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HAND OUTS HANDS UP AND SO ON
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news and comment by fort waynes local public policy wonk
Gina M Burgess
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https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10209365410557070&set=a.1512152488599.66075.1378001731&type=3
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im passing this on because she and i agree mostly on public policy and fort wayne governance. mostly.
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https://www.facebook.com/GinaMBurgess/posts/10209365413837152
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HELPING THE HOMELESS THROUGH HAND-UPS, NOT HAND-OUTS: Over the past few weeks, I’ve talked to a lot of different folks about the homeless situation. The most common theme is how to solve this problem. (And a few, “What’s it going to take to make this go away?”) The reality is that it’s a problem that isn’t going to be fixed overnight. I’m not sure what all the attorney for the Homeless has or will be asking for as a result of the Homeless lawsuit—besides restoring Constitutional rights to the homeless. And I’m not even sure what all the homeless, homeless activists, and homeless advocates are wanting---besides restoring Constitutional rights to the homeless. But, if it were left up to me (and it’s not), there are some things that can and should be instituted right away to have maximum impact:
Stop artificially inflating job numbers under the guise of so-called economic development. Why? Because our city attracts people throughout the tri-state region looking for a better job. Once people get here, they are in for a very rude awakening and often don’t have the resources to move on. This adds to the City’s pre-existing homeless population. (Kind of a sad irony---a City that touts all these “newly created” non-existent jobs, attracting people from outside the area searching for a better life, only to exacerbate a problem it created by failing to use available resources to prevent it. Now if that isn’t bureaucratic politics at its worst, I’m not sure what is.)
Dedicate a section on the City of Fort Wayne’s website for homeless resources. Make it an all-inclusive one-stop place to go for those who are homeless as well as those who are on the verge of homelessness. It should include locations of sanctuary spots (below), local homeless shelters (emergency shelters, short-term and long-term programs), housing vouchers (links to township trustees), links to subsidized housing (housing first programs), basic information and links to food sources (soup kitchens, food banks, and community feeds), basic information and links to fundamental tools needed to survive (i.e. Ave Maria House for an address, Broadway Christian Church for bus passes, etc.) and other fundamental information unique to the Fort Wayne community. It should be modeled in form and function after New York’s City’s “homeless department” website but improved upon. In my opinion, Fort Wayne doesn’t need a “homeless department.” It does, however, need an online portal of resources that can be accessed with the cheapest and most basic smart phones. Give the homeless a way to help themselves. Let me repeat that---GIVE THE HOMELESS A WAY TO HELP THEMSELVES. They don’t need hand-outs; they need a hand up.
Designate the 5 areas already commonly used as homeless encampments as “Sanctuary Spots” that are exempt from any current city ordinances that would be deemed anti-homeless. This allows for specific sites for respite for the homeless while allowing the city to be in compliance with various federal grant programs. Honestly, it’s time for the “City of Churches” to step up and demonstrate its nom de guerre. And it’s time for people more religious or more Christian or more “Democrat” than this proud-to-be lapse-Catholic /“not good enough Democrat” to step up and prove some real leadership. Bold. Innovative. And dare I say….progressive?!
**Make sure that each Sanctuary Spot comes equipped with a one public litter barrel for trash and one cleaned out (as in water power pressured, scrubbed down with sanitizer and hand-dried) public litter barrel for storage. The public litter barrel should be emptied weekly. The storage barrels should be monitored and tracked, increased and decreased as needed, but always one on sight.
**One week each month, a dumpster should be made available for a controlled monthly “clean-up.” During that week---day 1 -3 will serve as notice of an impending clean-up and an opportunity for the homeless to clean up the area after themselves. Day 4 and 5, that Sanctuary Spot will be shut down for a City-sponsored “clean-up.” Day 6 will be reserved for an optional City-requested inspected by the Allen County Health Department. Day 7, the “Sanctuary Spot” will be re-opened. (And, should the Sanctuary Spot not pass a Health Department inspection, then designate a temporary replacement Sanctuary Spot and give the City, in collaboration with the Homeless using that site, information about what specifically needs to be improved upon and a reasonable amount of time to get it improved. (With the understanding that, “reasonable” by Homeless standards is at least 48 to 72 hours.)
