Journal of Vincentian Social Action Volume 4 Issue 1 Symposium on Street and Article 6 Catholic Social Teaching

May 2019 Moving from Charity to Justice in Our Work to End Homelessness Rosanne Haggerty [email protected]

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Recommended Citation Haggerty, Rosanne (2019) "Moving from Charity to Justice in Our Work to End Homelessness," Journal of Vincentian Social Action: Vol. 4 : Iss. 1 , Article 6. Available at: https://scholar.stjohns.edu/jovsa/vol4/iss1/6

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by St. John's Scholar. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal of Vincentian Social Action by an authorized editor of St. John's Scholar. For more information, please contact [email protected]. MOVING FROM CHARITY TO JUSTICE IN OUR WORK TO END HOMELESSNESS Rosanne Haggerty

n 2000, a woman I deeply admired, an educator us were doing would change that. As unsettled as Iand historian of reform movements, asked me I felt, it struck me that the uncomfortable question why organizations working on homelessness were was a gift. doing such a poor job of ending it. I suspect that in every community now It was a startling question. Like most in our field, rigorously measuring its progress toward ending I was accustomed to affirmation for even working homelessness, leaders there have a similar on the problem. The way such conversion story to tell. I’ve conversations usually went, I heard accounts from a number would describe the success of of colleagues of the moment our organization’s permanent …we were using the wrong they acknowledged the failure supportive programs, of existing approaches and their our accomplishment in ending measure and that ending community decided to change the homelessness of our tenants, homelessness, not operating course. and the cost effectiveness of our good programs was what With a growing list of cities, housing over endless temporary ultimately mattered.” regions-even countries-now responses to homelessness reducing and ending forms of (Breaking Ground, n.d.). Those homelessness1 the key questions listening would, reliably, be in our field have changed. If the impressed that we were doing familiar questions have been something that worked. about resources and policy, the But this lightning bolt of a question implied we new ones are about purpose, and transformation. were using the wrong measure and that ending Is our purpose to run good programs or to end homelessness, not operating good programs homelessness? If it’s to end homelessness, are we was what ultimately mattered. This challenged willing to hold our organizations and communities fundamental things. As I sat there, considering to that standard? how to respond, I thought about the story of Each of us working in the field will have had success that defined our organization’s work, encounters with particular people experiencing and my own stake in that story being real, the homelessness that affected us deeply, or perhaps pride and sense of personal meaning. If the job we experienced homelessness ourselves. Empathy was actually to end homelessness, that changed born in these moments motivates our work. And everything, because against that standard we and yet, something even bigger is at stake for our every other organization, government agency, communities. Homelessness, in its raw visibility, every community were failing. At that moment, confronts our shared beliefs about right and despite earnest efforts, effective individual wrong, fairness, care, protection of the vulnerable, programs and significant money spent over many the importance of strong community bonds and years, there was no end to homelessness in sight the dignity of each person. Our beliefs about our and little to suggest that doing more of what all of communities and ourselves are on the line.

