Re-Housing is Not Failure

Welcome to 2015! Like many others, I suspect you have made a resolution or two for the year ahead. Let me go out on a limb and suggest you – or someone you know – has resolved to lose weight this year.

Obesity is an epidemic. The percentage of the population over-weight is staggering. No doubt, people that are not a healthy body weight deciding to become a health body weight is a good idea.

The science of weight loss is simple: a reduction of 3,500 calories is equal to a reduction of one pound. If you reduce your caloric intake and increase your aerobic exercise, weight will come off.

Some people with their resolution for 2015 are trying a miracle diet of some sort. Even though the science is clear that these are less likely to be sustained changes, people will do anything to find a shortcut to get the weight off.

Many people planning on losing weight have a shiny new gym membership right now. The fitness industry counts on you showing up about now. The first few weeks of this month the gym will be crowded. Then the herd will thin.

See, you know that making a decision to change is relatively easy. Maintaining the change is relatively hard.

By February, the miracle diet will be a thing of the past. People get fed up feeling hungry all the time, or the bland food, or the taste of cabbage or whatever. By February, hitting the gym three or four times a week will become once or twice. By March you may get there once every two weeks. By April you may be regretting buying the 12 month membership.

BUT…

If you are serious about losing weight, you can get right back to it. You can learn from what worked and what did not in the changes to your eating habits. You may come to realize that evidence is your friend, and that appropriate portion control and caloric intake coupled with physical activity is the way to go. You probably recalibrate your expectations and timelines for losing weight. You may enlist the assistance of someone to support you – whether that be a professional or a friend.

What am I getting at?

Sustained change is really difficult. Whether it is losing weight or quitting smoking or reducing drinking or budgeting better or having a more positive peer network or packing a lunch more than going out – any of these sorts of things are hard to maintain.

Then consider, if you will, the experience of a person or family that has been homeless for some time and has a range of things happening in their life that they are coping with on a daily basis. Once they move into housing it may not stick the first time. Being housed represents a dramatic change in their life. There are experiences and skills and challenges that they may be under-prepared to handle.

We shouldn’t punish any household if their housing doesn’t stick the first time. The worst thing we can do is put them to the bottom of some list or not see them as a priority. If they were prioritized by their depth of need to get housed the first time, why would they be a lower priority the next time?

Much like the attempt at weight loss that comes up short the first time (or two or three or ten), so too might the first attempt at being housed out of homelessness. We can learn from the first experience to increase the likelihood of success the second go around (or third or fourth or tenth). The metric that matters isn’t how many people stay at the first address they move into. The metric that matters is how many people stay housed regardless of how many address changes it takes to get to that state of being. Re-housing is not failure. For a large number of people you support you might even say it is expected.

Special Supplement – What I Want for 2015

As a special supplement to yesterday’s blog about what we should all want for 2015, I wanted to share with you what some of my personal goals are for 2015 in working on ending homelessness and increasing affordable housing:

1. To not feel alone when I sometimes feel afraid.

I am afraid sometimes that no one else is pushing the rock uphill. I am afraid sometimes that those precious resources that are available are being spent all wrong. I am afraid sometimes that more people will die before we commit ourselves to change at a scale that is necessary. There is an “I” in “Illness” and a “We” in “Wellness”. When I am sick and tired and lonely and worn out I am afraid that I am all alone. This year I want to know how I am connected to others on the same mission with the same goal. I want to know there are more shoulders carrying the load, acting as one. I want to know that on nights when I am all alone and on the road and miles from home that someone thinks all of the effort is worth it.

2. Fewer haters.

This work is hard enough. I could use a few less haters of me or the message this year. And I know other long blades of grass in a sea of lawnmowers that feel the same more often than they should. On the interpretation of facts, I welcome people to disagree. On the merits of my presentation methods I appreciate not everyone understands or applauds how I present the messages I choose to speak of in any given day. But your hatred is wearing me down. Haters started to win in 2014 and that caught me off guard.

3. An End to Askholes – Accepting the answers to the questions asked.

The classic askhole wants the answer but doesn’t want to act upon it when given. I am a professional answer giver. I get paid to give my best possible answers. Here’s to a year of people accepting the answer they are given and acting upon it rather than: a) thinking the answer given cannot possibly be the solution; and/or, b) asking more questions from other people until they hear what they want to hear.

