Comedy Show Feature on Homelessness

HUD Secretary on the Daily Show

What does it say about the major media that a good solid discussion about homelessness is done on the Daily Show?   Last night, Shaun Donovan appeared on Jon Stewart's Daily Show, and for 10 minutes we got to hear about homelessness and poverty on national television.  For clarification, this is a comedy show, and there was a real discussion about the huge increase in family homelessness and the number of children that find themselves homeless.   Now there are a few things that need clarified with regard to the interview that were just spin and not based in reality, but the bottom line it was nice to hear the discussion. 

• Everyone who watches the show knows Jon Stewart is a New York Mets' fan.  Psst, Shaun, watch the show for a couple of weeks before appearing on it so you seem hip and with it. Never ask a Mets' fan if they are New York Yankee's fan.
• We did not just figure out that housing was better than shelter even for the mentally ill.  We started closing down affordable housing back in the 1980s so what were we supposed to do?  Congregate living is cheaper than offering an apartment, medical care, food and case managers for every single person in need.  65,000 people declared themselves in need of housing when the Section 8 voucher list was opened.  We do not have the money or ability to serve that number of people, and so shelters are the best option when so many people are in need. If we had a national housing strategy, we would not need shelters in the United States. If we supported our voucher programs, our public housing and HUD housing with the the same zeal that we fund the Defense Department there would be no homelessness in America.  Unfortunately, we do not and so we have opened shelters to prevent people from dying on the streets.  The only way that it is cheaper to offer housing instead of shelter, is if the resident can contribute to the rent.  So, if you can return the person to the workforce quickly and they start paying rent then housing is cheaper than shelter.  Otherwise a bed in a shelter is way cheaper than an apartment.  
• The 20% decrease in veterans homelessness is BOGUS!!!  Just read the report that HUD published and see all the qualifiers at the beginning of the report.  They are using estimates of estimates.   They are using a one night count that is done well in some places, but barely done in other places.  It is like asking store clerks at Walmart and the local Shell stations to do a one night count to come up with the US population in the Census.  These numbers are not real for veterans.  If we cannot even figure out how many veterans are homeless how are we supposed to solve the problem by 2015?
• "We are going to raise the amount we spend on homelessness by 15%" according to Donovan.  This is only if Congress agrees to the President's budget, and that does not take into account the decrease in funding for other services that homeless people rely on.  It does not make sense to increase funding on homelessness at the same time as you decrease money for vouchers or eliminate homeless prevention spending.  If housing is no longer affordable and poverty increases, where do these people go except to the shelters?  There are massive cuts to housing and the end of the stimulus while at the same time increasing homeless funding by a small amount.  There is no comparison between the two--rental assistance is being cut by the billions while homeless funding is going up in the millions. Donovan's statement only tells a small part of the story.
• People are not chronic.  People may have a chronic disease, but homelessness is not contagious.  
• The stimulus no doubt helped millions avoid shelter, and the administration should be praised for pushing for these funds.  But what was not mentioned was that these funds are ending this summer.  With the housing system still a mess, what are we going to do going forward?  There are going to be more and more families struggling who can't keep up their payments and will turn to the shelters.  We are not going to have eviction money available to these families. 
• The settlement money discussion:  Why didn't our leading newsman in America, Jon Stewart, ask why they have not solved this foreclosure crisis in the last three years?  This voluntary program has not worked, and when is the administration going to go after these banks to write down these loans to stabilize the housing market?  $26 billion is chump change for the instability in the housing sector.  This was fraud that took place and we need a settlement of $2.6 trillion to clear out the abandoned houses in America and make a down payment on rebuilding our cities.  

There was a second part of the interview that was not broadcast, but placed on the Daily Show website.  A couple of comments from the bonus material.

