An Open Letter to the Faith-based Group that Wants to Help People that are Homeless

Dear (insert name of church, temple, synagogue, mosque, etc.),

In the name of (insert deity believed in/worshipped), I understand you are called upon to help humankind as a way of living your faith and putting into practice the teachings of your religion. This is most welcome, and we are grateful that you have chosen to help people that are experiencing homelessness. I am an expert in the field of homelessness, so while it is unsolicited by you, I want to take this opportunity to fill you in on ways that would be most helpful, and the stuff you may be thinking of doing that will just get in the way of what experts are trying to achieve.

If you are like me, you have been in a hospital emergency room once or more in your life. I suspect you have been frustrated with wait times and wished there was someone, somewhere that could show up to help out with people that are ill, injured, or otherwise suffering. I hope we both agree that medicine should be practiced by medical professionals. While many hospitals were started by people of faith, and many of the early administrators and funders were called to start the hospital because of their beliefs, they understood that the actual practice of medicine should be left to people with appropriate training, expertise, and education. Because you are, perhaps, unfamiliar with homelessness (though you see it every day), the work of ending homelessness is much the same. Day in and day out, professionals in this field engage with people with tremendous traumatic histories, physical ailments, long histories of housing instability, people that have a history of conflict with the law, family relationships that broke down because they were unhealthy, addiction and dependency, mental illness, and/or, detachment from others. We focus on ending people’s homelessness even with all of this knowledge. In fact, most of the people we see on a daily basis are likely more complex in their case history than the typical person you would find in an emergency room of a hospital. So, just as you would not want an untrained professional practicing medicine, I hope you can appreciate that we would prefer that you don’t practice ending homelessness with people that you are untrained to effectively engage with; people that you could end up making their life worse instead of better, even when you are well intentioned.

First, can we talk food?

Christians reading this are probably familiar with this idea of What Would Jesus Do? Other religions may have similar sentiments. If you really care about food security, we would appreciate that you spent your time and resources advocating that people have a livable wage or adequate food stamps or other income supports so that they can obtain nutritious food of their choosing. Are day old donuts really the best you can do? Bologna? Whiz? Did you think that maybe people’s oral hygiene has been compromised a bit, and that hard granola bars and the like would be difficult to chew and consume. How much coffee should a person really consume in a day? Is a high-fructose fruit cocktail from concentrate really going to benefit the individual?

Some of you open up your places of worship and serve a meal to people that are homeless. From my experience, many of you go to great lengths to prepare a magnificent feast. Members of your congregations showcase their best recipes with loving spoonfuls. And whereas you would expect a restaurant or cafeteria to ensure everyone to be trained and qualified in safe food handling, and that all food comes from an inspected source, too often you – as remarkably well intentioned as you are – are putting the lives of vulnerable people at risk. Food poisoning is terrible when you are housed and have your own bathroom (even though you probably called it something like a 24 hour flu – of which there is no such thing medically speaking – and was most likely food poisoning), but you can imagine how much more awful the experience is when you are sheltered with a bunch of other people or living on the streets.

One more thing on food, if I may. If you look at the calendar there are several turkey opportunities coming up. While I don’t know of any empirical research, I suspect people that are homeless like turkey as much as housed people. What would be awesome is if you put the same amount of money and effort into getting housing, paying for first and last, or damage deposits – or even time-limited shallow subsidies – as you do organizing turkey drives and banquets. Heck, this year you may even want to forego the turkey. If I was homeless and I was given the option of turkey or a home, I would go with a home.

Secondly, let us talk about those people you want to help that are living outside.

You may not be aware that there are professional street outreach workers in most communities. These women and men are trained in the art of engagement and rapport building to get people living outdoors connected to services that will end their homelessness. Many communities are housing people directly from parks, street corners, under bridges, cars, and the like. These professionals most often know how to do the work without re-traumatizing the person with whom they are engaging. They are likely prioritizing with whom they engage and what they are trying to accomplish in any given day or night, because there are quite likely more people outside than there is capacity within outreach services.

