A couple of months ago, one of the community members at Peace House Community crawled under the table where we set out pastries so he could take a nap. A newer volunteer asked if this was okay, and I replied that as long as he was breathing and no one was going to trip over him, we would leave him alone. If sleeping under a table on a cement floor in a noisy room is his best option, who am I to make an arbitrary rule that will take his sleep away?
I mentioned this story during a church service recently, and a couple of days later one of PHC’s supporters commented on how uplifting the story was, because it showed how caring we were. Unfortunately, in the two days between telling the story and hearing the comment, my mood had soured because cold weather had set in. My response was succinct. “You say its uplifting because I told you about the good part of PHC. The flipside is that there’s a really good chance that one or two of my friends from PHC will freeze to death in the next few months, or will lose their fingers and toes to frostbite, or will die in a tent fire.” Needless to say, our supporter wasn’t quite as joyful after that.
Unfortunately, as we head into another winter where homeless is still a deadly problem for our most vulnerable neighbors, the City and County are becoming less adept at dealing with homelessness, making the situation even more dire.
The County has Assessors who visit sites like Peace House Community to help homeless individuals get into housing. Until recently, they posted their calendar on the County website, showing when they would be a different locations. Recently they removed the calendar because too many people were showing up for County services besides housing. Taking the calendar down makes it that much harder for those who need housing to find the people they need to talk to. Even worse, when I asked different County workers who had been involved in the decision to share the calendar with me so that I could refer homeless individuals to them, they refused. I was told instead to have the homeless individuals speak to the Assessors who come to PHC. Unfortunately, the Assessors visit us only once a month for two hours, hardly an appropriate response when freezing temperatures are likely to last for weeks at a time.
At the City level, Council Member Chavez and others have sponsored the Encampment Removal Reporting Ordinance, which is meant to bring more transparency and fiscal responsibility to the clearing of homeless encampments. Basically, it requires the personnel involved in closing encampments to report to the City things like the services offered to the encampment residents, the number of City and other staff who were involved in closing the encampment, the cost of the closing, and so on. From the public comments I have heard from the Council Members, they believe that the City is not getting its money’s worth for the millions of dollars spent over the last few years on encampment enclosures. While I applaud a desire to not waste money, I don’t think the ordinance will help because it misunderstands the problem. Closing encampments as efficiently as possible to save money doesn’t solve homelessness or eliminate encampments; it just forces the most vulnerable to continually move, lose their housing (such as it is), and forfeit any form of stability.
A homeless encampment on the vacant lots behind PHC was closed on Dec. 5, and by the Encampment Removal Reporting Ordinance standards, the closure was probably a success. Outreach workers offered housing and services that many of the residents declined, but no one asked the residents why they didn’t want the services. Instead, everyone ignored the camp for a few months, and then police officers showed up one day and gave the residents about three hours to clear out. I’m sure this closure was cheaper than other closures (hence the success), but it didn’t move anyone into housing. Fortunately, the newly displaced homeless folks only have to wait 13 days in a Minesota winter before they can speak to the County Assessors at PHC.
by Marti Maltby, Director Peace House Community – A Place to Belong
This article originally appeared in “The Alley,” the newspaper for the Phillips neighborhood of Minneapolis.