The Value of Homeless Outreach

The Value of Homeless Outreach

Dear Readers,

We confront an issue that is universal among homeless individuals in our communities and this struggle is the struggle of homeless individuals attempting to get into the social service system. The causes of homelessness among individuals cross the gamut of causes. The most prevalent reason for homelessness in the United States is that the costs of living in the Unites States have outstripped the current earning wage of the minimum wage worker in the United States. The other reasons for homelessness in the United States involve physical disabilities that arise for American's that choose to fight in armed conflicts through out the world. These veterans suffer morbidity from physical disability that arises from being involved in conflict. The disabilities are being experienced by veterans from the Iraq conflict. There are a mass of veterans that are aging and suffer from morbidity. National resources that are earmarked to accommodate the needs of our American veterans are not enough. Physical and mental disabilities that individuals are born often prevent individuals from working and hence individuals must depend on a benefit check from Social Security. Such a benefit check will only cover the costs of housing for a homeless individual and will barely meet the costs of food for a disabled individual. The need for an individual to survive will often motivate an individual to forsake shelter in order to meet the other costs associated with living. I do not need to address the quality of living for an individual living in poverty or a homeless individual who is homeless. We have to understand that individuals living in poverty and those who are homeless will experience massive morbidities as a result of the lack of access to health care and proper nutrition. These individuals are often trapped because they can not achieve social mobility. The answer to social mobility in the United States is education. We can all agree on this principle. However how can we expect a homeless individual to achieve social mobility if there is a shortage of bus passes from social service providers? Furthermore, if we add on the lack of proper nutrition that our poor and homeless experience, how are they supposed to achieve social mobility? Who is going to encourage them to be successful when the going gets tough? The financial aid the federal government provides the poor is good enough to get a very motivated student through higher education. Agreed well, but what about your average to sub motivated student? How will they get through higher education if they do not having someone pushing them? The poor often do not have role models and they are often alienated because of other individuals who are pushing very hard and often have better resources than do the poor. Well, I guess I am ranting about an inequality that has existed with us for almost a half century, if not more. The reality is that poor and homeless individuals have it harder than do people coming from the middle class. It has been established in the literature that individuals coming from the poor classes have lower attendance in institutions of higher education. We wonder why, with all the struggles that poor people face. Moving on, I would like to establish that there is a solution to combating poverty in our community and to encouraging homeless individuals who become self sufficient. This involves first changing the attitude prevalent in our communities that our homeless are homeless because of held stereotypes that homeless individuals are homeless because they choose to be homeless. If you read the top of my article, you will see that homelessness is very broadly caused. Excellent now let's discuss the solution. The next step in combating homelessness involves mobilizing the community around methods that will improve the quality of life for our homeless and the ones who are experiencing poverty. This involves actually outreaching to the homeless and poor of our community. We hear about the very high rates of morbidity that the poor of our country go through. We all agreed that the poor of our nation lack access to health care at the rate comparable to the middle class and the rich. As a result the poor often present to emergency rooms with health disorders that could have been preventable. Mental illness among our high is very high. It is reasonable, I mean consider that the poor have to struggle to meet day to day challenges of survival like ensuring housing and food for themselves and any children if they have any. Hence, Depression runs rampant. Therefore, what must we do to reduce the onset of mental illness, health morbidities and to ensure social morbidity for the poor of our community? We must do something I call outreach. Social service providers as well as government officials stress the notion that if we advertise a program in venues where our target populations congregate, the target population will adopt the message that social service providers are trying to communicate. This method of providing messages that will benefit our populations is effective for the most part. What I encounter among the homeless population however is different pockets of homeless individuals who will respond to the beneficial messages in different ways. There will be the homeless individuals who if motivated will access a program that will greatly assist the social mobility and well being of a poor individual in some way. Then there are those homeless individuals who are not sure where to go with their lives because of struggles that they are dealing with. These individuals will often shun such messages because they distrust the established social system. These individuals will congregate with peers that have been through similar circumstances because these individuals will find