4. A positive spin on being an arms dealer.

Generally speaking I do not like being touched by people I do not know really well. I want to get over that a bit in 2015. I want more hugs from people that just want to communicate in a way that only an embrace can – I am with you.

5. Improved health.

Here is to a year with fewer red-eye flights, accepting more homemade dinner invites rather than restaurant food night after night, more runs on roads I’ve never visited before, and lower blood pressure. Here is to a greater focus on mental wellness. Here is to a few more nights of at least 6 hours of sleep.

6. More time with family.

My family pays the biggest sacrifice for what I do every single week. I need a few more weekends with an extra day at home. I need a few more work assignments when daddy can have one of his special assistants come along for the plane ride and extra time in the swimming pool.

7. Renewed faith.

More than once in 2014 I lost a little faith in humanity. It felt a little like vomit does when it reaches the top of your throat and goes back down. I want to rediscover faith that sometimes all of this hard work pays off. I want people to share what is working not to be boastful, but to give the rest of us collective hope that it is all worth it.

8. Less agreeing to disagree.

If someone is completely wrong, I need to speak truth to the power of their lie. When there is fact, I am compelled to allow that to contradict opinion. If they are held tight in a cocoon of cognitive dissonance, I need to keep saying it in different and polite ways – you are wrong. Why? Because I care too much about ending homelessness and improving housing and social policy to allow for the continuation of fairy tales when we have proof.

9. Figuring out the business side of consulting.

We give away a lot of stuff for free (as you will note if you ever try to “buy” things off our website…your check out cart asks for $0 money) and we lose money on the SPDAT and I bought out the other partner of OrgCode in 2014 which came at a huge personal cost. Balancing what people can afford to pay with what we need in order to cover our costs (I am not the only staff at OrgCode) is always hard. There is no Foundation or Sponsor of our work. We aim to be more or less a break-even, for-profit company. But I need to get my head around how to do that better and not alienate potential communities to assist in the process.

10. Being awesome.

I want to inspire awe. This probably means I need to dedicate some time to the things I love like music and stand-up, and maybe even take a retreat and a real vacation to charge my batteries more than once this year. I want to be the man my young kids think I am, while being worthy of the highest esteem of my wife. I want them to know and feel that all I do is worth it.

15 Things We Should All Want for 2015

In keeping with annual tradition, this is the blog that outlines what we should aspire to in 2015 if we are serious about ending homelessness:

1. Giant leaps forward.

Audacious stretch goals move us from the inertia of the status quo to a new (uncomfortable) place of the unfamiliar but awesome. Let’s make 2015 the year of everyone taking one giant leap forward out of her/his comfort zone – whether that is a conscious individual choice or as part of a broader movement (Zero 2016 in the US, 20,000 Homes in Canada, etc.)

2. Less band-aids and more solutions.

Let’s rally together every well-intentioned college class, church group and service club and get them to stop handing out sandwiches, coffee and blankets and devote the same energy to building housing and advocating for policy changes that would increase benefit levels and promote sustainable food security.

3. Imperfect action.

Less talk, more rock. Imperfect action trumps perfect planning. Get out there and do something different. Do it remarkably imperfectly. Learn. Adjust. Grow. Repeat.

4. A few more housing discussions.

I want a few more discussions about ending homelessness to be accompanied by the “and this is how we are going to increase housing options” discussion. There are more than just chronically homeless people that need housing. Trickle down economics are remarkably ineffective when it comes to housing.

5. An end to mythology.

Stories are seared into the consciousness of the masses. We tell stories about homelessness. We recount stories of how homeless persons became housed persons. But we need to start using data and evidence more and individual stories as pillars of success less. We need to tell the truth of what usually happens, not shine a spotlight on the anomaly that simply tells people the story we want to tell rather than the overall truth.

6. Fewer nice but stupid people.

Let’s take the goodwill of people with time and compassion and educate them so that they make positive, enduring impacts on the lives of homeless persons – not just perpetuating a cycle of well-intentioned, but ineffective energy. Charity will not sustain us nor will it end a complex social issue – it can’t.

