NPACH Perspective:
Looking Back, Moving Forward: Lessons Learned from the 2005
Hurricanes
For all who work on the issue of
homelessness, it is impossible to look back at 2005 without
examining the impact of the Gulf South hurricanes on our
ongoing program, policy, and advocacy efforts.
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita were unprecedented –
destroying or nearly destroying a number of American cities
and towns, displacing hundreds of thousands, revealing the
utter lack of preparation of government, and even – if
only for a brief moment – putting the issue of
homelessness and poverty on the political map. As we
witnessed the tremendous public response, we felt a guarded,
tenuous hope that the generosity and swift action of the
public and private sectors might also translate into a new
will to end homelessness for all Americans. Indeed, the
response to Hurricane Katrina gave us more reason to believe
that homelessness could be ended – shelters emptied,
housing located, services provided, goods donated, hearts
opened. No more, it seemed, would the phrase “ending
homelessness” be bandied about as an empty slogan or a
lofty but unreachable goal – in many communities, for
many evacuees, it was meaningful and achievable.
Yet, our initial optimism has been replaced by a strong sense
of disquiet. The media, government, and the public have
largely failed to discern the similarities between the mass
homelessness caused by Katrina and the mass homelessness that
preceded it. At the local level, many communities witnessed
sharply divergent responses, with efforts to house and
support evacuees far surpassing efforts to assist other
people experiencing homelessness. At the national level,
we’ve seen little change of direction in policies on
poverty or homelessness. Thus, the hope of finally putting
poverty on the national agenda appears to have been dashed
yet again. The fragile optimism of many advocates has turned
to frustration, disappointment, and even indignation. We must
try to understand the reasons behind what happened so we can
learn from this tragic hurricane season to build effective
efforts to end homelessness for all who experience it.
Certainly, part of the problem is fundamental misconceptions
about homelessness – misunderstandings that prevent the
development of the political will to address homelessness and
lead to misguided policies for addressing it. For instance,
the root causes of homelessness still remain largely hidden
from public view. The public sees and understands houses
toppled by wind and water, but not the erosion of the
economic landscape that has put housing out of reach for so
many. In fact, the public dialogue on homelessness today
– especially at the federal level – is almost
completely disconnected from considerations of the poverty
and lack of housing that cause it. No wonder the public
distinguishes between hurricane-homelessness and other
homelessness – what they see and hear about homelessness
is pathology, not poverty.
Clearly, we must do a better job of educating the public
about homelessness – its underlying causes and its human
consequences. But in addition, we must take a more detailed
look at federal policy – for while we are at the mercy
of natural disasters, we do have the power to impact other
forces, less visible but equally destructive to the lives
they up-end. A comparison of the federal response to the
hurricanes and current homeless policy is instructive in this
regard. Rather than start by asking what would result from
applying federal disaster policies to homelessness,
let’s reverse the inquiry. What would have happened if
the federal government applied current homeless policy to
people whose homelessness was caused by the hurricanes?
Hurricane Katrina left hundreds of thousands of people
homeless – infants, elderly people, families, singles,
people with mental illness, people with addictions, people
with no mental health issues or addictions, but struggling to
survive through grinding poverty. Suppose that FEMA decided
to direct resources to only 10% of the evacuees, targeting
those whom they thought were most vulnerable, under the
assumption that the others could get by on whatever they
could find. Suppose the federal government argued that no
money could be spent on evacuee families until there was more
“research” on evacuee-ism among families –
that a typology of evacuee families was necessary in order to
justify the expenditure of federal funds to assist them.
Suppose that after the hurricanes, the federal government
told us that we should adopt a goal to end evacuees’
homelessness in 10 years, and that we should spend our time
and energy making local ten-year plans without the resources
to implement them.
Undoubtedly, most people would have found this approach to
helping evacuees baffling and totally unacceptable.
Fortunately, it didn’t happen that way. Relief agencies
made few distinctions of costliness or worthiness among
evacuees. No one pondered the need for a typology before
committing resources to help their fellow citizens – it
was enough to know that they were suffering without housing,
jobs, food, and health care. And, thankfully, no one proposed
ten years as an appropriate deadline for re-housing evacuees.
The hurricanes have exposed the ludicrousness and irrelevance
of much of the current federal policy on homelessness: the
almost exclusive focus on a small percentage of the homeless
population; the use and misuse of an exceedingly narrow
research base to justify a politically expedient initiative;
and an un-funded local 10-year planning activity as a patent
attempt to devolve federal responsibility and distract from
the lack of resources. How small the vision has become –
how low the expectations. Sadly, many advocates have been
persuaded, or pressured, or are simply resigned, to
supporting this approach in order to be competitive for
federal dollars. Yet if we wish for the Gulf Coast hurricanes
to cause a fundamental paradigm shift among the public and
the body politic, we must be willing to entertain one
ourselves. For nothing less than a paradigm shift is needed
within homelessness policy and advocacy, especially now that
we know that ending homelessness can be embraced by our
communities and effected by the public and private sectors.
