2015 - NCH

Though our offices are closed for the Federal holiday, we are plotting how we will work towards a true end to homelessness in 2016.

Here is our holiday wish list for the coming year:

For each one of the Presidential candidates to explain how s/he will reinvest in affordable housing and work to end homelessness.
That each of our cities stops ticketing, harassing and arresting our homeless neighbors because they have nowhere but public spaces to eat, sleep, store personal items and take care of their hygiene and bodily needs.
That more landlords will lease their properties to renters who have housing vouchers.
That Congress will fully fund, and preserve funding for, the National Housing Trust Fund.
That more cities and states will adopt Homeless Bill of Rights legislation that protects people who are unhoused from discrimination.
That Congress adopts a minimum wage that is a living wage based on local cost of living.
For more community engagement around housing and homelessness through participation in the Faces of Homelessness Speakers’ Bureau, National Hunger & Homelessness Awareness Week, and National Homeless Persons’ Memorial Day.
For all states to expand Medicaid under the ACA, and to invest in mental health infrastructure.
That Federal and municipal governments follow through on their promise to end chronic and veteran homelessness by the end of 2016.
That cities expand emergency services to meet the needs of everyone who experiences homelessness or struggles to maintain housing, including youth, ex-offenders, families and the elderly.

Will you help us realize these goals?

Here are 3 quick reasons to support NCH:

Have you visited our website this year to learn more about homelessness?
It takes one staff member (there are 3 of us) at least one full day per week to keep our site updated – during that time, an average of about 1,500 people (per day) have accessed our pages. In 2016, we’ll be working to release updated reports and factsheets, as well as build a tool you’ll be able to use to quickly find info about homelessness in your community. Give to help provide research for other students, reserchers and advocates!
Have you ReTweeted or shared our posts on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram?
We daily search through current events to bring you the most up to date and relevant news about advocacy to end homelessness. We’re serious about reaching you where you are. We hope you’ll be serious about supporting our work through your favorite online giving site: Network for Good, PayPal, Razoo, GoodSearch, AmazonSmile, JustGive, or find us on other sites using our Tax ID #52-1517415!
Have you seen a Faces of Homelessness panel speaker tell their story?
We work with partners across the country – from BBYO, the Religious Action Center and the CloseUp Foundation, to schools like Villanova and Georgetown Universities – to schedule over 300 Faces presentations each year. If you are one of the approximately 15,000 people who met a speaker this year, you benefited from NCH programs! Give today so that others will have the opportunity to hear James read his poem “Arugula Salad” or to give Steve a big bear hug!

While shoppers camp outside their favorite retailers to score Black Friday deals, homeless communities across the country will face fines, harassment, and jail time for camping in an attempt to get a good night’s rest. To combat this stark inequality, the National Coalition for the Homeless (NCH) is calling for cities to stop the criminalization of life sustaining activities and instead promote “safe sleep.”

We know that ordinances and restrictions that seek to punish people experiencing homelessness for engaging in survival activities are counterproductive to ending homelessness. Instead, imposing fines and generating criminal records for “quality of life” offenses create a greater barriers for many to becoming re-housed. As chair of NCH’s Civil Rights Committee, Brian Davis, asserts, “it makes no sense to complicate a person’s ability to get into housing or find a job because they are engaged in purely innocent behavior of eating, sleeping, or resting in the public space especially when there are not enough shelter beds”.

So, we ask you to stand with us during this year’s Black Friday to call on your community leaders to look at successful alternatives to criminalization efforts and the benefits of universal access to shelter.

Challenge your elected officials to open discussions about the lack of adequate shelter, the high cost of rental housing, and the shredding of the safety net in your communities.
Call upon your local religious leaders to develop plans for how to better serve families and young people requesting help other than law enforcement.
Educate your friends, loved ones, and shoppers camping for Black Friday deals by downloading and distributing the postcard below.

Speak up, take action!

In recent years, as the fashion of criminalizing the people experiencing homelessness in the United States by local governments has grown more popular, the nation’s capital, Washington, DC, has largely respected the rights and needs of its poorest residents. Unfortunately, it seems that even as the city’s new mayor has publicly dedicated her administration to giving those experiencing homelessness within her jurisdiction the supports they need, her office is moving to displace the small number of men and women who have formed their own refuge from the city’s dangerous streets and chaotic shelters. A very troubling way to celebrate National Hunger & Homelessness Awareness Week (Nov. 14-22).

