Homeless advocate for themselves, but does it work?
A dozen of them sit huddled together against the chill on a recent Friday in the Brittingham Park shelter -- schooled in bracing against the wind by stints of living on the street -- to hear about the neighborhood's reaction to their presence.
People -- mothers -- say they're scared, reports Aaron Crandall, a founder of the newly formed Monona Bay Neighborhood Association.
"You don't have any idea about our lifestyle," Robert McGee tells Crandall. "Come live up under here. Pretend for one day you don't have anywhere to go."
"We're trying to build a program," Wesley Jennings says. "We're trying to show people they don't have to sit around and drink all day; we're trying to show them there can be more."
"Is this about homeless people or is this about black people?" asks Wesley Morrow, who is black.
Morrow, Jennings and McGee, all formerly homeless, are members of Operation Welcome Home, an emerging self-help organization for the homeless. They invited Crandall to the shelter for one of their regular meetings, and they see him as a reasonable voice in the often tense relationship between those who hang out at the shelter and those who lives in homes nearby. Welcome Home was formed last summer in response to neighborhood opposition to use of the park shelter by the homeless and transients.
Madison has seen a handful of such homeless-powered initiatives before. The raucous Warming Center Campaign staged a sit-in outside Mayor Dave Cieslewicz's office in 2004 and won private funds to launch the Street Pulse homeless newspaper, still hawked on downtown street corners, before the advocacy arm dissolved. The Interfaith Hospitality Network sponsors the Tenant Advocacy Group, whose low-income members, many of them formerly homeless, learn about and advocate on housing and homelessness policy. Dialogues on Homelessness, sponsored by Capitol Neighborhoods Inc., has hosted face-to-face discussions between homeless people and their downtown neighbors for the past six months.
Advocates for the new generation of homeless empowerment programs, which are now emerging in cities around the country, say excluding the homeless from discussions about programs that serve them is a doomed strategy. But overall, the programs that assist the homeless in Dane County now are conceived and delivered with limited input from the people they aim to help.
The people who run those programs question the effectiveness of the new wave of efforts. They say the homeless are usually too preoccupied with survival to be effective advocates for themselves and that it is critical to take a tough stance on drugs and alcohol among participants to be successful.
The tension between the two models comes amid a stinging backlash against the presence of homeless and street people in Madison, driven by two recent homicides. Although there have been no arrests, police have focused on "transients" in the killings of Joel Marino, who lived just a few blocks from Brittingham Park, and Brittany Sue Zimmermann, who lived in the Bassett neighborhood. Judging by the direction the city is taking in its recently announced plans to install security cameras at Brittingham Park, the civic mood toward the homeless is stern, despite their increased advocacy on their own behalf.
Unwelcome plan?
Located on the shore of Monona Bay off of West Washington Avenue, the Brittingham Park shelter has become a popular hangout for many homeless. Neighborhood complaints about drunkenness reached a high pitch last summer after a homeless person died in the park, though it was not clear that the death was linked to alcohol.
Members of Welcome Home presented a proposal for the park this spring that included a day-labor program to find temporary work for the homeless there. They did not recommend a policy calling for camera surveillance at the shelter and stepped-up police patrols at Brittingham Park, which were both part of a plan that Cieslewicz released on April 8. City officials say they are still combing the budget for $10,600 to mount two cameras that will transmit data to the city computer network.
They insist, though, that the decision to use cameras at the shelter doesn't mean Welcome Home is being shut out.
The city is talking through possible additional initiatives with Welcome Home, mayoral aide Joel Plant said in a recent interview.
The mayor's plan and Welcome Home's "overlap a lot," he says. "This is not a situation where the mayor wants to close his eyes and forge ahead with no one's input."
But that's just what Cieslewicz did, critics say, when the plan for the controversial cameras at the shelter was presented to the Parks Commission as a done deal on April 9.
Parks Commission Chairman Bill Barker acknowledges that members would have preferred to be involved in the policy discussion on placing cameras in a park -- the first such discussion in the city. It's a move that he admits makes him "queasy."
Barker backs the mayor's decision to take action, though.
"My canary in the coal mine is a mother with a kid in a stroller. I say if she doesn't feel safe in the park, we've got a problem. So, if you cannot or will not behave in the park, you've got to go."
Welcome Home says its plan for the park, which also includes "peer-led" activities and deferred prosecution for minor offenses, gives park denizens a way to better themselves. The group members say they are already meeting their goal of providing housing through a rented half-duplex, where seven members live communally. The group operates an AA program at the home and plans to hire a case manager.
"Our main goal is to make people part of a community, so that during that window, when people want services, we can get them what they need," Kristen Petroshius, a Welcome Home organizer who is not homeless, told a Parks Commission panel on alcohol policy on May 1.
She says more than 100 people identify themselves as park regulars, for whom the tickets usually issued for violations of city ordinances mean little. For poor people with a string of petty offenses on their record, another ticket they can't pay is no motivation to change behavior, she says. Allowing them instead to participate in a program to work on self-improvement is a better way for them to be accountable, she says.
