Taking away even the rug to sweep them under

Brenda Konkel gives tours of the first Tiny House built by OM

Madison has a strange relationship with its homeless population. A lot of folks at the city government level, homeowners in certain neighborhoods, and various others seem to think very little or not at all about those less fortunate who live on the streets, in broken down cars, and in occasional hotel rooms all around them. The attitude has been one of "out of sight, out of mind" for quite some time, even as the homeless population in the city grows. Our own mayor, Paul Soglin, once made a serious proposal to fund a program to stick homeless people on buses and ship them off to other towns.

There is no dedicated day/warming shelter, even after four years of attempts to create a new one. Current shelters are filled to overflowing, and often have incredibly limited resources, hours of operation, and sometimes overly strict rules that leave many people without a bed or any kind of hope for services that might help them get back on their feet.

Don't even get me started on the mess that is our public transportation system.

Thankfully, there are a good number of folks in the city who work hard, every day, to tackle the problem of homelessness in a very thoughtful and serious way. They're the ones who lobbied for and got the new Tiny House settlement on E. Johnson, pushed for the Occupy encampment (which was ultimately shut down by the city), and generally advocate for the people that a majority would seem to rather ignore entirely.

Brenda Konkel is one of the most prominent names among those fighting on behalf of the homeless population. A former alder and current executive director of the vital Tenant Resource Center, Konkel has been on the front lines of the fight for better treatment of and resources for the homeless for years. She's one of those money-where-your-mouth-is, walk-the-walk types that the world, quite frankly, needs more of. I've not always agreed with her on certain issues, but I admire the hell out of her dedication, compassion, and grit.

So I was particularly dismayed to read the story in today's Capital Times detailing the current effort by the city to shut down one of Konkel's good deeds. She and her partner have been keeping storage lockers on the front porch of their own home for those without roofs over their heads, so they have a safe place to keep their belongings stashed (instead of having to haul everything around on their backs all day). They've been allowing some of them to sleep on the porch as well. These are folks who have no other safe place to go, for a variety of reasons. This is last-ditch for them. But one neighbor complains, and that's all she wrote:

Brenda Konkel, a vocal Madison advocate for the homeless, and her partner, Robert Bloch, are facing potential fines of up to $300 a day if they don’t stop allowing homeless people to sleep and store belongings in lockers on the porch of their North Hancock Street house. ... “These are human beings,” [Konkel] said. “If the city and the county aren’t doing this, why prevent us from doing it?”

Good question. I know "laws are laws" and understand that the Building and Zoning Departments are technically just doing their jobs here, but how about we take a hard look at those laws and see where exceptions might be able to be made--we're talking about the health and well being of fellow humans, after all. And if the city isn't willing and/or drags its feet so hard in terms of meaningful reform to tackle the issue, then at least let folks like Brenda do what they can to stanch the bleeding.

Attacking day to day efforts like this one is akin to removing even the rug that so many homeless find themselves swept under. At least in that case, there's something covering them when they sleep at night.

Hizzoner is not a diplomat

Hoo boy, this is going to start some fires. As if this issue wasn't contentious enough. Email today direct from Mayor Soglin himself, regarding the ongoing debate over the presence of homeless people at the City County Building downtown (and how the city treats homeless folks in general):

Last night about 5:20 when I returned to the City-County Building from the Board of Estimates meeting a heated dispute was taking place at the chairs adjacent to the entrance to the Park Division office. 

Sitting on the left was Man A. He was talking on his cell phone at the time and continued to do so during the entire incident. Sitting in the center was Woman B. Wearing a gray hat she refused to move. Sitting next to her and closest to the door to the Parks Division office was Woman C. She was yelling at Woman B and telling her to get up and leave. Standing over Woman B was Man D who was yelling in a threatening manner at Woman B ordering her to move. 

I stopped to watch the incident and when it became clear the matter was escalating, called 911. Before the officers arrived, woman B got up from the chair, staggered over to Woman C and continued to yell at her. Man D took the center seat and asserted his claim that the chair was his. Man A continued with his phone call. I could hear him saying that the background noise was because of an argument. 

Woman B, Woman C and Man D continued to argue. As the police officers arrived Woman C threw a punch at Woman B. 

