Benefits and barriers

We’ve been preparing for a “Meet and Greet” with our local, state and federal legislators. In thinking about the issues we want to bring to their attention - barriers our families face in their path to self-sufficiency- we got another real time example. The mom in one of our client families – homeless until the family came to live in our housing – has a new job. She was stunned to find out that she also lost food stamps and has to come up with $70 per month to keep Medicaid for her baby. No time to accumulate some money. No tapering off. It’s just cut off. It’s ironic that a step toward self-sufficiency caused her to question whether her family could afford for her to work.

Our economy is really complex, and we have to be grateful that our government has created safety nets for people at the lowest end of the economic scale. Unfortunately, you can lose some of those safety net benefits even if you’re the working poor. Nobody intentionally designs government programs to discourage marriage for people who need childcare assistance or make it so that someone is better off economically if they turn down a raise to keep their food stamps. But, that’s what happens.

A heart for homeless children

The picture makes me think of the MasterCard commercials. Cost of a wellness clinic $XXX. Difference it will make – priceless.

About two years ago, pediatrician Dr. Raymond Cataneo (cutting the ribbon) came to us with an offer for our children. He had volunteered at Community LINC and could tell by observing our kids, that they showed signs of health problems common to homeless children – asthma, diabetes, overweight due to poor nutrition, etc. He offered to create a free clinic to give our children a medical home while they are residents and after they leave.

For most of our kids, the only medical care they receive is at the emergency room. They are covered by Medicaid, but their parents have no insurance at all. That, and the instability of homelessness, doesn’t lead to good medical care.

So we wrote a grant and made the case for creating a wellness clinic and other things that would dramatically improve things for our kids.

We thought our funder would be a church or a civic group, but we were turned down by two. Our eternally optimistic Associate Executive Director Teresa McClain kept searching until we finally found our funding partner in an unexpected place - a corporation with a heart for homeless children – Humana.

Humana provided the funding to build and stock the clinic, to refurbish our children’s centers, build an indoor play area in the basement of one of our buildings, and pay a part time staffer for the Children’s Program.

Shortly afterward, a second funding partner stepped forward to let us know that, at the end of 2011, they would provide the funding to keep the clinic and the Children’s Program going. This time it was the generous and caring congregation of Second Presbyterian Church. They earmarked a percentage of their capital campaign to go their missions work in the community.

We’re very grateful to all of these caring people and to all of you who have a heart for these children.

Happy New Year.

Jobs are fundamental

We've been watching the number of families who have left the transitional housing program for permanent homes decline over the last two years. To figure out why, Senior Director of Programs and Operations Jeannine Short compared the characteristics of the people who succeeded in transitioning to permanent homes to those who didn't, including their self-sufficiency assessment scores. Not surprisingly, she pinpointed unemployment as the most important factor in the decline.

We knew that unemployment was keeping people from "working the program" and it goes without saying that unemployed people aren't likely to get permanent housing.

Jeannine's study revealed that 100% of the families who exited successfully to permanent homes in 2009 and year-to-date in 2010 had jobs. Only 20% of the families who left without a permanent home had jobs. Their stays were also much shorter –13 months for those who exited successfully compared to less than 5 months for those who did not. Our residents don't always have marketable skills and they are competing for jobs with many others who do. Those who give up without a job, pay a high price for getting discouraged.

Jobs aren't the only factor that permanently ends homelessness. Financial education (budgeting), new life skills, coaching and mental health counseling all contribute to building the skills needed to stay living independently. But, jobs, like affordable housing, are fundamental.

In response, we've beefed up our job placement program by creating a computer lab where our clients can access the Internet, write resumes and get coaching (and the kids can have supervised access at night). And, we've been extremely fortunate to find that one of our interns, Norma, is skilled in job placement. In the few weeks since she took over the lab, she's found jobs for three residents we didn't think had a snowball's chance of being hired. Demand is so high, she's having to set up a schedule to accommodate both our outreach clients and our transitional housing residents. There is light at the end of this tunnel.

The federal strategy to end homelessness

The federal plan to end homelessness: Opening Doors: Federal Strategic Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness is available on the first page of the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness website at http://www.usich.gov.

The key goals are to end chronic homelessness in 5 years, homelessness for veterans in 5 years, homelessness for families in 10 years and to set a course of action that will end all types of homelessness.

