Tag Archives: homelessness

Madison, Chicago and homelessness

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On Saturday, I drove down to a Chicago suburb to participate in the ordination of a former staff member to the Ministry of Word and Sacrament in the Presbyterian Church USA. At the reception following the service, I had a conversation with a member of that congregation about Madison (he was a UW alum). As we were talking, he mentioned homelessness. I was somewhat surprised that our conversation took that turn.

A couple of hours later, I was sitting at a dinner table in the same suburb, visiting with friends of the newly ordained as well as members of her congregation. Again, the topic of homelessness came up. More specifically, they asked me about the connection between Chicago and Madison.

On Monday, I put it together. Pat Schneider wrote about the Chicago Tribune’s coverage of the Chicago family who had come to Madison to find a new life and the efforts of our community, from the Mayor on down, to help them out. Much of the story is behind the Tribune’s paywall, but there is free video available.

I suppose it’s possible to decry, as many in Madison do, those who come to Madison seeking help or a new life. On the other hand, ours is a nation of immigrants, built by people who came here seeking new lives and new opportunities. There has also always been internal migration, as people moved from settled places to the frontier, or moved from the South to the North, seeking jobs in the Great Migration of the 20th century, or those millions who move South or West, for retirement or to seek new opportunities.

We welcome certain kinds of migration, or the migration of certain kinds of people–like my wife and I who moved here from South Carolina–, or all those young people who move here for college or graduate school, or to seek their fortune with Epic or some other firm.

If nice, white, well-educated people move here, we shouldn’t be surprised that working class, or African-Americans, or Hispanics come here as well, seeking new lives or new opportunities. They may only be able to work at minimum-wage jobs, but perhaps their children will get college degrees and realize whatever is left of the American Dream in the 21st Century.

The homes they left, whether in the violent neighborhoods of Chicago or in Latin America, were desperate places that offered little hope for the future. Madison may not be the place where everyone can achieve their dreams but all of us ought to do our part to make those dreams real.

This particular family’s saga is being played out in the pages of the newspaper. They have attracted the attention of the city and even the mayor. Apparently, someone has come forward to help them find housing at least for a few months. Perhaps that will give them time and space to figure other parts of their lives out. How many stories like this one remain untold? How many other homeless people, homeless families are living on the streets or in their cars, having come here to start over?

This week’s update on homelessness in Madison

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It’s increasingly clear that there will be fewer services and no day center available for homeless people this winter. Pat Schneider has the story. Her reporting on the exchange between Mayor Soglin and Alder Palm:

Mayor Paul Soglin forcefully repeated his conviction that the city cannot and should not be expected to take care of homeless people, many of whom he believes are dropped off in downtown Madison by nearby communities or agencies like the state Department of Corrections.

“I want to know why some struggling household in this city should pay for that,” he told members of the Board of Estimates. “I’m sick and tired of seeing letters in newspapers saying ‘you have responsibility to take care of the homeless.’ Oh, there are no homeless in suburban communities, no homeless in the townships, no homeless outside of Dane County?”

Palm responded that if people are living here now, they’re Madison residents.

“We should treat them like they are our neighbors. I’m sorry if there’s a huge political battle with the state, other municipalities and neighborhood associations,” Palm said. “At end of the day, none of that helps people trying to find a warm safe place to stay and get assistance.”

Ah, but there’s the newly renovated Central Library where homeless people can spend the day. Here’s Joe Tarr’s story.

We’ll be talking at Grace this evening at 7:00 about these developments and what else we might do to respond to the ongoing crisis in our neighborhood.

 

 

Thank You, Mr. Mayor!

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I’ll admit I’ve been critical of Mayor Soglin’s statements and policies regarding homelessness. At times, it has seemed that he has wanted to avoid the issue entirely or evade the city’s share of responsibility to address homelessness and the underlying issues that contribute to it. In recent weeks, however, he has seemed to have something of a change of heart.

The inclusion in the city’s capital budget of money towards the construction of up to 100 units of single room occupancy for homeless or recently homeless people is a very important step. With a rental occupancy rate of around 2%, there are simply not enough vacant units to house people in Madison and little incentive for landlords to rent to low-income people.

Even more encouraging is what happened yesterday. Mayor Soglin involved himself personally in the plight of a homeless family. After seeing them at a bus stop on his way to work, Mayor Soglin went to the office, turned around, and spent considerable time ferrying them to various agencies in an effort to find them housing. The article is here.

He learned first-hand about the limited services available and about how difficult it is to access those services. These are things those of us who work with homeless people know all too well. Indeed, the family Mayor Soglin worked with yesterday had stopped by Grace earlier in the week. He also probably experienced the frustration and anguish many of us do when our efforts to find housing or other help fail.

