Past Issues :: 2006 September 1 :: Cover Story
Man about town: JOIN director Rob Justus leaves the organization he helped create for a new venture in affordable housing
Since 1991, Rob Justus has been fomenting a quiet revolution in ending
homelessness one person at a time. As a founding member of JOIN,
Justus has steered the organization through 14 years of education, outreach
and housing assistance — all guided by the streets themselves.
The result is an organization of outreach workers, community members and people living on the streets committed to building relationships based on people’s strengths rather than deficits. The priorities were, and remain to listen to what people want and need in their lives, and then wrap housing and stability around them. In the 10 years since the organization began placing people into housing, they’ve transitioned more than 3,000 people off the streets, with a 12-month retention rate exceeding 80 percent.
This month, Justus leaves his job as director of JOIN to begin a new private/nonprofit partnership with a local developer and landowner. Called Fornon, as in for nonprofits, the new organization will help match nonprofits with land assets and resources needed to develop affordable housing in Portland. Marc Jolin, the president of the JOIN board of directors and a former homeless advocate through the Oregon Law Center, will succeed Justus as director.
Justus’ career with JOIN incorporated advocacy work not just on the streets but in boardrooms and City Hall. He’s among a handful of standard members to the myriad city committees and discussion groups on homelessness, and his presence almost always guarantees a different opinion at the table — about police, public policy and affordable housing. He has made a name for himself on what he’s had to say on these issues, but his career was built first and foremost on listening.
Street Roots: In 1991, when you began talking with people on the streets, what were you hearing?
Rob Justus: One, that there were a lot of homeless people at that time who were pretty much left out of the system. That there had been designed, among other things, the Shelter Reconfiguration Plan, Bud Clark’s 12 Point Plan to end Homelessness... One of the assumptions was that if somebody wasn’t seeking shelter, the assumption was that they didn’t want to end their homelessness. And that it was a lifestyle choice, and thus, let’s criminalize them. The outreach that existed was only about trying to get people into shelters, nothing more. But a real strong sense from social services, from politicians from the police, that if you weren’t seeking shelter, you didn’t want to end your homelessness.
S.R.: And there would be many reasons why people wouldn’t be seeking shelter other than wanting to be homeless.
R.J.: Absolutely. And you also had this real strong notion around everything — housing, shelter — that people had to be clean and sober. So if you wanted to go into the shelter, pee on a stick. But if you weren’t going to do that, than forget it. So you also had a lot of people who were using and drinking who got locked out of the system. And it was that community, the “campers,” that got locked out of the system. There are plenty of people who want to go into shelters who can’t even get into shelters because of the waiting lists. It’s about freedom; it’s about waking up when you want to wake up, going to bed when you want to go to bed. And that was real strong in the community that we were interacting with. If you’re soft, you went into the shelters. It wasn’t even a critique of the conditions of the shelters. It’s really more about people’s personal freedoms, in that they wanted to be treated as an adult. There was a lot of pride. And it was those folks who really inspired me to do something.
Initially there was the educational piece. We had a couple of principles: if you wanted to learn about homelessness, you need to learn from homeless people. The idea was to create experiential learning opportunities for people who are more middle class to learn from homeless people.
S.R.: At this time there were other programs out there assisting people who were homeless. Weren’t they talking to the homeless?
R.J.: The system that existed had those assumptions, that you did outreach but you only did outreach to encourage people to go into shelters, and from shelters people went into either treatment or a training program and then into transitional housing, and then ultimately permanent housing. But it was this real elongated process and it could take forever. And what if you didn’t want to stop drinking? Then the system said you’re not coming in.
(One of the problems identified early on was an intake process that didn’t understand the realities of the streets. Justus cites intake interviews in which people are asked questions about whether they’ve had a drink in the past two weeks, trouble sleeping and any anxieties — all of which are common among people living outside, sleeping under a bridge and trying to survive the streets.)
R.J.: Early on, the notion of assessment was huge, and was something that I thought was just outrageous. And it still goes on, that somehow people think within an hourlong interview you’re able to determine someone’s future and whether they’re worthy, and to me that’s insane.
S.R.: So, there was no housing-first model back then?
R.J.: No, absolutely not. Nothing like that. So we started doing these educational programs. And then we started doing a little bit of community organizing. We started identifying leaders among the homeless community and really having them identify issues they wanted JOIN to work on. Early on, there were the basics, people wanted a place to shower — common sense stuff. But they didn’t want to have to jump through the hoops and make a life commitment to case management just to take a shower. So we initially talked St. Francis of Assisi Church into letting us use a basement room and turning it into showers.
