HUD’s Seven Big Homelessness Fails

I’m a nomad-by-choice. For the past 10 years, under the banner of HEAR US Inc., my nonprofit organization, I’ve traveled over 200,000 miles of mostly backroads travel chronicling homeless families and youth across the country. I live full-time in a van converted into a motorhome/workspace. I used to run the largest shelter in Illinois outside Chicago. I’ve been working on the issue of homelessness for 3 decades.

Last night I relented and paid for a campground in Asheville, NC instead of sleeping in my van in the ubiquitous Walmart parking lot because temps were down to 20 and I don’t like to freeze. One of my neighbors, I learned today, was a homeless family staying there because they have nowhere to go. Their school-age children were on the bus and off to school before I stuck my nose outside.

Last night in this funky and wonderful western NC city, motels provided some semblance of shelter for dozens of families who use up their meager earnings to keep a roof over their heads. Others cobbled together a spot on the couch or begged for an empty corner in someone’s basement so they could stay warm and safe.

The meager family shelter options don’t begin to meet the needs of hundreds of families and youth in the county in need of assistance. I learned of one mother, a former school social worker whose loss of housing kicked her and her 8-year-old son to the street. The challenging conditions at the local rescue mission are too stressful for the boy, so he’s staying at a children’s emergency shelter while his mom bunks at the mission.

Family and youth shelter options in Asheville, as with most communities, are horrifically inadequate, forcing homeless families and youth to desperately turn to makeshift options, typically on a night-by-night, or less, basis.  But they’re not “homeless enough” to meet HUD’s standard of homelessness according to Amy Hobson, program coordinator at Trinity Place, a local emergency shelter for kids on their own.

During this, the last week of January, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, HUD, has mandated that communities across the land send out teams of social workers and volunteers, armed with clipboards, to count homeless persons. The diligent effort of these census-takers does not make up for serious failures on the part of HUD when it comes to addressing homelessness because they don’t count the bulk of their community’s homeless population—the invisible families and youth that desperately need HUD’s housing assistance.

 Last year, HUD reported 578,424 homeless persons, an alleged 11% reduction since 2007. Their count chillingly ignores millions of homeless persons, including babies and toddlers.

The US Department of Education’s (DOE) 2012-13 report indicates 1,258,182 identified homeless students (not including younger/older siblings or parents), a whopping 85% increase since the 2006-07 school year. Even worse, a recent report, America’s Youngest Outcasts, states that the number of homeless children/youth exceeds 2.5 million (not including parents or single adults). My official HEAR US estimate is 3 million.

HUD maintains their narrow definition of homelessness, the hallmark of their fizzled-out 10 Year Plan To End Homelessness.   The Baltimore Sun editorial opines, “The central principle of the city's 10-year plan to end homelessness was that it would prioritize finding housing first and services second for those living on the streets. Events like today's clean-up are a reminder of just how far we remain from realizing that promise.”

HUD’s “point-in-time” count skips millions of vulnerable children, youth and adults, a potentially deadly omission. “HUD’s policy excludes children and youth who face real harm, including negative emotional, educational, and health outcomes; it also increases their risk of physical and sexual abuse and trafficking,” according to the coalition pushing for the expanded definition of homelessness, Help Homeless Kids Now.

This confused, grossly under-counted data gets presented to Congress, perpetuating the lack adequate funding to address housing needs of millions of people with nowhere to go.

HUD’s dismal failures include:

1.     “Homeless” to HUD means staying in a shelter or living on the streets. If you lost housing due to crisis and can’t get into a shelter, and you turn to family, friends, acquaintances or motels, you're not considered homeless no matter how fragile those arrangements are. 

2.     HUD demands proof of homelessness (yup, you’ve gotta prove you're deserving of the shelter bed). Such proof might mean an eviction notice, or a letter from a landlord, or your mother-in-law’s note that explains that she kicked you and your kids out. Pity the person who cannot document their situation.

3.     HUD makes it confusing and time consuming for both the shelter provider and the shelter seeker when it comes to proving homelessness (see the chart beginning pg. 3 of this PDF doc). “Arbitrary and unworkably burdensome eligibility rules” now govern our homeless shelter system. It doesn't matter if you’ve got the most desperate family sitting in front of you, HUD’s rules rule.

4.     If you’re a vulnerable (think sex trafficking, sex-for-bed, gang-bait, etc.) homeless youth on your own, but not seen sleeping in an alley, HUD won’t count you. One of the main reasons we have such an abysmal system for serving youth on their own who are homeless is because HUD’s definition of homelessness doesn’t include them, so they’re not counted.