I don’t want to paint any group of people experiencing homelessness with too broad of a brush stroke, but suffice to say many of the people you are seeing outside are amongst the people with the most complex needs and histories you will ever meet. Rarely are housing problems solved in one encounter. Heck, there are some people outside that lack trust of any organization because they have been burned too many times.

But did you know that the weather elements are not one of the leading causes of death for people that are homeless? You thought it was because you didn’t have the facts. So, I suspect you have or were planning on doing a drive to bring people sleeping bags and tarps and tents and such. All that does is make the work of the professional outreach workers harder in most instances. If anyone is going to hand out survival gear, probably best that the professionals determine when it is appropriate and when it is enabling. Meanwhile, a bunch of people that are homeless are about to die from cardiovascular disease, cancer, liver related diseases and infectious diseases. We should probably focus more on those things.

Thirdly, can we talk about housing?

Housing is the only known cure to homelessness. That is what we really need. If you want to help people that are homeless, help us with this. We need a lot of help. And there is a lot you can do.

No one wants you to build the housing. If you look at things like Habitat for Humanity, it sounds great, but not a lot of multi-unit residential housing is built that way. Most of the time it is one-offs for one family that the local HfH determined qualified and chose. It is like winning the lottery. Those things look great, but they don’t help the people we need help with, by and large.

How about you and everyone at your (insert place of worship type) start a letter writing campaign to your local, regional, provincial/state, and federal elected representatives asking them to build more housing that is deeply affordable for people living on government assistance or minimum wage? And then when you all get the polite “Our government is working really hard to ensure all citizens have access to housing…” letter, respond with the “Thanks for the canned response, now please provide us details suitable for our congregation on how this is going to be put into action.” YOU have the incredible ability to have a unified voice in creating change in this regard. Similar strategies could work for getting more housing vouchers, rent supplements, and other types of subsidies.

How about you and everyone at your (insert place of worship type) undertake fundraising to specifically allow some people that are homeless in your community to get access to housing because they do not qualify for various government programs? In some communities these are people like non-citizens. In other communities it is the like of people that were dishonorably discharged from military service and are not permitted to access most programs for veterans. Or you could help sponsor one chronically homeless person in housing every year. It may not have the same reach as peanut butter sandwiches, or have the same media presence or photo opportunities as a turkey dinner, but it will allow someone to permanently end their homelessness.

Maybe your (insert place of worship type) has surplus land, buildings that are not used, or other assets that can be turned over into affordable housing or sold to gain money for the purpose of housing. In most communities there would be one or more established, professionally run not for profit organization with expertise in housing that could turn this gift into a lasting asset that forever ends homelessness for a larger volume of people that are homeless. There would even be an opportunity for ribbons to be cut, media to be involved, and perhaps even naming rights.

Want to do something more hands-on? Create “Welcome Home” starter kits for every household that moves out of homelessness into their own apartment. Think of everything a person needs to start an apartment – dishes, cleaning supplies, pots, pans, salt, pepper, shower curtain, bedding, towels, shampoo, soap, toilet paper, etc. – and have one delivered by member of your (insert place of worship type) every time a person moves into housing and wants one from you. You get face time with previously homeless persons moving into housing, and they get all of the essentials to get started in a new life.

Lastly, I am hoping we can talk about dignity and the value of personhood for a moment.

In the history of humankind, charity has never solved a complex social issue. It never will. It is not designed to do so. Charity is great at meeting immediate needs. But it is lousy at getting to the root of the issue and navigating the complexity of systems and individual needs. Critical analysis of most charitable responses to homelessness, unfortunately, demonstrate that the delivery of the charity has more value for the giver than the receiver. You feel good because you did something for someone in need. While you may have alleviated suffering over the short term, you did nothing over the long term – and maybe interfered with the work of other professionals unknowingly. You unintentionally created a dependent relationship between giver and receiver. Yes, a person that is homeless may need food, clothing, or a roof over their head tonight. But they will need it again tomorrow night and the night after that and the night after that (and so on) if we don’t focus our efforts on housing to end homelessness.