We can build and spend money on more libraries, day shelters, night shelters, restroom facilities and none of these behaviors are going to change. The people of Madison deserve better. Therapy, treatment, and counseling, with constant supervision are needed for a significant number of people who hang out in this building and the surrounding area. No number of shelters or amount of money is going to address their needs unless it is focused on treatment for mental health and substance abuse matters. Frankly I see no sense in spending public money for buildings, shelter, day centers, or housing for individuals who will either refuse to use them or will be banned from them for behavior reasons. 

Someone has some explaining to do. Why is there no treatment, voluntary or compulsory? 

If the individuals in question had not been fighting and arrested they could have gone up to the third floor where the City-County Liaison Committee was meeting and joined in the testimony that a security guard was not needed in the lobby. It appears that at least one of these individuals was involved in a fight on Friday. 

Paul R. Soglin - Mayor City of Madison 

He's right that a lot more money and focus needs to go toward mental health and substance abuse treatment, I absolutely agree. But throwing shelter facilities and other resources for the homeless under the bus in the process is incredibly wrongheaded and short-sighted. Not all homeless people are mentally unwell and/or addicts. And even those that are will need resources for seeking out services and then being able to access those services on a regular, reliable basis.

It would be nice if the discussion about these issues could be had without needlessly inflammatory sniping (the Mayor is not the only guilty party here). Too many people's actual lives and well-being are on the line.

Passing the buck

Interviews with Madison Mayor Paul Soglin regarding the issue of homelessness in the city have become something of a broken record.

He says he wants to help, that he sympathizes, but that the city is simply too strapped for cash and resources to do anything more to help. He blames the Walker Administration and the state and federal level destruction of social welfare programs. He says that's where we should look if we want to place blame for the steady increase in the number of people left out in the cold, and certainly Walker Co. has been no friend to sane, compassionate projects.

An article in today's Capital Times does a good job of looking at the current state of affairs as regards the homeless population in Madison. In it, there are quotes from Soglin that could have come from any number of interviews he's given on the subject over the last year or two:

"I’m flattered that people as usual think that their city government, the most responsive and accessible unit of government, is expected to solve the problem," he says icily. "But certain problems, because of cost and mobility issues, cannot be solved at the local level." Advocates for the homeless should instead direct their complaints to Gov. Scott Walker and Republican members of Congress, Soglin says. "We’re watching at the state and federal level the wholesale breakdown of support systems," he says.

I think we're all too prone to passing the buck when things get hairy, and especially when there's a big ol' bureaucracy involved. No, Madison government can't solve all of the problems. But the fact of the matter is that is is possible to make positive change even in small, incremental ways if we just set our minds to it.

Take the Little Houses project that's being undertaken right now, and the initiative to allow private landowners to allow a certain amount of camping on their land. Everything helps. Sitting around throwing our hands into the air does not.

It's not just Soglin, of course, and his flaw seems mostly to be that he's terrible at talking about the issue (I don't doubt that he cares, deep down). There are a lot of people in this city, many of them well-placed within government, neighborhood associations, and the business community, who are actively stymieing efforts to make real change, and that would rather sweep the problem under the proverbial rug than deal with it head-on.

This is not what "community" is supposed to be about.

We should know by now, too, that ignoring a problem like the wholesale disenfranchisement and displacement of an entire class of human beings only leads to bigger problems for everyone down the line. We should know by now that a rising tide does lift all ships. But we make the same mistakes, over and over again.

Perhaps it's time we redirected some of the millions of dollars earmarked for something like the controversial Judge Doyle Square development project to, say, finally building that new shelter.

Heck, even providing a storage locker facility would go a long way toward alleviating some of the immediate needs of folks without permanent addresses.

Oh and, maybe don't gut funding for the Tenant Resource Center while we're at it.

I'm somewhat heartened by the inclusion in the 2014 Capital Budget of funding for a project that could provide permanent housing to 100 homeless individuals. I really and truly hope it goes through and gets done. It shows there are people thinking about and working on this issue at the city level, and that we do have the capacity to act when we want to.

Regardless, while those of us with roofs over our heads continue to argue, too many of men, women, and children continue to go without.

Fair Trade

The young man sitting at the table next to me keeps clearing his throat.

At first I think it might be the low rumble of some piece of coffee house machinery, but I hazard a glance to my right and see the guy working the muscles in his throat. It looks like a tick, not like he actually has anything stuck in there.