some security from the un-predictability of homelessness. Hence, another challenge of outreach of outreach is in reaching this pocket of homeless individuals. The next pocket is the group of homeless individuals who just reject the message that social service providers give try to convey to the homeless population. These homeless individuals have become disenfranchised. They have lost hope. We must outreach to the homeless in all of these pockets but the challenge is how? Well, first we must as a community understands that being homeless is about adapting to circumstances that are often out of control of individuals who are homeless. For those homeless who want to gain shelter, we must as a community work together in fund-raising funds that will provide immediate shelter for our homeless. There is something called a Housing First model where what is stressed is housing our homeless who may be addicted to a illicit substance or alcohol before we work with a homeless person who is struggling with a particular issue. Let me tell you, the evidence suggests that it is better to assist our homeless who have shelter with their life challenges. Then, what translates from this stage is the value of outreach. We must take a survey about what is plaguing our homeless population. Then we must go further and develop a one on one relationship with our homeless to the point that we develop a strong friendship with the homeless person we are trying to advocate for. Then will we understand the true realities of homelessness. Sure, I can write down why some homeless individuals go in and out of detox programs and drug rehabilitation but what is important is what homeless advocates discover from personalized friendships they have with the homeless individuals that they may serve. When I say friendship I mean to create an analogy between the relationship that a physician has with a patient and the relationship that a social service provider has with client. Like medicine which is best practiced via a holistic understanding of your patient, the social service provider must have a holistic understanding of the life challenges of a client. First off, for our disabled we must improve the quality of life of the individual by raising the level of benefits that they receive. Then we must expand health benefits that they have access to. After we hop over this hurdle, we can provide job opportunities for the homeless individual who needs assistance with getting income (we should provide shelter first and put the individual immediately to work). Then the individual may began working and being sheltered. The renewed sense of doing something productive (working and earning a wage) may encourage a homeless individual to kick an illicit substance. Remember that a good chunk of our homeless use substances because there is a high prevalence of mental illness in the homeless community (they self medicate themselves to do deal with mental illness). Being housed for a homeless individual will create some benefit for the chronic medical illness that a homeless individual must deal with. This has been established through a PBS special I invite you to visit. What do we do for the homeless person who is sort of wary about accessing social services? We must as providers take a survey and figure out what they need, we must then comprehensively provide what they need. The program must be truly accessible for our homeless person. After we achieve this, the homeless person will access the service and will be successful. The thing I want to add is that social support for our homeless person is very crucial after they have gone through a program like drug rehabilitation or the person may relapse. This is more of a state issue. The local community can step in and aid a homeless individual after an individual has finished a social program like drug rehab. For the most motivated member of our homeless community, we must provide more programs like immediate housing and access to detox beds. By doing this, we will get a member of our homeless community who is motivated to get off a substance, into housing and we will provide referrals for a person in need to other social agencies. We must over come the transportation needs that our homeless have if we are going to ensure there success. Why can we not fund-raise as a community around these issues? The other and last thing that I think is important in outreach is actually going out to the camp site of a homeless person. We as concerned community members and social service providers must go out to the camp site of a homeless individual and make first contact. From here, trust is developed. With how crucial homeless outreach is for our nations homeless, we must fight for programs like AB. 2034 where social service providers receive funding from California to make first contact with homeless individuals who are in deep need of social service programs like mental health treatment that the state provides. The governor would like to cut the AB. 2034 program and force the counties of the state to pay for AB. 2034 from funds that have been given to counties through the Mental Health Services Act commonly known as Prop 63. If such a cut was approved, there would be 4,000 or so homeless individuals at risk of becoming homeless. This would be a travesty and this must be avoided. So I encourage community members all over the state to communicate with the governor’s office and encourage the governor to preserve funding to AB. 2034. For our local communities with a local city council and a business association, I encourage the businesses to establish a partnership with high income residents to fund the infrastructure that will allow homeless outreach to occur. With outreach to our homeless communities, can we find hope for the reduction of social problems and a furthering of social mobility for our homeless?