Erected atop an empty stretch of grass in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood of Washington, co-existing alongside foreign embassies and luxury hotels, a small community of tents serves as home for a tight-knit, diverse community of unhoused Washingtonians. In recent weeks, that community has had to face the possibility of dislocation, despite the fact that many of the camp’s housed neighbors support them. According to WTOP, a local news station, Marina Streznewski, who serves as president of the Foggy Bottom Association, believes homeless residents are better off where they are than in the city’s notoriously overcrowded shelter system. “It may be cold out here, but it’s safer.”

By the time you read this, these men and women may already have been relocated. The city moved on Monday to close down the camp, but media attention and an alleged refusal by local law enforcement to assist the mayor’s office in the tear-down has meant that many of the tents remained in place at noon of the following day. However, members of the besieged community believe it’s only a matter of time before they and their belongings face an uncertain future back out on the street. Worse yet, vans sent to relocate residents have reportedly refused to tell them where they’d be taken if they complied with the city’s order.

If you are a resident of the District of Columbia, or if you care about the plight of these and other people experiencing homelessness in the most powerful city in the world, we encourage you to contact Mayor Muriel Bowser’s office by phone (202-727-6300), email (eom@dc.gov), or on social media (tweet @MayorBowser), and remind her that all of her constituents deserve to be treated with respect, and to be sure these and all unhoused residents of the area are offered safe and accessible shelter or permanent housing.

While you’re at it, you can sign our petition asking the District government to join Rhode Island, Connecticut, Illinois, and Puerto Rico in enacting legislation to end legal discrimination against our unhoused neighbors.

Today kicks off our annual week of raising awareness and taking action against on our ongoing homeless crisis.

Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week originated 40 years ago, in 1975, at Villanova University in Pennsylvania. From the school’s website, “The initiative began when a group of Villanova students, recognizing the power education could play in the fight against homelessness, decided to coordinate a week of activities around the issues.” The National Coalition for the Homeless has since partnered with the National Student Campaign Against Hunger & Homelessness to bring greater awareness of the effects of poverty to communities nationwide. Annually, at least 750 schools and community groups take part in the week.

Though we are thrilled with the ongoing participation in National Hunger & Homelessness Awareness Week, we also wonder how much longer we will have to keep building awareness before as a country, we enact policies that house and support our neighbors. Join us over the next week to continue our fight for greater investment in affordable housing, to support our labor through living wages, to listen to the struggles of those who are currently unhoused, and those who are at risk of losing their homes and to work in partnership with our neighbors and policy makers to protect our basic human rights and dignity.

Be sure to register your event, look for an event nearby, or find out more at https://nationalhomeless.org/about-us/projects/awareness-week/

Some more highlights over the coming week:

NCH’s Faces of Homelessness Speakers’ Bureau will be traveling to six states and the District of Columbia to share personal experiences with homelessness.
For the second year in a row, Storied Streets will be hosting free screenings of this powerful documentary November 13-15, with a live Twitter chat on Sunday, Nov. 15th at 8:30pm EST. Be sure to follow @StoriedStreets to take part.
Faith leaders will be holding town hall meetings on homelessness in Washington, DC on Sunday Nov. 15 and Monday the 16th. See the Presbyterian Network to End Homelessness for more.
We will be posting lots of great information about poverty, hunger and homelessness to our social media, as well as highlighting others doing great work. Be sure to follow and share on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, hashtag #NHHAW.
We will be releasing an update to our report on feeding restrictions, one of the more disturbing efforts by cities to move homelessness out of sight.

Stay tuned for more, and thank you for being a part of the movement! Together we can end homelessness.

^{Originally published Nov 4, 2015}
Local officials of Seattle and King County, Washington have declared a civil state of emergency for homelessness this week. Seattle follows Los Angeles, Portland, Oregon and the state of Hawaii, who have made similar proclamations likening the seriousness of homelessness with the aftermath of natural disasters. Unlike a natural disaster homelessness is not a new phenomenon, it has been prevalent for almost 40 years, but is being exacerbated with growing economic inequality and lack of affordable housing, etc. Homelessness is not contained to these areas either; it is widespread across the United States. It is safe to say that our country as a whole is in a state of emergency!