(In 1993, a major camp sweep occurred under the Ross Island Bridge, and St. Francis offered its campus as a sanctuary. At one point, more than 100 people were sleeping on the church property in the Buckman Neighborhood. The situation at St. Francis sparked a volatile reaction among neighbors and the police who wanted the homeless out. Pressures increased, and the church ended the sanctuary agreement. To leave the property in safety, JOIN organized a march back to the Ross Island Bridge, including 40 to 50 people with police meeting them on both ends. The folks set up camp and Justus and others spent the night with them under the bridge. No one was arrested and the police left them alone. JOIN forged an agreement with the Oregon Department of Transportation to let people stay here, provided they kept it clean and safe. The bridge residents got organized, and for two years, ODOT would give the campers garbage bags to keep the place clean, and then pick up the full bags. At the same time, JOIN hired its first outreach worker and began moving people from under the bridge into housing.)
S.R.: Regarding ODOT, it sounds like you were dealing with different people than today.
R.J.: ODOT, has completely changed. And there’s no cooperation with ODOT today.
The other part of all that community organizing was that people identified two main things in their organizing. One, they wanted a facility where they could shower, get their mail, store belongings, have their dogs, a place that was low-barrier, where people could come and go, and weren’t required to meet with a case manager. The other being that people wanted to get off the streets, but they didn’t want to be case managed in the traditional sense. They didn’t want to be referred to as a client. Some people said they wanted to go into housing but they’re not going to stop drinking. Really, what came out of that was a real clear message to us that our job was to work with people to get them off the streets into housing but not to attach all these hoops.
S.R.: The folks on the streets were telling JOIN what they wanted JOIN to be.
R.J.: Yeah, There was no kind of brilliant master plan. It really was very organic in trying new things. We were going to try to get people into housing, and our first assumption was subsidized housing. Most of the folks that are trying to get into housing they wouldn’t let into subsidized housing. So we said let’s look at the private market and we started having some real success.
We were the new kids on the block and everyone told us we were crazy. And we had politicians and the police who said you’re wasting your time with these people, with the assumption that if they really wanted to end their homelessness, they would.
We got invited to a meeting of housing specialists sponsored by Multnomah County. And sitting there listening to people, talking about not enough housing, at some point I asked how many people have they moved into the private market, not into subsidized housing. And there was silence. Then this woman patted me on the shoulder and told me, “Rob, these people can’t make it in the real world.” And that just pissed me off. Nobody is saying anything. Here is this whole group of case managers and that’s your assumption about anyone who’s homeless?
So that kind of put a fire under myself and all of us, to say we’re going to do whatever it takes to get people inside and the only criteria is the desire.
S.R.: JOIN is heavily weighted on outreach. What does an outreach worker face on the streets of Portland today, and what are the obstacles to doing the work? What has improved?
R.J.: Early on in doing outreach we battled with police. I’ve said this before: The 10-Year Plan to End homelessness will be won or lost on the streets. Bureaucrats can talk and do all they want and generate the reports, but until the Police Bureau, the Department of Transportation, the Parks Bureau, the Environmental Services — all those city government entities — change the way they treat people and really work to help support people in transition rather than to create barriers, it’s not going to end. Trespass tickets, people getting their cars towed, all those things keep people homeless. They lock people into homelessness. And that was one of our big critiques of what was going on, was all of these neighborhood issues, people being pushed and camp sweeps, and ticketing, the assumption by the police and politicians early on, was if we made people’s lives miserable, that would motivate them to get off the streets. And what we learned, through building relationships with folks was it was just the opposite. It keeps them on the streets. Homelessness is often an experience of a profound sense of alienation. And systemically you’re responding to people in a way that really intensified that alienation. It was saying to people, ‘You’re right, you’re not worthy. You’re right, you’re not part of this community.’
(The system was also siloed into categories of populations: the homeless single adult system, the homeless youths system, the homeless families system, the domestic violence system, mentally ill, substance abuse, etc. To Justus and the folks at JOIN, this set up unreasonable criteria that hindered more than it helped people get into housing.)
S.R.: What has helped? Has anything become easier?
R.J.: Accessing the private market — that opened huge doors. Ninety percent of the folks we move into housing go into the private market. But the other side of that is what we’ve learned is that getting somebody inside is just the beginning. There has to be an elongated commitment to people to help them transition — to help them reinculturate. People are inculturated to the streets. The longer you’re on the streets, you learn to function in a different way because it’s survival and it’s dangerous and there’s stuff that goes on.