Locally in Kansas City the Homelessness Task Force is creating comparable strategies for ending homelessness. We’ve just drafted an outline of the plan. I’ll keep you posted when the final version is available here.

Why do you care?

It’s sometimes as moving to hear why a donor or volunteer cares about our mission as it is to hear about the lives of the families who have become homeless.

A first time visitor asked both the Associate Executive Director and me why we had become involved. He then shared a group exercise in a seminar he attended years ago that awakened an awareness in him. The exercise (some call it the diversity shuffle) describes a number of experiences you may or may not have had growing up. If you had the experience, you take a step forward. If you didn’t, you step back.

He looked around the room at a group of people he worked with every day and knew well. He was stunned to see that he ended up way out front.

Some of his co-workers never went to a library as a child. They didn’t have a set of encyclopedias (I’m old enough to remember an old set of Funk & Wagnalls we had in our house). In his family, everyone went to college. Even his grandparents graduated from college in 1917.

The experience opened his eyes to the advantages he had that others didn’t. More than that, he understood what others had never learned. He’s given it a lot of thought over the years and the understanding has grown into desire to offer a hand up to people who have had less.

Another donor told me that he was stunned when his first job paid him more than his single working mother made in her whole life. And, she is a smart, hard working woman.

Not everyone is smart, or educated. Not every kid was read to as a child. And, it shapes our lives.

We’re very grateful for every one of you who sees that and cares.

Less homeless, but more homeless families

Last week, Housing and Urban Development released their 2009 Annual Assessment Report to Congress. It tells the story of homelessness on one night in January of 2009 when 643,000 people were homeless. An estimated 1.56 million, one in every 200 Americans, spent at least one night in a shelter during 2009. The gist of the report is that individual homelessness is down, but family homelessness is up for the second straight year.

As a nation, we’re doing better. We shelter more people who would otherwise be on the streets. Chronic homelessness was down nearly 30% from levels in 2006. The biggest concern is for families, especially those who haven’t yet entered the counts.

From the Report:
“The long-term impacts of the recession are unclear. A recent study found a nearly five-fold increase in the rate of housing overcrowding, suggesting that many families are doubling up in response to the economic downturn. If some of these family support networks already are struggling to make ends meet, some of the doubled-up families may find their way into the homeless residential service system during 2010.

On the other hand, as the nation comes out of the recession and as the stimulus funding made available through the Homeless Prevention and Re-housing (HPRP) Program starts helping families in crisis avoid shelter, it also is possible that family homelessness will decline during the next reporting period. Indeed, as of May 2010, HPRP has already served more than 350,000 people and approximately 75 percent of the funds have been used for prevention services.”

You can find the whole report at http://www.hudhre.info/documents/5thHomelessAssessmentReport.pdf.

This week, the Obama administration will issue the first national proposal to prevent and end homelessness.

What is it like for the moms?

Since Mother’s Day is this Sunday, I started thinking about all of the mothers, especially the single mothers, who are sliding into homelessness now.

A former co-worker used to call mothers and children the invisible homeless. You don’t see them pushing a shopping cart or sleeping out in the open on park benches or under bridges where their children are vulnerable. They stay with family or friends until they’re no longer welcome. Then they sleep in cars and go to shelters.

By the time a mom moves into our transitional housing, she has lost a lot of connections - with family, friends and even service providers. Those supportive kinds of relationships are often tied to the neighborhood. It’s really difficult to maintain the crucial ties that took time to form and anchored her children’s lives.

Most of our moms feel like they have failed their children. You see it in the flat affect on so many faces when they move in.

Then, they begin to feel like their kids are safe and life is stabilizing. Their coaches and counselors connect them with services for their kids. They go to lifeskills classes and start working with a budgeter. They begin to create new relationships when they make friends with other moms who are struggling with the same experience.

They do their kids proud. 47 moms moved their children into a home they bought when they graduated from the program. Myeshia got her GED and is enrolled in college. Cindy is getting her MBA. Stephanie is going to law school next fall.

And, their kids have done them proud. Jermaine is the first college graduate in his family. Stephen is finishing his freshman year in college. Julius had his choice of colleges, but is joining his big brother Stephen. Tiffany is one of the speakers at her high school graduation and someday wants to be an attorney and eventually a judge.

Happy Mothers Day to all of the wonderful mothers who have passed through our doors. To all of the moms facing homelessness now, hold on to the hope. To quote Jermaine, “Where you are, isn’t where you’re going to be.”