The Legacy of Lynching, on Death Row, The New Yorker
Bryan Stevenson, one of the foremost civil rights lawyers of our time and founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, sees a link between wrongful convictions, today’s police shootings of young black men and the nation’s barbarous history of lynching. To honor the 4,000 African Americans killed in the former Confederate states, Stevenson plans to build a $20 million memorial in Montgomery, Ala., on the site of a former public housing complex.
Man, 91, in hospice care knits hats for the homeless, WXMI
For the last 15 years, Morrie Boogart, a 91-year-old in Grandville, Mich., has knit hats for the homeless. Using donated yarn, Boogart has made at least 8,000 caps to keep the homeless warm during the winter. Confined to bedrest from skin cancer and a mass on his kidney, he’s spending his last days in admirable service to others.
Yes, Queens, The Ringer
When one thinks of podcasts, the image of a bespectacled white man, like “This American Life”’s Ira Glass, probably comes to mind. The seriously irreverent, wildly popular weekly podcast “2 Dope Queens,” hosted by Jessica Williams, formerly of “The Daily Show,” and Phoebe Robinson, a standup comedian, opens the medium to a new type of host. Racism, sexism and politics, as seen from a black woman’s perspective, are all carefully discussed, and somehow hilarity ensues.
MORE: Why Sleeping in a Former Slave’s Home Will Make You Rethink Race Relations in America
Tag: Homeless
Street Books: This Library on Wheels Brings Great Reads to People Living Outside
For the past five years, Laura Moulton has spent her days in underserved areas of Portland, Ore., lending books to people living on the fringes of society.
Those living outside or in temporary shelters are usually barred from borrowing books from regular libraries because they lack the required documentation (such as identification or a home address) to get a library card. Additionally, their everyday lives often make it hard for them to return books in good conditions and on time, triggering hefty fines and dissuading them from the practice, Moulton, an artist and writing professor, explains.
In 2011, she launched Street Books, a bike-powered, mobile library to ensure the homeless community has access to literature.
“Being recognized and spoken to on the street and offered a book for someone who has really been struggling can be a really powerful thing,” Moulton says. “Books have the power to have us feel empathy and have us experience the thrill of a journey of someone else”.
So far, Street Books have served more than 5,000 patrons, many of which have become regulars.
Discover more about Street Books and its patrons by watching the video above.
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
Renewable Energy’s Role Model, The Written Word Brings Life to the Homeless and More
Guess Which State Towers Over All the Others on Wind Energy?, onEarth
In a state known for caucuses and cornfields, renewable energy has taken root. More than 30 percent of Iowa’s in-state electricity generation already comes from wind — and it’s only going to increase, thanks to a new wind farm housing a turbine that’s taller than the Washington Monument.
Using Literature as a Force for Good Among Austin’s Homeless Population, CityLab
Barry Maxwell, a former resident of the Austin Resource Center for the Homeless, is paying it forward. As founder of Street Lit, he collects donated books and provides a creative writing class (participants write short stories, poetry, blog posts) to create a sense of community among those living on the streets.
Choosing a School for my Daughter in a Segregated City, New York Times Magazine
More than 60 years after the monumental Brown vs. Board of Education court ruling, New York City public schools remain some of the most racially- and economically-divided in the country. So where does a middle-class African-American family enroll their daughter: A segregated, low-income public school or a “good” public or private one?
How One School System Is Fighting Back Against the Achievement Gap, A Better Way to Help the Homeless and More
What Are Massachusetts Public Schools Doing Right? The Atlantic
The Bay State may be tops when it comes to reading and math, but officials aren’t resting on their laurels. Instead, they’re directing resources towards Massachusetts’s achievement gap, which remains stubbornly high. Can a focus on social-emotional learning and childhood trauma bring disadvantaged students up to the same level as their more affluent peers?
