HOMELESS TRANSITIONS ACTION GROUP

Goals and Priorities

Final (for now)

Roseburg Area

Douglas County

Oregon

February 2016

“Offering a HandUp to HomelessPeople in Douglas County”

Background

Three non-profit organizations originally sponsored the work that led to this document: United Community Action Network (UCAN), NeighborWorks Umpqua, and the Downtown Roseburg Association (DRA).

Numerous other governments, non-profits, churches, and businesses also supported the effort along the way either by providing meeting space or, more importantly, offering staff or volunteer time and other resources. These include: Greater Douglas United Way (GDUW), BP Media, Paul O’Brien Winery, Architrave, Mercy Medical, Community Health Alliance, ADAPT, Umpqua Valley Disabilities Network, Good Governance Committee, The Ford Family Foundation, Court Ordered Special Advocates (CASA), Hucrest Church of God, Roseburg Alliance Church, Redeemer’s Fellowship, Dream Center, Faith Lutheran Church, Douglas County, City of Roseburg, HADCO, and Environmental Dispute Resolution USA (EDRUSA)

A working group composed of more than 60 participants helped developthe material presented in this document. This group included homeless people, advocates for their interests, community volunteers, service providers, local church leaders, caring critics, concerned businesspeople, and government representatives. Most of their names and affiliations, if known, are shown in Attachment A.

Some participants hold strong feelings about key issues: economic and development impacts of homeless people’s presence and behavior in Roseburg’s central business district and other commercial areas, meeting housing needs for the poor and homeless, civil and property rights, public and private costs, use of public funds to serve homeless people, perceived irresponsibility towards other people and property by some homeless people, importance of being a compassionate community, and public health, safety, and security, for example.

The people developing this document had all those issuesand more in mind as they worked through the details. They view the goals and priorities presented here as a work-in-progress and one, if it is to be successful, that has to be connected closely to community values throughout the Roseburg Area and Douglas County.

The work began with a questionnaire distributed in July 2015 to community leaders. The results of that questionnaire are shown in Attachment B.

People participating in the first working group meeting held on August 18, 2015 confirmed the validity of the questionnaire’s results. Discussions of those results yielded five topics for focused work: information and education, crime, sanitation, housing, and services and support.

Work progressed through five more monthly meetings as of January 2016 as well as at a public-discussion forum conducted in November 2015. Monthly meeting sign-in logs showthe consistent presence of 15-30 people.

After each facilitated meeting, the cumulative writings and agreements of all attending were compiled and then distributed for comment and correction via email to a much wider network of reviewers. Any comments received from the email distribution were incorporated into this goals and priorities document.

An “implied-concurrence” model was used in which reviewers were told explicitly that, if they offered no comments or corrections, the working group would assume that the reviewers supported the work accomplished to date. People offering dissenting voices and different ideas were consistently asked and encouraged to participate in the public forum, the monthly meetings, and the email reviews.

After two months of discussion, those present at the January 2016 monthly meeting adopted the name “Homeless Transitions Action Group” or “H-TAG.”

To put the proposed H-TAG work in context, please consider the following figures from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and Oregon Housing and Community Services:

Nationally:

  • 3 million people experience homelessness in any given year; 37% live in families
  • 1.3 million are children; 25% are under 18 and 8% live on their own
  • 40% have a mental health issue
  • 12% are victims of domestic violence, mostly, but not exclusively, women
  • 10% are veterans
  • Homelessness can take 36 years off of someone’s life expectancy
  • Poverty is the number one cause of homelessness, a factor in at least 70% of cases

Oregon:

  • 2ndhighest in nation for rate of unsheltered people in families
  • 3rd highest number of unaccompanied rural homeless children and youth
  • 4th in nation for total number of rural homeless people
  • 5th highest rate of statewide unsheltered unaccompanied homeless youth and children
  • 5th for largest number of rural chronically homeless individuals
  • 5th highest rate statewide of unsheltered chronically homeless individuals
  • 6th highest in total numbers of rural homeless families
  • 6th in the nation for rural homeless individuals
  • 7th highest for number of homeless rural vets

County: on any given night,

  • Estimates are that over 500 people are homeless
  • 91 live in families with children -- 323 people with 182 of them under 18
  • 9 are unaccompanied youth under age 18
  • 42 are veterans
  • 57 are chronically homeless and 32 of those people are unsheltered
  • 71 are victims of domestic violence and 25 of those people are unsheltered
  • 86 are seriously mentally ill and 41 of those people are unsheltered

Our county numbers come from a homeless persons’ count. But the reader should know that under-counting and -reporting homeless folks is to be expected because many are hard to find or, once found, to communicate with. In addition, although many Douglas County homeless people are locals and remain here year-round, others travel. So, populations vary by season, changing economic conditions, available and accessible work, and so on.