He looks young, maybe my age or a few years shy. Long, dark brown hair that falls in front of his face and doesn't seem to be recently washed. He's wearing jeans, sneakers with the laces untied, and a too-big winter coat. A stuffed, ragged bag lays at his feet. Sometimes he just sits and stares out the window for a few minutes without moving. Now his hand is raised, waving back and forth as though he's conducting some invisible symphony.

I think he must be homeless, probably, and not entirely level in the head. There are a lot of street kids that hang out in this area. A lot of transient adults, too. Most keep to themselves, I assume focused less on the mobs of students going to and from class and more on finding some place to sleep tonight. He's quiet, looking far away, not all there. I think he's too young for that. Too young to be so abandoned already.

A woman, one of the owners of this coffee shop, comes and sits at his table. Asks him if he has any family nearby, a place to stay. I hear him say something about how only one person still talks to him anymore, and they live in Rockton. Illinois? she asks. He nods and mumbles something else. I think it's nice that she's talking to him instead of just kicking him out. I guess.

I don't hear the whole conversation, but it ends in him shuffling to his feet and leaving. I don't think there was any resolution, nowhere for him to go, just another move-along-please but, to her credit, nicer said than some.

Another young man comes to sit in the now vacant seat, laptop in hand, but the woman tells him to wait, "I'm going to wash off the table first."

Frozen

Please don't let this be a symbol of some greater truth or trend. It's tragic enough as it is.

Blog Day of Action: Poverty

When you hear the word "poverty," what do you think about?

Me? The images conjured up in my head are usually of dusty countries, where children with fly-encrusted eyes sport weirdly bulging bellies and women haul water in jugs from dingy wells miles away from their ramshackle huts.

And hey, we wouldn't be wrong. It's incredibly important to recognize and try to do something about that kind of extreme, abject poverty that exists for far too many people in this world.

But in honor of today's Blog Day of Action focusing on poverty, and since my blog is but a small, local blog, I want to focus on the kind of poverty that all-too-often goes overlooked: the kind that exists in our own backyards, right here in Wisconsin.

Statically, Wisconsin ranks 33rd highest in the nation when it comes to poverty, with a rate of 10.9% (including 14% of children). In human terms, that means that somewhere around 600,000 people in this state live in poverty, and the trend, unfortunately, seems to be toward things getting worse.

We're all feeling the increasing pinch of the credit crunch and general economic downturn. Those of us who were already living on the very edge, however, are being pushed into the abyss by this downturn in fortunes. Second Harvest, an excellent food pantry that serves 16 counties in southern Wisconsin, reports an significant increase in the number of individuals and families served by its programs over the last few years. This coupled with the unfortunate decrease in the amount of food being donated from corporations are both troubling signs of the times.

While poverty has been a pressing issue for a long, long time, things certainly seem to be getting worse for a wider range of people these days. Now more than ever, perhaps, it is important to take a hard look at our policies and programs, to see what we can and should be doing better to ensure that fewer (or preferably, none at all) people end up falling below the poverty line, and to help raise up those folks who are already there.

It will take a carefully considered balance between government and community programs to do this, but it's possible.

While we take time to consider the many and varied root causes of poverty--things like educational quality and opportunities, job availability and wages, culture, etc.--we must also be sure to tend to the immediate needs of those most at risk.

Organizations like Second Harvest and the Wisconsin Community Action Program Association (WISCAP) are crucial, and I urge you to either donate food, time, or other resources to help bolster their efforts. WISCAP especially provides a good example of the kind of work that helps lift people out of poverty by working toward job training and creation, fostering small businesses, providing educational opportunities for young and old, developing and maintaining affordable housing, and even helping to weatherize homes in order to make them more energy efficient (and therefore lower cost).

Poverty, whether directly or indirectly, effects us all - and it benefits us all to do what we can to lessen and/or eradicate it. In a country as wealthy as ours, there is no excuse for us to allow such large swaths of our community to live without basic resources. No one should have to choose between food and heating bills, or medicine and rent. It will take a mixture of personal responsibility, community action, and government assistance to make things better. The payoffs will be many: a more productive and educated workforce, lower health care costs, potentially lower crime rates, healthier people and families, etc.

We simply cannot afford to ignore the problems that exist all around us. Clearly there are deep divisions over and misunderstandings about poverty even in seemingly well-off and liberal Madison, where debates over homelessness have recently turned heated. But it's important to take a hard, honest look at ourselves and our communities, and to make good-faith efforts at real improvements. We can't just sweep the problems under the proverbial rug, hoping that they'll just move to other cities or stay quiet enough that we can just walk by without looking.