• A legitimate question about the total number of homeless people was avoided by Donovan with an answer dealing with the Complete Count on one day.  As we have said before, counting on one day the number of people living without homes is like trying to count the number of Skittles falling in the rainbow while watching the commercial.  It is so flawed that it is a meaningless number.  It does not give us a window into homelessness or even give an assessment of the funds used by Congress to address homelessness.  It is a giant waste of time. 
• Yes, there are a lot of children who are becoming homeless, and why doesn't HUD consider the child sleeping on a sofa at a friends house to be homeless? They have this complicated list of questions to determine homelessness and there are millions in America who do not qualify by HUD as being homeless.  It was nice to hear that Donovan and the President are focused on the poverty figure, which is more accurate than the figure regarding homelessness.  
• Having a national discussion about the causes of solutions of poverty is always good, but why does it have to happen on a comedy show?
• "Get sober and we will find a place for you."  The Housing First strategy is great, but if you have 8,000 people using the shelters in Cleveland and you build 100 units of housing a year, how many years will it take to solve this problem at that rate? 

Thanks to the Daily Show for featuring this debate, but sometimes you need a translator to cut through some of the spin from government officials.

Brian 
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New School Children Resource Available

What to Do If You Are In Danger of Becoming Homeless While in School?

The state and federal government have clear and unequivocal rules for protecting a child's education. The goal is to get a child situated within 24 hours after becoming homeless with a preference for maintaining their school life unbroken. So, whenever possible, advocates try to keep the child in the school they were attending before their guardian became homeless. The State of Ohio Department of Education enforces these rules, and will make sure that school districts don't try to enforce an arbitrary residency rule on homeless children.

Thanks to our new VISTA, Holly, we have updated the list of contacts from each school district in Cuyahoga County. As the new school year begins, we have posted the 2010-2011 list of homeless liaisons within each school district in Cuyahoga County. With the passage of No Child
Left Behind each district in the United States had to appoint one school official who could help children who may be experiencing homelessness. These liaisons can help identify resources within the community for homeless children, and will help set up transportation back to their school of origin. So, lets say a child's family becomes homeless in October while the child was attending Maple Hts. elementary school, they could search our list and find the district's contact. This district official would help the child pay for transportation from the Harbor Light shelter in Cleveland back to Maple Hts. school every day. They could help with tutoring assistance or printing a family street card from our website to help the household stay together during their stay in the shelters.

Brian
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The People Who Make Things Work 1

Photo of Gayle Channing Tenenbaum from the Ohio Air Quality Development Authority Website.

Gayle Channing Tanenbaum
Congratulations to Gayle Channing Tenenbaum who will be inducted into the Ohio Women's Hall of Fame at the end of the month. Tanenbaum is a huge advocate for children in Ohio, and is the one of the reasons that things work in our society. Her job is to make sure that any threat to the health and welfare of young people in Ohio is met with an appropriate response. That could be a legal remedy, lobbying, twisting of arms, publicity, and most importantly shining a light on the inner workings of government. She has exposed the hypocrisy of campaigning on a platform of life, but cutting all human services funds so that young Mom's can not survive or attempts to balance the state budget disproportionately with cuts to programs serving poor people. She has worked 40 years in serving the most fragile populations. Tanenbaum works on public policy, planning as well as media and public relations.

Tanenbaum is a Senior Policy Fellow with Voices for Ohio's Children, and CEO of Channing and Associates consulting firm. Simultaneously, she serves a number of children and human services organizations including her role as Legislative Director for the Public Children Services Association of Ohio. She worked in the Celeste administration, and cut her teeth in social services in Cuyahoga County.

She holds a master's degree in social work from the University of Cincinnati. She is an adjunct professor, teaching public policy, at the Ohio State University College of Social Work. There are many who feel that our government is dysfunctional or dishonest or corrupt, but without honorable women such as Tanenbaum, Ohio would be in big trouble. She strives everyday to improve the quality of life for families and proven successes in access to benefits, health care expansion to children, and housing. None of us have the time to watch every move made by state government; that is why is critical to have people like Gayle Channing Tanenbaum acting as our eyes and ears down in Columbus.

Brian
Posts reflect the opinion of those who sign the entry.

Cleveland: A Nice Place to Live

Photo by Pleasure Simmons, which was one of the images selected by the Downtown Cleveland Alliance Photo competition.

What Makes Cleveland Great???

