Homeless

On Justice + Inconvenient People

The drunk driver who killed Becca (if you missed last week’s essay, read here) will not be charged for the killing. 

No surprise there. 

Originally charged with reckless driving resulting in death and driving under the influence, where she was held on bail, Jessica Saita, age 35, lucked out by killing a homeless Mexican trans woman. 

Because no one cares much. 

The incident that killed Becca is now being labeled an “accident.” The DA will not prosecute. Saita won’t be held responsible for her death. 

There will never be a day in court. 

Or a reckoning of any kind. 

Homeless people, among other things, are excluded from memory and from justice. 

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I’ve been telling stories about the unhoused lately. My purpose wth this newsletter is to excavate some of the issues around food and poverty, mental illness and addiction. Homelessness is one of those topics. And it’s been on my mind since an old friend, Ms. B, had a big life moment and called me.

Food and housing are inextricably connected. 

How? If you spend too much on rent, you put yourself at risk for hunger.  So how you live and where and what the house is like and how much it costs  determines the food you can afford and that you eat. 

An example of that came up when Raffi’s friend came over after school. I offered his mom a dozen eggs from my chickens. She told me there were so many roaches in their weekly hotel that she didn’t dare have fresh food around. They ordered food. Ate quickly and neatly. And threw wrappers and packaging away immediately.

Her surroundings dictated how they could eat. 

It’s that simple. Your housing determines your food. They are forever connected. 

Recently a friend shared an op-ed in The Las Vegas Review-Journal from a group of drug counselors who work with the unhoused in Vegas. I am happy that these folks are attempting to figure out solutions. But I find their proposal austere, unnecessarily inhumane, traumatizing and ineffective. But I’m including it here because it reflects what a lot of people feel about the unhoused, that they represent a problem so big and untenable and unsolvable that we just want them corralled and out of sight. 

Their proposal included the following (summarizing for brevity)

• Create more shelter beds. Make it mandatory that the homeless have to live in them to receive help. Me: By force? How would this happen?

• Treatment options kick in when they are housed. Me: There is no plan for the actual housing, which is the real issue—where everything bottlenecks because there isn’t enough suitable housing.

• Involve the community and get their help getting the unhoused into shelter beds. Me: Good luck getting the public on board with mandatory forced detainment.

• End entitlements for the homeless on the streets so services only happen in shelters. Me: Weirdly, they mention food as an entitlement. Are we actually admitting that food is an entitlement, not a right? I will have to write about this in the future.

• Collect data and track results of each person across all agencies. Me: AKA surveillance. We like to keep an eye on the poor. But a limited form of this with a centralized data base could help streamline care.

• Specialized drug court Me: We have this in Vegas!

My friend commented on FB that this felt extreme, but that maybe extreme solutions were necessary? God knows we’ve all thought this. 

First let me say that the ACLU would never allow people to be forced into shelters. It is a serious violation of civil rights. This plan, for that reason alone, will never come to fruition. I can’t even express what a fuck-all mess that would be.

The reason shelter beds are available around-the-clock is that living in a shelter sucks. There are rules, steps, expectations, restrictions, and this community struggles to manage rules and expectations. They are mentally ill, drug-dependent, often treatment-resistant, or they have traumatic brain injuries, combat PTSD and/or so much severe childhood trauma that they will forever be reeling from the consequences of it.

These are the most vulnerable people in our communities. 

We could absolutely end, or at least make manageable, homelessness in Vegas and other smaller cities.

It would not be easy. 

It would take multiple administrations and legislative sessions. 

It would require communities to open their gates to people that they might usually not. 

It would require people in the community to heal their negative stigma of the unhoused and the poor and struggling.  

It would mean we have to be vigilant and focused and keep at it. We would need to allocate both federal and state funds, while demanding that casinos and corporations do more than give performative charity money, leftover buffet food, or invest in hostile urban architecture that keeps the homeless hidden from tourists. 

We are talking about 8,000-ish people at any given time. Many who would need specialized care to manage mental illness and substance abuse. 

But compare that to the 47,000+ people who moved here from California in just 2019. If we can accommodate California, we can accommodate the issues of the unhoused. 

I agree with my friend that extreme solutions are needed. But the harshness of the extremities should not be born by the homeless.  

We, the housed, must bear that. 

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One of the things my friend said in our back and forth about homelessness is that “every person, within the bounds of competence, has a responsibility for their own well-being, and if they choose to live within society (and that's geographic as well as existential), they have a responsibility to live within that society’s expectations of conduct.”

Sounds reasonable, yes? 

But this implies that people who aren’t doing well simply don’t want to do well. 

“Within the bounds of competence" is a mitigating factor here. People with brain-based disorders, severe trauma, substance use disorders or traumatic brain injury often don't have a lot of those competencies.

I would also argue that unhoused people don't actually live "within society.”

I talk about this in my book. The government has abandoned them. The homeless are not part of our communities.  When was the last time you went to your friends house for dinner and a couple of the folks at the table were homeless? How many of our close friends are chronically homeless? Can we name one unhoused person by name? And can they name us? How many relationships do we have with the chronically unhoused that are not based on helping and being charitable?