Of course, the city can’t solve the problem of homelessness by itself but it needs to engage constructively with the county, with social services, and with advocates to address both the lack of housing as well as the underlying reasons that contribute to homelessness.

I’m grateful to Mayor Soglin for his pledge to address these issues, and for taking the time to get to know and to try to help a homeless family yesterday.

The shelter system and the prison system

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A really fine article by Pat Schneider on the direct line from the prison system to the homeless shelter.

Linda Ketcham, executive director of Madison-area Urban Ministry, a nonprofit agency that assists criminal offenders returning to the community, estimates that 75 to 80 percent of people her agency assists in its offender “re-entry” programs are homeless. “The shelter system is the only option“ for many of them, she said.

I’ve blogged about this before here. I can confirm several points in the article. I know that guys come straight from the parole office to the shelter. I know that sex offenders that are released to their own communities come to Madison because there’s no place for them back home.
I remember several years ago a young man, a teenager, brought by corrections officials to the shelter from whatever prison he’d been in elsewhere in the state. His parents came down too. They wanted to know about the shelter, how he would fare, what would happen to him. For whatever reason, he wasn’t released to them. What I remember most about him was the look of fear on his face. Whatever he’d faced in prison was nothing like the uncertainty he was facing now. I have no idea what happened to him.
His reaction is quite common among those I’ve talked to who have just been released from prison. They’re facing incredible odds in their efforts to put their lives back together. In addition to all the social services they need, they also need a support system to help them, to encourage them, and to offer a helping hand when they make mistakes. Instead, they come to the shelter where they’re anonymous, where they’re surrounded by people who may or may not want to help them, and where access to the services they need is a maze in a city they probably don’t know.
The re-entry program run by MUM mentioned in the article does amazing things.

Grace Church: A Transient Hotel with a Steeple

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The author of a recent letter to the editor published in the Wisconsin State Journal was intending to be witty, sarcastic, even bitingly critical when he described Grace Church in that way. I doubt he had any clue that it’s an apt description of a church. St. Augustine of Hippo referred to the church as a hospital for sinners and interpreted the inn in the parable of the Good Samaritan as the church where peoples’ sins and wounds are healed. In the letter to the Hebrews, the Christian life is described repeatedly as a sojourn in a foreign country. Christians are homeless in this world, yearning for our eternal home.

Of course, the letter’s author wasn’t referring to spiritual homelessness. He was referring to the fact that since 1984, Grace Church has opened its doors to the homeless.

Why is the men’s shelter at Grace Church? One answer is that there’s nowhere else. The shelter opened its doors on a one-year trial basis in 1984. The need is as great now as it was then and over the years no alternative location has been found.

There’s another reason it’s at Grace. In Matthew 25, Jesus tells a parable of judgment in which the righteous are rewarded because they clothed the naked, fed the hungry, welcomed the stranger. The righteous asked when they had done those things to him and the king replies, “Just as you did it to one of the least of these, you did it to me.”

Like millions of other Christians in Madison and around the world, we shelter the homeless and we feed the hungry because in their faces we see the face of Jesus Christ.

Maybe we should make it our new motto: “Grace Church, A Transient Hotel with a Steeple.”

State Street update

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More articles on the city’s proposed crackdown on people hanging out at State and Mifflin. There are several interesting nuggets here. Mayor Soglin places some blame on other communities and the State Department of Corrections sending parolees here after being released from prison. I’d be curious to know how widespread this practice is, but over the years I know it happens frequently. For example, I’ve seen police cruisers from Monona drive right up to the shelter and drop someone off. And just last week, I encountered a man who said he’d been released and sent to the shelter from the Parole Office. Often, there’s no alternative. Their home communities lack the resources to help them or places for them to live.

Something else I find very interesting. My sense is that the number of men coming to the Drop-In shelter this summer is down significantly from previous years. In recent days, the numbers have often dropped below fifty. There may be a couple of reasons for this. One is the limit on the length of stay (60 days, not including inclement weather). At our First Monday meal this week, we had more “walk-ins” than guests from the shelter, which suggests many are not accessing the shelter system. But that also may mean that they are not accessing the network of social service agencies that seek to help.

One simple solution, well not so simple because we’ve not been able to create one in Madison, is a day center where homeless people could spend their days and access the services they need. If there were such a facility, homeless people could go there, and the police could deal much more effectively with those who commit the crimes.

From Channel 3:

Frederick “Chile” Burton is a self-proclaimed mayor for his homeless community, even though he said not all of the people congregating in that area are homeless.  Burton said with shelters shutting down during summer days, there are few other places to go.

