In Jersey City, New Jersey, weekday mornings are bustling at the Journal Square station. People rush in and out of trains and across platforms; most are coming from or going to New York City, commuting to work or dropping children off at daycare.
But a few people near the Journal Square station won’t be stepping onto a train. Instead, they’re stepping into a mobile shower. They’ll be met with soap, warm water and clean towels.
This month, the City of Jersey City launched a pilot program offering free access to showers, bathrooms and a new set of clothes to anyone in need. Many of the people visiting these showers are experiencing homelessness; after their shower, they have the opportunity to talk to coordinators on site who can refer them to additional resources.
A hot shower creates a launching point to connect people with what they need, whether it’s mental health support, checking in with a case manager or receiving SNAP or Medicaid benefits.
Mayor Steven Fulop said that the program goes beyond cleanliness. The goal is to build trust.
“We started to think about how to use the resources — simple things like a shower — as a conduit to building a bond and trust and a larger conversation to steer people towards better services,” Fulop told NationSwell.
The pilot program was created after a series of meetings between citizens and the mayor’s Quality of Life Task Force, a group of leaders from across city departments involved with issues pertaining to the public. One common concern from Journal Square business owners and residents was sanitation in and around the station.
“This isn’t a police issue, this isn’t a prosecution issue … this is really a health and human services issue,” Stacey Flanagan, the director for Health and Human Services of Jersey City told NationSwell.
For a solution, the city turned to a similar one implemented after Hurricane Sandy. To help with recovery from the superstorm’s impact, Jersey City used grant funds to purchase a mobile shower unit. For years, the showers sat unused. Today, the unit has a new purpose. It serves about five people every Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning.
Jersey City isn’t the first place to implement mobile showers. In Oregon’s Washington County, Community Connection, a coalition of nonprofits, finished building a mobile shower unit earlier this month. The City of San Antonio, California, is currently in discussions to purchase a $58,000 mobile shower.
Since 2014, the nonprofit Lava Mae has been driving throughout San Francisco, Los Angeles and Oakland serving hundreds of people every week. In California, where there are thousands of individuals facing homelessness and few public showers, the ability to get clean is a challenge.
“Here we are in this first-world country, in a super affluent city, and still, we have people who don’t have access to water and sanitation,” the founder, Doneice Sandoval, told NationSwell.
Flanagan noted that “we’re not promising a shower’s going to change your whole life,” but that being clean can create a sense of dignity. It can give people the courage to interact with business owners, apply for jobs and move through the world without fear of judgment. One man left saying he “felt like a million bucks,” she said.
Currently, the project is projected to run throughout the rest of the year. Afterward, the city will assess the best location and times to offer showers.
Jersey City is part of Hudson County, where homelessness has been on a steady rise over the last three years. A 2019 study conducted by the nonprofit Monarch Housing Associates found a 3% increase — approximately 30 individuals — in the number of people experiencing homelessness from January 2018 to January 2019.
Jobs and affordable housing were among the top causes of homelessness, which gives insight into areas of improvement for Hudson County.
“There are organizations doing great work around homelessness, but there are some things that fall through the cracks,” said Flanagan.
Jersey City also has plans to open a shelter next year that would provide rooms for 150 individuals, with space for 14 people living with HIV/AIDS and six permanent homes.
“I think the system has failed these people in many different ways,” Fulop said. “So doing a simple gesture that most people take for granted on a daily basis, can really go a long way.”
More: Showers and Toilet on Wheels Give Homeless a Clean Slate
Tag: chronic homelessness
This Church Found a Brilliant Way to Help Homeless People, and It All Starts with a Mailbox
When people think of home, they often focus on what’s inside. But there’s a privilege in having a place to live that’s often forgotten: having a permanent address.
For people experiencing homelessness, an address can be a gateway to gaining that home. Without an address, an individual can’t receive disability benefits, social security payments or veteran’s benefits. They can’t open a bank account, which is often needed to collect earnings from employers. They can’t receive notifications about newly available affordable housing, messages from their children’s school or correspondence from family members.
In other words, the resources that homeless people need require an address, but in order to have an address — a home, apartment or place to sleep — the individual needs to first obtain those resources.
This vicious cycle has come to be known as the Postal Paradox — and leaders at Cathedral Basilica of St. Joseph in San Jose, California, saw an opportunity to disrupt it.