If you think the issue is too overwhelming to focus on housing…if you are the sort of person that parlays this into the adage of the man throwing starfish back into the ocean…I can assure you that statistically (go ahead look at your census data and government assisted housing data, etc.) almost every single person in your community with the EXACT same issues as the person that is homeless is housed. Almost nobody with a mental illness ever becomes homeless. Almost nobody with a chronic health condition ever becomes homeless. Almost nobody with a substance use disorder becomes homeless. Almost nobody living in economic poverty ever becomes homeless. Almost nobody with terrible credit history or eviction histories becomes homeless. Almost all sex offenders and persons that have served time for other offences are housed. And so on. You see symptoms of homelessness and feed into the mythology of homelessness because you are not a professional in the field. It is really no different than people believing myths of waiting after they eat before swimming or thinking that if you consume chewing gum it will take years to digest – or any other such nonsense. As a professional I know how to separate fact from fiction when working with people to come up with solutions to their homelessness. Trust us in this field that have got graduate degrees, published papers, presented at conferences, undergone peer review of our work, continually work on our professional development, and network with other professionals on a regular basis.

I am begging you, if you are a person of faith, to pray and discern what is truly in the best interest of the people that are homeless you aim to assist. Would your deity be pleased if you were actually killing people with your kindness or interfering with the professional care they should be receiving? Is there a way you can practice your beliefs and end homelessness rather than manage homelessness? There is. Look deep into your heart and conscience. Please do so.

Sincerely,

A guy that has been at this for decades and is at a loss of what to do to help faith groups engage in solutions rather than charity

Museums of Suffering

The tour. You have been on one or given one. You walk through a homeless shelter or day centre or spend a night on an outreach van or a morning at a soup kitchen. You see the things that go on there. You meet the people – the program participants, residents and clientele; the staff; the volunteers. When these same buildings and programs are anchored in more traditional models rather than being focused on rapid exit from homelessness into housing they become, by definition, homelessness as a museum – objects of historical, scientific, artistic or cultural interest are stored and exhibited.

People that experience longer term homelessness are more prone to die. At some point for the observer the question of why the person is homeless and how to end it becomes a question of when the person will pass away. They can become resigned to what they see as inevitable.

Sadness is the cost of being able to smile once in a while. All of us are relative in our perspective and perceptions of the world around us. Seeing homelessness from a place of sympathy rather than empathy can bring the voyeur happiness. Every time someone remarks, “There but for the grace of god go I” it is easy to see relief.

Trauma-informed service delivery compels us to work with people. We are not to do things to another person or for another person. In being transparent in this process, the intent is to build trust. With emotional safety created, we are to be catalysts for building connections that endure and offer the assistance the person needs. In many homeless facilities, we forget all of this. Think of the program that makes people graduate through different dormitories or privileges gained for obedience to fulfilling program milestones. Think of the programs that bring in untrained volunteers to engage with people about the most intimate details of their life during moments of exceptional vulnerability.

Museums of suffering have special exhibits as well. Exhibit A, the woman that graduated from the program that lays out her story to self-sufficiency on the website, revealing the most intimate details of her suffering and progress along the way. Exhibit B, the man that is invited to speak at your Annual General Meeting to regale others with his story of despair to stability, all because of everything your organization did for him. Exhibit C, the family that you put the media in contact with just after Thanksgiving to outline how they got out of shelter and now have a shot at the future, as the journalist probes their addiction, parenting, educational treatment, traumatic past, ability to budget, and how they meet their most basic needs. For all of these Exhibits, whether named or not, the intent is to heap praise on the curator for putting on such a display, which means more money. It is a tragedy in slow motion to watch this happen. It is the horrific event that one wishes they could stop when everything seems to slow down around you. And these types of exhibits are so commonplace we cheer them on, and wait for them.