The homeless exist without context. And without context, there is no place for them to be in our communities. When they are run down by motorists and murdered, there will be no reckoning. No justice.

The homeless will only be a part of our world when they are housed inside our neighborhoods. When they are our neighbors, living independently or in multi-person buildings (when necessary, with support staff) inside our communities. Then, and only then, can we can start imposing our expectations for how they conduct themselves. 

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So how do we house people?

For some answers, I looked at cities around the globe. Here are some things that have worked. Mind you, the solutions are not founded on the unhoused having more hustle or more agency in their actions. 

It’s about how we can make room for them inside our communities. 

• Housing First Policies

We know that “Housing First” policies work. This means we build, create, organize the appropriate housing (and level of care in supported residences) necessary for people to live, without making them run a gauntlet of treatments in order to get it or stay in it. Simply put: We put people into houses.

We know what is known as “The Staircase Approach” (which mandates that people subscribe to treatment as a way to earn housing) doesn’t work. Clearly, we have to create actual apartments, houses and physical buildings for people and then let them live inside those buildings for free or for steeply reduced rates. 

Solution that works: Build houses, apartments and supported care residences for people to live in. And then let them live there. This means that monies coming in for homeless services need to be re-allocated toward construction and development of housing.

• Construction Requirements for New Buildings + Neighborhoods

Munich, Germany is a great example of this. Munich is committed to creating multi-class neighborhoods and they do this by requiring space for people of all different incomes in every community. They require that newly constructed communities have ⅓ residents buying at market, ⅓ reserved for low-income families, and ⅓ for residents who cannot pay at all. This creates neighborhoods where poverty isn’t so visible and stigmatizing, and where the markers of class can’t be seen. That means people come together for vastly different reasons that aren't centered around making similar amounts of money.

A similar program exists in NYC with 80/20 buildings. I lived in one years ago. This is a government-sponsored program for apartment buildings. It gives developers tax breaks as long as they offer 20% of the building to low income tenants, which usually means folks who make less than 50% of the median income. 

Solution that works: Require new developments and master plan communities to offer a certain percentage of units to low income and no income people. With tax breaks as incentive for compliance. 

• A REAL enduring commitment to ending homelessness

The Finnish people believe, as an expression of their culture, that being housed is a human right. By comparison, folks in the US generally believe that people are responsible for their own circumstances and can work harder to help themselves. Finland is admittedly more ethnically homogenous than the US, and this contributes to their success, but ingrained commitment to getting rid of homelessness is at the heart of their efforts. We can learn from this.

Finland operates on a Housing First plan. Cities, like Helsinki, are required to have at least 25% of their housing be affordable. Plus, the country works with the Y-Foundation, a non-profit social landlord that oversees services and programs to get and keep people housed. Under the direction of the Y-Foundation, Finland has opened almost 20,000 apartments across almost 60 cities and towns and the services required to keep people in them.

Solution that works: Two things: 1) Change hearts and minds that housing is a right for everyone (tough). And 2) create a social landlord non-profit that oversees getting the unhoused and low-income families into residences (when we build them) and oversees the services required. In Vegas, people could be housed in weekly hotels, as long as their landlords are a social service non-profit, where services and guidance can be implemented and to keep vulnerable people from being managed by shady property managers.

• Open Paths to Home Ownership

Back in the 1960’s, the reigning political party in Singapore created a housing and development board. This created lots of new homes for people to live in. Today, these homes are cheap enough that many of Singapore’s residents are homeowners. Nearly 90% of residents live in their own homes. This is a country where most citizens own their homes and reap the benefits of that for their children and grandchildren across generations. 

Solution that works: Build housing for people and make it affordable enough that even the poorest among us can buy in. We need to make home ownership a priority for low-income folks, through subsidies and programs, who are insecurely housed and vulnerable to homelessness.

This is obviously not a comprehensive plan. But there is success here and it’s worth looking at solutions more deeply. Many of our housing issues track back to our fears of difference. People ask: What would happen if those people lived in our neighborhoods? What about our property values? Do we want those children in our schools?

This part will have to be a generational shift. It will take decades.

Some last thoughts: We have a lot of hard-working, dedicated homeless services folks who are on the streets helping people every day. Planning for their care. Attending conferences and lectures. Reading the research. Putting actual food in bellies. Lowering people’s burdens and warming their hearts. Thank you for doing this work.

Now, what we need to do is shift our goals from caring for the homeless to integrating them into our neighborhoods and communities. If we can do that, people like Becca can be recipients of both equity and justice.

Please ask yourself:

• How do you feel about formerly unhoused or mentally ill or drug addicted people living next door to you? 

• What about a residence of mentally ill people, counselors and service providers? 

• What are you willing to do to make sure everyone has a place to live? 

• What aren’t you willing to do?

It’s time to start considering our place in solving this problem.

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The photos: 1) Becca with her bike. And 2) Ms. B who often came to help us pack boxes of food for folks during the pandemic. She also likes washing dishes, which makes me love her even more. Cooks love dishwashers. :)

I’m going through the last pass of the typeset pages for the book this month. Soon, I’ll announce the cover and the pre-sale. I will need your support with that. :) Thank you for inquiring about the book and supporting this newsletter in all the ways.

As always, thank you for reading. xo Kim