In 1983, the church opened up its reception office so that people experiencing homelessness could have a permanent address to receive mail and use when applying to jobs. Today, the program is called The Window.
“[The Window] is how we keep them connected,” Sharon Miller, the director of Cathedral Social Ministries at Catholic Charities, told NationSwell. “It’s just one small little layer of making a significant difference in someone’s life who doesn’t have a permanent residence.”
Throughout the day about 150 people, typically those recently released from the justice system or those experiencing homelessness, stop by the walk-up counter to collect any mail they might have received. Behind the glass panel is a tiny room with rows of mail slots, boxes of sandwiches and workers bustling around.
You’ll find people leaving The Window with bundles of mail. You’ll also find people walking away with a saran-wrapped sandwich or carrying a tube of toothpaste, a bottle of shampoo or a stick of deodorant.
“It’s just making sure that they have some real simple items, that are life-saving items,” Miller said.
Though it was initially conceived to serve as a permanent address, The Window has since evolved, offering toiletries, food and access to services to those who need it — services like referring individuals to shelters, permanent housing or employment opportunities. The Cathedral Office of Social Ministry also runs a free healthcare clinic, which is accessed through The WIndow.
“[The Window] really did grow over the years, and now we’re in a state of crisis with homelessness,” Miller explained.
Homelessness in San Jose is on the rise — up 42% since 2017. So a resource like The Window is essential to connecting individuals to permanent housing. And although San Jose’s homeless population has increased, Miller said registration rates at the Window are beginning to plateau.
Miller estimates that about 15 new people register with The Window every week and another 15 find permanent housing, so The Window’s total population has consistently hovered around 920.
Miller is constantly reminded of why she does this work. She’ll be flagged walking down the street by people she used to help. “Someone will come up and say, ‘Sharon, Sharon, I still have my housing because of what you provided.” And those are the memories that stick.
So even as homeless rates rise, Miller stays positive.
“All of us know what we need to do to solve this problem,” she said. “It just isn’t happening quick enough.”
It may seem like just a walk-up window, but inside are connections and opportunities for so much more.
More: These Parking Lots Give Homeless People a Safe Place to Sleep for the Night
Upstanders: Homes For Everyone
Faced with a growing homeless population, Utah changed the way it provides shelter to those on the streets. Under Lloyd Pendleton’s leadership, the state has reduced its chronic homeless population by 91 percent.
Upstanders is a collection of short stories celebrating ordinary people doing extraordinary things to create positive change in their communities produced by Howard Schultz and Rajiv Chandrasekaran. These stories of humanity remind us that we all have the power to make a difference.
3 Smart, Forward-Thinking Strategies to House the Homeless
Solutions to SF’s Homeless Problem Starts with Supportive Housing, San Francisco Chronicle
Ten years ago, the City by the Bay set out to end chronic homelessness by placing people in units where they have access to therapists, job assistance and rehab services. The strategy has proven successful, but to put roofs over the heads of the most deep-rooted street people, can San Francisco take the next step and expand the program?
Could This Silicon Valley Algorithm Pick Which Homeless People Get Housing? Mother Jones
In the tech capital of the world, those without homes live on the same streets that house companies worth billions of dollars. Inspired by nearby geniuses and their computing, Santa Clara County created the Silicon Valley Triage Tool, an algorithm that uses data to identify which of the area’s homeless should be housed the fastest.
Why Businesses Don’t Need to Be Helpless About Homelessness, Inc.
Can business owners create a customer-friendly shopping environment and be sensitive to area residents without homes? Brian Kolb, a principal at Paramount Contractors & Developers, says yes, believing that these six moves by private enterprises can help the homeless get the assistance they so desperately need.
MORE: Ever Wondered What to Say to a Homeless Person? Here Are 5 Things to Say and 5 Things Not to Say
Utah Set the Ambitious Goal to End Homelessness in 2015. It’s Closer Than Ever
Crystal Spencer desperately needed a home for her three little girls. A single mother in her thirties, Spencer had lost her job at a Utah gas station and, in the twilight of the Great Recession, couldn’t find work elsewhere. Notices stacked up from her landlord, utility companies and bank.
