Think Tank Homeless

I was at a dinner party the other night and one of the people there and her friends asked me if I acknowledged my privilege. I was awkwardly silent because I knew I was about to get verbally jumped. I replied, "everybody has privilege in some way." This was not well received, but I ended up fighting them off by reminding them that I work on homeless issues. I said, "The reason I work on homelessness is that poverty is a great equalizer. If you show me a gay black man with cancer, I'll show you a homeless gay black man with cancer. If you show me a disabled Native American veteran, I'll show you a homeless disabled Native American veteran." My point was that having a stable place to live and a support system is a privilege in and of itself. I don't deny that there are a lot of people who don't understand adversity. My mother said she never went without and she was always protected by her family. Personally, both of my parents were stable and I gre...

Back in 2010, I had a police officer tell me that a shopping cart equaled one homeless person and a tent equaled two. Since that day, I have been very suspect of the accuracy of homeless statistics. This week, I participated in the Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count because I wanted to understand their particular methodology. We did count tents, but not shopping carts. The tents also seem to remain tents in the final numbers - instead of equating them to a number of people. The people running the count were very kind, but there was this air of protecting the volunteers from the homeless that was floating about. The training video explicitly stated that the homeless were people too, but went on to tell us to not talk to them "in order to keep their privacy". I kept imagining some guy coming up to me on the street, not saying anything, writing a tally mark down on a clipboard, and just walking away. I would be so sad. People talk to people. People count items. Homeless pe...

I just watched an interview clip where Conor Skehan (an Irish housing official) talked about the pitfalls of pulling on people's heartstrings. His point was that people are pulled into action when humans say they have no shelter - and this could be used as manipulation. The headline for the article I read about the interview focused on Mr. Skehan calling homelessness 'normal'. Because he called it normal, the publication that wrote about the interview is banking on its readers to think that that is a polarizing thing to say - it's their click bait. In the eleven years that I have been documenting homelessness in the US, I would agree that homelessness is normal. No person in any city I have visited  has ever said to me, "We don't have any homeless here." The interviewer asks Conor Skehan if it being normal makes it right. It seems as if the interview's subtext is this: Skehan: People need to calm down and not react to people crying 'homeless...