With trust can the top be achieved? Please use my essay for the promotion of conversation around the issue.


Best,
Richard Cipian

Dont Cut AB. 2034

Top priority-Do not Cut AB. 2034

by Richard Cipian ( richardcipian [at] gmail.com )
Tuesday Feb 6th, 2007 3:25 PM

AB. 2034 currently funded by the state of California is at risk of being cut. Such a program allows social service workers in California to outreach to the homeless of our state. The California Governors office intends to force California counties to fund the AB. 2034 program through Proposition 63 dollars that have been provided to fund mental health outreach for our most marginalized and mentally ill. After reading my piece call the Governors Office and convince the governor to fully fund the AB. 2034 program.

It is very true that the first step in helping the homeless of our community is for members of our community to become aware of why people are homeless so that wrongful stereotypes of the homeless can be erased. Then, can we have community members with shelter willing to outreach to the homeless of our community without shelter. There is an outreach program that was established by the State of California known by social service providers as AB. 2034. This program funds the work of social workers from California counties who make first contact with the homeless. AB. 2034 is a wonderful program and it is at risk of reduction by the California state governor. The governor would like to cut state funding for AB. 2034 and force the counties to fund AB. 2034 through Prop 63. (Mental Heath Service Act) funds the counties have received. This makes no sense. Counties all over the state of California are struggling to implement their Mental Health Service Act Plans because funding given to the counties has not been as adequate to fully meet the demand. This idea proposed by the Governor is so stupid it is not even funny. What the governor proposes is to first cut funding from a program that allows social workers to meet face to face with the most marginalized on California streets and then to cut a program that provides money for mental health outreach for our marginalized populations; non-native Spanish speakers, seniors, transition aged youth and our homeless. It this was to occur, mental health outreach for California’s marginalized would be jeopardized. It would be like the choice to release all of the mentally ill to the streets from our state mental health institutions. Therefore, I encourage community members all over the state of California to learn more about AB. 2034 and give a call to the California governor’s office. We must preserve state funding to AB.2034 so that we can continue our work of outreaching to our homeless and mentally ill. Thank You

Richard Cipian
endhomelessindavis.blogspot.com
Student homeless advocate in Davis, California

Housing Options for the Homeless

Dear Readers,
My name is Richard Cipian and I am a college student and a homeless activist. I am writing this very brief piece to inform members of the community of an important issue facing the homeless community of Davis. The critical resource facing the homeless of Davis is housing. It is a commonly known fact that there is a long term and emergency shelter program operating in the city of Davis, operated by Davis Community Meals. This facility houses up to 16 homeless individuals at once, the focus of this program being long term transitional housing for clients who lack shelter but who would like to get back on their feet. A major requirement for placement in this and other long term housing programs in California like Davis Community Meals is the need for clients to be sober and if a client is suffering from a mental illness, the illness must be stable and treated with medication. We have been lucky in Davis to have in place the Cold Weather Shelter in Davis, which is geared to serving homeless individuals who are also substance and alcohol consumers at the time of shelter. Davis Community Meals also hosts a family program. The 2005-2006 Homeless Count coordinated by the Yolo County Homeless Coalition identified a homeless population of 148. It is a given fact that while there are other homeless resources present for the different populations of individuals who are homeless in our community, slightly more than half of this homeless population do not have a roof over thier head. The national consensus among homeless specific social service providers and some in our federal government is that, a housing first model where we house our chronically homeless and then provide needed social services is a good strategy and a start in ending chronic homelessness. With this in mind, I bring up an important issue facing the homeless of Davis which is also an issue in other areas of Yolo County. This issue pertains to the lack of stable year around housing options for the , alcohol, illicit substance consuming and the incomeless homeless (including the mentally ill) of Davis, California. I propose at least a place to start with this crisis with the goal in mind that we are to find long term housing options for every homeless individual that seeks housing. Community members, staff from the city of Davis and members from the Chamber of Commerce should coordinate with other social service agencies and county government in order to host a outreach fair for the homeless. A outreach fair would encompass health service screening and social service assistance in one centralized location. In the city of Davis's future evaluation of affordable housing projects, there should be an effort to designate some of these units for the homeless who do not have a fixed income. A condition could be established that homeless individuals being housed must look for work in at least six months from the date of being housed. Members of the homeless suffering from severe mental illness that we get off the street and house in such units could be matched up with social service advocates that could assist such members of the homeless population in applying for social security benefits. A major impediment in a lack of housing for our homeless suffering from mental illness is that a good majority of these individuals do not know where to start in applying for social security benefits. Without income, our mentally ill can not be housed in a long term fashion. An option to subsidizing the cost of rent for our homeless in the city of Davis could be via establishing a community fund to subsidize the rent of a homeless person for a period of six months. Another option is to work with local apartment complex managers in order to provide some of the vancant apartment complex units to members of the homeless without a fixed level of income. The homeless individuals without housing could actually be housed. The solutions I have suggested, are a few of many that have worked in other communities across the country. We have the income in the community to house our homeless; we do not have to rely entirely on city and county government funds. We as a community must have a political will to house every homeless individual who wishes to be housed. This is the bottom line. This article does not even be speak the other issues plaguing the homeless community that the community as a whole; not just city and county government agencies could do on the issues of a lack of healthcare upkeep, proper nutrition and the need for more drug detox (drug rehabilitation services and supporting discharge services) .I invite responses to my blog entry. It is my intention to bring about dialogue around this critical issue in that we must house more members of our homeless population in the city of Davis. Please reader gain some inspiration from this article and do not just passively read my entry.

Richard Cipian
Davis, California
RichardCipian@gmail.com