“What are we supposed to do?” Burton asked.  “We can’t go to the shelter until 7:30.  At the same time, they have to come down here.  They come down here where they feel comfortable at.”

From Channel 15:

Madison Mayor Paul Soglin attributes the crime surge partly to the state Department of Corrections dumping offenders released from prisons from around the state in Madison without a place to stay, stressing the shelter StSsystem.

“We plan to talk to some of the other municipalities that are using their staff, their vehicles and literally driving their residents to downtown Madison,” he said. “I’ll tell you right now we will drive them right back.”

From the Capital Times (paywall)

What can we do?

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What can we do? What should we do?

Tami Miller asked me this question a couple of days ago. She was referring specifically to our response to homelessness. I promised her a response but it’s been a busy couple of days for me filled with meetings and lengthy conversations with parishioners about all manner of things.

During these past few days, my attention has also been diverted by the growing debate over the same question being asked about a very different situation—the appropriate US response to the ongoing violence in Syria and especially to the claims of the use of chemical weapons against civilians. As I’ve read that debate, I was struck by the same anguish, uncertainty, and helplessness that many of us feel in Madison. “We’ve got to do something!” is a common refrain in the debate over Syria, although the prospect of the situation improving as a result of our actions is doubtful.

We see suffering, either in images on TV of distant conflict or natural disaster, or as we walk down State Street in Madison. We’ve got to do something! The need is great; the suffering profound, our compassion, guilt, generosity, compel us to action.

Those of us who are involved in direct ministry and outreach to homeless people know the complexity of the situation. We know all about the many reasons why people become and remain homeless—illness, mental illness, poor life choices, imprisonment, alcohol and drug abuse. We also know about the systemic issues, a medical system that fails the neediest; racism; lack of education; family systems that have been in cycles of poverty, violence, abuse, etc., for generations; a 2% vacancy rate for rental housing in Madison. There are also all of the ways our local, state, and federal government have pursued policies that contribute to the problems that they are trying to solve. We know that the help we offer is often little more than a bandaid.

The problems are complex. The need is so great. What can we do? What should we do?

We should do what we are doing.

We should be advocates. We should be advocates for those who have no voice and no power. We should call our institutions: government, schools, universities, businesses, communities of faith, to respond to the need in our communities. We should demand that they serve the needs of the powerless, the hungry, the weak. A society is judged not on what it accomplishes, on its wealth or military power, but on how it treats those who are at its margins, the impotent, widows, orphans, the elderly.

We should be compassionate and merciful. As Americans, we claim that all are created equal and endowed with certain inalienable rights. As a Christian, I believe that all are created in the image of God, that we share with the vilest criminal, the disabled, the mentally ill, a common human nature that reflects the nature of God. The humanity that unites us across race, class, and gender demands that we build a community in which all have access to the basic necessities of life and all are able to flourish as human beings.

When we can do nothing more than offer a sandwich, a sleeping bag, a kind word, perhaps a hug, we are offering what is often called a ministry of presence, a willingness and commitment to be among those who Jesus called “the least of these.” Jesus told us that when we feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the prisoner, we are feeding, clothing, visiting Jesus Christ himself.

The problems will remain. The suffering will continue. We cannot solve the world’s problems, whether it’s the homeless in Madison or unimaginable horrors in Syria. The love we share is the love of Christ. When we share that love we are affirming the dignity of every human being and we are bearing witness to the image of God that we all reflect. We are also calling ourselves and our community to our better nature and to a deeper humanity.

We have to be the conscience, the moral compass of our community. Our voices call our community to become better than it is, to be a place and a people that protect the neediest among us. Our actions, as futile as they may be, challenge everyone to reach out beyond themselves to their neighbors in need and join in the effort to help those who cannot help themselves.

So Tami, that’s what we have to do. We have to continue to advocate, to help, and to be present with the weakest members of our society. It’s hard, exhausting, and often demoralizing. In our actions, our presence, and our love, we bear witness to God’s redemptive love and grace. And through it all, we need to pray.

Homelessness: What should we do?

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Tami Miller is one of my heroes. Singlehandedly, she has helped to start a movement and has helped to change the debate in Madison. For more about her and her efforts, visit Feeding the State Street Family. 

She commented on a previous post of mine. I’m putting it up here to make sure people see it. Her fundamental question is: “What should we do?”