JoVSA • Volume 4, Issue 1 • Spring 2019 Moving from Charity to Justice in Our Work to End Homelessness 9 What would it take to end homelessness— to individuals tended to remain in a holding pattern, make it an experience that rarely happens, and living in temporary shelters or on the street, in and when it does, is quickly resolved with the right out of hospitals as their health or mental health help so that it doesn’t happen again? Many sectors broke down, reliant on food programs, bathing have figured out similar challenges and developed facilities and other emergency assistance programs systems and tools for getting the right thing to the that helped them survive but were not designed to right people at the right time; preventing problems end their homelessness. in the first place; having the right information This disconnect was evident in my first encounters to show whether efforts are on track and where with those experiencing homelessness—at the improvement is needed; creating cultures of shared shelter for young people in where accountability for achieving, day after day, the I worked in the early 1980s part of a year long desired result. These sectors have found ways to volunteer program, and at a shelter for homeless systematize their values and turn them into reliable women where I was an overnight monitor one solutions for everyone. night a week during that year. Homelessness The work of ending homelessness is evolving in was still a “new” issue then, and the Church and this way. other faith groups were the first responders. Both At a high level, responses to contemporary projects I worked at were sponsored by Catholic homelessness have moved through four stages organizations, and the majority of the volunteers since the issue became visible in the late 1970s in both places were Catholic, explicitly drawn to in the United States and other countries. Yet help by the social justice teachings of the Church. awareness of what’s working is uneven, and The youth shelter attracted ample resources from a adoption of successful practices has been slow. largely Catholic base of supporters who responded This paper reviews the critical stages of this to a monthly newsletter/funding appeal from the evolution, insights drawn from our experience as organization. The woman’s shelter occupied the we recognized the limits of successive strategies, basement of a Catholic church. and what can guide the work ahead toward ending Yet the gap between our good intentions and homelessness. our effectiveness was evident. The youth shelter rules allowed each young person a 30 -day stay. I learned quickly that the great majority of FIRST GENERATION: EMERGENCY RESPONSE young people I worked with did not have 30-day Most people involved with homelessness have problems. Most had left school, had no training spent time working or volunteering at a shelter, or work experience, and were from families soup kitchen, or some other project providing overwhelmed by poverty with limited capacity to emergency relief. I have worked in the field long help. Focused on operating a large shelter, we had enough to recall that in the early days of rising few relationships in place outside the shelter with homelessness, we imagined that these short term landlords, employers or others who could help measures were real solutions, and in fact, for some young people succeed after leaving our program. they were. For those who had networks of family Discharged from our shelter after 30-days, no one or friends, a plan, a job- something to connect to was surprised when most young people returned after a crisis, the temporary help on offer was well 30-days later, their situation unchanged, for matched to their temporary crisis. another 30–day stay, in an ongoing cycle. Yet for others, there was nothing temporary about The pattern was similar at the women’s shelter. their housing crisis, and no discernable options Arriving exhausted by school bus late in the for them on the other side of it. A one -size -fits all evening, the women had mustered hours earlier emergency response to homelessness was bound to at a city facility where they would be assigned serve these more isolated individuals badly. These to a shelter for the night. Those who still had

JoVSA • Volume 4, Issue 1 • Spring 2019 Moving from Charity to Justice in Our Work to End Homelessness 10 the energy to talk would ask me where to go to Industrialization led to tenements, and the find housing or a job. My training as a volunteer inadequacy of tenements led to housing quality consisted of basic first aid, how to turn on the codes, the garden city movement and other coffee and where to put away the cots in the correctives. Mass migration to cities led to YMCA morning. I had none of the information the women residences, foyers, residential and lodging needed to escape homelessness and in in trying to to accommodate single people getting their piece it together between my weekly shifts, I found start. Boarding homes and shared arrangements that none of the city agencies or other programs have met housing needs wherever housing costs I called had clear instructions either. Information and incomes have been mismatched. and referral numbers led to other information The rise of homelessness in the late 20th century and referral numbers, instructions on places to can be traced to the same confluence of economic go to schedule appointments and the forms and and social forces that disrupted communities documents that would be required. It was mind- and institutions and that are numbing. I tried to imagine how now playing out vividly in our one of the teenage boys at the national and global politics. The youth shelter, or an exhausted “With homelessness emergence of homelessness can women from the overnight be seen in retrospect as an early shelter, could ever thread their increasing, the inadequacy indicator of these fractures, and way through this bureaucracy. of emergency responses remains a powerful measure Had we then understood the alone began to spur of how well our communities significance of this gap, the course are functioning. Levels of of homelessness might have innovations in housing.” homelessness are a bellwether for unfolded very differently since. racial and economic disparities Responding to the immediate and also reflect the consequences needs of those experiencing of specific policy decisions. homelessness consumed our Among the most significant focus, energy and resources. Our organizations of these decisions was deinstitutionalization, paid little attention to creating clear exit paths which freed those with mental illnesses to live in from homelessness- what the young people communities with a network of support. Yet the and women I encountered were seeking. This institutions were closed before the homes and the imbalance can compound over time, when promised infrastructure of community support emergency services are institutionalized and was built. This meant individuals who had been in become an end in themselves. Witness New York institutions were discharged to fend for themselves, City, which now spends over two billion dollars and that those with chronic health and mental annually on a vast municipal shelter system, while health challenges who in previous generations the number of those experiencing homelessness has would have been cared for in institutions were 2 never been higher. also left without a place to live and essential care. Mass incarceration also plays out in homelessness, SECOND GENERATION: INDIVIDUAL creating huge barriers to employment and housing SOLUTIONS FOCUS for mostly African-American citizens returning from prison. Government financial support With homelessness increasing, the inadequacy for new , which had been of emergency responses alone began to spur extensive after the Second World War, faded. And innovations in housing. the unintended consequence of laws aimed at Social and economic upheaval have often eliminating rather than improving types of housing catalyzed new housing forms and arrangements. deemed substandard-single room occupancy

