Just this past week a
homeless encampment was told they have to leave the area in East Ft
Worth or be arrested for trespassing. The unfortunate part of this
particular scenario is that some of those in the encampment are just
trying to get along. Instead they wound up being caught up near other
homeless people who are just there for the drugs or to drink their
alcohol. Personally I never went into that particular encampment
because of safety issues.
Even though they are
offered information about homeless services nearby, getting those
services is another headache in and of itself. Why is that? Well for
starters the three main shelters here are operating at capacity which
is one of the reasons those folks are camping in the first place.
Even then the shelters themselves have their own issues. They are
much better today than they were during my homeless period but a
shelter is not a real happy place. Secondly, while it is possible to
find out about the other services available there is so much
competition to receive those services that many people simply give up
trying.
Now don't get me wrong,
there is nothing wrong with the available homeless services
themselves. They try hard. There is just not enough to go around.
Here is an example; the wait for a housing voucher can be as long as
a year and then that person has to find an apartment that will take
him. It's not the voucher that the landlord does not want to accept
it is the fact that a homeless person probably has no credit history,
bad credit, maybe a criminal background or has no work history. All
those and other barriers prevent a homeless person from ever getting
an apartment. There are few if any available housing units for those
who need them most.
I too personally went
though much of this when I was homeless. I literally spend 10 years
camping and then hit all the barriers that prevent a homeless person
from ever rising up out of that pit. Sure it can be done but look how
it took me 10 years and much patience before I could get out of my
camp. In fact, while I was getting some homeless services from the
various service providers, not once did I rise to the top of any
housing list, assistance list or got into a position where I could
see a light at the end of the tunnel. What it took was a lady who
works for a large institution who wanted to hire me. She literally
paved the way with her superiors and I became employed again.
Those sorts of things are
rare.
Now let's get back to the
homeless service providers. They mean well and work extremely hard,
but there are not only not enough funding or services available to go
around, then there are all the other barriers ahead of the homeless
person. On top of that, the service providers themselves have a real
problem with following up on their clients to make sure they can make
the transition from homelessness. It's not their fault because they
only have enough resources to get the process started and the follow
through can sometimes be non-existent. There is a reason why the
homeless person became homeless in the first place.
This is another
problem I ran into after I left my camp and went back to work. Just
getting a job was not enough for me to get my problems resolved. In
the end I ultimately got old enough to retire and did so. Then I
started therapy to work through the underlying reasons I became
homeless in the first place and were causing me some real problems
with working and adjusting to life in the world again. In fact I
might still be working and not retired right now if I had gotten the
therapy at the very beginning. I didn't think I needed it nor was it
really available. There aren't many therapists who have experience
with the homeless community.
There is another side to
all of this. Homelessness has been on the rise since the mid to late
1980's. There are plenty of reason's for this and those very reason's
need to be addressed. Homeless prevention can be a lot cheaper for
everyone involved than paying for the homeless services themselves
after the damage is done. It's not just the homeless services costs
either, there is a health-care component, a law enforcement
component, a legal system and confinement component, not to mention
long term mental health-care cost that results just from being
homeless.
Today we are paying the
price for ignoring the rise in the homeless population that began
over 25 years ago. We could have prevented it or at least kept the
ultimate costs and damage down. Because of ignoring the problems then
letting them get out of control we now will have a huge cost just to
get the current homeless people back into the community then there
will be the longer term cost to resolve the damage done to the
individual both mentally and physically from being homeless in the
first place. Then on top of that, to actually prevent homelessness
from occurring in the first place there must be a safety net to
identify when a person is on his way to becoming homeless.
In the end we have a two
part problem ahead of us if we are to make a dent in the homeless
problem. The first part of the problem we need to find a reasonable
way to get the people off the streets and reintegrated back into
society. Then deal with the after-care involved while the homeless
person goes through the reintegration process. That means affordable
housing, living expenses, long-term health-care and mental
health-care as well as a long-term plan of after-care to prevent a
relapse back into homelessness. The second part of the problem to
eliminate or at least drastically reduce the homeless population
permanently is to identify the reasons that force people into
becoming homeless in the first place. Prevention is the name of that
game and prevention has to happen at the same time as getting people
off the streets or the cycle will continue.
It's up to all of us to
work on this.