7. Greater investment in professionalizing services.

I want a few more communities to grow a set and divert money away from direct service and put it into professionalizing its frontline staff. You can talk a good game about ending homelessness all you want. If you don’t teach people how to do it, it is wasted air. And wasted effort.

8. More organizations in communities working together instead of tearing each other apart.

Give me alliances for collective action that commit to work together to achieve a new reality. And for those who refuse to come along – paraphrasing the immortal words from Frozen – let them go. No point keeping around a “partner” just to spar with them.

9. An understanding of the difference between acuity and being chronically homeless.

Most definitions of chronic homelessness miss the point of acuity. Let us look at the depth and complexity of needs as it relates to housing stability. Let us stop looking solely at length of time homeless and presence of disabling condition, which could be an indication of nothing more than an ineffective service delivery system or woefully out of date programs and approaches that incentivize homelessness.

10. Stop clinging to the past.

Unless someone has invented a time machine that the rest of us don’t know about, we would be well served to leave the past in the past. We can learn from the past. We cannot yearn for the past.

11. An end to investment in stuff that doesn’t work.

When demand exceeds supply of supports and housing can I look any homeless person in the eye and say, “I cannot serve you because our community is giving money to another program that doesn’t work.” Probably not. If your community does not collectively put a stop to investing in stuff that doesn’t work you are essentially condoning the deaths of homeless people.

12. Leadership skill development.

We need to build leaders. I wish I could convene 75-100 of the most emerging leaders on homelessness and housing together for three days and rock their universe with knowledge, strategies, techniques and supports unlike what they will experience at any other time in their life. Then send them back to their communities to pollinate the bloom of other blossoming leaders.

13. Better knowledge on how people do after they are housed.

Take the guesswork out of it. Start reporting on outcomes (what happens after people are housed) and less on outputs (how many people are housed). If you don’t have a quality of life self-report tool we can give you one. If your assessment tool doesn’t have this capability, start using the SPDAT.

14. A grown-up conversation about taxes.

Maybe this will be the year people realize you cannot get better services while paying less taxes. I want to pay more taxes if it means more housing and less homelessness. The wealth exists around us to fund the solution to most social problems if we tax for it. Instead, we will have less than we need and rely on individual donors and corporate philanthropy.

15. Less unnecessary competition.

The best service providers should be rewarded with funds. The best communities should be rewarded with funds. And I appreciate the only way to determine what is “best” is through competition. But it seems that almost everything has become a competition from who can end veteran’s homelessness first (I have met many veteran’s still homeless in Phoenix by the way) to which communities can do the best application for more supports. Maybe it is time for more cooperation and less competition if we want to bring all performers to a new standard.

Thanks

This is the last blog of 2014. Next week I will be taking a little R&R.

Thanks for making 2014 such a memorable one for all of us at OrgCode. Some highlights and memorable moments on our end:

• I took over 100% ownership of OrgCode at the end of the first quarter

• White House visit in July thanks to our rewarding work with Community Solutions

• SPDAT and VI-SPDAT changing the landscape of assessment in the United States and Canada and Australia

• Seeing complete states tackle coordinated access and common assessment effectively, keeping the people to be served at the centre of the discussion and planning

• The Alliance conferences in New Orleans and DC

• The 100K Homes Campaign reaching its goal

• Gwen departing OrgCode; Kieran departing OrgCode; Jeff joining OrgCode

• Popularity of training other than SPDAT: Excellence in Housing-Based Case Management, Assertive Engagement, Diversion, and Promoting Wellness & Recovery in particular

• Completion of a half dozen community affordable housing plans

• Reaching places we had never been before and making new meaningful connections professionally and personally

• Maintaining top tier frequent flier status (like that was ever in doubt)

• Surpassing 1,000 Likes on FaceBook

• Klout status

• Having so many people subscribe to the blog, and the popularity of a few select posts in particular

• Board retreats and leadership development assignments with a half dozen organizations

• Assisting with Executive searches and transitions for a handful of organizations

• The fantastic OrgCode team of professionals that are my motivators and friends and the engine that keeps what we do humming along

• Feeling that the work we do is making a difference, even when it most often means spending 5 or 6 days a week away from home

Keep an eye out for the first blog in 2015 which is all about things I hope happen in 2015!

The Best Should Not Always be Promoted

If someone has survived on the frontlines for long enough we promote them. Sometimes that may be warranted, but there is an impact of this decision that needs a closer look if we are serious about ending homelessness.