JoVSA • Volume 4, Issue 1 • Spring 2019 Moving from Charity to Justice in Our Work to End Homelessness 11 hotels, lodging houses, boarding homes-was the their home and connecting with needed treatment. intentional loss of the very types of low cost Upwards of 75% of participants in housing first housing most sought after by single adults facing programs succeed in leaving homelessness behind homelessness. permanently (Tsemberis, Gulcur & Nakae, 2004). The first real solutions to homelessness therefore Initially “housing first” programs focused on those focused on housing. Permanent with serious mental illnesses, but the efficacy of combined small with affordable rents starting with housing, not treatment programs and on site support workers to assist residents as a way to help individuals to exit homelessness with health and mental health challenges. proved applicable to everyone. This innovation proved to be an important The success of the housing first approach was solution for communities as well as those followed by a derivative innovation, “rapid experiencing homelessness. Many of the early rehousing”. Rapid rehousing programs use the projects I worked on involved converting long housing first principle, and focus on removing vacant Catholic schools, convents and orphanages the financial barriers to exiting homelessness for into attractive “single room occupancy” moderately vulnerable individuals and families by apartments with spaces for communal activities providing a time limited rent subsidy. and offices for social workers. Run down hotels, Importantly, housing first and rapid rehousing former YMCA residences and other neglected or approaches exposed a bias in the dominant troubled properties became neighborhood assets emergency response mindset, which had again as permanent supportive housing. Across pathologized homelessness and turned a home into many projects and thousands of apartments we a prize to be rewarded to those who completed learned what made for a successful environment treatment programs, remained sober or reliably for residents and prevented a return to took their medications, rather than a foundational homelessness: good design, a diverse group of resource and basic right. residents including the working poor as well as All three of these housing models were those coming from homelessness; attentive on-site independently evaluated and found to be property management; having support services successful in ending homelessness for those they well-matched to the needs and aspirations of assisted. Nevertheless, homelessness continued residents; deep involvement with neighborhood to rise, as did spending on emergency responses, issues; having mission-oriented staff who modeled even in New York City, the place where community-oriented values. Permanent supportive permanent supportive housing and housing first housing also proved to be very cost effective, far had originated and were well known. Moreover, less expensive to operate than shelters and other increasing numbers of individuals were living on emergency services. the street in the neighborhoods surrounding our Two other housing innovations, “housing buildings. first” (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban This was a different type of gap than having Development, n.d., a) and “rapid rehousing” extensive emergency responses without sufficient (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban attention to solutions. This gap was between Development, n.d., b), cut through misguided having solutions and spreading them to all who practices established in the emergency response needed them. stage. Housing first as a principle meant starting with the offer of a stable home, without the requirement of treatment or sobriety first. As a THIRD GENERATION: TIME-BOUND practice it meant coupling a rent subsidy with a COORDINATED CAMPAIGNS visiting worker or team of workers who would The challenge of spreading what works is not assist a formerly homeless tenant in maintaining unique to homelessness. In a masterly New Yorker