Deferred prosecution is proposed in the mayor's Brittingham Park plan as well, says Plant. A day-labor program, originally proposed by Welcome Home as a permanent facility, did not appeal to city officials, Plant says, but a newer idea of a mobile trailer that could be used throughout the community as a job assignment program has some promise.
Plant credits Welcome Home with working toward solutions. "They are not just criticizing. They are saying, 'Here is an alternative, and here is what we are willing to do.' That is refreshing."
He was encouraged, too, he says, when, in a recent meeting, several Welcome Home members said alcohol use at the park was a "real problem" and that it was hard to get someone in the lifestyle of drinking all day long to stop.
Involving the homeless
Homeless people are not all addiction-addled and apathetic, as they are stereotyped to be, says Michael Stoops, acting executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based National Coalition for the Homeless. Some are activists. Many more could be.
Yet they are seldom part of homelessness advocacy work. It has been a weakness of the movement, Stoops acknowledges. That is changing.
Initiatives to empower the homeless are popping up independently around the country, from New York City to Portland, Ore., Seattle, Kansas and North Carolina. They range from rough-hewn grass-roots start-ups to programs sponsored by traditional service agencies.
"Most Americans have not had an intelligent conversation with a homeless person and don't think homeless folks have the capability to speak or be so-called experts," Stoops says. But talking about homelessness without homeless people is like "talking about women's issues with only men in the room."
But for people who are currently homeless, there are challenges to becoming involved in advocacy, Stoops says. Most of the people who sit down to strategize to end homelessness are being paid to go to those meetings, he says. "And we expect Homeless Joe to show up, when what he needs to do is get across town to the soup kitchen."
Homeless or formerly homeless who are prospective candidates for the boards of directors of service agencies are viewed with suspicion. Typically one homeless person is named to a board, says Stoops, "then they screw up, and it gets set in stone that they tried involving the homeless and it didn't work."
Politicians all too often dismiss homeless people, Stoops maintains, because they figure the homeless don't vote, so they can be ignored.
And people who work with the homeless have their own stereotypes, Stoops says, because "social workers don't want to give up any power to clients."
Resource roadblocks
The tension between the homeless and traditional program management is evident in Madison, where Welcome Home members have been harshly critical of Porchlight Inc., which provides most local programs for single homeless men, including the Men's Drop-In Shelter at Grace Episcopal Church.
Porchlight Executive Director Steve Schooler says he is puzzled by some of the criticisms, which misstate simple facts like how many bus tickets the agency will hand out at one time. "We do have some fairly strict policies as it relates to intoxication, and that has created for some in the Welcome Home program a barrier" to entering the shelter, Schooler says .
Porchlight's board of directors has formerly homeless members, who "have helpful insights."
"But we know from the experiences of other cities which things are effective," he says.
Putting people in a "wet" shelter like Welcome Home's in which people can still drink can't be effective unless support services are provided, Schooler says. And getting timely services -- like addiction treatment or mental health treatment -- is the biggest barrier Porchlight encounters in its programs.
"We can't be all things to all people," Schooler says. "If Welcome Home can effectively organize a place that is a wet shelter and can manage it, great. The jury is still out on whether they can effectively manage it."
Joe Lindstrom, who has worked with Madison's homeless for years, says people living on the street are understandably too preoccupied with their own survival to be effective advocates on homeless services policy.
Homeless people often find themselves waiting -- for a meal, for a bed -- and there's a tendency to blame the people who are supposed to be helping. "It's frustrating to see disdain for service providers," Lindstrom says. "They're doing a lot, but the problems are complex and solutions are not immediate."
Waning optimism
That is certainly true at Brittingham Park.
Two months ago, before the mayor's proposal for cameras and before Zimmermann was killed, Welcome Home members were talking optimistically about their chances for positive change in a meeting at Neighborhood House near Meriter Hospital.
Then Dane County Board Supervisor Ashok Kumar told them that "legislators cannot turn a deaf ear when homeless people advocate for themselves. The power is overwhelming."
The group strategized on ways to make their voices heard, approved a grant application for an arts project in which they would tell their stories, and talked about their chances for other city grants.
A few argued that authorities could end homelessness if they wanted to. They are not ready, they said, to accept the transformative power of people working together.
"We are an extended family," said Wesley Morrow. "It's hard for people to see that. People think they are helping 'those poor people who can't do anything for themselves.' I'm transformed in some way by everyone in this group."
"I'm sober," McGee said as proof of the group's power. "I'm sober, and I like it."
Two months later, the outlook is dimmer.
Neighborhood organizer Crandall says he's concerned that cracking down at Brittingham will just push "troublemakers" from there to another park. He does credit Welcome Home for coming up with creative strategies.
But he also says most neighbors of Brittingham Park want to see the surveillance cameras installed there.
And McGee, who spoke with hope about his own situation in March, acknowledges in an interview that he has started drinking again.
He hasn't given up on Welcome Home, but his confidence seems shaken.
"They don't want us here," he says of the neighborhood. "That's not going to change."
Mike DeVries/The Capital Times
6 total imagesview them here
The Brittingham Park shelter is a place where several homeless people spend much of their time.