If you are working with families or individuals with multiple areas in life with higher acuity, they will benefit from having a well-educated, experienced professional to provide the skills in supports necessary to help them succeed. If these supports are behind a desk and a new-ish or less experienced practitioner is providing the supports, the benefit of experience can be lost. Think of it this way – if you were sick with a number of illnesses co-occurring, would you want the specialist that has seen that type of issue and worked through it successfully many, many times before, or would you want the person that recently graduated and while they may have some new methods and techniques do not have as much experience?

If you are working at implementing a new program in your community – say a rapid re-housing program for singles – it can be advantageous to have people with years of experience to put service delivery into context. They may have perspective in weathering the ups and downs in new program roll-out. They may also be more versed in metrics and monitoring. Think of it this way – if you were to head out on an adventure, wouldn’t it be best to have someone that knows how to navigate even if they have never been to that specific destination before?

I suspect your community has been working on rolling out coordinated entry and common assessment of some sort. If we want practitioners with experience to solve problems and provide helpful solutions on how to ensure this works to the benefit of service users, having some of the best frontline staff around the table goes a long way. Think of a time before Google when you may have had to call the operator for information – did you want the operator that had many years of connecting people to information, or the operator new on the job?

Is there a place for new blood? Yes.

Is there a place for fresh perspectives? Yes.

Is there benefit in having some people not entrenched in a particular way of doing things to be involved? Yes.

All of those are positives.

The point is to not automatically take the most skilled people in your organization and put them all into supervisory or managerial or executive positions. For the benefit of the people we aim to serve – and for transference of knowledge and skills to lesser experience persons – we cannot underestimate the value of having highly skilled professionals with experience to lead the charge and educate others along the way. Or think of it this way – if you were building a championship sports team would you want all rookies or would you like to have some seasoned veterans who have experience being successful?

Depression and the Christmas Holiday Season

This week’s blog is a public service message about depression and the Christmas holiday season. I do not hide the fact that I live with depression. I want to educate people. I have learned to share. I think all stigma of mental illness should be taken out of the shadows and put into the light.

Depression sucks on the best of days even when you have a strong support network and a strong focus on recovery in your life. It sucks worse during the holidays. Let me explain to those of you that do not live with depression 9 things that are especially difficult for people living with depression during the Christmas holiday season so you know what is going on inside the person in your life that lives with depression. You can use these insights over the holidays to better support people in your life that live with depression.

There is a societal pressure to be holly and jolly.

If I could force myself to be holly and jolly I would every single day of my life. I don’t have that switch. While every Christmas celebrator seems to find their happiness overdrive this time of year, the person with depression may feel even worse that they do not have such an ability. Ask the person in your life with depression to participate in things like tree trimming and caroling and gatherings, but don’t assume that just because they choose to participate that they will suddenly be happy and “in the holiday spirit”.

There will be parties. Lots of them.

If you are an introvert and live with depression this is akin to French kissing an electrical socket if you are forced to go on a day that you are quite down. If you go, and you are having a down day, people will ask why you are down – even if they know you have depression. (“C’mon, man, it’s a party! Lighten up a little!”) If you don’t go, people will think you have no holiday cheer. On days when my depression is in check I can handle parties. On days when I am not in a good place, I avoid them at all costs. But you can’t win – people will hold it against you if you show up and seem down; they will hold it against you if you were invited and don’t show up. So maybe ask the person with depression if they feel up to going to the party and don’t hold it against them if they say no. Also, just because the person with depression doesn’t want to go doesn’t mean they do not want you to go. Do so, guilt free, when they tell you it is okay. And one more tip – under no circumstances if you live with someone with depression should you plan on hosting a large party. They will want to hide all night.

No matter how hard you try, you can’t buy your way out of depression.

I am not the only person I know with depression that has tried to overcome the guilt of being depressed during the holidays with buying more gifts for people. It’s kind of like “I bought you nice things so you will not make demands of me when I am down during the holidays”. But what happens is that you make no one happy and are broke. I have also had the experience of feeling more down because I have tried to find theperfect gift for someone that has supported me the rest of the year through my depression. Because I suck at buying presents, this has, historically, made me feel much worse. The best thing that ever happened to me is learning to ask the people I care about what they actually want for Christmas and then buying one of those things. Maybe give the person with depression an out like, “I know I can be difficult to buy for and that may be a lot of pressure on you. Would it help if I gave you a list of ideas?”