“It was overwhelming. I just couldn’t keep up,” Spencer recalls. “I moved out because I knew I couldn’t do it.” She loaded her daughters — just babies at the time — into the back of her Dodge Durango and went to The Road Home, an emergency shelter just west of downtown Salt Lake City. As Utah’s largest shelter, its interior consists of a stripped-down dormitory. Plastic-covered mattresses on bunk beds can sleep more than 200 men each night, and its bathroom stalls, as a safety measure, don’t have doors. Spencer’s family had the small privilege of staying in a room closed off from the main beds, but she said it was “very uncomfortable” not having any privacy. Fearful of who was coming in and out the shelter, she never let her girls wander from her side.
In any number of American cities, Spencer would be required to jump through bureaucratic hoops — prove you’re sober, get a job, never miss a meeting — before her family would receive assistance. But in Utah, “Housing First,” an initiative to place the homeless into supportive housing without any prerequisites, now prevails. Because of it, Spencer quickly moved to a two-bedroom apartment at Palmer Court, an old hotel renovated into 200 units and opened by The Road Home in 2009. In the 13 months since, she’s caught up on all her debts and is on a waiting list for a Section 8 housing voucher. She decorated the apartment with framed pictures of her daughters — Sandra, 4, a nimble athlete fond of doing handstands on the living room recliner; Sierra, 2, a gregarious dancer and singer; and Phoenix, 1, a quiet observer — and the paintings they made at the on-site Head Start classroom.
“It was very difficult being homeless…[My kids] didn’t really understand what was going on. They still don’t,” Spencer says. “Right now, I am trying to go forward with my life, so I can move out and get a place of my own. The only thing I see myself doing is taking care of my kids. Hopefully, in my own house.”
Utah’s initiative isn’t just for hardworking moms like Spencer: it’s helping veterans haunted by war, the mentally ill, alcoholics and drug addicts. “Homelessness itself turns out to be a big barrier to all kinds of things, whether it is trying to get a job or trying to get an education or stop a drug addiction,” Steve Berg, vice president for programs and policy at The National Alliance To End Homelessness, tells Mic.
As the decade-long plan initiated by then-Gov. Jon Huntsman wraps up this year, the Beehive State’s “Housing First” program has already reduced chronic homelessness (those with deeper disabling conditions, like substance abuse or schizophrenia, who had been on the streets for a year or longer or four times within three years) by 72 percent and is on track to end it altogether by this time next year.
Media coverage ranging from The New Yorker to The Daily Show has pointed out that “Housing First” is a no-brainer. In reality, however, it’s been a herculean task 10 years in the making.
When the plan rolled out in 2005, Utah counted 1,932 chronically homeless adults. These individuals composed only 14 percent of the state’s total homeless population, but they were consuming the majority of agencies’ scarce resources. For instance, The Road Home found that the small group of chronically homeless used 60 percent of the shelter’s beds, according to executive director Matt Minkevitch. “Once we saw that, we really wanted to move forward.”
In Utah, a homeless person relying on shelters and soup kitchens costs the community $19,200, while the expenses of permanent housing and case management run just $7,800. For some, the price of law enforcement and medical expenses is astounding: One chronically homeless individual in Salt Lake City, for example, racked up $563,000 in emergency room charges in 2010; another had hospital bills that almost topped $1 million over three years.
Liz Buehler, Salt Lake City’s homeless services coordinator since 2013, says the state jumped into action when service providers realized they couldn’t rely on “diminishing resources” from the federal government. “If you put someone in a house, it’s half the cost of that person receiving services in the shelter. So why not put them in housing?” Buehler asks. “It’s not only giving them security, you can also help more people.”
Housing First’s backers are quick to note that they’re not giving away apartments for free: the new tenants have to abide by lease agreements (a handful have been evicted) and contribute $50 or 30 percent of their income to rent each month (whichever amount is greater).
For every 10 chronically homeless people housed through the program, eight are still in rapid rehousing units and one has moved on to other stable housing.
Minkevitch, a former hotel manager who migrated to the nonprofit sector to help “the weariest of travelers” at The Road Home, says the state’s success has taken even the most experienced caseworkers by surprise. “I know people who have been in this field for years, in this line of work for like 20 years, and as they were talking about clients, their eyes would light up like at Christmas,” he says. “They’d just laugh like it was the funniest, most beautiful joke, sitting here right under our nose all this time: we’d always known if a person has a home, they’re not homeless.”