Give Directly to the Homeless Through a New Sharing Economy App, Fast Co.Exist
Known as the “City of Goodwill,” Seattle is living up to its moniker. Thanks to one tech entrepreneur and an advocate for the homeless, residents can now use the WeCount app to donate unwanted items (think: blankets, coats, sleeping bags) directly to those most in need. With homelessness an ongoing problem in many urban areas, let’s hope this technology spreads across the country — fast.
What If Mental Health First Aid Were as Widespread as CPR? New York City’s Planning to Do It, Yes! Magazine
Often, law enforcement encounter people suffering from mental illness, yet many haven’t received the education necessary to recognize and provide assistance (instead of arrest). In response, the New York Police Department is joining forces with the National Council for Behavioral Health to provide 250,000 first responders with mental health first aid training. The ultimate goal? To prevent suicide, which currently takes 40,000 lives each year.
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Through the Power of Music, These Homeless Mothers Create a Lasting Bond With Their Children
Earlier this winter at Siena House, a homeless shelter for young mothers in the South Bronx, Crystal spoke softly to her five kids. “This song is for you,” she said, and began crooning a lullaby she wrote (along with the musician Daniel Levy), titled “You’re the Reason Why.”
Accompanied by a guitar and violin, she sang, “You’re the reason why I smile. You’re the reason why I sing. You’re the reason I’m alive. You’re my all, my everything.” In delicate couplets, Crystal expressed a mother’s love for her children — sentiments we often associate with a woman leaning over a crib in a baby’s bedroom, not new moms passing through homeless shelters, jails, housing projects and adult education programs who are barely able to hold their families together.
Since 2011, the Lullaby Project, a Carnegie Hall program (part of its larger Musical Connections initiative) that takes music’s transformative power outside gilded concert halls and into neglected communities throughout New York City and across the nation, has paired more than 300 homeless or incarcerated mothers with professional musicians to create a musical experience for their child. Over three sessions, new and expectant moms write, compose and record a short lullaby for their newborns. For young women who may have experienced their own difficult childhood, the project is a chance to give a name to all the raw emotions that come with motherhood: the regrets from their own lives, the bright wishes for their children and, most importantly, the bottomless affection welling up in these new mothers’ hearts.
The Lullaby Project is not simply a chance for a mom to pen something lasting and meaningful; the song also creates a vital bond that’s key for the child’s development, says Dr. Dennie Palmer Wolf, a researcher evaluating the project. Singing a lullaby helps to create a secure attachment between mother and child, which studies have shown often leads to exploration, better social relations and emotional well-being in later life, Wolf says. Carnegie Hall’s Lullaby Project is one of the few programs that encourages that broader neonatal development, rather than society’s limited emphasis on preventing infant mortality or disease.
“When we fund maternal and infant healthcare, it’s chiefly in a disease framework: ‘How do you keep mothers from smoking, drinking, or having soda? How do you ensure that kids, postnatally, get vaccinations?’ Those are epidemiological issues. What we don’t pay any attention to, yet is no less critical, is the other side of prenatal and postnatal care: ‘How do we say to young mothers who are maybe on their own, maybe pregnant in neighborhoods that are not particularly safe or in the shelter system, that you are about to be a mother? How do we tell them you are an agent in charge of your own and this baby’s growth and development?’” Wolf asks. This initiative, she adds, is “building young people to do the job they are about to engage in.”
For a generation of children, despite all the turbulence of growing up in poverty, falling asleep in mom’s arms suddenly sounds much sweeter.
MORE: How Texting Can Improve the Health of Babies Born to Low-Income Mothers
Rutgers University Admits Unlikely Student Body, Journalists Use Reporting to Urge Politicians to Act and More
A University That Prioritizes the Students Who Are Often Ignored, The Atlantic
Traditionally, America’s colleges seek to attract the best and brightest to their hallowed halls. Committed to cultivating local talent regardless of status, New Jersey’s Rutgers University is bucking that trend, recruiting low-income, public-school graduates with mediocre GPAs and test scores — the very students that other schools shun.