Then there is the whole Grinch thing.

If you are not the life of the party or heck even if you are not halfway happy at work when it is close to the holidays someone will say something like “What made you the Grinch?” There are few times in life when an actual throat-punch is warranted. This is one of them. Or spit in their egg-nog while you crotch kick them. Okay, so that is probably not going to fly. Like any day living with depression, I have come to accept that some people will choose not to hang out with me when I am down. While it may be more magnified during the holidays, we have to accept that it may happen then too. To support the person in your life with depression that may be accused of being the Grinch, ask them from time to time, “How is your depression with the holidays coming?” I can think of nothing more thoughtful to be asked by people that love me.

Presents.

Ugh. Generally speaking I am terrible at receiving presents. Many days I feel like I don’t deserve them. On some birthdays they have reminded me I am alive another year – which you think should make me happy, but sometimes has had the opposite impact. On Christmas, I could walk downstairs, see what Santa has brought, it could be the exact thing I have wanted for a LONG time, and I still don’t have the “I am going to do cartwheels through a meadow of mistletoe” reaction that people were hoping I would have. I may love it but have no clue how to show it. Take people at their word. If someone tells you they love it, even if their body language doesn’t seem to show it, believe them. Or another strategy could be to wait until later in the day or the next day and do a little check in, “Hey, it’s cool with me that you didn’t smile ear to ear when you got the present from me. I just want to make sure you actually like it.”

“You have ruined Christmas.”

Thankfully most of the people that have said this statement to me in past years are no longer in my life. When already feeling low and being unable to cheer one’s self up, being blatantly told that YOU are the reason why Christmas sucks doesn’t trigger a “snap out of it” response. It just makes things worse. Christmas not only brings joy for people, it brings stress. The person that seems the most down can become the scapegoat. Be sensitive to that. And never, ever, ever tell someone with depression they have ruined Christmas unless you are trying to convince them to end their life.

“Everyone’s here. Can’t you try to be happy for just an hour or two? Or would it kill you to smile just once for your grandparents?”

So many of us go through the annual ritual of hanging out with family that we see at no other time of the year other than Christmas. At some points in my life I have more or less been asked to hide my depression for the sake of family. If happiness or a smile is not genuinely there, trying to get someone in the throws of depression to force this to happen is about as likely as you licking your own elbow. Let people with depression be in whatever mood they are in.

Writing out Christmas cards can be a very trying task

However, there have been two great inventions in the history of humankind that have made Christmas cards easier for people with depression. The first is electronic cards. The second are photo cards from the likes of Costco where you can plaster your offspring wearing cute matching outfits whilst on Santa’s lap at the mall. Why are these inventions so great? Neither requires trying to force yourself to say cheery things on the inside of the card. Like me, you may actually love reaching out to people near and far with Christmas cards. But the pressure of getting them out the door when you have to write holly jolly things can be too much to handle. Go the route of the electronic cards or photo cards. Trust me. Or if there is someone in your household that does not have depression, share the duties of writing cards allowing some to be just for signature and other ones for writing inside. If you start LONG before Christmas there will likely be a number of good days where the person with depression is able and interested in writing in some of them, without time pressure.

Alcohol seems to flow very freely in the holiday season.

It is in abundance at gatherings. Even your own house may be stocked up more than other times of the year with beer, wine, special liquors and other spirits. In the pit of deep depression, alcohol can seem like a magical elixir. It can get the depressed person through many social situations of the holiday season but makes matters worse in the long run, not better. This doesn’t mean everyone that deals with depression has an addiction to alcohol, but it should be acknowledged that many people living with depression turn to alcohol to cope. Being sensitive to choices of sobriety is critical, as is ensuring that alcohol isn’t the primary focus of engagement at the party. And if you have someone who is feeling really blue around the holidays in your house, you may want to think of making sure that there isn’t alcohol readily available in your own home.

So there you have it, from a person who lives with depression, on how you can be really supportive of people with depression during the holiday season. Perhaps putting some of these into practice will be the gift that person has always been waiting for.