READ MORE:
Part 2: 13 Images of Resilient Utah Residents Who Survived Being Homeless
Part 3: The Compassionate Utah Official Who Believes in Housing First, Asking Questions Later
Part 4: Far From Finished: Utah’s 5-Step Plan to Continue Helping the Homeless
Showers and Toilet on Wheels Give Homeless a Clean Slate
Silas Borden has spent the last five years living on the streets of San Francisco. He’s used to making the best with what he has, so when he stumbled upon a bus offering free showers and toilet, he couldn’t resist. “Living on the streets, no matter how clean you try to stay, you’re going to be grimy,” said Borden as he prepared for his first shower in over a week, “and I want to wash it off.”
Borden is one of the first beneficiaries of a pilot program from the nonprofit Lava Mae, which has retrofitted an old city bus into a souped-up sanitation service on wheels. The bus, which is equipped with two showers and a toilet that run off city water, travels the streets of San Francisco and aims to provide 300 to 500 showers a week.
Doniece Sandoval, the brains behind the operation, was inspired after reading about the lack of options available to the more than 3,000 homeless living on her city’s streets. “There are only seven drop-in centers in the entire city, and that translates to 16-20 shower stalls,” says Sandoval, who plans to add three more buses to her fleet because of the success of these test runs.
Read more about Lava Mae
This Innovative Program Found Housing for 200 Homeless Veterans in Just 100 Days
For far too many veterans, the end of their military service doesn’t involve a happy homecoming when they arrive back on American soil.
According to the Department of Veteran Affairs, 62,619 veterans were counted as homeless in 2012. Despite this being a drastic decline of 17.2 percent since 2009, veteran homelessness is still a huge problem in this country. In response, cities across the country — as part of Community Solutions’ 100,000 Homes campaign — are tackling the issue of veteran homelessness, vowing to reach the Obama Administration’s goal of ending it by December 2015.
And it seems to be working: Phoenix has already declared victory in their war against veteran homelessness. Utah claims to be on track to end homelessness altogether by 2015. Tennessee was recently profiled by 60 Minutes for the state’s efforts. And now officials in the nation’s capitol are doing their part. Last week, representatives from Veterans NOW, a coalition of district and national organizations and agencies, announced that in just 100 days — between August 9 and November 30 — they were able to place 207 homeless veterans, 96 of whom were considered chronically homeless, in houses.
MORE: Yes It’s True. Subsidizing Housing for the Homeless Can Save Them — And Taxpayers’ Money
In 2013, a one-night census of Washington, D.C.’s homeless population found that 499 veterans were living on the streets — a 29 percent decline since 2009. However, twice as many veterans were considered “at risk” of homelessness and in need of emergency housing services. Bolstered by that statistic, national organizations like The Community Partnership for the Prevention of Homelessness, the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Human Services teamed up with local groups such as the DC Housing Authority, Miriam’s Kitchen and Pathways to Housing DC to connect homeless veterans with subsidized housing.
According to DCist (a local blog that covers all things Washington, D.C.), these veterans are assessed through a universal service prioritization decision assistance tool, which asks about their history of homelessness, risk factors, socialization and medical needs. Each person is then scored to see if he or she is considered “vulnerable,” in which case permanent supportive housing or rapid re-housing would be recommended. The veterans are housed through the Supportive Services for Veteran Families (SSVF) program — $6.5 million in funding has provided for the D.C. region — Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing (VASH), HUD Permanent Supportive Housing and the D.C. DHS Permanent Supportive Housing program. The apartments themselves are located by officials from the D.C. Housing Authority directly reaching out landlords who partner with the organization.
MORE: Phoenix Just Became the First City to End Chronic Veteran Homelessness. Here’s How
The success of Veterans NOW’s first 100-day program has convinced everyone involved to give it a second go-around. Currently, the organization is in the midst of another 100-day push, where they hope to house 190 homeless veterans, including 56 who are chronically homeless, by March 31. And it looks like they’ll meet their goal. So far, 161 veterans have been placed in homes, including 84 who were considered chronically homeless. In total, communities participating in the 100,000 Homes Campaign have placed almost 89,000 homeless individuals in homes. And that number is growing every day.
While it is too soon to tell if we’ll reach President Barack Obama’s goal of eradicating veteran homelessness by the end of 2015, it looks like we’re getting a whole lot closer.
AND: This Hero Isn’t Just Alleviating Homelessness; He’s Preventing It
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