Einstein once remarked that gravity should not be held responsible for two people falling in love. Gravity should not be held responsible for people falling deeper into despair either. Each page of our life cannot be rewritten. Yet most museums of suffering make program participants essentially re-read each page over and over again. It is as if somewhere in a dusty old vault the museum is going to pull out a time machine and allow us to go back in time and reverse course. Impossible.

“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity,” remarked Hanlon. Perhaps it is not that those involved are malicious. Perhaps it is that they are not well informed. But one has to wonder when the tipping point of knowledge will occur. If I had a nickel for every instance a service provider has told me housing is not the answer for their clients’ homelessness but [insert: substance use recovery, Christ, medication management, budgeting, life skills, parenting classes, anger management, employment, etc.] is, then I know that the museum industry is booming. Because even when all of these are the wrong answer, people still give them gobs of money as if it is a sound investment on the best guess of what to do.

I believe that sweat holds more value than tears. We have to work harder. We have to work smarter. We have to demand that we do that which will end homelessness. We have to stop displaying the homelessness of others for our gain. We have to stop showing off volunteers and staff as proof of our importance. We have to stop thinking one more walk through of a dorm or commercial kitchen or waiting room is the answer. We need to bid adieu to uncertainty and embrace that housing is the only known cure to homelessness. And when a person or family needs supports, we provide those in housing.

To do anything else is akin to preparing another exhibit for the museum of suffering.

Making Change Happen

I do listening sessions with groups of case managers and outreach workers in several of the communities where we do work. It is their chance to share what is working and not working in their practice, and gives us the opportunity to identify strategies or techniques they can try to improve their practice. I absolutely love doing them, and can often see the frustrations experienced turn into optimism.

One of the most recurring themes in these sessions is the outreach worker or case manager that gets frustrated that the person they are trying to support is not changing (or not changing fast enough given some funders provide a timeline for certain activities to be completed). We often go down the road (again) of how coercing, threatening, ingratiating, contracting with, bribing and bargaining does not get strong lasting change results.

But where I have been finding myself thinking more in reinforcing change is walking people through the four strategies and approaches most adults can benefit from when there is a change situation to be considered.

Self-aware and self-guided

I know I need to change. I know what I need to change. I know how to change it. I have the resources and skills to change it. I change.

Self-aware and assistance guided

I know I need to change. I may know what I need to change. I don’t know how to change it. Or, I don’t have the resources or skills to change, so I seek them out. I connect to those resources. I learn and take on the challenge of change with that assistance. I change.

Motivational Interviewing

I am motivated to change because a helping professional used a personal-centred approach to be exploratory in her inquiry to stimulate change. This intentional conversation was evocative enough to call forth my own motivation to change. I may still need supports along the way. I change.

Assertive Engagement

I do not see the need for change, or do not see the need for change right now. Motivational interviewing has been attempted and gotten us nowhere. Part of my current behaviour is putting myself or others at risk which is why change is needed. Because I put up defences when change is suggested, a helping professional challenges those defences to make me more vulnerable to understanding the need for change – at least for the duration of the engagement. We are action focused. I change.

As a sector, I think we can lose sight of how the first two likely happen more than we know. There are some helping professionals who think it would be impossible for the people they support to change without them. I think we are doing a better job infusing motivational interviewing into the sector, but we can do a better job making sure the trainers are grounding the techniques into the realities of working with homeless and under-housed persons, and move the training and strategies a bit away from hyper-therapeutic environments, which most of the people we serve are not located within. And there is a need to continue to expand opportunities for workers to know how and when to apply Assertive Engagement. If change really is going to be a benefit because there is harm – and the person is not changing – then probably best to learn the interpersonal skills and creativity skills to increase the likelihood of change, rather than just being frustrated that change is not happening.

Learn. Grow. Implement.

Theory. Practice. Implementation.