What can we do- as ordinary, “regular” people to help our homeless neighbors- right now in practical and useful ways? Our weekly food run has been hit with bigger crowds than ever-we keep running out of food- I have been told that Savory Sunday has also been running out of food- our Midnight run takes less than 30 minutes to hand out supplies for 100 people living outdoors…I now have 42 remote camping sites that I visit— it feels like the economy and the circumstances here in Madison are causing a swelling in the numbers of those who are homeless… yet growth for services is slow paced, and often argued against and it just can’t keep up… no one wants a 24-7 day center in their neighborhood… and homeless people are dying out here (5 deaths in the past months). It scares me.I am frightened for my homeless family. I know that we are doing God’s work, but the problems seem so overwhelming Father. I pray each day for my homeless brothers and sisters- I pray for God to give us direction, to give me direction- I give it back to Him because this is HIS thing. I wish I could hear an audible response to that prayer…

My heart breaks to see the desperation and the fear. To see people hungry, cold or overheated, sick with little healthcare and no medicine, addicted with no available treatment beds or turned away from detox, mentally ill with no treatment, injured, spat on, raped or beaten because of who they are and how they have to live. I am just a farm kid Father, I feel like I have no answers…I want…so much to make things better, and to have those who control the money, and who have the power those who look down on people with less to see my homeless family through my eyes, or far better- through God’s eyes. What do we do? How do we Pray? How can we be better, do better than we are? Right here, right now??? I ask this earnestly, and with hope… How do we become a city and a people that puts our fellow human being’s basic needs first?

I’ll offer my response when I’ve had more time to think about it.

 

Update on the “criminalization of homelessness”

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The stories  about Columbia, SC and Raleigh, NC to which I linked have generated a lot of press and interest across the country. Barbara Ehrenreich’s piece, which was written The Guardian, has received less attention.

It’s easy for us to criticize those benighted folks in the South for their attitudes toward the homeless. Ehrenreich points out that this movement is national, not regional. Even the mayor of a progressive city like Madison seems to share the opinion that bleeding-heart do-gooders are partly responsible for the presence of homeless people in downtowns.

Some additional material on both stories:

The group that was prohibited from serving breakfast to the homeless in Raleigh, NC is Love Wins Ministries. They provide additional background to the incident and their decision not to be arrested here.

Kudos to Bishop Michael Curry of the Diocese of North Carolina, who has this to say about the situation:

… the Mayor announced that no one would be arrested for feeding the homeless in Moore Square and that the city would work with those doing so. Further she said that neither she nor the City Council were aware of this until yesterday. As a side note many of our clergy and congregations are supporters of Love Wins Ministries and we were making phone calls yesterday about this. Additionally, we were working to make our Diocesan House parking lot available for this minustry, which is also downtown, near Moore Square, if that proved necessary or desirable. It appears that for the moment the matter has been resolved and the city is working with the ministry. (Quoted on Episcopal Cafe)

Bishop Curry’s letter to the Mayor and City Council of Raleigh is now available here.

From my source on the ground (or close to the ground), some additional info on Columbia, SC. The Columbia City Council has mastered the craft of Orwellian doublespeak. Their program to restrict homeless people to a remote shelter is known as “Columbia Cares.”

I’ve heard nothing from the Diocese of Upper South Carolina nor from Trinity Cathedral, both of which are located smack dab in downtown Columbia.

The criminalization of poverty and homelessness

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Mayor Soglin is in very good company. The criminalization of homelessness is taking place all over the country.

Barbara Ehrenreich (Nickel and Dimed in America) writes about it:

the criminalisation of poverty has actually intensified as the weakened economy generates ever more poverty. So concludes a recent study from the National Law Centre on Poverty and Homelessness, which finds that the number of ordinances against the publicly poor has been rising since 2006, along with the harassment of the poor for more “neutral” infractions like jaywalking, littering, or carrying an open container.

The report lists America’s 10 “meanest” cities – the largest of which include Los Angeles, Atlanta and Orlando – but new contestants are springing up every day. In Colorado, Grand Junction’s city council is considering a ban on begging; Tempe, Arizona, carried out a four-day crackdown on the indigent at the end of June. And how do you know when someone is indigent? As a Las Vegas statute puts it, “an indigent person is a person whom a reasonable ordinary person would believe to be entitled to apply for or receive” public assistance.

Some other examples:

It’s apparently illegal in Raleigh, NC to feed the homeless.

Columbia, SC is setting up a concentration camp for the homeless:

Concerned that Columbia has become a “magnet for homeless people,” and that businesses and the area’s safety are suffering as a result, council members agreed on Aug. 14 to give people on the streets the option to either relocate, or get arrested, according to the city’s “Emergency Homeless Response” report.

Cooperative homeless people will be given the option to go to a remote 240-person bed emergency shelter, which will be open from September to March. The shelter will also be used as a drop-off for people recently released from prison and jail, too.