This paradigm shift must occur in three main areas: 1) the
role of the McKinney-Vento homeless assistance programs
administered by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban
Development (HUD); 2) definitions of homelessness; and 3) the
“chronic” homelessness initiative.
First, we must not view the McKinney-Vento Homeless
Assistance grants administered by HUD as the primary means or
“best vehicle” for ending homelessness. The HUD
McKinney-Vento programs are emergency responses, and small
ones at that – $1.4 billion dollars a year, spread out
over all 50 states, representing only 1/30th of the entire
HUD budget. These programs will never, in and of themselves,
end homelessness for any group, because they don’t
address the causes. To end homelessness, national advocacy
efforts must encompass a broader agenda that includes a
national housing trust fund, expansion of mainstream
affordable housing programs, comprehensive and affordable
health care, livable wages, adequate benefits, and quality
education. While these large systemic issues may seem far
beyond our grasp, there are specific legislative steps we can
take toward achieving them – steps that NPACH and our
national partners will outline in our upcoming 2006
legislative agenda. More immediately and more urgently, if we
are serious about ending homelessness, we must urge Congress
not to slash funding for programs that help keep people even
marginally housed, such as Medicaid, SSI, and Food Stamps. If
we are silent on these issues, we can guarantee good business
for homeless shelters for years to come.
Second, we must accurately define homelessness. As has been
described in previous issues of the NPACH Report, the
definition of homelessness used by HUD is limited to people
living on the streets or in shelters; it excludes people
living in doubled-up situations and those in motels. By
comparison, the definition of homelessness employed by the
U.S. Department of Education (ED) specifically includes
children and youth who are “sharing the housing of
others due to loss of housing, economic hardship, or a
similar reason.” In addition, children and youth who
“are living in motels, hotels, trailer parks, or camping
grounds due to the lack of alternative adequate
accommodations” are specifically included, along with
other temporary living situations (emphasis added). The ED
definition thus acknowledges the extent of the housing crisis
in this nation, and the lack of emergency and transitional
shelter for those who need it. The HUD definition, by
contrast, often excludes families and children, as well as
people living in rural areas.
The definition of “chronic homelessness” is much
narrower yet. Indeed, it is beginning to appear that the
chief strategy for ending homelessness is to simply define it
out of existence – as fewer and fewer people meet the
definition, the closer we can come to proclaiming victory.
What an irony that people living doubled up either before or
after the hurricanes are eligible for emergency assistance
from FEMA, while those doubled-up because housing is
unaffordable or unsafe, and shelters are full or
non-existent, are not eligible for emergency assistance
through HUD. Ignoring the real need for housing and homeless
assistance by using a scaled down, limited definition of
homelessness does nothing to assist policymakers, service
providers, and others in making informed decisions about who
is impacted by the affordable housing crisis in our
communities and how to meet their needs. Only by
acknowledging the extent of homelessness, and by giving
communities the ability and the flexibility to respond to it,
can we begin to address the causes of and solutions to
homelessness. Thus, NPACH is joined by a growing number of
national organizations in urging that HUD's definition of
homelessness be expanded to include people who are doubled-up
and who live in motels.
Finally, we must re-examine the rationale for and outcome of
the “chronic” homelessness initiative. We should be
deeply concerned about an initiative that divides equally
vulnerable populations of people, treating them as if they
have no relationship to each other, and actually pitting them
against each other for service dollars and public attention.
If we found the pitting of hurricane-displaced homeless
against poverty-displaced homeless to be unsavory, unethical,
and ineffective, then we must not tolerate policies that
create the same kind of competition and division between
homeless singles and families, between children and adults.
The “chronic” homeless initiative is not only
unacceptable for its consequences, but it is also
fundamentally flawed in its premises.
One of the rationales for the chronic homeless initiative is
the judgment that non-“chronically” homeless people
are more resilient, that their homelessness is somehow less
serious with fewer long-lasting impacts. Yet, the
“chronic” homeless initiative overlooks the
relationships between populations, including the fact that
today’s “chronically” homeless adults were
once children, many of whose disabling conditions didn’t
appear overnight, but were the result of a lifetime of
hardship, starting at a young age. A plan that prioritizes
the needs of adults will never end homelessness in ten years;
in fact, the child born homeless at the beginning of the plan
will be ten years old, with significant deficits, possibly
still homeless, or at risk of becoming homeless, at the
plan’s “end.” Regardless of if, how, or when
people become disabled, it takes affordable housing, health
care, income, and education to prevent them from becoming
homeless in the first place. This is true for all
populations. To focus on any one population at the exclusion
of others is to all but guarantee the perpetuation of
homelessness into the foreseeable future.
Surely, we can do better. We can value every life equally. We
can read the fine print; ask questions; think and act
comprehensively. We can articulate the needs that we see on a
daily basis and we can demand policy and program initiatives
that appropriately and humanely respond to them. The Gulf
South hurricanes have challenged us, and they have changed
us. It is now our turn to do the challenging and the changing
– to take back that optimism we once felt, to pick up
the threads of inclusiveness and compassion we saw in our
communities and weave them into a tapestry of justice through
which no man, woman, or child falls. It is a tall order, but
only a vision so large can sustain us through these difficult
days.