A Plan to Flood San Francisco With News on Homelessness, New York Times
Can journalists advocate for a cause while remaining unbiased in their reporting? Next month, writers and editors from 30 Bay Area media outlets plan to do just that while collaborating on coverage focused on San Francisco’s homeless problem. The goal: To serve as a catalyst for solutions to the seemingly intractable problem.
This City Is Giving Away Super-Fast Internet to Poor Students, CNN Money
No longer are the poorest families in Chattanooga, Tenn., forced to visit a fast-food restaurant so their children can access the Internet needed to complete their homework. Two new programs are bringing citizens online in the Southern city, where 22.5 percent of the population lives in poverty.
MORE: Only 1 in 5 New York City Students Graduate from College. This College Is Going to Change That
Thanks to This Man’s Vision, 22,000 People Are No Longer Living in Poverty
A native San Franciscan, Daniel Lurie has witnessed his hometown change as two tech bubbles inflated, introducing “tremendous wealth” and sometimes crowding out those living, by contrast, in “tremendous poverty.” The son of Brian Lurie, a rabbi and head of the Jewish Community Foundation for 17 years, and stepson of Peter Haas, one-time head of Levi’s and renowned gift-giver, Lurie has philanthropy in his blood. In 2005, not yet 30 years old, he co-founded the Tipping Point Community to harness the money swelling the coffers of tech companies and other businesses, distributing more than $100 million directly to the Bay Area’s most effective nonprofits and social enterprises.
Rather than “building institutions” — libraries, universities and hospitals — this new generation of donors wants to see their charity have a measurable impact. As a result, their methods and tools have improved. NationSwell spoke with the man who’s educating members of the Bay Area about how to best share their riches.
What’s the best advice you have ever been given on leadership?
I live by the motto that you hire the best people. You surround yourself with people that are smarter than you, that hire people that are incredibly competent and you let them run. No one can do this work alone.
What’s currently on your nightstand?
“Between the World and Me” [by Ta-Nehisi Coates]. We’ve talking a lot about race and class and power here at Tipping Point, and I think there’s probably no more important book out there than that one.
What innovations in your field are you most excited about right now?
In our T Lab program, we’re providing funding to high-performing, established organizations for research and development, which is definitely something new for our sector.
What do you wish someone had told you when you started the Tipping Point Community?
That my job would never be over. I mean, I knew it, but what’s great is that it’s also what’s needed to be inspired each and every day. We live at this nexus of great wealth and privilege here in the Bay Area as well as great poverty. It can be daunting, the chasm, but when you get to meet people who are wealthy and are really committed to these issues, that gets you fired up. And when you get to meet executive directors or clients on the ground doing the hard work every day, that also gets you fired up, despite the fact that the numbers are still overwhelming for those who live in poverty. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed, but it’s also easy to get inspired.
Who is the most inspirational person you’ve encountered?
The first one that comes to mind is Martha Ryan, who runs the Homeless Prenatal Program. She’s been doing this work for 27 years, and she’s always evolving and innovating. She’s tireless. She always humbles me. Homelessness is an extraordinary tough issue. It’s obviously top of mind for everybody, and here’s a woman who’s been tackling it for almost three decades. She’s still going strong and more committed than ever.
How do you try to communicate that inspiration to others?
I don’t think it’s that hard at our organization. We hire great people that are committed to our mission. I think they understand the daunting task that our partner organizations — 45 groups — are working on each and every day. Knowing that we are supporting such excellent work and such difficult work, I think, motivates our staff. And when they do get daunted, overwhelmed and a feeling of helplessness and hopelessness, I can always point them to a Martha Ryan or Sam Cobbs at First Place for Youth who always gives us hope and always can tell us a story of success.
Last year, our groups at Tipping Point, we moved 22,000 people out of poverty concretely. That’s an amazing number, and one that, if we have a rough day, we can point to. It’s pretty easy to look around our portfolio of organizations and find inspiration.
What’s your biggest need right now?
