by
Shannan Stoll
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Kerry Morrison interviews homeless
veteran John Watkins in the Hollywood Hills. Hollywood was one of the
first communities to join the 100,000 Homes Campaign. Watkins has been
provided with housing. Photo by Rudy Salinas at Path.
1. 100,000 homes so far
Teams of volunteers across the country hit the streets early in the
morning to put a name and a face to the long-term homeless in their
communities. The volunteers started canvassing at 4 a.m., combing
the streets to gather names, photographs, and stories of the people
sleeping there. They searched for the people at the highest risk of
dying from being on the streets. Once they identified the most
vulnerable people, they offered them a home.
That was the 100,000 Homes campaign’s approach to eliminating
homelessness in communities across the country for the past four years,
and it worked. In June, one month before their deadline, campaign
organizer Community Solutions announced that its more than 230
partnering cities, counties, and states had surpassed the goal of
placing 100,000 people in homes in just four years. It was a bold goal.
In the traditional housing placement system, it often takes more
than a year to work through the multiple agencies, treatments, and
counseling requirements to secure a home. The process is intended to
ensure that government subsidies for housing go to the people best
prepared to receive them. The 100,000 Homes campaign flipped this
paradigm by offering housing first. Once housed, people received
supportive services to deal with substance abuse, mental illness, and
joblessness. The housing first method is quicker, and it’s
successful. Studies show that two years after receiving supportive
housing for free, more than 80 percent of people were still living in a
home instead of on the street.
Community Solutions isn’t stopping with 100,000 homes. Next January,
the organization will launch Zero: 2016. This new national campaign will
target the elimination of all chronic and military veteran
homelessness, one home at a time. It’s another bold goal, and they just
might do it.
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Photo by the All-Nite Images.
2. Suddenly debt free
When 80-year-old Shirley Logsdon went into the hospital for a back
injury, she came out with nearly $1,000 in debt that she would never be
able to pay. For a year and a half, she received persistent phone
calls from debt collectors. Then Logsdon received a letter from Rolling
Jubilee. “You no longer owe the balance of this debt,” it read. “It
is gone, a gift with no strings attached.”
Letters like the one Logsdon received were sent to 2,693 people last
November, when Rolling Jubilee bought and forgave $13.5 million in
personal debt. A newly released study by the Urban Institute says
about 77 million people in the United States have debt that is subject
to collections—often debt that was incurred to pay for basic needs.
That’s one of the reasons the Occupy Wall Street group Strike Debt
formed the Rolling Jubilee project. “We believe that no one should
have to go into debt for the basic things in our lives, like healthcare,
housing, and education,” the group says. Since forming in November
2012, Rolling Jubilee has bought nearly $15 million of debt for just
$400,000 on the secondary debt market, where lenders sell unpaid bills
to collectors for just pennies on the dollar. Thousands of
individual donations averaging just $40 have paid for these debt buys.
It’s a bailout for the people, funded by the people.
3. Stuff of good neighbors
Freecycle and Craigslist give new life to old stuff by facilitating
porch pickups for everything from free lamps and scrap wood to cans of
food close to their expiration dates. That kind of stuff is posted
on Buy Nothing’s local Facebook pages too, but the group is about a lot
more than just stuff. It’s about the people and stories behind the
stuff and the porch meetings between neighbors.
One year after it began, the Buy Nothing Project has grown into a
social media movement with more than 225 local groups across the country
and the world. Rebecca Rockefeller cofounded the first Buy Nothing
group on Bainbridge Island, Wash., and says the project is helping
communities discover their abundance. “There’s enough stuff to go
around,” she says, “and the way we learn that is by getting to know our
neighbors, asking for what we need, and giving what we have.
Everyone has something to give.” People give away their dusty household
goods, but they also give childcare, cooking classes, and garden
produce. People ask for what they need, too: One neighbor asks for a
piece of land to bury a beloved pet, another for a late-night store run
to pick up medicine.
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Photo by Mark Peterson / Redux.
4. The city that pays for college
In 2005, residents of the declining rust-belt city of Kalamazoo,
Mich., received some unbelievably good news: A new program supported by
private donors would fund Kalamazoo kids’ college tuition up to 100
percent at any of Michigan’s public colleges and universities. The
Kalamazoo Promise would be available to any student enrolled in a
Kalamazoo public school since the ninth grade. It was the most
comprehensive scholarship program in the entire country.
