Project Homeless Connect: Beyond a One Day Event

Project Homeless Connect is a one day one-stop-shop model for persons experiencing homelessness. The idea of a "one-stop-shop" and "no wrong door" is something that you often hear about in homeless services and Project Homeless Connect is an embodiment of this idea. It brings community leaders come together to bring services, from housing to haircuts to ids to giveaways, together in one place. There have been more than 300 events in over 170 communities in less than three years. Each event stands alone and is organized by the community in which it takes place. It's so cutting edge that they are using videos on YouTube to spread the word:


One of the major criticisms of Project Homeless Connect is that it is a ONE DAY one stop shop. It would be impossible to bring together all of these services in the career-fairish way that Project Homeless Connect does on a daily basis but there are some programs that are beginning to try to deliver a breadth of services with one point of entry.

For the City's Homeless: A One Stop Center
Mercury News, May 17, 2008

[Christine Burroughs] described how the new operation would work for an estimated 7,000 chronically homeless folks in the county and thousands more in danger of losing their homes. Caseworkers would determine their housing needs, physical and mental health, and qualifications for government, insurance or other financial assistance. The next step would be to help them apply for benefits and services.

I've blogged about homeless sex offenders before, but I hadn't realized how accepting some counties are of returning people to the streets until I read this article from Washington State:

No easy fix to homeless sex offender problem, state corrections chief says
Herald Net, May 4, 2008

Corrections officials across the country confront daily the challenge of sex offenders without an apartment, shelter or motel room to bed down at night.

In Florida, when authorities ran out of places in ­Miami-Dade County in 2007, they set up an encampment for sex offenders under a bridge linking Miami to Miami Beach.

Say what? Aren't encampments usually technically illegal?

Q: I'm not sure if living under the Snohomish bridge is legal. So, if Torrence got arrested for illegal camping, he might have landed back behind bars and might have made the state liable for something.

A: I had not thought about that. I wasn't aware that it was illegal. If he got violated he would be back in custody. That would be an interesting situation. It is my understanding we chose that site in coordination with local law enforcement. It is not atypical of what we've done in other parts of the state.

I was floored by how naive the Secretary of Corrections in Washington, Eldon Vail, was about homelessness and how nonchalant he seemed in his answers. I actually thought that this paper was satire until I found another article from the Seattle times:

A Bridge as a Last Resort
Seattle Times, April 30, 2008

David J. Torrence, who assaulted a 16-year-old girl in 1995, had completed his latest prison term (for failing to register as a sex offender.) He had no place to go. So officials gave him a sleeping bag and a rain poncho, then told him to stay under this bridge, 9 p.m. to 6 a.m., until further notice.

"We're not proud of it," says Mary Rehberg, parole officer for the state Department of Corrections. "We did it because this is what it has come to. Under a bridge is the best of the options we had left."

I trust that the Seattle Times isn't satire. This housing of sex offenders thing is a huge problem and we need to work to resolve it. Granted everyone deserves housing, not just the sex offenders and other ex-cons, but my concern lies with discharge planning from hospitals or foster care as well. How can we expect to have someone in care, often for extended periods of time, then be able to take care of themselves when they leave without support? Think of when the Mental Institutions closed, a lot of people blame homelessness today on that one event. Granted we know that homelessness is more complicated than that but poor discharge planning and case management leads many individuals to be discharged to the streets or unable to sustain themselves in the situations that they are discharged into.

There isn't much that we as individuals can do to help this one, it has to be a nationwide systematic change.