OPINION: POLICY BRIEF SONOMA COUNTY HOMELESS
SYSTEM OF
CARE: BEST PRACTICES
The CDC provides a deliberately, indeed cynically, skewed perspective on transitional villages, drawing heavily from an interagency body which, despite its existence of over 30 years, has not taken the necessary steps to end homelessness. Furthermore, the CDC's benchmark of: "Therefore, the success of any service model can be housing, and the investment required to achieve this goal" is concerning.
Most apparently,
defining success in such narrow, bureaucratic terms entirely overlooks the
exigencies of being homeless, of the negative housing stock in Sonoma County,
and most importantly reduces people, individuals with all their variations,
strengths and needs, to whether or not they have accepted this non-existent
housing. The CDC attempts to impose a structural analysis that has little
to do with the complexities of living without shelter in a negative housing
market.
Transitional
villages do work. The CDC
pointedly ignores evidence from places such as Dignity Village, which has been
successfully providing housing for over 15 years and is self-governed. Or
the work done in Eugene, or Olympia Washington at Opportunity and Quixote
Villages, respectively. The information on Camp Michela is so deeply
flawed and deliberately skewed as to be risible, were the stakes not so high.
The homeless need
safety and shelter and stability now. To pretend that the shelter system
works for everyone, which is one implication of the CDC's statement, overlooks
that not only are there not enough beds, but many individuals living on the
streets have not found shelters conducive to their mental health, physical
health, sense of autonomy, safety or familial needs. Tent or tiny home villages
are, and always have been just one measure to ease the humanitarian toll
brought on by living homeless. And since we do not have housing, easing
that toll should be our benchmark in the interim.
Housing first must
be changed to stability first. Requiring people to stay on the streets
until they have permanent housing is an unconscionable prospect, and yet that
is precisely what the CDC's statement intones. People form tent
encampments because they need safety and community. Below are some of the benefits of having tent or tiny home
villages:
a. Community. Public health
and the social sciences are clear: isolation is inordinately damaging to
humans, particularly when people are faced with the adverse conditions found in
homelessness. We know that long-term relationships increased
likelihood of survival, for instance, among HIV+ individuals prior to the
advent of protease inhibitors. We also know that when individuals have
"social capital," which can include mutual, reciprocal beneficial relationships,
involvement in larger social groupings, and a sense of trust in their
environment, health outcomes are significantly better.
(http://www.macses.ucsf.edu/research/socialenviron/capital.php)
b. Safety: In CA, 27.3% of women have a lifetime prevalence
of being a victim of intimate partner violence (rape, stalking, physical
violence). No doubt these data are worse for homeless women. Members
of the LGBTQQIA community, particularly youth, are equally vulnerable on their
own. These numbers are notably higher among the homeless, making tent villages,
despite their limitations, a better option for many. (https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/NISVS_Report2010-a.pdf)
c. Environmental: Dispersed homeless populations can lead
to multiple sites of trash and human waste disposal. A central area, where the
homeless can safely use portapotties and dispose of trash in receptacles,
decreases environmental impact in the immediate neighborhoods, as well as
preserving watersheds, area creeks and riverways.
d. Centralized public health services. At Last Chance Village, the Sonoma County Dept. of Public Health
organized remarkable programs for many of the residents, including needle
exchange, HIV testing, sexually transmitted disease testing and referral,
Hepatitis testing and referral, and advocacy.
e. Centralized judicial advocacy. Through Homeless Action! and several local attorneys,
including CA Rural Legal Assistance, individuals facing camping citations and
other charges, have obtained legal representation, with several clearing
outstanding bench warrants.
These are only a
sampling of how homeless villages lessen the suffering.
We suggest that the
BOS view report delivered today by the CDC with wariness. The more
appropriate document is the one provided by the UN Special Rapporteur on
Extreme Poverty and Human on His Mission to the United States. Its conclusions
are particularly telling, given the inhumanity visited upon the homeless on the
Rodota Trail on May 30-31:
1. Decriminalize being poor
71. Punishing and imprisoning
the poor is the distinctively American response to poverty in the twenty-first
century. Workers who cannot pay their debts, those who cannot afford private
probation services, minorities targeted for traffic infractions, the homeless,
the mentally ill, fathers who cannot pay child support and many others are all
locked up. Mass incarceration is used to make social problems temporarily
invisible and to create the mirage of something having been done.