5.     If you’re a family that’s scotch-taped together a flimsy plan to stay with family, friends or acquaintances after you lost housing (doubled up video, Worn Out Welcome Mat), HUD won’t count you. Christine Craft, the Homeless Education Liaison for Buncombe County Schools, told me that 75% of the students she serves don’t fall under the HUD definition, doubling or tripling up in many cases.

6.     If you’re a family staying in a motel on your own thin dime because you have nowhere to go, HUD won’t count you. Most of the families that Ms. Craft works with have someone working, but the motels eat up most of their meager pay, giving them no option to save for a security deposit to move out.

7.     HUD pits single adults against families and youth by forcing communities to prioritize adults in order to get funding. While HUD pays lip service to serving families (not so much youth), their funding decisions tell the story.

The dire realities most people don’t know until they experience homelessness: Many communities don’t have shelters. Some shelters turn away boys in families, don’t accept intact families, same-sex parents, those with criminal records, substance users, or parents with work schedules conflicting with shelter curfews.

First Focus, a children’s advocacy group, estimates  over 1 million homeless children and youth are ineligible for HUD assistance because of not being homeless enough to satisfy HUD guidelines.

And HUD continues to push “Housing First,” a way to pop people into housing and then offer services to help them., although HUD has shifted away from funding services. Housing First was used mostly for those deemed “chronically homeless” by HUD’s parlance with mixed results. Even this approach is doomed, with funding a major issue, hello Congress! And HUD’s one-size-fits-all approach to homelessness doesn’t work, as this short video by the Institute of Children, Poverty and Homelessness points out. 

Especially in light of the latest blizzards and Arctic cold spells, people of compassion would like to think that the federal agency charged with housing the housing-challenged, especially families and youth, was under control. Not so. But hope is on the horizon!

Bipartisan legislation aimed at expanding HUD’s definition of homelessness has been introduced, with growing support making it likely that soon HUD will have to face the brutal reality that they need to help millions of kids and adults with nowhere to go. 

To help homeless kids, urge your lawmakers to pass the new(old) legislation simply by going to www.helphomelesskidsnow.org  and sign the petition. Takes just seconds!

If nothing else, HUD is guilty of a big logic FAIL. How do you justify claiming reduced  homelessness in light of a shattered economy, massive foreclosures and evictions, slashed affordable housing stock, pathetic wages for the bulk of the working class, inadequate health care and child care, and more? Oh yeah, just don’t count them.

Perverted Reality: Shelter ‘System’ Is No System

Homeless people have shelters to go to, a common belief comforting those who don’t know better. 

Having just come from Carlisle Cares, the community-based shelter where my friend and colleague Pat LaMarche works, having run shelters for 15 years myself, having seen shelters across the country for the past 9 years of my HEAR US traveling, I find myself seething at the perverted reality of what our shelter “system” is in this affluent country.

Pat’s shelter is probably average (no offense!). It’s in a middle-income borough in sort of central PA. Hundreds of similar communities dot the Keystone State. This community is quite unusual, with 3 shelters—one in a fixed site, this one which rotates to different places of worship—and a Salvation Army shelter for families. Shari Bellish, the shelter founder, fights hard to keep this meager operation going, knowing that 55 people a night will have a safe place to sleep. 

I listened as Pat answered one of many phone calls she and other staff get during the day. “I’m sorry, we’re full,” was the gist of it. The caller, a woman staying in her car. It’s below freezing tonight. Pat referred her to a neighboring community’s rotating site “shelter” program. At least she has a car, and gas is cheaper. Maybe she’ll get a spot to sleep.

Many shelters operate on paltry budgets, forcing them to creatively get around the lack of space and staff by setting hours that minimize the operations’ expenses. Pat’s shelter busses people to the night site which opens at 9:30 p.m. Everyone has to be out by 7 a.m., bussed back to this modest base so everyone can go on their way.

Imagine life for school kids—to bed by 10 if they’re lucky, up at 6:30, on a bus at 7 to go back to shelter headquarters to wash up and grab breakfast before heading out to school. Not a lot of quality time for homework, much less sleep and normalcy. The pads on the floor squeezed together don’t allow for privacy, or sleep. 

Volunteers and a skeleton staff make this emergency arrangement possible. And it’s much better than everyone cuddling up on the street. In Phoenix, the county is contemplating shutting down their overflow shelter—a bleak warehouse that offers nothing but a place on the floor for hundreds of desperate men.

Reading Bill Moyer’s post on homelessness, I found myself torn. His valid perspective is tainted by the use of wildly-delusional statistics provided by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. HUD’s official report to Congress, which determines funding for homelessness programs, was that 578,424 people were homeless last year.  