Nearly a decade later, the place-based scholarship program has
inspired more than 30 similar programs across the United States. While
not all communities have donors with pockets deep enough to fund a
program like the Kalamazoo Promise, the program is demonstrating how
radical investment in youth can transform a struggling community and
have a huge impact on its most vulnerable populations. Since 2005,
young families have returned to the city, and enrollment in the
school district has increased 24 percent. The number of minority
students taking AP courses has increased 300 percent. The city has spent
more money on the district than ever before—a lot more. Test scores
have improved, and GPAs have increased, most notably among black
students. The list of achievements goes on, and just this June, the
program announced its expansion to include tuition coverage at 15 of
Michigan’s private liberal arts colleges. “There is no wholly
literate urban community in the United States,” says district
superintendent Michael Rice. “We aim to be the first.”
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Photo by O+.
5. Medical care for a song
Without a steady paycheck, retirement package, or health care,
independent artists and musicians often have to sacrifice health and
security for their art. In Kingston, N.Y., a unique arts festival is
helping change that by bringing neighbors together to care for one
another.
At the O+ Festival, art and music are exchanged for fillings,
physical therapy, routine physician’s exams, and other health services.
The festival began when a Kingston dentist wondered aloud to his
artist friend if he could get a band he liked from Brooklyn to play for
free dental care. He could, it turned out, and with the help of a
few friends in the arts, his idea grew into the first O+ Festival in
2010. At the fourth annual O+ last year, providers at the festival
pop-up clinic offered 99 dental appointments and 350 hours of health
services for the 80 artists and musicians who performed and presented
during the three-day festival. “Building a community around O+
speaks to the simple idea of compassion and being part of a community,”
says Joe Concra, a painter who co-founded the festival. “Because
we’ve become accustomed to huge companies providing everything we need,
we forget to look to our neighbors to see what they can offer.”
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Photo by Masbia Photo.
6. The finest dining
Masbia serves up dignity with dinner to hundreds of hungry New
Yorkers every day. Instead of long lines and a tedious intake process,
diners at this soup kitchen are greeted by a friendly host and
ushered to a private table for a delicious three-course kosher meal. No
questions, just healthy food. Original artwork decorates the walls,
the atmosphere is cozy, and the menu is prepared using fresh ingredients
donated by farmers markets and CSAs. Nearly all the kitchen and
wait staff are volunteers.
“It’s a restaurant with no cash register,” says executive director
Alexander Rapaport. When Rapaport began Masbia, his goal was to provide
kosher food in a comfortable, welcoming atmosphere. “Doing it with
dignity means people will come,” he says, and he’s right. Every day,
more than 500 people come to Masbia’s three locations. This year
alone, the growing organization expects to serve more than 1 million
meals.
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Photo by IMAS.
7. Immigrant Mutual Aid
Before state-funded programs and large insurance companies, many
people turned to community networks for services like health care,
unemployment aid, and education. In mutual aid societies, people
pooled resources to pay the salary of a community doctor, outfit a
schoolhouse, or give financial and emotional support to members who
were sick or out of work. Today, mutual aid remains an important
alternative for people with limited or no access to state-funded
services. Cooperatively run pre-K schools, lending circles for
low-income groups, and even some housing associations fill in the gaps
left by state services. Mutual aid societies are still particularly
relevant among immigrant communities.
In Chicago, home to some 3,000 Iraqi refugees, the Iraqi Mutual Aid
Society is Iraqi immigrants helping each other adjust to American
society. Language and vocational classes provide practical skills
while social and cultural events like poetry contests and concerts help
refugees remain connected to their unique culture and community.
Resources include free and reduced-cost child care, and the group’s
Immigration Legal Services Program provides help with naturalization
petitions. According to
iraqimutualaid.org, the region expects at least 800 more refugees annually over the next several years.
Source:
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/the-end-of-poverty/7-practical-ideas-for-compassionate-communities
Shannan Stoll wrote this article for
The End of Poverty, the Fall 2014 issue of
YES! Magazine. Shannan is a freelance writer.
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