by Deborah Kafoury, Contributing Writer
One bright spot during the NAEH Ending Family and Youth
Homelessness Conference last week was the session with Micah Projects from
Brisbane, Australia. Yes, Australians are struggling with the same issues that
we’re struggling with here — but they’ve got really great accents! And, they
refer to homelessness as “sleeping rough.” I love that.
My “a-ha” moment occurred during the first 20 minutes after
I arrived at the conference. We were learning about DESC’s controversial and yet successful wet
housing complex 1811 Eastlake. The point the speaker made was, “we don’t wait
for people to be ‘ready’ for housing – everyone is ready for housing.”
Isn’t that the truth?
I have yet to meet anyone experiencing homelessness who said they
weren’t ready for housing. I certainly
didn’t hear it from the multitude of individuals I surveyed during my shift at
the Central Library for our county’s one night street count a couple of weeks
ago.
It’s true that they may not have been ready to meet the many
requirements we put on people to get into a housing program, but every single
person is “ready” to sleep in a bed instead of sleeping rough.
The steady drumbeat heard throughout the conference was of
sequestration, looming cuts to the already limited resources available to end
homelessness and of a need so great we do not even know how to quantify
it. The inspirational message was “do more with less.”
I pose an alternative concept. How about we “do more” but
with compassion? How about we “meet
people where they are” — assume they are
ready to get off the streets or out of their cars or off that couch where they
are staying for a few precarious nights — and do what it takes to get them into
housing?
This past summer, in Multnomah County, we experienced something we hadn’t before experienced. Our family shelters were full and 70 families
were on the wait list.
We hired two mobile housing placement specialists to help
these families find housing before they landed in shelter. (I learned from the conference this is
technically called shelter diversion).
Armed with flexible rent assistance, a cell phone and some training in
assertive engagement, they hit the streets – to “meet people where they are”
and, since December, they’ve housed 46 families.
Our housing placement specialists are named Mary and
Carl. There are Mary’s and Carl’s all
over the U.S. and apparently Australia, working similar magic – doing more with
less, and more importantly, doing more with compassion and vision and meeting
people where they are.
Ending homelessness is complicated. Unless you can peel away
the complications (that we often add to the program) and focus on the simple
solution — a bed. Then it’s not so
rough.
Deborah Kafoury is a Multnomah County Commissioner