This extremely narrow enumeration hardly counts homelessness at all. It’s a one-night point-in-time count that, despite sincerely stalwart efforts by professionals and volunteers, documents a mere drop in the vast sea of people—adults and kids, oldsters and babies and those in between—with no place to go.

Case in point, the U.S. Department of Education reported that almost 1.3 million students without homes were identified in the 2013 school year, a staggering 72% increase since 2006. T America’s Youngest Outcasts reports over 2.5 million CHILDREN are homeless, not including parents or single adults. So, HUD’s report…just a tad under-representing the crisis.

I left as Pat headed down the garbage bag-lined hallway, holiday clothing donations. Folks were quietly waiting at tables. If you’d could ask, you’d hear about boredom, frustration finding housing or jobs, regrets about burned bridges and family alienation, and gratitude that at least they have some place to turn to on this cold Pennsylvania night where they’ll be safe. 

It’s perverted that they should feel grateful. It’s perverted that many communities have no shelters. It’s perverted that HUD is pushing “Housing First” with inadequate resources to help those who need it, and we’ll see the perverted action of the 114th Congress, which doesn’t begin to have a clue as to the staggering scope homeless Americans, as they likely slash spending for human needs.

Brutal Cold + Brutal Reality For Homeless Families/Youth

Keynote speeches can be good or bad, stimulating or numbing. At the Beyond Housing conference put on by the venerable Institute of Children, Poverty and Homelessness in NYC last week, I could have danced on the table during Ralph da Costa Nunez’s opening salvo.

Ever the contrarian, this respected guru of all things to help homeless families took a major shot at the homelessness “cure” de jour, Housing First aka Rapid Rehousing. Nunez spared no words. It doesn’t work as a one-size-fits-all (underfunded) approach to ending homelessness. My dear friend and sister-blogger Pat LaMarche captured the sense of his proclamation.

Now, let me add my 2¢ worth: whatever well-intentioned approaches communities have to assist families and youth moving from the streets to sheets (and all the other essentials of home), far more communities have nothing. Read that again.

Maybe it’s the ivory tower syndrome:

• I’m doing good in my job helping homeless families and youth, so everyone else is probably doing the same. (Hello, organizations in big cities that have resources.) 
• I don’t see any homeless families/youth, so they’re all OK or we don’t have any here. 
• I’ve heard this isn’t a problem, so it’s not.

Or worse:

• I get HUD funding so I can’t say anything bad about this absurd policy that excludes million of homeless families/youth.
• I will agree with this policy of Housing First because I want it to work (and I get HUD funding so I can’t bite the hand that feeds me). 
• It would be too much work to change things to better serve homeless families/youth. 
• They should try harder to solve the problem on their own. I’ve got too much to do as it is.

Having spent many grueling years running shelters for individuals, families and youth over 18, I feel I’ve got skin in the game. (My bio) Having spent the past 9 years traversing the country listening to and chronicling families and youth in homeless situations (3-min YouTube vid), I feel obligated to bring their story to the table. Having spent 30+ years advocating ending homelessness (How’s that working? Not!), I can’t stay quiet when these rare discussions hit the media wave.

I wrote a book, Crossing the Line: Taking Steps to End Homelessness, because I was dismayed about the lack of understanding of homelessness among policymakers and the public. Here’s a 1-page excerpt from my missive that list some causes of family/youth homelessness. (You can order the e-book or real book at my HEAR US website.)

20+ years ago I astoundingly found myself fighting against so-called advocates in Illinois who said we didn’t need a state law to remove barriers commonly experienced by homeless students trying to get into school. Yes we did. We got it, and now it’s federal law. And millions of kids have had access to 6-hours a day of educational stability, meals (albeit not the greatest), and a shot at escaping poverty through education.

So I’m not backing down when it comes to demanding that our affordable-housing-destroying government steps up mightily to right the wrongs of the past 30 years of what doesn’t pass for viable housing policies. Here’s a 3-minute video critiquing  “Rapid Rehousing,” produced by Nunez’s organization, ICPH.

Housing First, the touted “solution” to homelessness, has been primarily directed at those derogatorily dubbed “chronic” homeless persons, and grossly inadequate funding has caused organizations to fight brutally. You should be a little suspicious when HUD and HUD-funded agencies fight to keep a narrow definition of homelessness that excludes most families, youth and non-chronic adults.

Ralph suggests Housing Second and Third. And funding these approaches. That would take us beyond our one-size-fits-all mentality to addressing this growing national scandal. Why we have to fight about this baffles me.

I’d suggest those who think we’re doing enough to help homeless families and youth to leave the comfort of their cozy work/home environments and spend a day or 2 (preferably with kids in tow) looking for a place to stay. Yeah, Housing First is a good slogan but a lousy blanket. 

 (Originally posted by me on my AlterNet blog)