The Imperative - I'm Going In!

This Memorial Day weekend reminds me of a simple Imperative that those in the military live by. When it comes to family homelessness we could learn something from this principal.

The harsh impacts of homelessness will hurt hundreds of thousands of innocent children this year. How many thousands of those kids’ futures will be permanently damaged? 20 years from now what will the real cost of this be? Despite billions of dollars thrown at this problem every year, hundreds of plans implemented, thousands of organizations and countless community heroes helping the homeless, communities around the US find themselves mired in the impacts and constantly making moves trying to manage those impacts.

Despite what feels like standing up to the aggressive nature of homelessness, the results speak for themselves. 483,000. Wrap your head and heart around that number and then cry like I cry. That is the number of children who will be in the "churn" of homelessness in America this year.

Why? Why can't we make the right moves and push back the impacts against the onslaught that is hurting our kids and destroying our communities? Do you think we are outmatched? That we just can't win it? That we are doomed to lose our kids to this relentless hidden enemy? I don't know about you, but my guess is that if you are reading this article, that you might be like me...

You might just get fired up enough to do something "crazy" like what the people at Solutions for Change are striving for every day. You might even get 'epically pissed' (yeah, I have a 15 year old) and declare an all out IMPERATIVE. The people in and around the Solutions for Change camp have been having this conversation all week. We know how to solve family homelessness with and for the families and communities we serve. We have figured it out through our Solutions University - 1000 days to a permanent solution.

But how do we go in after 483,000 homeless kids?

As a Marine I was trained to never, ever, ever leave a fellow Marine behind. We would go back in there and we would do everything in our power to get that person. It was an imperative...an attitude so deeply imbedded in us that it wasn't a question of "if" it was how and when and what it was going to take. We just did it with one phrase:

I'm Going In!

I want you to know that we, as a civilized society, can and absolutely should be GOING IN after our homeless children. It is not "if" we should go in after them. It is how, when and what will it take. Damn it, we just need to stop all this "I'm trying" and just do it. Trying is lying.

It is my commitment to you to use whatever skills, knowledge and resources which I have accumulated in my 21 years of leading initiatives and programs to advance this imperative. I believe that this is also an imperative which is growing within the hearts of the people whom I serve at Solutions for Change, both those who work, give and volunteer alongside me, and those who are in our programs on the courageous comeback trail out. Could it be your imperative? Will it?

The more hearts that are engaged and who believe in the imperative, the more lives we will save. It is that simple. Through the Solutions for Change organization we've been making moves and defeating homelessness for over a decade. We don't make moves just to make moves...you might see our Pawns and Knights, but our moves put homelessness into Check and then Checkmate. And for those of you who aren't familiar with our model, we fight and defeat homelessness by moving families off the welfare rolls and into jobs, higher education, health related solutions, and back into the community as rent payers and helping others as community givers.

And when we as a community put the impacts of homelessness into checkmate what we are really doing is completely reshaping the future for a once homeless kid. Reshaping futures for many homeless kids.

How many homeless kids’ futures do you want to completely reshape? 10, 100, 1000, 10,000, 100,000, 483,000?

If it is an imperative for us "impossible is nothing" folks at Solutions for Change, and then YOU make it an imperative, and then YOUR friends make it an imperative, and then their friends make it an imperative...

Reimagine that.....that is what Generational Transformation looks like.

Happy Memorial Day.

Chris Megison
Founding President and CEO
SOLUTIONS FOR CHANGE



Put Godzilla Back In His Cage

Over the past five months since 2011 began, the impacts of homelessne­ss have kicked down another 128,462 bedroom doors of America's children, claiming more causalitie­s in a battle that we as American's can win and absolutely should win. Astonishin­gly, in cities across America we act as if the best we can do is open a winter homeless family shelter for four months. Then when the shelters close, like those in San Diego did this past few weeks we go back to reacting, managing the impacts with symptom relief programs, and trying to contain the impacts with services. Do the impacts of homelessness just slow down for the spring and summer months while we plan on opening the doors for next year's winter shelters? Of course not. This battle plan is obvioulsy so deeply flawed that it would be laughed out of any war room. And yet we just keep showing up to the fight, year after year, with a pitchfork.

It's like we have accepted defeat and have already submitted to the ruin of hundreds of thousands of our children’s futures. And boy we can sure blog about it. Everyone who has anything to say about homelessne­ss has a blog nowadays.

We do a great job about blogging about what works and what doesn't work, all the while writing more stories, attending more meetings and launching more "comprehen­sive strategies­". I wish I was a cartoonist for the Union Tribune. Picture Godzilla with a yellow wristband that says "Impacts of Homelessne­ss" thrashing undeterred through our suburbs. Now glance down....th­at's all of us with pitch forks and axes chopping at his toes.