We need people not to turn away from the problems of our time. In the Bay Area right now, I’d say it’s homelessness. I’m into three decades of seeing this problem in San Francisco, and I’m seeing more mentally ill living on the streets and encampments and tent cities popping up. We’re seeing our brothers and sisters and children not only living on the streets, but dying on the streets. We just had a police shooting of a homeless man here in the Mission District, and we had a homeless guy stab a California Highway Patrol officer the week of Super Bowl under an overpass. It’s not safe any longer — not only for people walking down the street, but it’s also not safe for those that are homeless. It’s not okay for us to treat our brothers and sisters this way. It’s not humane. And this isn’t just San Francisco: it’s New York, Seattle, L.A., Dallas.
It feels intractable, and I would just say it’s not. I’m not saying we can solve it overnight, but if we have the political will and we use our various resources at our disposal, then change can happen. I would ask people to get engaged. It’s pretty easy to give up and throw your hands in the air and say, “This problem is too big. It’s unsolvable.” The more people that believe that we can change this, the more likely it is that we do.
What don’t most people know about you that they should?
I don’t like to sit around strategizing and planning for very long. I’d rather try something and fail than plan something for a long time. I’m probably oriented towards action, rather than planning.
To learn more about the NationSwell Council, click here.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
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The Room Full of Recliners That’s Saving the Lives of Drug Addicts, An Investment in the Poor That Pays Off and More
Overwhelmed by Overdoses, Clinic Offers a Room for Highs, Boston Globe
The number one cause of death among Boston’s homeless? Opioid use. Overdoses are such a common occurrence that they disrupt workers’ daily tasks at Boston Healthcare for the Homeless Program. In response, the organization is making a drastic, controversial move: opening a room where addicts can come down from their highs while under medical supervision. Some claim that it’s a plan that will simply enable users; others, including the Boston Public Health Commission and the Massachusetts Society of Addiction Medicine, believe it’s an effective way to get the drug pandemic under control and reduce the number of fatalities.
Free Money Lifts People out of Poverty, and That’s an Investment That Pays for Itself, Tech Insider
Despite America’s vast wealth, more than one in five children grow up in poverty in this country. While many believe that giving the less-fortunate money increases laziness, North Carolina discovered that Cherokee tribe members receiving up to $6,000 a year from casino revenue gave parents the ability to save money and pay bills on time — all the while continuing to work the same amount as they previously did. Not only that, their children experienced a reduction in mental health problems, fewer behavioral problems and improved performance in school.
Crowdsourcing the Future of a Social Movement, Stanford Social Innovation Review
You’ve probably heard the popular saying, There’s no “I” in team. While running a major crowdsourcing campaign, funders and nonprofit leaders in the LGBTQ community learned just how powerful collaboration is at maintaining social progress. More than 14,000 ideas were collected from residents of all 50 states, creating a vast data set about LGBTQ issues — something that’s cost prohibitive for one organization to source, but that will help guide the entire movement for years to come.
This Is How You End the Foster Care to Prison Pipeline
Moments of stability were rare during Pamela Bolnick’s childhood. She repeatedly witnessed her father beat her mother, a Venezuelan immigrant diagnosed with schizophrenia. Bolnick’s mom eventually left her abusive spouse, fleeing to the Bay Area with her two kids. When she stopped taking her medication, the county child welfare department stepped in and placed six-year-old Bolnick and her younger brother in foster care. Her mother resumed treatment for her mental illness, and for two short years, retained custody of her children. After another relapse, Bolnick and her sibling were permanently removed from their home.
Bolnick was placed with her godparents in Richmond, Calif., an East Bay city then known for its notoriously high murder rates. Toughened by her childhood, she excelled at El Cerrito High School, impressing teachers in her Advanced Placement classes and filling her schedule with softball games and dance rehearsals. By senior year, however, she felt her foster family was pressuring her to move on. “All this time, I looked at them as being my own family. I did everything that you’d expect of a child, going to school, not getting into trouble, applying to college,” Bolnick says. “I came to see it as a business transaction: them being paid [by the government] for taking care of me, and me getting the benefit of being a child in their custody.” Disgusted, she left and spent the summer living at friend’s house. Shortly afterwards, she enrolled at Holy Names University in nearby Oakland Hills.
