National City Christian Church Washington DC
When I signed up as a volunteer in this years "Point-in-Time" (PIT) count of homeless persons in Washington DC, I didn't know anything about the survey. Never had I dealt with any organization that helps those who live on the streets and have no place of their own to live. In a short email exchange with the organizer from
The Community Partnership for the Prevention of Homelessness I was told to not bring any camera, not to take photos and to participate in a training session.
The training and the questionnaire of the survey I described in my last diary. Lots of questions and a bit of angst lingered in my mind. How I would be able to approach the people I was supposed to question, in the middle of the night, possibly with flashlights, and then ask the unavoidable questions: "Are you homeless?"
I was supposed to meet with the other volunteers and team leaders at the National City Christian Church between 8:45 - 9:00 pm on Wednesday January 28th.
Little did I know whom would I meet there. It was a pleasant surprise.
Mayor Vincent Gray at the PIT 2014 Kick-Off Speech
I arrived pretty late at the Church and entered the basement on the backside. Around 200 people packed the room and gathered around their designated tables, one table for each designated area for the so-called "neighborhood teams". Seven to 10 people met with their team leaders, who then split them into groups of two or three and handed each person clipboards with the questionnaires and turf maps, which laid out walkable areas that each group of two people would have to survey.
Washington D.C. is a relatively densely populated city, squeezed in a rhombus shaped area of about 60 square miles, without highrise buildings, but lots of small apartment complexes and townhouses. Walking every street of it in four hours is quite a task. But that was the goal, to swarm out from 10 p.m to 2 a.m. and count every single homeless person we could find.
I was busy studying the map, wondering how one can walk all these streets in four hours at night, took names and telephone numbers of the other people in my group, while I tried to listen and understand to what was said at the other end of the room.
Mayor Gray, VA Sec. Shinseki and HUD Sec.Donovan
at PIT 2014 kick-off meeting
Suddenly the noise ebbed away and I could catch that someone mentioned the name of "Shinseki" and "HUD" and "Mayor Gray". I walked a little bit more to the front and then I did regret to not have my own camera. Yes, actually the Secretary of Veteran Affairs, Gen. Erik Shinseki was standing there in jeans and sweater with Sec. of House and Urban Development Shaun Donovan and Mayor Vincent Gray (in a suit) like everybody else, mingled in the crowd and ready to go. I recognized only Shinseki at first.
These three gentlemen then got serious and started talking about their most ambitious campaign so far under the slogan:
Ending chronic homelessness in the city by 2017
They were determined., though they made it sound like it would be easy as pie. Cool guys, of course.
Retired General Shinseki was always my favorite military man. Having seen him now in person and listening to his words, all my first impressions of this calm and sincere man have been reinforced. Unfortunately I couldn't find any complete videos of either Sec. Shinseki's, nor Sec. Donovan's or the Mayor Gray's speeches. Just some photos and this promotional video for the survey published by the VA. The most important sentence:
I Can't Solve a Problem that I Can't See
.
was repeated often during Shinseki's speech. These words reminded me of the "Invisible People" and the associations they produced in my mind. American Indians often poor, all of them somehow "homeless", similar to the population we were supposed to survey, but still not visible to most. (I know we don't want to see, but that's another issue...) Please listen to
General Shinseki's words:
What Is the Problem Then?
Let's see. Last year the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) compiled all the PIT counts and found that 610,042 people were homeless in the United States, a third of whom had no shelter at all.
Amazingly the nation at large has seen its overall homeless population decline by approximately 10 percent over the past seven years, despite the 2008 recession.
PIT Estimates of Homeless People 2007 - 2013
But:
Washington DC's homeless numbers have actually increased by nearly 20 percent
Think Progress digged into the data and summarized them beautifully here: I made a partial summary of Think Progress' summary (these data are to be found in the following reports: Homelessness in the Metropolitan Area and in The 2013 Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR) to Congress, specifically the details here:
Homelessness declined
4 percent compared to last year (2012)
9 percent since the beginning of the recession in 2007.
25 percent drop for Chronic homelessness since 2007.
24 percent drop among veterans went down by 24 percent.
But:
Homelessness increased (over 2012)
11.3 percent in New York
8.7 percent in Massachusetts
4.5 percent in California
33.1 percent increase in South Carolina
26 percent increase in Maine.
And:
Since 2007 Washington DC has seen an increase of more than 20 percent.
The National Alliance to End Homelessness using its own count, estimates that the:
D.C. area currently has the fifth largest homeless population in the country
(Look at next to last column of the table A1)
That Is The Problem
But luckily VA Secretary Shinseki had something nice to tell us. As outlined in this report the
VA Offers $600 Million in Funding to Support Services for Homeless Veteran Families
January 14, 2014
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has announced the availability of up to approximately $600 million in grants for non-profit organizations and consumer cooperatives that serve very low-income Veteran families occupying permanent housing through the Supportive Services for Veteran Families (SSVF) program.