The City of Cleveland feels scorned by the loss of LeBron James, and we all feel like electing Dan Gilbert as the County Executive for what he wrote and said. Cleveland is not all about sports, and no matter if the Indians, Cavs and Browns stink we have a great deal going for this city that often goes unrecognized. In the area of housing and homelessness, there are a number of things that make us among the top cities in America.

1. Guaranteed Access to Shelter: There are still some issues to work out on release of information, intake, and disciplinary procedures, but we still maintain the appearance of allowing everyone who comes to the door into the shelters. If a person is willing to abide by the rules they will have access to one of the publicly funded shelters. This is expensive and causes overcrowding, but it is a life saver for many. The City of Cleveland and Cuyahoga County officials should be thanked for all their work to protect homeless people.

2. Peace with the Police: The City of Cleveland signed a consent decree in 2000 that settled 10 years of lawsuits. The Coalition repeatedly sued the City over their policy of arresting and threatening arrest of anyone who decided not to sleep inside. We finally settled the lawsuits, and the City agreed not to arrest or threaten arrest of those who are sitting, sleeping, standing, or eating on the sidewalk. This agreement has held for the last 10 years. In that time, the population of those living outside has decreased.

3. Project ACT: The homeless children and youth program at the Cleveland Metropolitan School District is over 20 years old and a model in the United States. They try to serve every child that becomes homeless in our City. They make sure that the child's school is not disrupted if the family becomes homeless during the school year. They serve thousands of children every year.

4. EDEN Inc./Shelter Plus Care: Cleveland is unlike most of other cities in that a private non-profit distributes the vouchers to the disabled. We have over 1,000 vouchers currently on the streets providing housing to homeless people with a disability. This is a great resource that the County has continued to put more funding every year into this program, and is a great supplement to the Housing Choice Voucher Program.

5. Coordinated Outreach: In both Columbus and Cincinnati, they have one or two teams out on the streets, and in both cities one of the outreach teams is a for-profit social worker employed by the downtown business district. Cleveland has five or six teams that go out on the streets to try to build a trusting relationship with homeless individuals. These teams have mapped out the entire city, and regularly meet with people as they struggle to stay alive. They have saved countless lives and moved hundreds into the shelters or housing.

There is plenty more, but this is a good list for now.

Brian
Posts reflect the opinion of those who sign the entry.

Children Who Become Homeless

This image is from the Homeless Grapevine photo class, and shows the image of a Mom caring for her child. The subject of the photo is not related at all to the incident discussed.


Who Do We Represent?

The Plain Dealer announced today a panel that would investigate the death of a homeless toddler earlier this year. Alexandria Hamilton died after being scalded in a motel. Her mother had a number of complaints of neglect and her children had been assigned to foster care in the past. Only a few weeks before the child's death the family stayed in one of the Cleveland shelters. I have no idea about the specifics of this case, but I know that some of the homeless social service providers are concerned that we did not do all we could to protect this child or the Mom. The bottom line is that a homeless child died, and just as the Department of Children and Family Services is conducting a review, the homeless system should conduct a similar review.

It raises bigger issues that we should address to avoid any future problems. It is unlikely that without extraordinary and unusual intervention by a homeless social service could we have changed the outcome in the Hamilton case. But a review of the homeless social service system and its interaction with children may prevent a future death. Government which funds all these services should request a review and make the participation of the homeless services mandatory.

The first confusion that needs to be addressed locally is who does the case worker at the shelter represent--the Mom or the homeless child? For licensed social workers this is clear and they have rules for their interaction with both mother and child, but unfortunately not all the homeless social service providers are social workers. We need to have every shelter clearly define their role when a Mom comes to the shelter, and those guidelines should be posted. At what point will they call the Department of Children and Family Services? See, many Moms avoid the shelter because they think that they will be reported just for taking their child to a shelter. There is also the Catch 22 that we have set up some facilities as absolutely not appropriate for children, but what do we do when every other shelter bed in the community is full? This was a much bigger problem six years ago in Cleveland compared to today, but it is still a problem. If a Mom takes her child to a shelter that is really not appropriate for children, but she has no other choice do we call the child abuse hotline? Is she better risking her child's well being in a car or in a shelter that is overcrowded and has a sizable population of women actively using? From the Mom's perspective since it is unclear at what point a shelter staff member will call the child abuse/neglect hotline, they often risk spending the nights in the car over the unknown of the shelter.