Today, the Capital Times has two articles dealing with homeless students in our state's public schools, and how, with limited funding, they're trying to address their needs as best they can.

For an excellent, more in-depth look at poverty in Wisconsin, read this report from WISCAP (pdf).

If you want to help, consider a donation to Second Harvest, supporting programs like Porchlight, or helping out with something like the Luke House Community Meals Program. Every little bit helps.

Juggling the homeless

Last night, the Madison City Council voted overwhelmingly to recommend that an offer of free land from the federal government, to be used as a homeless services site, be turned down in favor of buying it for other uses:

The Truman Olson Army Reserve Center, 1402 S. Park St., which is scheduled to close within the next four years, was earmarked for homeless services under federal government guidelines.

But after prioritizing a plan from Porchlight Inc. to create 38 spaces for permanent and temporary housing for the homeless, south side council members Julia Kerr and Tim Bruer sought an alternate site for the plan, citing concerns about the south side carrying more than its fair share of housing for low-income residents as well as the transitional housing detracting from economic development plans in the area.

One of the suggested alternatives was a site on the far east side on Water Utility land at 4002 Nakoosa Trail, which would involve a paper transaction between the utility and city as well as the city's purchase of the Truman Olson site.

Ald. Brenda Konkel has been writing about this issue over at her blog, and I've been scouring the available documents (which don't seem to be loading anymore?) trying to figure out exactly what the reasoning behind all of this is. It hasn't been easy, though. Heck, if the alders can't get answers to their various questions about this, how am I, a regular ol' resident, going to do it?

At first blush, it would seem that an offer of free land for the development of a homeless services site would be a pretty cherry deal. Porchlight, Inc. and Goodwill Industries both submitted proposals for just such projects, and Porchlight was given priority with their plan of building both permanent and temporary housing for the homeless. The Truman Olson site, located at 1402 S. Park St. on Madison's near south side, seems like a good place for that kind of development: it's right on a bus line, nearby to grocery stores and both residential and commercial areas. If the people being served by such a facility are to be successfully integrated back into society, then they need reasonably easy access to cheap transportation, food, and other such amenities.

However, members of the City Council, the mayor, and developers decided that the Truman Olson site would be better used for more commercial development--part of an effort to bring economic progress to the area. Apparently, a homeless shelter wasn't part of the plans drawn up by the Wingra Creek BUILD Project, an effort to "conduct market and trade area study, identify business retention and attraction strategies, and develop alternative redevelopment scenarios for the area bounded by South Park Street on the east, Fish Hatchery Road on the west, and West Wingra Drive on the south."

So it was proposed that the city just buy the Truman Olson land (for an estimated $2.2 million in initial purchase and demolition), and find a different spot for the Porchlight plan. That site? Way over on the far east side of town, on Nakoosa Trail, nestled between the loving arms of a Wal-Mart, Cub Foods, a smattering of houses, and a bunch of industrial sites like a junk yard. And also pretty well off any sort of convenient bus line, which was supposed to be one of the requirements of any site chosen for the project.

The big argument on the pro side of this is that the Truman Olson site likely won't be ready for development until 2012, whereas a different site might be ready within a year or so. I'm all for timeliness in getting Porchlight's needed services up and running, but not at the cost of a) losing accessibility for the people who'll live and work out there, and b) millions of taxpayer's dollars.

Still, I can't entirely make an informed decision about this because all the facts have yet to be presented. That's what really makes all of this seem so weird. Instead of presenting a detailed argument for the land swap, alders and everyone else have essentially been asked to sign off on a pretty hefty check without knowledge of just what they're paying for. Somehow, that smells like a really bad idea.

In our own backyards

If this is essentially a case of "not in my backyard," it fails pretty hard:

The Madison Community Development Authority in a 4 to 1 decision on Thursday voted against using the former ROTC building as a mixed use development that would provide longterm housing for homeless with disabilities & mental health issues.

No matter how hard we might try to sweep the problem under the proverbial rug, homelessness and mental illness exist. Simply denying those afflicted with these problems a safe place to stay and seek treatment, maybe because you feel like it's too close to your home for comfort, doesn't make the problem go away. Heck, now instead of being in a nearby building, under supervision and getting help, they're probably more likely to actually end up in your backyard. Or under a bridge. Or in a park shelter.