“Those who have served our Nation should never find themselves on the streets, living without hope,” said Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric K. Shinseki. “These grants play a critical role in addressing Veteran homelessness by assisting our vital partners at the local level in their efforts. We are making good progress towards our goal to end Veterans’ homelessness, but we still have work to do.”
That sounded impressive to my ears, but the same way as Sec. Shinseki
can't solve a problem he
can not see, I
can't understand a problem that
I haven't seen (with my own eyes.)
That's how I ended up really wanting to see how a group of organizations united under the name
The Way Home - Ending Chronic Homelessness in DC try to solve the problem.
The Way Home is a campaign to end chronic homelessness in the District of Columbia by 2017 and to end veteran chronic homelessness by 2015, joining the campaigns in Phoenix and Salt Lake City, who have already shown great success. Their solutions are clearly stated, among which I think the "Housing First" campaign to provide Permanent Supportive Housings, is the most important:
1. Immediate access to permanent supportive housing. Housing First moves participants immediately from the streets or shelters into permanent housing, while providing intensive supportive services to help residents achieve and maintain housing stability and improve their lives.
2. Targets chronically homeless individuals who are considered the most vulnerable. The program uses a vulnerability assessment to target people who are at greatest risk of injury or death if they continue to live on the street or in shelter.
3. Low barrier. Housing First does not require residents to undergo psychiatric treatment or maintain sobriety prior to obtaining housing. Vulnerable clients can more easily engage in services and address their chronic medical conditions once they are no longer dealing with the chaos of homelessness.
The Way Home has a long list of
campaign partners and I pledged to myself to get to know them all, one at a time.
Let me go back to our count. We finally got ready to spread out at 10 pm at 23º F (but luckily not so strong winds). My counting partner turned out to be a Ph.D.graduate in Philosophy, who also couldn't find a job in his field, and therefore worked now for Pathway to Housing DC. I had my car and we drove into our assigned neighborhood.
He had chosen that specific area, because he was living not too far away from there and wanted to be able to walk home after the count, considering it would be 2:20 am in the morning and very cold. I had chosen the area, well ... because that's where I once met the one homeless Kossack you all know. In my mind I had some last little hope to may be ... find him there. Of course, nothing like it turned out to be the case.
Think Progress has written a beautiful story about their own experience with the PIT 2014 count The Bone-Chilling, Heart-Wrenching Process Of Counting The Nation’s Homeless", in which they talk about their encounters with a homeless person, who "didn't move anymore". You can feel the scary moments they lived through finding that person. I recommend to read it.
Mayor Vincent Gray during the PIT 2014 count
of homeless persons in Washington DC
Of course Mayor Vincent Gray and Sec. Shaun Donovan had more luck, because the area they walked in is known to have more homeless persons, right near the Hill and Capitol and near the Dupont Area circle.
HUD Sec. Shaun Donovan during PIT 2014 count in DC
We on the other hand didn't meet one single homeless person in our turf. It is a residential area around the Catholic University in DC and at that time there were no people, no busses, no restaurants, no stores open (of which there are not that many). The malls and the metro were deserted and only a couple of travellers that didn't look like they were homeless waited for the buses to bring them home.
We could have never walked that huge area, so we drove slowly in slalom fashion through all the residential streets with single homes. My compagnion and I figured out that were WE in the shoes of a homeless person, this neighborhood would not have been the one we would have chosen.
But it's good to not find anybody (putting aside for a moment how inaccurate these counts are by their very nature). All the team leaders reassured us at least ten times during the evening that we shouldn't be disappointed if we wouldn't find any homeless person. (Does that strike as a bit strange for a counting procedure? ...)
The organizers seemed to be scared we all wouldn't come back next year to the count. Having seen now what it entails, there is no way that I don't come back next time. It's really no big deal at all. At the end we met with our team leader and altogether the whole team had found six homeless persons. We went home much less tired and cold than we expected.
Let me just finish with some photos I found along my digging. They are kind of expressive in my mind.
Here are three photos that illustrate how great VA Secretary Shinseki "cleaned" up house.
Pending VA Disability Benefits Claims - Jan. 2009 - Nov. 2013
VA Disability Benefits Claims - stacked, bundled and forgotten
VA Disability Benefits Claims - Clean-Up - Shinseki Style
Wouldn't it be nice we would manage to clean up those as well:
and end up with these?
May you all have a nice, clean, warm, safe room for yourself. It is a right for everyone.