From the Statewide numbers, it’s clear that Douglas County and the Roseburg Area have the same or similar challenges as other rural Oregon Counties and smaller communities. In addition, high rates of poverty and unemployment here compared to more urban or prosperous areas make our challenges more difficult to resolve.

Community Values Guiding This Work

After the first meeting in August 2015, it became clear to the sponsors that four more-or-less conflicting philosophies…each vigorously supported by different participants and other voices from the community…were complicating the work. As the notes from that meeting state,

“One approach was to minimize local services and support for homeless and transient people with the goal of having them leave the Roseburg Area. This approach night mean reducing or eliminating services and support presently provided and thoughtfully evaluating but mostly rejecting future options and opportunities.

Another approach was to develop and maximize services and support to meet the specific needs of homeless and transient individuals. This might mean placing more emphasis on having case workers connect with individual homeless and transient people and assisting them as they worked through service and support systems.

A third approach was to look at how current services and support systems might be made to more efficiently answer the generalized needs of the area’s homeless and transient populations. This might mean greatly improved delivery coordination by Area providers and joint development of new services.

The fourth approach might be stated as, “We provide hands-up but not handouts.” This approach might evaluate and promote services and support efforts on their measurable ability to move individual homeless and transient people back into mainstream society, while minimizing custodial or other care for individuals unable or unwilling to make the transition.

Because we have not been able to reconcile these competing visions, the Roseburg Area is experiencing near gridlock over homeless and transient issues. Different organizations and individuals are pursuing separate agendas, often in opposition or competition with one another. Even the best work undertaken under these circumstances stresses community fault lines to the breaking point and potentially wastes scarce public and private resources through duplication and unclear results.”

After testing these different approaches with the working group and other people in the Roseburg Area, it became clear to the sponsors that the fourth approach was most likely to be embraced by local people. That approach is now embodied in the Homeless Transitions Action Group’s draft motto, “Offering a Hand Up to Homeless People in Douglas County.”

What this might mean in practice can be found in the remaining portions of this Goals and Priorities document. However, at the motto’s core are significant levels of agreement that Douglas County communitiesshould support willing homeless people to transition:

-From being jobless, to having a job, and eventually supporting themselves fully

-From living on the street, to being housed, and eventually to paying market-rate rent or owning a home

-From being alcohol- or drug-dependent to being sober or clean

-From being mentally or emotionally disabled to being capable and life-skilled

A lot of agencies and resources already exist in the County to accomplish these transitions, and in most cases they are doing excellent work. Governments, including law enforcement, and service providers are also working together to address issues and needs. However, the working group felt what community resources exist could be delivered more effectively and those ideas are incorporated in this document.

For those homeless people not capable of or willing to make these transitions, the Goals and Priorities suggest that the communities would provide sufficient minimal support to meet basic needs while doing so in ways that minimize social and economic costs through improved communication, better property management, and stronger security and law enforcement.

It’s clear that people in Douglas County and the Roseburg Area place high value on compassion, education, collaboration, responsibility, and accountability by all – governments, non-profit service providers, community members and volunteers, church leaders and members, and the homeless people themselves. The group is convinced that these values should permeate every future action as well as the relationships necessary to make those actions successful.

Next steps for H-TAG include: forming a board or committee to lead and guide future work, outreach to more people and organizations in the Roseburg Area and Douglas County, further refinement and development of the goals and priorities, and mobilization of volunteers and resources to accomplish many of the priorities already defined.

Goals

In response to questionnaire results and the challenges represented by and affecting homeless people in the Roseburg Area, the participants developed the following goals:

Information and Education

  • Goal I1: Homeless populations can access complete and up-to-date information about services and support opportunities
  • Goal I2: Maintain ongoing awareness of homeless people’s conditions, needs, and interests and share that learning with other people

Crime Abatement and Restorative Justice

  • Goal C1: Meet criminal behavior with appropriate consequences
  • Goal C2: Use detection, complaint, and arrest processes to divert some offenders into treatment, training, and support programs

Housing

  • Goal H1: Homeless people in the Roseburg Area have access to safe, accessible, and affordable housing, and they have the resources available to them to successfully remain in that housing

Sanitation

  • Goal SA1: Homeless people have access to adequate sanitation
  • Goal SA2: Keep the Douglas County communities garbage-free; actions we take prevent our places from being trashed

Services and Support

  • Goal SD1: Communicate about and provide service options and supports (e.g., medical, mental health, food, and shelter) in the most efficient and effective ways possible
  • Goal SD2: Homeless people sustain themselves; they respond to the positive engagement they have with other people and the community by acting responsibly to the best of their ability
  • Goal SD3: Douglas County communities develop a successful collaboration with other communities, and the community leaders and service providers in those places, to make sure homeless people arriving here have adequate services and support before they travel

Programsand Priorities by Goal

Programs are shown in “quotes” and priorities for action identified by bolded words.