These are the three key ingredients to knowing how to make change in operations in your approach to ending homelessness. Very recently, we announced the Learning Clinics in 2017. These are the next big step (risk?) we are taking at OrgCode to enhance the knowledge-base in ending homelessness, and help communities achieve sustained reductions in homelessness.

There are a number of different learning clinics throughout the first half of 2017. I want to take a few minutes to tell you why we are doing them, and to tell you about them, as well as how they are different from a typical conference or workshop.

Why?

We believe that our job is to be catalysts for better outcomes. We feel that many communities focus on the wrong things in ending homelessness either because of lack of knowledge or lack of leadership. We tackle leadership development in the Leadership Academy. We are now tackling knowledge acquisition. But not just any ol’ approach to knowledge. We are marrying theory to individual practice and organization or community wide implementation.

We believe that every community should invest in professional development of staff every year. We feel this way because it is our contention that we need to see this work as a professional service rather than a charitable approach to addressing homelessness.

We believe that people that are homeless in every community are best served by the best trained staff and organization. We feel that an organization/community owes it to the people they serve to ensure they are on top of the main currents of thought and practice, know how to make those practices happen, and are committed to making it work to improve homelessness.

We know that change sucks, and that while a person or organization may like the idea of changing, they rarely take the time to discern what they do not know, invest in getting the knowledge they need, and struggle to keep change happening when faced with challenges. We feel that if we help people group their approach in broader theory that change is more likely to be realized in practice and wide-scale implementation.

We believe in communities of practice. We feel that if we can bring people together from different communities and even different countries we can increase the size of your sounding board, give you more people to reach out to for help when you are implementing change, and enhance your network of like-minded professionals.

We know that conferences can do a great job of introducing you to a topic – usually over 90 minutes or so – but that it is impossible for a panel presentation or even one presenter in that time to give you all you need to know in order to practice what you have learned. We also know that webinars are great at getting information out, but are not intimate enough to allow for connection and ongoing change practice. We accept we can do better in providing information and improving practice.

The Clinic Topics

You can read a more fulsome description of the topics here and the first ones are open for registration  here, here, here and here. Below is a quick synopsis of all of them:

Housing Stabilization (Ottawa Jan 9 & 10; Las Vegas Jan 26 & 27) – how to keep at least four out of five of your most acute households housed so that they do not come back into homelessness.

Coordinated Entry (San Diego Mar 2 & 3; Burlington, Ontario Mar 6 & 7) – even communities that have been trying to implement or have implemented within the last two years will likely find the refinements of practice outlined in this learning clinic to be exceptionally important.

How to be an Awesome Shelter (Edmonton Mar 20 & 21; Dallas Mar 23 & 24) – what it takes to make your shelter completely housing focused and change all practices to be trauma-informed

Being a Kick Butt Community Entity (Continuum of Care, Community Based Organization or Service Provider) (Providence Apr 10 & 11) – the best approaches to guide, lead and manage the body that influences how your community invests in and responds to homelessness

Rural Homelessness Solutions (Minneapolis May 8 & 9) – everything you needed to know to focus on amazing service delivery when engaging with people in rural and even remote geographic areas

Street Outreach to Housing (Nashville May 11 & 12; Saskatoon May 15 & 16) – how to make sure all engagement is focused on housing, and the connection to coordinated entry and housing stability when people are street involved

Making Your HMIS Super Awesome & Using Your Performance Data (Pittsburgh June 5 & 6; Denver June 8 & 9) – the alternate title for this session is “Un-f*cking Your HMIS” if that helps you figure out what this session will focus on.

For many of the sessions (Housing Stabilization, Coordinated Entry, and How to Be an Awesome Shelter) we are offering three separate tracks: one for families, one for unaccompanied youth, and one for single adults. These will occur at the same venue. Plenary will be shared and instruction will be with like-service organizations/staff.

