National Coalition for the Homeless Marks 30 Years

Thirty years ago, the National Coalition for the Homeless was founded after spinning off from the New York Coalition.  I attended the kick off event to mark this historic day in Washington.  I got to talk to Fred Karnas who was a previous Executive Director and has some great stories of building the organization.  It was nice to meet Heather from the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty during the gathering.  I had talked to her on the phone during civil rights conference calls, but never met her in person.  Michael Stoops gave a history lesson on all the work done by the Coalition including the HousingNow march in the 1980s, the McKinney Vento legislation and pushing for additional funding for the homeless programs.  For thirty years the National Coalition has been known to represent the civil rights of those experiencing homelessness. The best part of the evening was hearing from the Speakers, Steve and T.,  who do hundreds of speaking engagements at schools and before religious communities.  I talked to a number of the speakers who attended the event; all had previous experience with homelessness.  It is amazing that some of these people can get up in the morning let alone talk publicly about the trauma they underwent on their path back to stable housing.  They all have tremendous stories about the adversity of living on the streets, fights against bureaucracy, and abuse.  These speakers had found stability and a voice to work out their pain.  It is always amazing that they can put their rough times into perspective that provides a small glimpse into homelessness.

NCH has for 30 years represented the interests of those living without housing and trying to bring those voices to the halls of Congress.  It was great hearing from a professor at Georgetown, Sarah Stiles,  who makes it a point of having her classes hear from people living on the streets.   She talked about the classroom talks and the alternative spring breaks offered to college students from around the country in Washington.  As an aside for the first time a group got in trouble with the police for sleeping outside.   The group never disclosed that they were students on break in DC, and were taken in by the police but not charged. 

Neil Donovan was the Master of Ceremony for the event, and most of the Board were able to attend the anniversary.  We are going to miss Neil, but we know that he left the organization in a better place than he found it.   It is difficult to not have a feeling of remorse that the country has not solved homelessness in thirty years.   How does the group celebrate that they made it through tough times, but not send a confusing message that they are celebrating that homeless people have kept them in business for 30 years? It is a balancing act to not alienate the group you cherish most of all, homeless people, but celebrate overcoming obstacles that would have killed most groups.  NCH has seen some great times when they had staff in all different policy areas and were the foremost expert on the rights of homeless children and youth.   They have made hate crimes against homeless people a national policy issue.  The staff were experts in housing, the rights of homeless people, entitlements, and employment issues.  They wrote white papers every couple of months on policy and legislative issues.  They led letter writing campaigns and pushed local governments to give up on attempts to hide homeless people.  They pushed against Congress and social service agencies trying to mute the social justice aspects of the struggle to find a place for everyone in society.  They worked to make housing a right and not a privilege that only the sobor or mentally stable have access to in our society.

It is a good time to remind supporters of the local Coalitions to contribute to NCH with a donation to assure that they will be around to see this housing crisis to a just end.  We urge you to support a group that has spent 30 years fighting the good fight?  Many who founded the organization are no longer around including Mitch Snyder in DC, buddy gray in Cincinnati, Ellen Daily in Massachusetts, and John Donahue in Chicago.  These four were amazing advocates in the struggle to build affordable housing and provide universal health care in the United States.   NCH has had some amazing advocates associated with the organization over the years including Cheryl Barnes,  Dr. Matt Vega,  Barbara Duffield, Lynn Lewis, Shelia Crowley, Paul Boden, Bill Faith, John Lozier and Chuck Currie.    I am happy to currently serve with John Parvensky of Denver who is the current board president doing amazing work out in Colorado.   Donald Whitehead who cut his teeth in the shadow of buddy gray fighting against the forces who wanted to sweep poor people out of Over the Rhine is a former Executive Director and current board member.  The NCH Board also has Patrick Markee who grew up in Cleveland, but now is a major policy wonk in New York City.  There are powerful voices from the deep rural south, Florida, Indiana, Washington state, Sacramento, and Boston on the current board.

NCH has always had some strong loud voices, but the majority of the people associated with the organization over the years are the people who day in and day out are trying to figure out how to get the food to last for the last 20 stragglers in the soup line.  They work every night to find a bed for the individual forgotten by the rest of society sleeping on a park bench at midnight.  They come to the nation's capital looking for someone else who understands the misery of homelessness and wants to find a long term solution.  They are looking for a plan, resources, or a massive development of housing to keep the children back in their community from facing the fear of not knowing where they will sleep at night.  

Please help the National Coalition for the Homeless as they mark 30 years of survival and 30 years of finding a place in our society for all. 

Brian Davis

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National Coalition for the Homeless Looking for a Director

The National Coalition for the Homeless Announced last week that they were seeking a new Executive Director for the organization.  They have an announcement on their website here.  I am board member of NCH, so am somewhat biased here.  It is sad to see Neil Donovan leave the organization.  He has been with the organization since 2009 turning the organization around after a rough period.  He worked well with the staff and restored some of the credibility of the organization at the National level.  He always was pushing the views of homeless people to staff at HUD, Interagency Council and in Congress.  He rebuilt a local advisory group in DC to push civil rights issues and make recommendations on local and national policy changes.  