72. It is difficult to imagine a more self-defeating strategy. Federal,
state, county and city governments incur vast costs in running jails and
prisons. Sometimes these costs are “recovered” from the prisoners, thus
fuelling the latter’s cycle of poverty and desperation. The criminal records
attached to the poor through imprisonment make it even harder for them to find
jobs, housing, stability and self-sufficiency. Families are destroyed, children
are left parentless and the burden on governments mounts. But because little is
done to address the underlying causes of the original problem, it continues to
fester. Even when imprisonment is not the preferred option, the standard
response to those facing economic hardship is to adopt policies explicitly
designed to make access to health care, sick leave and welfare and child
benefits more difficult to access and the receipt of benefits more
stigmatizing.
73. A cheaper and more humane option is to provide proper social protection
and facilitate the return to the workforce of those who are able. In the United
States, it is poverty that needs to be arrested, not the poor simply for being
poor.
Were the BOS
and the CDC to approach homelessness from a stability - and human rights -
first model, we could begin to meet the actual needs of the homeless now. We
would engage in harm reduction as opposed to pointing fingers at individuals
for self-medicating. We would ensure that the housing needed for every portion
of the homeless population would be available, as opposed to channelling people
through a system that dehumanizes, that strips them of their autonomy, that
arrests them for having the indecency of sleeping while poor.
We would
recognize that the homeless, who die 23 years earlier in Sonoma County, based
on median lifespan, than the County as a whole, are very much akin to refugees.
They warrant every service that can be delivered, including immediate refugee
villages with appropriate levels of sanitation, food, mental and behavioral
health services. We would recognize that some individuals will not be
able to go through drug recovery successfully, but we will nonetheless provide
them stability, behavioral support, respect and dignity. We will recognize that
giving them a bed, privacy, sanitation, a degree of autonomy, while providing
supervised "dosing," is a viable model, that finally moves us beyond
the drug fear-mongering apparent in the CDC's statement.
Briefly put,
housing first must become not only stability first, but human first.
Dr. Carolyn Epple, Ph.D
Open Letter to The Sonoma County Board
of Supervisors
Tomorrow you will get a presentation from your staff on Item
26 which says that sanctioned encampments are NOT a good idea. The staff report leans heavily on a
brief by the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH). There is much to be said about the
staff report and there will be some people from Homeless Action! at the meeting
to give you more information.
Right now, I would like to turn your attention to other
recent national reports that tell a very different story, the reasons that
sanctioned encampments ARE a good idea.
1) From the National Healthcare for the
Homeless Council.
https://www.nhchc.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/encampment-statement-finalized.pdf
A few highlights:
"...poor responses to encampments can strain our relationships with those receiving our care.
This is especially
true when forced closures or “sweeps” undermine the effectiveness of our services and damage
trust. Forcible moves such as these often prioritize community aesthetics over
human dignity. They also
contradict well-established principles of
trauma-informed care,
re-traumatize the people who are displaced, and
potentially cause adverse health consequences when individuals are disconnected from
care. . .
• Jurisdictions
should avoid destruction of encampments and instead focus on rapid creation of
permanent, affordable housing with appropriate support services as needed.
• As an interim
measure, services should be provided at encampments to promote safe and
sanitary living conditions for residents and the broader community.
• As an interim
measure, public buildings or other facilities should be opened to provide
options for shelter for people without homes. No one should be evicted from an
encampment without a safe, stable alternative.
2) From Seattle University's School of Law
Homeless Rights Advocacy Project's Report "It Takes a Village: Practical Guidance for Authorized
Homeless Encampments" ((https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3173224)
)
This report says:
"Encampments demonstrate several benefits for people experiencing
homelessness... Safety and Security... Community... Autonomy... Stability...
and Health..."
"Authorized encampments are not themselves permanent
solutions to homelessness. But, in
communities that lack sufficient shelter and affordable housing, authorized
encampments can offer safer, more stable temporary living environments than
other alternatives such as living alone or in pairs in other public
spaces."
These are just a couple of the highly reputable reports that
reach a different conclusion than the report cited in tomorrow's
presentation. It doesn't do
homeless people much good to fight it out with dueling reports, so I will stop
here. But please do take look.
If you would like more information and reports, please let
me know.
======================
Adrienne Lauby
Member, Homeless Action!
(707) 795-2890
adrienne@sonic.net
.
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