**Each Sanctuary Spot should also come equipped with a community-style bulletin board containing information promoting United Way’s 211 service, the City’s homeless resource portal (discussed above), a schedule of trash and clean-up days for each specific site, and space for community resources to make other info available (such as the Rescue Mission’s “Real Change” pamphlets; business cards from Blue Jacket, Indiana Workforce Development, and other work/temp agencies; business cards or brochures from mental health organizations such as Park Center; etc). In the winter, post information about expanded services, especially as they relate to emergency winter warming shelters. Again, the point here is to give the homeless a way to help themselves. They don’t need hand-outs; they need a hand up.
Honestly, it would be really great if Fort Wayne could act as a leader here. Lots of places are struggling with homelessness. The most effective programs, State after State, involve housing first initiatives. Housing first initiatives requires getting people into housing first and then jumping through hoops of assessing individual needs, working to get those needs met, getting folks gainfully employed and setting them up for self-sustainability instead of the failure the City is currently setting them up for.
Some advocates, myself included, would like to see the City of Fort Wayne adopt a “Homeless Bill of Rights” like other communities have passed and/or considered, including Indianapolis. Why? So that we don’t waste our time and resources as a community on these same problems in the future after each change in Administration. (That’s sort of the irony about a “Homeless Bill of Rights”---they are designed to protect the homeless, but there’s actually more time and money saved by the communities that implement them. It’s the not-having-to-keep-designing-the-wheel over and over again syndrome.)
Again, this is my personal “homeless wish list”--if it were left up to me….and it’s not. If it were, I would treat the above homeless wish list like a bowl of vanilla ice cream, and throw in a symbolic “cherry” on top of the would-be Sundae by mandating that winter warming shelters should open at 32 F, the “hot fudge” would be figuring out a Six Sigma-style system to collecting, organizing and maintaining data (creating a matrix of sorts) that isn’t politically-influenced but just gives us the hard numbers to see where efficiencies/improvements need to be made, and the “sprinkles” would be all of the above accomplished by or before July 25th. To me, there is something positively symbolic about giving the homeless in our community a “Christmas in July” gift of this magnitude. But again, this is all if it were left up to me….and it’s not.
To actually solve homelessness is going to require a combination of creating more space in existing shelter programs (i.e. helping the Rescue Mission relocate closer to either the bus terminal or to another homeless service provider that is right on a bus route, like Ave Maria House, and then help the Rescue Mission expand---which would require being generous in the purchase of Rescue Mission’s riverfront property), eliminating inefficiencies in the process to get people into HUD housing, stop reducing the inventory of affordable housing to make way for “affordable housing” that the average family can’t afford, and stop artificially inflating numbers and/or promoting the artificially inflated numbers to try to convince the community, especially Millenials, that all this new housing development of $1,500/month for 1,200 s.f. is “affordable housing.” (And to those who create all this propaganda---stop buying into your own made up statistics. The banks aren’t buying it. People can’t afford it. Let’s get back to being real.)
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SPECIAL THANKS to everyone who has helped out with the first stage of the Homeless lawsuit---Keith See (for having the courage to be the Plaintiff and endure extra harassment), Seth Anderson (for coordinating the efforts with the ACLU and local attorney, David Frank), Sally Becker Segerson (for demonstrating compassion and perseverence for the past four years and organizing/maintaining the homeless, volunteers, and data...lots and lots of data!), Joe Renner (for being at the right place at the right time and asking all the "wrong" questions while videotaping things), Amanda Annette and countless others for so much help that the list is just too long to include here.
Also, lots of thanks goes out to the community, from those making donations of food, clothing, tents, blankets and other survival gear; to those who have sent emails to City Council and the Mayor (and/or called) to get them to stop the "clean ups"; to those good Samaritans who have actually tried to help a homeless person on a one-on-one basis even if only for a couple of days at a time; to those who have offered a variety of support services from laundry to transportation and _____ (another long list); to people who try to bring awareness to solutions being utilized elsewhere; and finally, to people who bring up-to-date info about the nationwide trend of reversing anti-homeless public policy, such as Ernest B Greene Jr., who provided this news article that came out about three weeks ago: http://www.latimes.com/…/la-me-ln-homeless-injunction-20160…
Sincerely, a heart felt thanks to everyone!!
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HOMELESS LAWSUIT UPDATE: Today is the second and final day of the matter pertaining to the Injunction part of the homeless lawsuit. Essentially, once the lawsuit was filed, the City continued on and even ramped up their "clean ups"/evictions of the unsheltered street homeless. There was a special focus on the main Plaintiff to the lawsuit, Keith See.
As part of its defense strategy, the City first requested the Homeless list alll their potential witnesses (i.e. homeless, activists, advocates, and experts) and the nature of each persons testimony. After receiving this information, the City sought to restrict all witnesses, except for Keith See and ALL news coverage. (See screenshot below.)