The recognition of epidemic levels of homelessness is long overdue. According to Mayor Ed Murray of Seattle, “More than 45 people have died on the streets of the city of Seattle this year and nearly 3,000 children in Seattle Public Schools are homeless,” In Hawaii, there were 7,600 people experiencing homelessness and only room for about 3,800 people in shelters or housing programs; among these unsheltered individuals were 439 children. The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority counted more than 44,000 individuals experiencing homelessness in the county. Likewise, Portland, Oregon, officials counted 1,800 individuals including 566 women experiencing homelessness while unsheltered.

Further, as the value of our wages continues to decline, renters across the country are finding themselves paying 50% or more of their income on housing. 20.7 million households are housing-cost-burdened. Add to that the 1.5 million households living on $2.00 a day, the number of workers who can not afford fair market rents working 40 hours a week, etc. All further exasperating decades-long de-investment in affordable housing production and assistance to create growing homelessness.

Although these proclamations of emergency will enable regions to receive millions of dollars in crucial funding, these funds alone are not enough to prevent homelessness long-term. The allocation of emergency funds is fundamental to the effectiveness of local programs in preventing and ending homelessness. Hawaii has claimed they plan to use the funds toward the rapid construction of temporary shelters, increase of existing homeless services, and funding for housing first programs. Portland has stated that they will waive portions of state building codes to convert private and city-owned buildings into shelters, as well as build housing for people who will be served by the future psychiatric emergency center. While specific spending plans are in the process being negotiated, it seems that the common focus is the development of shelters. Even though shelters could reduce the amount of deaths on the street it is only a short-term solution that will not prevent homelessness and extreme poverty.

For long-lasting change we must focus on long-term systemic solutions, such as affordable housing, rent control, jobs that pay a livable wage, healthcare, and adequate funding for services like social security and disability, and so much more. The big picture response that we advocate is not easy, but it is necessary to correct the structure that has produced inequality and vulnerability for the last few decades. Homeless shelters alone will not remedy the factors that have produced homelessness in epidemic proportions.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has released a Notice of Funding Availability (NOFA) for the Continuum of Care (CoC) Program for $1.89 billion for Fiscal Year 2015. The CoC Program distributes funding to homeless projects in communities throughout the nation. The deadline for applying for the FY 2015 CoC Program Competition is November 20.

For the first time, HUD will examine whether applicant communities are preventing the criminalization of those experiencing homelessness. In a 2014 report, the National Coalition for the Homeless (NCH) found over 70 cities that had or were considering restricting the sharing of food with people who were homeless. Other laws that disproportionately affect people without a permanent home include bans on camping in public spaces, bans on loitering or begging, even limits to the time someone can spend sitting or lying down on a city sidewalk or park bench.

“The National Coalition for the Homeless is pleased to see HUD continuing the federal proactive approach against the continued criminalization of people experiencing homelessness,” state Megan Hustings, Interim Director, NCH. “NCH is the leading homeless civil rights organization in the nation and have been advocating for this position for at least two decades and our advocacy has finally paid off. If communities continue to enforce anti-homeless ordinances, now they risk losing valuable points in their CoC application, which means a potential loss of funding,” continued Hustings.

Specifically, the NOFA states that up to 2 points will be awarded to applicants that demonstrate their communities have implemented specific strategies that prevent criminalization of homelessness, affirm further fair housing, and ensure that outreach is conducted to homeless individuals and families who are least likely to request housing or services in the absence of special outreach.

This is especially critical given the recent Department of Justice [DOJ] statement of interest in the Bell v Boise, et.al. case where DOJ argued that for communities that lack housing alternatives of for homeless people, anti-camping ordinances violate the US Constitutions 8th Amendment as “cruel and unusual punishment” and as “misguided public policy.”

“It is a new day for protecting the civil rights of homeless people. Lets hope that this is a wake up call for communities to now focus on creating affordable housing that will end and prevent homelessness,” states John Parvensky, Board Chair, NCH and CEO of the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless.

NCH is an advocacy organization focused on organizing and giving a voice to those who have experienced homelessness. NCH’s mission is to prevent and end homelessness while ensuring the immediate needs of those experiencing homelessness are met and their civil rights protected.

The National Coalition for the Homeless recently hosted a Congressional briefing on Trauma Informed Care (TIC) and homeless families. Trauma Informed Care is an important topic that is rapidly gaining notability due to its capacity to teach practitioners how to engage with individuals who have experienced trauma without the use of damaging punitive or paternalistic attitudes.