I think one of the most important things the system as a whole really forgets about is that people that are on the streets, like all of us, are relational beings. Community is important. Relationships are important, and that’s what can sustain people and motivate people. People often on the streets for the first time in their lives may find people who accept them for who they are. And that dynamic of a relationship is huge. But it’s also something that people have a hard time quantifying. So it’s much easier to talk about employment, substance abuse, all these other issues.
S.R.: Your organization has worked a lot with the city, and yet at the same time you’ve been very critical of the city’s policies. Do you think JOIN has affected city policy?
R.J.: It’s a real interesting relationship we have with the city. On the one side, we have people from the city looking at what we’re doing. And by total coincidence there’s this whole national movement around housing first. But we’ve never really paid attention to the “industry.” What we were doing really mirrors a lot of those conversations.
What has been and has to be our focus is the people. Politicians come and go, people write books, studies, whatever, there’s plans. At the end of the day, and the beginning of the day, it’s about the people.
For us, we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to then stay housed. And in that, not making any assumptions about what that’s going to be. It really depends on the individual. It has to be about the people. That’s why I don’t even like to talk about JOIN as a program. Because a program is too often the stagnant set of assumptions, and thus we make people take classes and create all this criteria and that’s what bureaucracy does... There is this effort to have people conform. And I think that’s one of the biggest mistakes. If you’re going to be able to respond to the thousands of people outside, you need the flexibility to be able respond to who they are. So flexibility, openness, trust are all part of the foundation of doing the work. Unfortunately, the bureaucrats need more than that.
S.R.: You work with the Police Bureau and have developed a relationship with the bureau, and yet the bureau, for years, still has this reputation of being at the very least insensitive and at the worst, abusive to people on the streets. How is JOIN’s relationship with the Police Bureau now?
R.J.: Our approach to doing the work is about building relationships. So we’re not going to take any different approach, whether a person is homeless or in a uniform. So it’s about building trust relationships. At the same time, it’s very important to push back, and hold your line and speak up. I feel like the best thing that’s happened within the Police Bureau, here recently, is (newly appointed Police Chief) Rosie Sizer. We, historically, have had good inroads with individual officers, where individual officers get it and kind of step up to the plate. And that’s crucial, because I don’t care what the precinct commander is saying, if we can cut a deal with an officer on the street to back off, that’s fine. But the bureau as a whole, we’ve been knocking our head against that wall forever. And it’s really only been with Rosie Sizer that the doors are opening. Part of that wall we’ve been knocking our head against was the good ol’ boys network. With Rosie coming on, I feel like, institutionally, there’s some hope. So it’s going to be interesting. And that’s some of the work, even after I leave JOIN, I’m hoping to continue. I am doing some stuff within the Police Bureau where I’m talking to some people and talking to policy change that’s internal to the police bureau.
S.R.: You’ve worked with the 10-Year Plan to End Homelessness. Do you think we can end homelessness?
R.J.: I do think that we’ve landed on some good ideas, and housing first is a good idea. I think without some serious money, some real dollars to be put forth, nothing is going to happen. Without some real effort to change all these other bureaus and institutions, nothing’s going to happen. One of my biggest concerns as we move forward, is this effort to kind of have everybody conform. This bureaucratization of this effort to end homelessness is becoming a real obstacle. And I’ll be very concrete: HMIS, the Homeless Management Information System, is a nightmare. JOIN is a less effective organization because we’re using that system. And the reason why we are is because it takes us three to four times as long to enter data. There are tons of assumptions made about people. The system itself is based on a traditional case-management ideology, not how they’re first approached. In some ways, HMIS contradicts how we do things. What gets in the way of this good idea is the politics, and honestly, the bureaucracy.
S.R.: You must leave feeling of a great sense of accomplishment.
R.J.: This might sound odd, but no. I feel great about the people who are at JOIN. I feel great about the people I’ve gotten to know who have made the transition. But I don’t have a sense of accomplishment, and part of that is that the bureaucracy, the politics, the egos, are all still there. And even though there are some good ideas in the plan, and there are some good things happening, I just feel like we could make huge strides if we could in some way get around all those systemic issues. JOIN isn’t what it is because of me. It is because we’ve had amazing people who are committed to people who are on the streets and we’ve had people who are on the streets come up with some brilliant ideas. So, what I feel good about is the relationships. But I don’t feel satisfied.
S.R.: The problems are still out there.
R.J.: Yeah, and I have too many friends who are still outside.