JoVSA • Volume 4, Issue 1 • Spring 2019 Moving from Charity to Justice in Our Work to End Homelessness 12 article, surgeon-writer Atul Gawande (2013, July As a starting point, we adapted the Rough 29) probed the question of why some life saving Sleepers Initiative to our midtown innovations in healthcare were quickly adopted neighborhood. We chose the same goal, to reduce and others resisted. “Slow ideas”, the ones that street homeless by two thirds within three years. can transform the conditions of life, especially To lead what we called the “Street to Home for the poor, tend not to be flashy but to require Initiative”, we recruited someone who had never a change of norms and in the way people work worked with the homeless, but had the experience together. They require careful, repetitive attention and skills we believed would matter: the ability to to seemingly small tasks (eg: wash your hands!) build an effective team, use data to understand a to take hold. Spreading them is a social process, problem in its context, and work without a map of leaders modeling new norms, and people to achieve a clear goal. We hired a retired military instructing each other through direct interaction, operations specialist. The local organizations through relationships. They require what Pope that stepped forward to help were also atypical: Francis (2016, September 23) has described as a the local business improvement district, the “culture of encounter.” community court and an Episcopal church. When we faced into the question of why we and By being out on the streets in the late night or others weren’t ending homelessness, we discovered early morning hours, and listening to each person’s one place that was. In Great Britain, the Rough story, a whole new picture of homelessness Sleepers Initiative was well on its way to reducing emerged for our team. Most individuals, we street homelessness by two thirds in three years. discovered, were in the midst of a transition or This had been a campaign pledge of Tony Blair. brief crisis and needed limited help. The group Once elected, he appointed Louise Casey, a that had been trapped in homelessness for years brilliant change agent, to lead the effort. Coming was relatively small. These individuals would need from the homelessness sector, Louise understood permanent supportive housing and the health and that the essence of the challenge was to change mental health supports that came with it. Some the way the system functioned: to move from of these individuals were deeply skeptical of our endless emergency responses to solutions, and to promise of help with housing, and only agreed to hold communities accountable for measurable work with us once they had seen others move into reductions in street homelessness. Among the homes. The biggest challenge was threading our key pillars of the Rough Sleepers Unit approach way through a Byzantine process first to prove were to make the process of exiting homelessness these men and women were homeless and qualify simpler and to put responsibility for making it them to receive housing assistance. Bit by bit, work in the hands of the service providers, not the situation on the street changed. By the end of the overwhelmed individuals on the street, for year three, our neighborhood had reduced street making it work. The Rough Sleepers Unit insisted homelessness by 87%. on regular street counts to measure progress, and The key principle of Street to Home – define that the local outreach teams would know each success as ending individuals’ homelessness, person on the street by name. They prioritized not providing services to them-resonated with the most vulnerable for assistance, and reserved the place and time. Though the Street to Home accommodations for them. When their data Initiative was underwritten by foundations, not showed many young people leaving foster care, government, New York City’s then mayor, Michael as well as many military veterans among the Bloomberg, believed in data as an essential tool for homeless, they focused upstream. They engaged improving public services. Street to Home’s design the relevant government agencies to make it their and focus on results were incorporated into the job to prevent homelessness among those leaving city’s new street outreach contracts in 2007. Other their institutions. Within three years, they had met US cities were also drawn to the idea that they their ambitious goal.