How These Differ From Other Conferences or Workshops

We, as you may know, are HUGE fans of conferences. We attend a lot of them. We are honoured when given the chance to keynote or do session presentations. We find them to be highly effective at communicating key messaging and helping to outline the key aspects of some important aspects of homeless service delivery.

What conferences are not awesome at (nor are they designed to do) is to give very detailed instruction on any particular topic of interest in ending homelessness. Each of the Learning Clinics we are delivering are either 1.5 or 2 full day sessions (depends on the subject). These are a much deeper dive into the subjects.

We are also working to own the things we (OrgCode) does well and focus on those things. We happen to think there are other organizations that are remarkably stellar at training on some other stuff (like the National Alliance to End Homelessness work on Rapid ReHousing, T3’s work on Motivational Interviewing, and Focus Strategies work on data analysis – to name a few). We are not out to compete with any of these organizations or their strengths. We are here to bring our expertise to a different audience in a different manner.

In addition, we are working and communicating with a range of colleagues in different organizations and government to ensure our content is aligned to policy, other initiatives afoot, and changes in the pipeline. You already know we are decently connected to what is happening in the bigger picture. You can expect that to be anchored into our material delivery.

We would be honoured if you would make the investment to join your colleagues in improving service, learn all you need to take the information back to your community and put it into practice, and help improve your efforts to end homelessness.

Crazy Sh!t, Volume 3, 2016

Time for everyone’s favourite blog – the crazy shit from July, August and September.

$1.8M vs $4.3M

Let me get this straight, the motel operator, who is in his late 70s, wants to sell you all of his properties for $1.8M (way below market value because he believes you are doing the Lord’s work) so you can continue to use them to help homeless families where you have given the operator $4.3M in fees over the past three years, but it does not make financial sense? (Even if one of the properties is RIGHT ON THE OCEAN and a recent building audit for the entire portfolio of properties showed the buildings to be in REMARKABLE SHAPE!!!)

“I would like to speak with your boss. Does he know the things you say when presenting?”

How to handle this delicately….yes, I know the things he says because I am the boss – though I dislike that title.

“In your speech this morning you cited Census data, SAMSHA data, data from your government, HUD data, and at least seven different academic papers. This is what makes your conclusions so remarkably bad – none of these are direct service providers. None of these see the reality of homelessness every single day. Those of us on the frontline know that the reality is way different than any study every published by anyone.”

And that, folks, is a great example of what happens time and time again if you try to persuade people with data and evidence. Part of it is operational bias. Part of it is cognitive dissonance. All of it is a compelling example of why putting proof of alternatives to current service models can be more important than just talking about the alternatives. In my defence, this was a reaction to things I said at a keynote – which was not the right venue for me to explain how to make things operational in great detail.

“I read with interest your tweet about the upcoming OrgCode Learning Clinics. We are a small group of concerned citizens working to improve homeless services in the Pacific Northwest. We are unable to attend any of the Learning Clinics (no budget for travel or conference attendance), but we are hoping you would consider sending us all of the material so we can use it to educate services, government, and the general public in Seattle and the surrounding area. As you may know, we have plenty of issues up here, especially with tent cities. What you are teaching could have the answers we have been looking for.”

I think it is admirable that a group has banded together to try and improve homeless services. But I am astounded that would think we would just turn over all of the materials from the newly announced Learning Clinics to help out.

“You could have just said, ‘no thanks’ instead of lying you are that busy.”

This came to me in an email when I said the next open dates I have in my schedule is January. I wasn’t lying. Apparently, though, they took offence and thought I was brushing them off. Then when I had two postponed events and got back in touch with them they indicated they did not want to “play games”. Sigh.

“That’s your opinion.”

Nope. As it turns out, those are the facts. People are allowed to have their own opinions. They are not allowed to have their own facts. So, if I have facts and you have opinions, I will. If that pisses you off and you want to complain to the VA? So be it. Though I do hope, woman in Florida, that a better organization serves people in your county.

“HUD is out to take away our transitional housing in the same way Hillary is out to take away our guns.”