Information and Education

Goal I1: Homeless populations can access complete and up-to-date information about the Roseburg Area services and support opportunities

“Arrowhead” -- Connect with the homeless populations:

Hold in-depth conversations with members of the homeless populations in Douglas County and the Roseburg Area to understand their conditions, interests, and needs

Find compassionate ambassadors and train them to provide one-on-one mentoring to homeless people [describe the need to churches and service organizations; we have the resources, we need the volunteers to focus on all categories of homeless folks]. First, educate the volunteers who will train the ambassadors (develop a list of possible trainers)

Communication -- We believe this is the first step to our cause in creating needed contact and relationships with the homeless folks

Contact -- We need either a centralized drop-in center or decentralized, mobile services at many access points to help ensure success

Possible Locations -- on the streets or at a drop-in center

Possible Leaders/Managers/Participants -- UVDN leads multi-interest group, Grant Goins supported by HADCO, churches to develop and support a “compassionate ambassadors” program, United Way, The Ford Family Foundation, Chamber of Commerce, community individuals

Goal I2: Maintain ongoing awareness of homeless people’s conditions, needs, and interests and share that learning with other people

“Ground-well” -- Obtain information from scientific and community-action literature about causes, conditions, and effective solutions:

Data – get reliable data on the numbers, scope, magnitude, and composition of the homeless populations in Douglas County and the Roseburg Area; then work to keep lists and data current

Review and discuss existing research-based information about homeless people

Work to understand the culture and sub-cultures within the homeless populations in Douglas County and the Roseburg Area

Educate ourselves to understand the difference between “chronic homeless” and temporarily “homeless” populations

Conduct root-cause analysis with a community lead to conduct the survey

Look for successful rural solutions; urban settings like Salt Lake City, Denver, and Los Angeles may offer some ideas as well as the experiences of other large and small Oregon cities

Possible Locations -- Community will need addresses or locations for searches; existing service providers may have them

Possible Leaders/Managers/Participants -- Academia: UCC, PSU, U of O, SOU; Penny Tannlund, UCAN, community members

“Clear Word” -- Deliver reliable information about homeless folks and programs to the general public:

Secure public relations expertise

Get organizations to share information and come on board with our program

Share our work with a design and desire to overcomehostility and develop support for our ideas and suggestions

Collaborate (who are we and how do we work together most effectively)

Use personal connections to tell the stories of people’s lives and put a human face on homelessness at community events and in the media

Possible Locations – Douglas County community organizations, churches, and government bodies

Possible Leaders/Managers/Participants – homeless folks to help serve as spokespeople, caring community members, agency staff and boards

“Knowledge Builder” -- Conduct orientation and training activities designed to inform professional and lay people providing services to homeless people in Douglas County and the Roseburg Area; these people include police, fire, businesspeople, city and county employees, and many others:

Conduct public education through such programs as the Addictions Workshop (Ross Banister has the info), mental illness awareness and understanding, and the “Culture of Poverty”

Identify gaps in available services

Explore the concept of a “Replacement Culture” that supplants cultures of addiction and poverty

Obtain the means to promote public education

Possible Locations – Douglas County community organizations, churches, government bodies, and schools

Possible Leaders/Managers/Participants – Chaplain Dr. Ross Bannister, volunteers, educators, church pastors and staff, teachers, people in stores serving homeless folks

Crime Abatement and Restorative Justice

Goal C1: Meet criminal behavior with appropriate consequences

“Watch-well” -- Use citizen engagement and information to support responsive and restorative community policing:

Get better information (correct information)

Bring community andhomeless people together to define crime-prone “hot spots” on a regular basis and to make it safe and easy to identify criminals, homeless or otherwise, needing attention [community policing, person-to-person model like Boston’s]

Respond to the challenge of prison inmates simply being turned out on the streets without resources upon their release; there are possible State and federal policy issues here, perhaps this should be taken up by the Public Safety Coordinating Committee

Develop neighborhood-watch groups communitywide -- throughout both residential and commercial areas -- with an emphasis on group action

(recording, presence); locate existing Neighborhood Watch Groups and coordinate city/county law enforcement resources

Obtain high-res video cameras to record criminal activity

Keep the numbers and names of people served so that progress may be measured

Possible Locations – Communitywide; information about numbers and names valuable because the populations are constantly changing and transitioning

Possible Leaders/Managers/Participants – Rev. Dr. Ross Banister, NeighborWorks Umpqua – applied for “peer to peer” training opportunity, Public Safety Coordinating Committee, LEO liaison to Neighborhood Watch Groups,state or federal support to procure surveillance systems