I have personally seen cases in which the mere fact that a Mom cannot provide adequate housing as the basis of a case being opened at Children and Family Services. Once a case is opened there are hearings and monitoring and oversight that takes place to protect the child. These are critical and a vital oversight role for the government to protect innocent victims, but often times poverty, foreclosure, loss of job or a chronic health condition disrupts the housing of a family. The agency has to balance the well being of a child with the economic struggles of a family, and there is no margin for error. This is one of the few instances in which a mistaken unification order or the closing of neglect case that results in the death of an toddler can be easily traced back to the decision of a single government employee. It is hard to hide behind a bureaucracy or rely on a private entity/charity to make these decisions in child abuse/neglect cases. Heads usually roll when a child dies after charges of neglect were overturned. My concern is that it is safer and the easier decision to take the homeless child away from the mother and put them in the custody of the County.

Finally, how do we improve our internal communication system within the shelters to keep in contact with women who leave the shelters with their children? How do we maintain contact with the homeless family after they leave the shelter to make sure that they are not living in a worse environment? Is there a way to assign a child advocate to every family that enters the shelters that will remain in regular contact with those children as they move through the system so that they are constantly moving closer to a stable home? This could prevent any loss of school time, assist with the smooth transition between shelters, or assist with determination of neglect. We have privacy and massive government bureaucracy's to contend with, but if it saves one child's life and reduces the time a kid remains homeless, it will be worth it.

Brian
Posts reflect the opinion of those who sign the entry.

Homeless Coalition Updates

Photo appearing in the new Grapevine #84 by 2008 Photography student Cheryl Jones.

After Four Months--Grapevine is Available

The Grapevine was forced to take a break, but we are back on track. We have a bunch of new vendors and the new paper is out. Available downtown, and at the West Side Market. We had to take a break and re-group, but things are looking good. There are some great photos in the new paper from students taking the 2008 Photo class. There are stories about North Point Shelter, and a few stories about homelessness across America. There is one interesting story about the City of San Francisco passing a shelter standards bill. The Grapevine has a few sad stories about hate crimes in Ohio and those who had passed away in 2007. Check it out.

We had a nice Teach In this week. The next Teach In is set for September 16, 2008 and will focus on voting and identification issues at 5:30 p.m. We will have an ability to RSVP on our website in June.

The new Street Cards are out and available on our website. We have distributed 4,000 so far. Thanks to University Hospital for printing this year's Street Card. In case you are not familiar this is a one page piece of paper that lists all the services available to homeless people right from the streets. We have published 18 updates of the street cards over the years.

HousingCleveland.org saw a huge increase in users over the last month. This must have something to do with the large number of foreclosures in Cleveland, but the housing search website saw over 1,700 more searches done this year over last. We have doubled the number of unique users from the same period as last year. In the last month, 6,517 unique users made over 50,000 searches on the website--a new record.

In a similar story, the Plain Dealer covered the story today of the dramatic increase in homeless children using the Cleveland Metropolitan School District. We are so lucky to have Project ACT in our community. Imagine everything in your world collapses including your housing, but Project ACT is there to make sure that your school situation does not have to change.

Brian
Posts by Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless staff and Board.

Youth Issues Discussed at NEOCH

Teach In -- Thursday of this Week

You can RSVP for a 3 hour discussion on homeless children and youth in the Cleveland area. This photo is from the last teach in, when we talked about homeless outreach efforts. We will meet at NEOCH at 5:30 p.m. on May 22, 2008 at the Coalition offices to participate in this forum. There is a presentation by a group of current or formerly homeless people, and presentations by a few agencies who serve homeless people.

You can call NEOCH or go to the website under Programs to reserve a space (www.neoch.org).

Brian
216/432-0540
3631 Perkins Ave. Third Floor
Posts by Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless staff and Board.