A friend emailed over a comment about the story in Sunday’s Star-Advertiser with the headline, “Initiative to Help Homeless Falters.”
The story leads off with this:
A 2-week-old statewide effort to identify the homeless and give residents the opportunity to direct medical, mental and housing services their way has not led to getting a single person off the streets or beaches.
My friend, a former journalist, reacted:
Oh, really?
Two weeks into the beginning of an effort to deal with an intractable problem, the Star-Advertiser sees failure? But the article calls the public response “encouraging,” and the second paragraph says: “Many of the calls were from people teetering on becoming homeless who have since gotten help.”
Further down in the story it is mentioned that some “new” homeless have been identified.
These would seem to be the news, not the fact that some people living on the street refuse to be helped or refuse to take advantage of the help offered.
Gee whiz. Looks like in order to justify a big headline and fancy graphic on the front page, well anything goes.
I have to agree that two weeks is way too early to proclaim the state initiative “faltering.” The story also conflates the issues of homelessness and serious mental illness, which pose quite different public policy issues.
But the story pointed out substantive issue–people or families with animals apparently aren’t accepted at shelters. Obviously, I’m very sympathetic to people who won’t give up their animals. How big is the population of the non-mentally ill homeless who can’t take advantage of shelters because they have animals?
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So,what’s the right length of time? A month? A year? Strikes me if you get a zero success rate after 2 weeks, it’s time to at least go back and double check the plan’s underlying assumptions.
I thought the Unfunded Feral Citizen Reporting Program sounded a bit wifty from the get go. Whilst I wouldn’t be screaming for an immediate shutdown, I’d sure like to know that there is a certain time when an evaluation will be made and a decision to proceed or terminate will be taken.
But I think it’s unfair to use that “zero success rate” label. The mechanism for public feedback was starting to work. It was also becoming a help-request line for the pre-homeless. Some homeless were identified and obtained services as a result. All within two weeks, and without allocating any additional funds.
Because I am very actively involved with the Windward Homeless Coalition which now works closely with North Shore advocates, we estimate that the number of homeless folks who have pets runs about 60% – way more than the number with dependent children.
Many of them are not that visible – they camp in valleys & other mauka areas because they cannot bring their animals to shelters and public workers make it clear that animals are not welcome in many areas.
For folks who want to work on these issues, please get involved. Our next organizational meeting is later today so it’s probably too late to attend, but if Ian is willing to post information about the next one, I’ll do so.
O those Star-Advertiser headlines! Did you see the one on Saturday that proclaimed, to the best of my memory:
PAUL MCCARTNEY TAKES
3RD DRIP DOWN THE ISLE
I thought it rather rude of them to call all the McCartney wives “drips”.
Here’s another over-blown story by KITV to the effect that the Legislature must go back into special session to appease Eric Seitz.
http://www.kitv.com/news/27847451/detail.html
We all must set priorities and make choices. If a homeless person is actually mentally competent, then we must respect his choice to keep his animal even though he knows that means he cannot go to a shelter. And it is ludicrous to tell taxpayers we must pay to enable him to keep his animal and to also have free housing in some other venue. It’s his choice, and not my fault that his choice causes him to remain homeless; so don’t make me pay for that. We might also ponder the question whether the choice to keep an animal and therefore remain unsheltered is prima facie evidence of mental incompetence. Perhaps those people who have cats and dogs, and larger homes than they need, should consider inviting a homeless person who has an animal to come stay in their home; instead of demanding to raise the taxes the rest of us must pay to accommodate the homeless person they choose not to host.
IMHO it is always wise for program administrators to (re)assess the adequacy of goals. Did no one consider what to do w/animals and STINKY possessions of the homeless? They surely should have. I am aware of many folks who forego drug/alcohol treatment because they will not part with their animals and the contents of their shopping carts! This is surely an insane situation for which concerned managers must have solutions.
I am recalling a 2 hour conversation I had last year with Utu Langi, director of H-5. He has been feeding homeless people in parks around the island for eight years. He is also the person who used the old Roberts buses for shelters. He told me one of his biggest issues was the meaning of the term homeless. To us “civilized” folk it means no home or apartment. He said to tell a Pacific Islander who is on a Pacific Island that they are homeless is meaningless, they will just look around wherever they may be and say “I am home” Is this part of the issue?
Thoughts & comments please….
Most of the recent research suggests that “shelters” are not very effective in reducing homelessness. What does work is getting homeless people into permanent affordable housing (where they can keep their pets and possessions). Many of the problems that persist when homeless people are being sheltered are sharply reduced or eliminated when they have a place they can call their own.
And the evaluation period for any new program is definitely longer than two weeks. If it was a new football coach hire, nobody would expect turn around within two weeks, so why should we have such unrealistic expectations of a public program?
The reality is that there should be annual evaluations with the expectation that a major turnaround probably is at least a three year project.
If the annual evaluations don’t show progress being made, you may need to pull the plug, but you can’t expect an overnight turnaround in such a difficult problem.
It takes that long for the team members to figure out to work with each other, to figure out what really works and what doesn’t, and and to gain experience in balancing competing demands, setting priorities, and building core competencies and institutional memory.
That is part of the problem with governmental programs. Often the top leadership that starts the reorganization/reinvention project is not around long enough to get it established and effectively functioning, and the replacement leadership tears up everything and starts all over again.
The Star-Ad’s headline writer needs to stop hyperventilating.
It makes sense to me that attempting to “fix the homeless problem” via encouraging use of shelters isn’t working. Yes, it looks like it’s just a shopping cart and a dog, but to the person whose possessions and companion these are, it might be something entirely different.
Our identity and sense of “personhood”, if you will, is in large part derived from our possessions and possibly our animal companions. If it were not so, I think it would not be so utterly devastating to lose everything to some disaster–after all, they’re just material goods, right? Just an animal, right?
To ask people who have so little to give up everything they DO have, after losing so much…that doesn’t seem to me to be an effective answer.
Lopaka43’s ideas regarding permanent housing which someone can call their own seems a good way to start getting back on track. One is not asked to give up all one has to get help; rather one is accepted as one is and given help, a much more compassionate (and evidently effective) model.
Hawaii is way behind in working on issues of homelessness. The animal problem is a problem only because the one available option (shelters) can’t right now accommodate it. Too bad we have only that one option going.
Other states are more or less advanced in working on this complex issue. Housing first, rent control and stabilization, etc. etc.
At base, I don’t think we as a state care about the disadvantaged. If the federal government doesn’t come in and sue, we leave them without services and often to die.