest for that matter) would magically go away. To solve all those problems, you would also need to end the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, close all the unproductive corporate tax loopholes, end the deduction for million dollar-plus homes, stop subsidizing oil companies and big corporate agribusiness, impose a tax on Wall Street speculation, cut wasteful defense spending, create a robust public option in health care, negotiate with drug companies on Medicare Part D, and reform federal contracting policy. Oh, and start creating economic growth and new jobs at the rate Bill Clinton did in the 1990s. You do all that stuff and the deficit gets solved pretty easily, but I’m guessing a hard-line conservative like Samuelson would oppose almost all of those policies.
Samuelson concludes his article by saying this: “But recognize that the anti-wealthy populist rhetoric is mostly political expediency. It distracts from the serious issues the country faces—creating jobs and closing long term budget deficits. The anti-rich backlash is growing; a Pew poll finds 66 percent of Americans see strong conflicts between rich and poor, up from 47 percent in 2009. Pandering to this is easier than dealing with the future.” Not seeing that the richest 400 families in America have more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans is a “serious issue” and one of the most tragic flaws of conservatism. This kind of imbalance creates a country that looks far more like the Third World than like America in her mid-20th Century glory years. And you will never create big numbers of jobs or curb long-term deficits without a prosperous and expanding middle class. To suggest that those of us who care about issues of economic equity are pandering, or—another one of my all-time favorite straw men—are envious of the rich—suggests a fundamental lack of understanding about either good economic policy or our nation’s history. I’m not envious of the rich; I’d just like the rest of us not to be crushed by their greed.
The truth that we are all created equal is indeed self-evident. America was in fact conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all of us are created equal. And if a certain small sector of our economy grows so much richer and more powerful than the rest of us, it strikes at the heart of the America we used to be, and are supposed to be.