This is what makes places like Texas fun to do work within. If by “fun” I meant “frustrating as f*ck”.

“How do I get people to stop forwarding me your blogs? About once per month at least a half dozen people want me to read what you wrote in your blog. I am sick of it. I do not like you or what your business stands for.”

Turns out the blog on day services was the last straw for this Rescue Mission in the Southwest. Turns out, though, I have no control what people want to forward to him in his community. Oh well.

“Businesses in our downtown are thinking of blaring music every night to make sure people cannot sleep in their doorways. They want me to ask you if Metallica or Mariah Carey would be better. Any studies on which are better for keeping people away – metal or pop music?”

I refuse to participate in non-sleeping playlists.

“I am writing you today hoping this question does not put me in the Crazy Shit blog. Keep in mind I am asking for my boss. She wants to convert one of our transitional housing programs. She wants it to be abstinence-based and require that people can prove three months of employment prior to entry. She is not against having people with a mental illness live there, but wants them to prove they take medications. How can you spin this so it falls within ‘Housing First’ and make sure we get points from our CoC in our application if we go this way? We were thinking of calling it Site Based Recovery Oriented Rapid ReHousing. Thoughts?”

Um – WTF is wrong with your boss? That is like looking at a Toyota Camry and convincing yourself it is a Porshe.

“How many more jobs do you have to take away from Americans until you are satisfied?

This question came from a US-based TA provider. Well, we don’t look for work. It looks for us. Oh, and people with OrgCode are a combination of Americans and Canadians. Also, I was unaware that Americans had a stranglehold on all ideas related to ending homelessness.

“Can you settle an argument between my brother and I? I say you must have been in a rock band. He believes you were probably a jazz musician or pop musician masquerading as a rock guy.”

Seriously? Your organization turned away more than 1,000 people from services last year and the reason you email me is to settle an argument with your brother about my previous musicianship? Whatever. It was rock. Now get back to work.

A Bias Towards Longevity

One of the weirdest things about homelessness is that the longer you are homeless, the better you are at being homeless. And many services – government, not for profit, faith-based, etc. – feed into this bias. They are generally difficult to navigate unless you have been in the system for a long time.

It seems once or twice every year (at least) some organization has an intern pulling together a guide of services for people that are homeless. It takes them months. And it may have value to the intern if they are staying in the field or are trying to figure out the array of services that exist for people that are homeless.

Want a more efficient way to do it?

Give five chronically homeless dudes a pizza and an hour and they can write out the whole thing for you. Heck, they can likely rank order each shelter, feeding program, day service, outreach program, etc. based upon their perceptions of their awesomeness. (“This shelter is three bunks out of five.”, “The breakfast program at St. Mildred’s is a solid five spoons out of five.”, “The lasagne dinner at the temple the last Wednesday of the month is two volunteer happy faces out of five.” Etc.)

How did we get to a place where there is a bias to longevity?

Much of it has to do with false promises and waiting lists. Most of the people that experience homelessness for long periods of time have been promised many things over the years that have not panned out the way initially promised. Or, the offer of service resulted in being put on a waiting list, not on actually providing service.

Waiting lists are a game of Survivor – outwit, outplay, and outlast and you too may get the pot of gold at the end of the waiting list rainbow. Meanwhile, an entire bureaucratic system has been put in place to manage the waiting list and the data associated with it. There are now staff whose sole function is to do nothing other than manage more names being added to a list.

Perhaps this is a large dollop of pessimism that is making you feel uncomfortable. That discomfort may work to our advantage of solving the problems in front of us. Imagine if we all felt a sense of urgency to appropriately prioritize and serve those with the longest homelessness and deepest needs first? Imagine if we decide to tear up our waiting lists and focus on priority lists. Consider what would happen if we could have the fortitude to distinguish between being eligibility for a service and needing a service. Furthermore, what would it be like if you/your system no longer had people with lower needs consume resources that should be reserved exclusively for those with the deepest needs?