From leading the 100,000 Homes Campaign to being recognized by the White House as a Champion of Change to founding the Billions Institute, an organization committed to supporting new solutions to global problems, Becky Kanis has committed her life to making bad things better.
Her motivation stems from one moment, which she shares in her Got Your 6 Storytellers talk. When she was a lieutenant in the 25th Infantry Division, a U.S. Army division in Hawaii, every single link in the communications system went from green to red. At three in the morning, Kanis stood at the colonel’s door — and with a knock, knock, knock — woke her up and explained the situation.
“She literally poked me in the chest and she said ‘un-f*** this lieutenant,’” Kanis says. The colonel could have kicked a trashcan; she could have micromanaged. But instead, she gave Kanis permission to fix the problem.
Kanis says that in order to do our part to make the world a better place, we should ask ourselves three big questions: What do you really want? What are you willing to let go of? And what lights up your heart? Kanis’s talk centers on how she has applied those questions and pursued answers to them in her own life. And it explores how we can all give ourselves permission slips to un-f*** things.
While her seven minutes onstage includes a lot of laughs, there is also a moment leaves the audience in awe. Kanis displays two images of a formerly homeless man named Ed Givens. First, he appears drunk, with his back against a brick wall, and later he appears in a suit at a party the White House threw to celebrate the success of the work that Kanis and others did to address homelessness.
“This is the kind of change that I know in my bones is possible in the world,” Kanis says. Watch the video, then join Kanis in her call to action to un-f*** big things together.
Tag: Becky Kanis
Veteran Storytellers Take the Mic and Change the Conversation
Got Your 6, a campaign working to change the conversation about veterans and military families, is hosting its Storytellers event in New York City today.
By bringing together service members who continue to pursue careers as change makers and problem solvers, Storytellers represents one way Got Your 6 is bridging the military-civilian divide by uniting the government, the entertainment industry and nonprofits.
The Storytellers that will deliver short presentations include Greg Behrman, founder and CEO of NationSwell; Becky Kanis, who led the 100,000 Homes campaign and is now working on a new project called the Billions Institute; and Don Faul, head of operations at Pinterest. Each of their talks will be filmed, released and promoted widely with the help of partners including MTV and The Huffington Post.
NationSwell will feature these videos in the weeks and months ahead so that this celebration of veterans can continue well past Veterans Day. You can take action in support of the Got Your 6 mission by joining the conversation on social media using the hashtag #wagegood then sharing the videos with six of your friends.
In the meantime, here is a glimpse at highlights from the 2013 Storytellers event.
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Yes It’s True. Subsidizing Housing for the Homeless Can Save Them — and Taxpayers’ Money
It’s so simple. If you really want to stop homelessness, start by giving people a place to live. That’s the mission of the 100,000 Homes Campaign, a national movement created by the nonprofit Community Solutions that works with communities across the country to connect the most vulnerable homeless individuals with housing. These apartments are highly subsidized — paid for mostly by the federal government, with contributions of 30 percent of any income these individuals receive as rent, no matter how much that amount changes over time. In return, the formerly homeless have a solid starting point to get back on their feet, along with a connection to any supportive services that they want or need — from addiction counseling and medical services to budgeting tools and more.
The idea of providing “housing first” has already proved itself in Utah, where the rate of chronic homelessness has been reduced by 74 percent over the past eight years, putting the state on track to eradicate homelessness altogether by 2015. In Atlanta, the same initiative moved 800 people off the street in 2013. And now the campaign is gaining momentum in Tennessee, where 200 individuals were placed in homes in just 100 days in Nashville. All together, participating communities have connected more than 83,000 Americans, including at least 23,000 homeless veterans, to apartments. And the best part? The program is actually saving taxpayers money.
MORE: Phoenix Just Became the First City to End Chronic Veteran Homelessness. Here’s How
Studies have shown that the public cost of providing permanent supportive housing for the most vulnerable homeless people — meaning those with addiction, mental illness or chronic diseases like cancer — is less than simply allowing these individuals to stay on the streets. The biggest reason is health care. Homelessness causes illness, as well as exacerbates existing mental and physical ailments and addictions, leading many individuals to seek out expensive medical services, much of it on the taxpayers’ dime. “The inability to tend to your basic healthcare needs results in people on the streets ending up in emergency rooms and ending up in in-patient hospitalizations. And one night in the hospital is a whole month’s rent on most places,” Becky Kanis, director of the 100,000 Homes Campaign, told Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes. “We are paying more as taxpayers to walk past that person on the street and do nothing than we would be paying to just give them an apartment.”
AND: This Hero Isn’t Just Alleviating Homelessness; He’s Preventing It
On its face, this movement may seem counterintuitive. As Cooper told Kanis, “It does seem like you’re rewarding somebody though, who’s — you know — drinking or doing drugs or just being irresponsible.” But Kanis disagrees. “I see it as giving them a second chance. And most people, given that second chance, do something about those behaviors.” Indeed, the 60 Minutes report cites a University of Pennsylvania study, which found that when homeless people in Philadelphia were given housing and support, more than 85 percent remained in homes two years later. These individuals were unlikely to become homeless again. While the program isn’t 100 percent successful — in fact the 60 Minutes report follows one individual who can’t seem to shake his addiction — the changes in those who take advantage of their second chances are nothing short of remarkable. Just look at the before and after photos. “There is something that’s really dehumanizing about living on the streets in so many ways. And then, really, in a matter of days, from having housing, the physical transformation is almost immediate,” Kanis says. “And I don’t think that there’s anybody, once they see that, that would say, ‘Well, let’s put them back on the streets again.’”
ALSO: How Can We Beat Homelessness? Predict It Before It Happens