You can be housed and not feel at home

Recent media coverage and comments by Provincial and City leaders have raised two critical issues. Both issues are fundamental to the challenge of ongoing chronic homelessness. Both issues have been used to divert the attention from where it really belongs. The problem lies not with First United but with the City and the Province.

Issue number one is about the fact that Minister Coleman and Mayor Robertson have been quoted as saying that around 30% of those at First United have housing that is being paid for elsewhere. There are a number of things that need to be said in response to this:
1. The number has been inflated. I would like to see the evidence for those numbers. Surveys done by staff from the City and Province over past weeks have reflected around 17%, not 30%. And I am not sure why this number is so significantly different?
2. BC Housing is NOT paying twice for people. Despite the spin that is put on the funding contracts, BC Housing is not paying twice for anyone at First United. Minister Coleman has consistently announced that Heat Shelters cost around $100 per person per night. At that rate, BC Housing has until March of this year, paid less than a quarter of the cost for the 240 people at First United. And at those rates, BC Housing has since March this year, funded less than half the cost for 240 people. Of the 240 people, the statistics indicate that around 40 people have other housing that is also being paid for. Those 40 people are easily accounted for amongst the 130 people who are currently funded not by BC Housing but by our own donors.
3. There are genuine reasons for why people don’t use the housing allocated to them. It is convenient to point fingers at First United. It is easy to demand we simply send folk who have housing paid for elsewhere back onto the streets. It is also very naive. People who are not staying in the housing provided for them, have real reasons for doing that. Some housing units are too cockroach and lice infested; some are surrounded by neighbouring tenants deep into their addiction and/or mental illness such that people find First United a safer and less tempting place to be; some are just too lonely and frightening for people who are ravaged by anxiety or other demons and are terrified of being alone; some housing units are enmeshed in scams where third parties make money out of complex sub-letting. We all agree that the state should not pay twice for housing for somebody. But the real challenge lies in addressing the reason for why the housing is not ‘working’, not in ensuring they don’t have anywhere else to be. Refusing people entry does not result in them being back in the inappropriate housing that has been paid for. It puts them onto the streets.
4. Including people inside First United ensures we can address the real issues. Excluding people, ensures there is no relationship in which we can explore and address the reasons for why people are not staying in the housing that has been provided. Without the contact and in the absence of the housing providers addressing the issue, these folk are simply pushed into the streets and shadows.
5. The Housing Providers need to address why folk are not staying in their units, not put the blame on First United. The most significant aspect of all this is that the real responsibility for dealing with this issue lies with the Housing Provider, not First United. The housing provider should surely know if people are not using the housing allocated to them. And the housing provider should address the reasons for that, not simply demand that others should not accommodate them.
6. First United does not lure people out of their housing. It is ridiculous to suggest people are being lured out of their adequate and appropriate housing by the attractiveness of staying First United. One does not have to sleep at First United to enjoy the food, the welcoming hospitality, the sense of belonging, or the acceptance of all regardless of social circumstance. You cannot describe First United as scary, dangerous, unsafe and “loosely managed” and then also say it entices people away from their housing.

Issue number two relates to the increasingly common claim that First United should exclude those who simply want to be there, but don’t really need to be there. This is a bogus distinction, based on a superficial understanding of the deep need people have for belonging (and the terror many have of being alone). If housing does not provide a genuine home, people need to find other places where they feel at home. This need is not an easily dismissed “nice to have”. It is a very deep authentic human need. Leaders from the Province, City and Police have disparagingly said people are going to First United because of the sense of community they find there – or more crudely, because it’s a “party place”. We will never break the endless cycle of chronic homelessness, if we glibly dismiss the reason as a ‘want’ rather than a ‘need’. The need is about a desperate longing of chronically homeless people for:
• Feeling accepted and validated rather than merely tolerated,
• Knowing they truly belong to and are part of a wider circle,
• Restoring what is broken in their sense of connection with self, family, friends and society.

We can build as many new housing units as we like but the people we put in them need to feel at home with sufficient and appropriate support 24 hours a day. Without that, they will continue to cycle through the system. The folk who are chronically homeless are typically the most traumatised, troubled and vulnerable people in our society. The fact that First United is “too welcoming and accepting” is not the problem. The problem is that too often these basic needs are not being met in the housing that has been provided.

The Province, City and Police have responded to the above concerns by calling for increased screening at First United. The screening is intended to help exclude those who have housing elsewhere and those who ‘want’ rather than ‘need’ to be at First United. This flies in the face of all the points made above. It assumes that housing is the solution to chronic or street homelessness. Housing is indeed a prerequisite for “solving” homelessness. But it is not sufficient. Homelessness is ultimately not about having a house but about having a home. If we do not get the difference, we will not end homelessness.

These two above-mentioned issues are windows into a very basic error being made by many who are presently the most critical of us. First United Church is not and never has been a Shelter. We were previously and still remain a place of refuge. When we were asked to open our doors 24/7 some three years ago, we agreed to extend what we were then doing Monday to Friday 8 hours a day. At that point we were offering folk a place to be where it was safer, warmer, drier and more caring than the streets. We agreed to extend the hours so as to provide a 24/7 refuge from the streets for those who had nowhere else to go. It seems that staff from the City and BC Housing are dismissive of the term “refuge”. But whether we like it or not, the fact is that we need a point along the housing continuum between the street and the formal Shelters. And we need a place where people who are excluded from Formal Shelters can be welcomed, cared for and engaged with. That is who and what we were before we opened our doors 24/7. That is who and what we still are.

I said at the outset that the real problem lies with the City and Province. We all want to break the cycle of chronic homelessness, stop failing deeply vulnerable people, and stop wasting inordinate sums of taxpayer money. The only way to do that is to commit seriously to an integrated and comprehensive approach to these issues. Simply doing more of the same with greater determination and within the same old government department silos, will not produce the change we need. We need the political will to move beyond traditional regulations and best practices. We need a sincere commitment to find new and effective strategies via collective wisdom. We can only do this by sitting together around one table, doing the shared analysis together, working together to develop creative out- of- the- box strategies, collectively allocating resources and together implementing daring new initiatives. Only the political leaders at Provincial and City level have the authority and resources to finally get all the parties into one room. Only they can ensure the parties are committed and empowered to deliver what has been agreed. We have had enough talking, and enough posturing. We have had enough of doing more of the same over and over again. It’s not about numbers and statistics and regulations. Ultimately it’s about people: real people in very real pain. We need something different. We need it from the Leaders in the City and Province. And we need it now.