JoVSA • Volume 4, Issue 1 • Spring 2019 Moving from Charity to Justice in Our Work to End Homelessness 13 should measure the effectiveness of their efforts by FOURTH GENERATION: ACCOUNTABLE reductions in homelessness. COMMUNITY SYSTEMS Out of this momentum, in 2010, we invited any Each phase of response to homelessness surfaced interested US community to be part of a collective a new type of coordination problem. Whether leap to shift our focus to results. We launched balancing investments in emergency responses the 100,000 Homes Campaign to find homes against investments in solutions; matching those for 100,000 of the most vulnerable and chronic experiencing homelessness to the right help; homeless in the country within four years. The reaching all who needed assistance, all the way “100,000 Homes” campaign helped communities through to the most overwhelmed and skeptical increase their housing placements and learn to cut person; aligning the work of many organizations through bureaucratic steps that made escaping so that paths out of homelessness were clearly homelessness a near impossibility for those most in marked; embedding the most useful training and need of help. tools in each community; or making improvements 186 communities participated in the Campaign, stick and extend beyond political cycles, it was and more than 105,000 people were housed. becoming clear that the absence of an accountable However, no community ended homelessness coordination mechanism for ending homelessness during that time. In part that happened because in each community was itself a big part of the new people continued to become homeless, and problem. in part because the problem-solving practices Complex, shifting problems that present high that proved valuable in a sprint did not get risks for vulnerable people are solved every embedded in the marathon of driving reductions in day by teams trained to do so, in hospitals, on homelessness day after day. construction sites, in aviation, and in many other The Rough Sleepers Initiative, Street to Home industries. Certain types of problems are similar no Initiative and 100,000 Homes Campaign showed matter where they show up. In our first meetings how the combination of political will, a disciplined with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement focus on results, a streamlined process for linking (IHI), which had brought improvement science to people to homes and a challenging deadline could the mission of helping hospitals and physicians achieve profound reductions in homelessness. Yet eliminate avoidable deaths and patient harm, the gains proved unsustainable in most places. hearing that insights and practices associated They were highly dependent on the commitment with the Japanese auto industry could make and attention of particular leaders. As leaders healthcare safer took some getting used to. Seeing changed and priorities and ideologies shifted, the the difference between hospitals that have rigorous goal of ending homelessness lost urgency. Old safety cultures and those that don’t turned us into ways of working re-emerged, along with increases believers. in homelessness. Learning that problem solving practices can move However we now had the clearest view of between industries spurred us to reflect on the homelessness to date, and of the dynamic, shifting kind of problem that homelessness is, and to look problem it is. Gawande (2013, July 29) had also broadly for solutions to the accountability and noted that new ideas not only need help to spread, coordination problems at the heart of persistent they need help to stick, and to become the way homelessness. These problems have made all our things are now done. We had discovered another efforts less powerful and hindered for a generation gap to be closed, between a community’s capacity the dedicated work of organizations serving the to end homelessness once, and the local skills, homeless. tools and systems needed to end it for good. But we can change that. Six months after the 100,000 Homes Campaign