In light of this strategy, I believe the City purposely and intentionally agitated the situation by increasing evictions and targeting Keith See to create the need for a preliminary court matter (such as an emergency injunction to halt their activities). In my opinion, that's low. I know all is fair in love, war, politics, and legal adjudication, but where is the line when it comes to human dignity?
This morning, the City get's to finish up their "defense" by focusing on testimony from the Allen County Health Department--whom the City called in for the May 3rd and only the May 3rd eviction (after the lawsuit was filed) to prove how dirty, filthy and unhealthy the homeless encampment lifestyle is. Really?? No sh*t. What do you expect to happen when the City purposefully refuses to provide its readily available, pre-contracted and paid for resources like public litter barrels from National Serv-All for trash collection and portable toilets from King's John Service to the homeless?? First, the City refuses to provide resources to prevent a known problem, then they spend resources (tapayer dollars/FWPD) to punish those who may or may not help create the known but preventable problem, then they waste money (taxpayer dollars) by hiring a third party vendor (Clean X-treme) to perform the already contracted for services they've paid for but refuse to require their original vendor (Republic Services dba National Serv-All) to perform, and finally they continue to squander resources (taxpayer dollars) by litigating the problem that they themselves failed to prevent.
And then they waste even more taxdollars (City and County) by having the Allen County Health Department come out to one homeless encampment, but fail to have the ACHD do a compare and contrast assessment of other public places that are not known to be homeless encampment hot spots. Nice way to demonstrate that you "aren't targeting the homeless" by asking another governmental department to assess public space used by the homeless and only the homeless. (smacks forehead)
After the Allen County Health Department's testimony, they will be calling the Rescue Mission. Apparently, there is some confusion about the number of beds the Rescue Mission has available. And why is there confusion? Because the City doesn't want any online resources to be presented in court---silly things like information from Rescue Mission's website about how it only has 44 beds in Life House (emergency shelter), 78 beds in Charis House (short-term and long-term programs for women and children), and 40 beds in Restoration House (short-term and long-term programs for men). That's 162 beds. So where does the confusion come into play?? Various news reports of how Life House can expand to up to 90 beds, which increases the number of available beds to 209 and reports by Rescue Mission leadership (whom won't take the stand) that Fort Wayne has a total of 500 beds and that the Rescue Mission has half of those beds, or 250. In fairness to Rescue Mission leadership, I would trust their word over the news reports, which I think inflated the numbers since the reports occurred during the winter months. (And this is why its important that our news reporters be allowed to report the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth as supported by proveable facts.)
In an interesting twist to yesterday's courtroom action, the Homeless were permitted to present video footage obtained by local activist Joe Renner. The twist was that the Court allowed the video footage to be shown, but would not allow the audio. Why? Because Joe got a Fort Wayne police officer to admit on camera that there was no warrant issued for the search and seizure that was taking place at a homeless encampment. Why was the audio turned off? Because Joe isn't an attorney. Apparently, only an attorney or someone with legal authority can ask a law enforcement officer to produce a warrant before allowing the City to remove and destroy personal property.
Clearly, the current Administration would like Fort Wayne to be a police state. What else do you call it when you make the case that only certain people have the right to question authority figures? When you conduct warrantless search and seizure under the color of "authority"? When you censor or otherwise punish those people who have the audacity to ask questions? Or when you try to tax people by adding them into your jurisdiction against their will? Or when you won't make all information available to the public (like all the "economic development" deals that take about 3 to 6 years of planning BEFORE they are introduced to the public) and instead hide behind the cloak of law citing the privacy concerns of he private businesses in public-private partnerships? When you control local media through the generosity or restriction of advertising dollars? When you manipulate who is and is not on the ballot, who does and does not get support, who can vote and where polling locations are? Does anyone else think that maybe the City didn't quite think this strategy through???
Personally, one of the things I find disturbing is how the City is trying to pit the Rescue Mission (a shelter for homeless with a limited number of beds and resources) against those who provide services to the unsheltered homeless who find themselves living on the streets. I'm not sure what the City hopes to accomplish by putting the Rescue Misson on the stand today, especially as it comes to a confirmation of their available beds. The Rescue Mission can't really stray from the information on their website without risking a violation of their building occupancy certificates. Oh, but wait, the building occupancy certificates are controlled by the Fort Wayne Fire Department. And who oversees the Fort Wayne Fire Department? Public Safety Director Rusty York. Oh what webs we weave....
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