Alone for the first time, juggling 19 credits of core classes and a full-time job overwhelmed Bolnick. Short on time and seared by her past relationships, she distanced herself from others. “I almost grew to believe that I could be this Superwoman figure,” she recalls. “It burned me out completely. I didn’t have time to enjoy my first year of college, a time that’s supposed to be so liberating. I had finally reached the only thing my mother wanted me to do, and it made me so sad knowing I wasn’t happy.” Bolnick dropped out. Her foster parents refused to take her back, and without a permanent place to go, she couch-surfed at friends’ dorms.
The foster care system is one of America’s most troublesome institutions: chronically underfunded and largely uninformed and unsuccessful at raising children much better than the parents from whom they were removed. Its primary recipients — children under the age of 18 — have no political leverage, so policy decisions are often driven by scandals. In New York City, for example, after a mother killed her daughter in 1995, thousands of kids were forcefully removed from their homes, but when troubles beset the administration in 2005, the pendulum swung in the opposite direction. While the system as a whole has experienced some reforms (motivated by Victorian sensationalism, as Jill Lepore documents in The New Yorker), a subset of its population gets little attention: those who “age out” of the system.
Each year in California, several thousand youth exit foster care immediately upon turning 21 years old. (Previously emancipated at 18, youth care was extended by a 2012 state law.) Longitudinal studies by researchers from University of Chicago’s Chapin Hall Center for Children found that 24 percent of youth were homeless after exiting the system and nearly half had been incarcerated within two years. Perhaps most shockingly, 77 percent of the young women reported a pregnancy, risking another generation reentering the system.
While other children can mature gradually, relying on their parents for emotional advice or a bit of extra cash, these youth are entirely on their own. Amy Lemley, a former case manager at a group home for foster youth in Boston, remembers teenagers celebrating their 18th birthdays by stuffing their few belongings into a backpack and saying goodbye. “We kind of looked the other way and pretended that it was going to work out, but we knew that it wasn’t,” she says. Recognizing that these kids needed help transitioning into adulthood, Lemley enrolled in a public policy graduate program at the University of California, Berkeley, and with her classmate and “kindred spirit” Deanne Pearn, the women founded an organization in 1999 to provide that support.
Headquartered in Oakland, Calif., First Place for Youth provides emancipated youth in five Bay Area counties and Los Angeles with their very first apartment, covering both the security deposit and the monthly rental fees. Last year, 464 youth moved into these residences. Most stay in the program for around 18 months; some kids drop in for 30 days, while others stay for three years, current First Place for Youth CEO Sam Cobbs says. Before exiting, the organization assists the young adults meet four main goals: find stable employment, locate housing that matches their income, complete two semesters of community college or a certificate program and, finally, achieve “healthy living,” which means avoiding arrests, unintended pregnancies and substance abuse.
The program’s scope wasn’t always so large. The way Lemley originally envisioned it, housing would be enough. But after realizing that some First Place participants couldn’t read, she quickly pivoted, including educational and career services as well. Targeting a group that’s significantly behind their peers, First Place’s goals are modest. “I can tell you, we don’t have anybody at Goldman Sachs,” Claudia Miller, the group’s spokeswoman says. Instead, it aims for participants to land jobs that provide a livable wage, like a paralegal, nurse or solar panel installer. A full 86 percent obtain employment, and 91 percent attend college. (The program did not provide numbers on how many complete their education.)
“This program is not a handout; it is a hand up,” Cobbs says. “What we’re doing is trying to help you understand and make choices so that you can provide for yourself. You have to meet us, if not halfway, at least 30 percent, and invest in your own future. Which I think is one of the reasons it’s such a big success: it depends on them.”
Bolnick heard about First Place for Youth through a college counselor, who advised her that the program could provide her with the financial and emotional support she needed. Feeling like she was “working to live each day,” Bolnick initially signed up for just classes. But after dropping out of Holy Names University, experiencing a brief period of homelessness and crashing with friends for a bit, she moved into housing provided by First Place.