Neil came to Cleveland for a fundraiser in 2011 and we got to hear his strategy for involving homeless people in the struggle to end homelessness in the United States.  This was a comprehensive strategy not to end homelessness for veterans or families or one of the other many most favored populations, but for all homeless people.  He was always inviting those experiencing homelessness to meetings, and had his ear to the ground.  Over the 30 year history of the National Coalition for the Homeless they have become known as the one group to amplify the voice of those on the streets.   There are groups that represent shelters, lawyers or specific populations, but NCH has always tried to represent all different kinds of people from the hated panhandler to the innocent child to the runaways as well as the immigrants.  If they were homeless, NCH represented their interests in Washington.

Neil came out of the Boston shelters and worked for years as a shelter director learning the bureacracy of funding social services as well as the struggles that homeless people face everyday.  He did a great deal of consulting on rural homelessness in Ohio as well as policy work for the National Alliance.  At NCH he took over the organization as it was finding its way after a low point with the financial downturn.  This is one of the hardest groups in the world to work with because of the 30 years of history and the balancing act the director faces.  NCH has board members who have been with the agency for 20 or more years.  They have a community organizing history with staff who have been with the organization since the 1970s.  They have hands in the local DC community with helping to found the street newspaper and the homeless memorial while also working on Congressional issues. We will miss Neil and hope that the Board can find a replacement to continue to rebuild the organization.

Brian Davis

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Here and Now Discusses Homelessness

There was a nice interview with Neil Donovan of the National Coalition for the Homeless today on the radio program Here and Now out of WBUR from Boston.  The show featured a lengthy discussion about panhandling and some of the disturbing trends in homelessness on the Tuesday Feb. 12 program.  If you can get beyond the Boston heavy accents and expressions, it is a very good program.   This program is nice because they give the guests a chance to talk beyond just the sound bytes.  Neil discussed criminalization of homelessness, the affordable housing crisis, the exploding numbePhoto by Karen St. John Vincentrs at the shelters and plenty of shout outs to Pine Street Shelter system in Boston on this national radio show.  Neil felt that there was a level of compassion that is taken out of the equation when cities pass laws directed at panhandlers or install parking meters to take donations.  He made the point that if municipal governments were going to outlaw panhandling they should also include Girl Scouts, the Salvation Army, and firefighters during Labor Day weekend in that ban.  It was a very good interview and if you did not catch it, you should listen to his interview which was lasts around 16 to 18 minutes. 

NCH Announces 2012 Hate Crimes Report

2011 was one of the most dangerous years for homeless people in the United States according to the National Coalition for the Homeless. The National Homeless Hate Crimes report was issued this last week. 

• 1,289 reported acts of bias motivated violence have been committed against homeless
  individuals between 1999-2011.
• 339 homeless individuals lost their lives as a result of the attacks.
• Reported violence has occurred in 47 states, Puerto Rico, and Washington, DC

The violence continues, and with thirty-two known deaths, 2011 ranks in the top-five deadliest years for attacks on homeless people over the past thirteen years, and with one hundred and five attacks, ranks as the sixth most violent year since NCH began tracking the violence in 1999. NCH has found startling data in the number and severity of attacks. However, the reports also acknowledge that since the homeless community is treated so poorly in our society, many more attacks go unreported. Hate crimes against the homeless community is a growing wave in need of public attention.

Ohio was again identified as the third most violent state in the United States behind California and Washington state.  One bright spot was that after many years of leading the national Florida has fallen out of the top five.  There were 32 attacks that led to the death of a homeless person.  Ohio was listed as the fourth most dangerous state over the last dozen years. Fortunately, none of the deaths in 2011 occurred in Ohio.  

The non-lethal attacks in Ohio occured in Enid, Elyria, Columbus, Toledo and two incidents in Cleveland Ohio.   One incident in January 2011 was a library guard attacking a homeless person, and then an incident in July was referenced in which two young people attacked a homeless guy with a shopping cart on Public Square.   The complete report can be found here. 

There is a renewed effort to get a bill passed in Congress to ask the Justice Department to begin to keep track of these hate crimes and report on those to Congress.  Unfortunately, at this point law enforcement does not report these crimes as a hate crime to the FBI.  Even though the number of hate crimes outpace every other population protected by federal hate crimes, it is not recognized by the US government.   These are terrible crimes in which vulnerable innocent people are attacked just because they are outside and a symbol of our inability in the United States to provide an adequate safety net.  It is a real sign of the violent times we currently live. 

Brian Davis

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Thursday on NBC's Rock Center with Brian Williams

The National Coalition for the Homeless has worked to assist NBC News with a feature on Family Homelessness in America over the last couple of months ago.   Thursday at 10 p.m. on NBC on the television program Rock Center with Brian Williams will feature an awareness piece on family homelessness. If you paid attention to this website or the Street Chronicle--family homelessness is on the rise and families are the fastest growing population in Cleveland and many other cities.    Here’s a trailer for your viewing - http://video.msnbc.msn.com/rock-center/49981294.

Brian Davis

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