Representative Alcee L. Hastings of the 20th District of Florida, co-chair of the Congressional Homelessness Caucus, began the briefing with opening remarks. He was then followed by a panel of TIC experts, including Cheryl Sharp, the senior advisor for trauma informed services at the National Council for Behavioral Health, Jennifer Pearlman, the coordinator for trauma informed care for the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless, Leah Harris, the TIC specialist for the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors, and Barbara Anderson, the director of Haven House Services. The panel was moderated by Carmela DeCandia, the director for child and family initiatives from the Center on Social Innovation. Each speaker brought a complimentary perspective from a different facet of homeless and mental health services, as they informed the audience on their knowledge and experience with trauma informed care.

Each panelist explained that trauma informed care serves as an organizational strategy to help social service agencies gain the awareness, knowledge, and skills to better support individuals on their pathway to recovery. This approach prompts service providers to respond to the recipient’s psychological and emotional needs rather than just provide resources. It necessitates that service providers approach recipients from a perspective of empathy that rejects ideologies of individual blame for issues created by much larger forces. This ideology is pertinent in light of the findings of the SHIFT study that showed, 93% of homeless mothers had a history of trauma, 79% experienced trauma as children, 81% experience multiple traumatic events, and 36% had a lifetime history of post-traumatic stress disorder. The SHIFT study also provides valuable insights on the impact of public policy on the creation of homelessness and poverty.

With the severe lack of affordable housing in this country, only one out of four low-income families that are eligible for federal rental assistance will receive it. Meanwhile, the minimum wage is not sufficient enough to cover the cost of housing in many cities. Without stable housing, traumatic vulnerability occurs, which can result in assault, mental and physical health issues, and substance abuse. More than half of homeless children are under the age of 6, which is a critical time for brain development and resilience. Cheryl Sharp warned that when children do not know if they are safe it impedes upon their development. Traumatized caregivers are more likely to pass adverse experiences onto children, and are less emotionally and physically available. This is compounded on the stressors of being homeless. Even sheltered families can experience trauma because of danger in these environments, instability, and a lack of mental health knowledge among caregivers. This trauma furthers the barrier to successful re-housing. We must demand systemic change to increase our nation’s affordable housing stock, and make TIC funding available in existing shelters and service organizations to allow homeless families pathways to stability and healing. Barbara Anderson stated that ending homelessness and the resulting trauma requires the completion of two main objectives: solving the root causes of homelessness through a paradigm shift to a democratic government that addresses the needs of the people, and healing the trauma of past policies with social service investment. Our political representatives, our shelters, our service providers, our schools, and our culture must implement trauma-informed strategies, because within our current mode of operation, we are only making surviving in America more difficult.

Interested in measuring the TIC in your organization? Check out the ticometer at www.Thinkt3.com.

– Kyra Habekoss and Quinn Kobelak
NCH Interns

We are sad to report that Michael Stoops, Director of Community Organizing, is on medical leave as of June 10, 2015. We ask that Michael’s privacy be respected during this difficult time.

Michael has been a driving force towards ending homelessness for more than 30 years. He has touched so many lives in his tireless work on behalf of those experiencing extreme poverty.

We also ask for your patience as our responses to inquiries about NCH programs and activities may be delayed.

This is the power of the men and women of the Faces of Homelessness Speakers’ Bureau:

In February, the 6th Grade class of Alice Deal Middle School, here in Washington, DC, listened to T. Sanders and John Harrison talk about their experiences with homelessness. T with her Master’s Degree and John, a clean-cut soft-spoken man, do not fit the stereotype of someone who is homeless. They are both eloquent and motivational speakers, and boy did they motivate.

Every year, students at Alice Deal Middle School dedicate one day near the end of the year to giving back. The students decide what they’d like to do for the day, often volunteering for a low-income meal program or environmental project.

For the last several months, 6th grade students have been working with local homeless advocates to plan a rally in support of a measure that would add housing status to Washington, DC’s anti-discrimination ordinance.

Says one student,

‘I want it to be a chance for the community to stand up for someone more. For people to actually do something.’ Has this project motivated the students to work for homeless rights in the future? ‘Absolutely.’

The rally will be held at Freedom Plaza in downtown DC, Wednesday, June 3rd at 10am.

Stay tuned to Facebook/Twitter/Instagram for more on #Heart4TheHomeless.

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