A big part of what needs to happen, what MUST happen, is that we must allow ourselves to see the impacts of homelessne­ss on our children as dangerous to them as if a band of terrorist enemies were ravaging our neighborho­ods. Until we start treating this as a real threat, with a real battle plan to push Godzilla back into his cage where he belongs, more innocent lives and more precious futures will be damaged.

Chris Megison
Solutions for Change

President and Executive Director
www.solutionsforchange.org

What Homelessness and Linus Have In Common

Many who are mad about the homeless problem in San Diego and around the nation are mad because we keep throwing billions of dollars at it yet the problem gets worse. I can't blame them. If you read articles about homelessness in almost any online newspaper today you'll see many bloggers who people refer to as the "haters". The haters don’t know why the homeless problem gets worse so they blame the homeless themselves calling them lazy and other names. But these judgments against the homeless are ill placed. The reason why we are failing is not because the homeless are addicted, mentally ill, or just plain lazy. It is because of how we as a collective community of non profits, churches, governments and people respond to addiction, mental illness or laziness among those that are homeless. Our attitudes and actions are largely those of containment...treating homelessness like a disease that has to be contained...managing the symptoms instead of dealing with the root causes. This battle plan of containment has failed. It has failed the homeless and it has failed all of us. Yet we cling to it like Linus clung to his blankey.

Because slinging shelter beds, soup bowls, motel vouchers, water bottles and safe parking lot zones is simple...and it makes a lot of people FEEL like they are doing something. But what they don’t understand is that the something that they are doing is really making the problem much WORSE. They feel like they are helping but in reality they are enabling the problem to grow into gigantic uncontrollable form...which then creates more of a need...which then creates more containment opportunities. It creates a bigger blanket to be dependent on. If we change our attitudes and actions, if we can abandon the old battle plan of managing the symptoms of homelessness and redesign around a new plan based on the core values of solving this problem for BOTH the homeless person AND the community, homelessness is beatable. We can defeat it but it will require leadership that is willing to abandon the old battle plan and redesign around access to permanent solutions. Or, to use the angle of this story...it will require us to give up the familiar, well worn and now very big, gnarly, smelly blanket.

Police Intervention and the Homeless Issue

I was recently asked to share my views for an out of town newspaper article about the value of social service engagement in contrast to police intervention tactics. This made me really think from the police officer's view about how he or she must feel when dealing with the impacts of homelessness in their city. So I offer my thoughts...perhaps not what you would expect from someone running a "social service" type agency. I'd be interested in your thoughts on the matter.

It’s a trust thing.

How many times have we collectively, as a nation of homeless service providers, made promises that we are going to end homelessness? We are great at issuing intentions but when it comes to delivery on those intentions we haven’t done a very good job, have we? As a collective body, we can come up with a million excuses, some of them very legit that help to explain why, but what I am simply saying is that we’ve issued promise after promise to end homelessness and time after time we’ve failed to deliver on that promise. And we rarely admit it. We just go on to the next plan and the next one and the next… That is a really bad business model. The result is that we as a nation of homeless service providers have conditioned the public to believe that despite what we say, that homelessness can’t really be solved, that it will never really end.

The good news is that every day I see more evidence that shows me that there are some leaders out there in the fight to defeat homelessness who are abandoning the old battle plans that have failed us as a people, failed our communities and failed our neighbor - the neighbor that we call “the homeless”. These failed battle plans; the “containment system” of managing the impacts of homelessness through shelters, soup kitchens, and servicing the homeless are being shredded and replaced with bold new thinking and audacious new strategies primarily fixed around the supportive housing model. It’s not happening fast enough, but it is happening and its mainly occurring through these almost rogue like social entrepreneurial insurgency operators who are daring to move people around outrageous visions and models (oh my) of solving homelessness.

Recovering from decades of executing a failed battle plan is going to take time. As it is now when I say that we are solving homelessness to the cop, the elected official or the churchgoer, among many others, it’s like I can hear them say to themselves, “yeah right, here we go again, I’ve heard this one before”. As someone on the front lines battling the impacts of homelessness I know that it’s up to me to deliver on promise. Do I like it when the police officer intervenes into a homeless situation using code enforcement and law enforcement as their primary option? No I don’t because I know that there are so many other effective ways to deal with the greater underlying causative factors of the problem. But I can understand it. I understand it because for decades we’ve said to the cop wait a sec, I’ve got this one. Only to watch the impacts of homelessness on communities explode in the cops face.

It’s going to take time to gain the trust of the police officer, the elected official, the faith community and with the public in general. If our national leaders insist on making promises like “ending homelessness” then I’d recommend that they find a way to deliver on that promise pronto because their words mean very little to the cop, the elected official or the churchgoers at this point in time. Make promises that we can keep, and watch our relationship with law enforcement and other community partners take a huge turn for the better.