JoVSA • Volume 4, Issue 1 • Spring 2019 Moving from Charity to Justice in Our Work to End Homelessness 14 ended, Built for Zero began. 70 communities CONCLUSION signed on to figure out together how to get all the Do we stay on the path of slow evolution or way to a sustainable end to homelessness. We had choose transformation? learned by then the necessity of well organized teams in each community that shared a clear goal; We’ve discovered that working back from the goal of accurate information and measures to show the of measurably ending homelessness will require effect of different interventions; of training local (at least) five shifts in our communities: a shift teams in problem solving skills like design thinking of belief, from seeing homelessness as inevitable to understand where the pitfalls and barriers are to being solvable; a shift of organization, from for avoiding or escaping homelessness and frame thinking in terms of individual programs to a possible solutions, of quality improvement to test shared, whole of community commitment; a shift and refine ideas, and in using data to see what’s in information, from generalized or estimated data working, for whom, and to help us get better at on homelessness to by-name, real-time knowledge our work. on who is experiencing homelessness and each individual and family’s situation; a shift in culture, Counting down to ending homelessness is much from complying with program rules to relentless harder than increasing the numbers of people problem solving; and a shift in investments, from housed. They are different activities. Getting to automatically maintaining traditional services zero begins with a mindset that no one will be to making, targeted, data-informed, constantly left out. It means, knowing everyone experiencing monitored and ever improving investments in the homelessness in one’s community by name. It things that prevent and end homelessness. requires paying attention to a number of things at once: who is becoming homeless, and why? Are Though the skills and tools required to make we getting people back into housing as quickly as these shifts may be new and stretch us to think we can? Are we using all the assets and resources and work in new ways, the vision of ending we have in the community to create more housing homelessness, for good, for everyone is not new. options? What interventions are working and for It is what drew all of this to this work in the first whom? Where should funding be spent to have the place. greatest impact in reducing homelessness? These practices are yielding results that point to a REFERENCES different future. Nine Built for Zero communities Breaking Ground. (n.d.). Retrieved from https:// have ended veteran homeless, three more have breakingground.org ended chronic homelessness, and most have sustained the result for several years. Another 33 Francis. (2016, September 23). For a culture of are seeing steady, month over month reductions. encounter. morning meditation in the Chapel In Canada, nearly 20,000 homeless Canadians of the Domus Sanctae Marthae. L’Osservatore have been housed in 38 communities that are now Romano, weekly ed. in English, n.38. counting down to zero. And in Finland, a similar Gawande, A. (2013, July 29). Slow ideas. The New set of strategies based on accountability for results Yorker. has all but eliminated homelessness in the country. The Finnish government focused on getting each Tsemberis, S., Gulcur, L., & Nakae, M. (2004), individual the help needed to exit homelessness. Housing first, consumer choice, and harm They implemented housing first as national policy. reduction for homeless individuals with a dual They converted shelters into permanent housing diagnosis. American Journal of Public Health, and continue to closely coordinate and direct 94(4), 651-656. https://doi.org/10.2105/ resources to flag and resolve emerging housing ajph.94.4.651 crises quickly and keep homelessness solved.

JoVSA • Volume 4, Issue 1 • Spring 2019 Moving from Charity to Justice in Our Work to End Homelessness 15 U.S. Department of Housing and Urban NOTES Development. (n.d., a). Housing first 1 For more information see: https://www. permanent housing brief. Retrieved from community.solutions/what-we-do/built-for-zero/ https://www.hudexchange.info/resources/ track-our-progress documents/Housing-First-Permanent- 2 Supportive-Housing-Brief.pdf For more information see NYC Department of Homeless Services Daily Report https://www1.nyc. U.S. Department of Housing and Urban gov/assets/dhs/downloads/pdf/dailyreport.pdf Development. (n.d., b). Rapid rehousing brief. Retrieved from https://www.hudexchange.info/ resources/documents/Rapid-Re-Housing-Brief. ABOUT THE AUTHOR pdf Rosanne Haggerty founded and led Community (now Breaking Ground) a developer and operator of housing for the homeless, from 1990-2010. (https:// breakingground.org) Currently, she is president and chief executive officer of Community Solutions (https://www.community.solutions/)

Fourth Generation: Accountable Community Systems..

Built For Zero 20,000 Homes (US) (CA)

Third Generation:. Timebound Coordinated Efforts..

Street to Home 100,000 Homes (US) (US) Second Generation:. Rough Sleepers Initiative Vanguard Cities Solution-oriented Programs. (UK) (International)

Housing First at scale (Finland) First Generation:. Emergency Responses. Wider range of permanent housing options

Shelters and transitional housing Prevention initiatives

Soup Bathing kitchens stations

Food Linkage to Clinics shelter

Information and referral

JoVSA • Volume 4, Issue 1 • Spring 2019 Moving from Charity to Justice in Our Work to End Homelessness 16