Transience is a Bitch.

One of the things that NEOCH tries to do is get homeless people to actively reform their community and environment. We meet with residents at both 2100 Men's Shelter and Community Women's Shelter to listen to their complaints, grievances or annoyances with how the shelter (their current home) is operating. Residents tell us everything from how the food is bad, to how the staff is disrespectful--all things that need to be improved. NEOCH then mediates between shelter staff and residents to get these changes implemented. Change takes time, though. It usually takes many meetings of going back and forth to get something implemented. A problem with this is that many residents we never see again after their first meeting. This is especially true at CWS where we rarely see the same woman twice. It's hard to inspire an individual to follow through with an issue when they live in a temporary home + have no clue where they'll end up next. That's really no big deal at the resident meetings because we can usually pass the torch to the new people we see--they pretty much all share the same problems with their shelter anyways.

But, what is a problem is the Homeless Congress. We really need regular people to show up at these meetings. The Homeless Congress is a way for homeless people from all the different shelters to come together + address problems with the homeless community as a whole. The Congress has met with a rep from the FoodBank to address the issue of nasty shelter food that plagues the whole city. Next we will meet with a state rep to discuss ways to eradicate homelessness. At an early meeting, the Congress decided that lack of affordable housing and jobs were the two biggest problems in the city. So they proposed an idea: why not give homeless people the job of renovating abandoned, dilapidated buildings into nice, affordable homes. Great. The Congress was supposed to meet with the media + with county commissioners to relate these ideas. We've even been training people to do this. The only problem is that it's incredibly difficult to get the same people to return. And It's not their fault. Mail is often not delivered properly at shelters; many people have no phone; and many have spotty forms of transportation.

There's another Congress next week. We'll see how it goes. Hopefully the fliers where delivered to all who needs it.