The transition wasn’t always easy. Like in her dorm room, she shared the space (a two-bedroom apartment in San Leandro, Calif.) with another teenager, this time a foster youth who’d faced her own hardships. At first, the pair bonded, but soon Bolnick felt that her roommate began to shirk responsibilities, hanging around at home and smoking pot and cigarettes, even after she found out she was pregnant. “It literally put a flash of light in front of me, knowing there are kids out there who don’t even want to make a difference in their life,” she says. The environment became so tense that Bolnick couldn’t take it anymore and had to move to another apartment. There, Bolnick found another First Place participant who became like “a little sister to me.”
It’s a result that can’t be quantified, but Bolnick says First Place provided a community that understood her. After losing both parents (her father left the picture when the family moved to California, and her mother committed suicide) and then feeling betrayed by her foster family, Bolnick learned to distance herself from those closest to her. Before getting to First Place, she didn’t express any emotions related to her upbringing. She couldn’t tell her little brother how scared she was for fear of traumatizing him, and she kept her biological parents a secret through high school so that her friends wouldn’t pity her. Getting to know other emancipated youth at First Place helped her, Bolnick says, not because they necessarily knew the specifics of her story, but because each of them had a similar experience to share. Up until her early 20s, she says she never knew what it was like to cry. When asked what the rush of emotions feels like now, Bolnick says simply, “I appreciate it.”
Foster youth “have completely normal behavior,” Cobbs says, “and what I mean by that is, if you are moved nine times, then you probably wouldn’t establish relationships really quickly. It is normal behavior to protect yourself from building intimate relationships, because every time you get attached, you get hurt. It’s abnormal not to do that.”
Today, Bolnick pays for her own apartment near Oakland, where she bikes and reads by Lake Merritt. She’s working full-time as an assistant manager for a high-end fashion company, and she’s saved enough money to take a two-week trip to Venezuela to meet her mother’s family. Within the next year, she plans to complete her last semester of community college and apply to U.C. Berkeley, where she’s planning to major in biophysics (the next step towards her goal of practicing pediatric neurosurgery) and minor in sociology (a way to understand where she’s been and what she’s faced). She spoke to NationSwell, she confessed, partially because she wanted to hear more about the neighborhood around New York University in downtown Manhattan where she plans to go to medical school. But she also mentioned she wanted to talk because she feels she has an important story to share — one that has a brighter ending than her mother’s.
Why was Bolnick able to beat the odds? Some of the latest scientific research on trauma might call it grit or resilience — an inborn ability to overcome. In her words, “I think it has to do with seeing the light behind all the blockages that get in the way. It takes a lot mentally,” she explains. “If I keep telling myself I am a foster kid, I am a Latina woman, I live in Richmond and all of my friends are doing the same things that people expect me to do, I should just as easily do that. But I never once had that thought at all. I just wanted to make the best of what I had.” Bolnick also credits First Place for Youth for providing her with the network she needed to halt a situation that was spiraling out of control. She says the nonprofit gave her “stability, stability, stability.”
With results like that, Cobbs wants to see the model expand across the country, whether it’s run by his organization or a partner. He acknowledges specific benefits — support for transitional housing in Sacramento and a top-notch community college system statewide — that make the model work in California, but he also points to challenges, including the Golden State’s high cost of living and the fact that it is the largest foster care system in the country (largely because it hasn’t been as aggressive in returning kids to their homes, even if conditions improve, and because a flood of orphaned immigrant children keep adding to the total, he says). If replicated in just 10 more cities nationwide, Cobbs says that about 70 percent of America’s foster youth could have another option available to them.
Before Lemley founded First Place for Youth, the safety net for America’s foster youth abruptly disappeared at age 18, abandoning these vulnerable children at the most critical moment. First Place for Youth lengthens and stabilizes that transition to adulthood. Homelessness and jail-time are no longer mandatory chapters in stories about foster care. With the organization’s work, emancipated youth finally have a home to call their own.
Homepage photo courtesy of First Place for Youth
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