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By CHARLES BLOW, NY TIMES
Around the corner came a little golden ball of sunshine named Madison, dressed head to toe in pink, hair arranged in Afro puffs, one wrist covered in turquoise beaded bracelets, arms opened wide. She wrapped those arms around a teacher’s legs, hugged them close and looked up with the kind of smile that sets the world right.
Madison is 4 years old. She is happy and thriving. This is her second year of Head Start in the basement of a building that houses the poor and homeless in one of Manhattan’s poorest neighborhoods.
I met Madison and 50 other little rays of hope at the Dorothy Day Apartments on Riverside Drive in West Harlem. The building is the sixth in the neighborhood run by Broadway Housing Communities, and the first to include a day care center serving both the building and the community. This former drug den is not only beautiful, but it also pulses with pride and hope and happiness.
It’s just what I needed to see. Writing about children and the poor and the vulnerable these days, there aren’t very many bright spots — but this is one.
The children are bathed by natural light that floods into the basement through skylights. The floors are covered by beautiful green ceramic tile made to look like slate. The walls are painted a sunrise yellow, lined with thick wooden moldings and covered with well-framed pieces of art — some by the children, some donated. The courtyard, which had been filled with six feet of garbage, is covered with mats and used as an area where wee little legs that barely have kneecaps can be folded into funky shapes for daily yoga.
Above the day care center are six floors of housing for 190 people, more than half of whom are children and all of whom were either homeless or in extreme poverty. Many of the adults are the hardest cases: those recovering from drug addiction, those with chronic diseases like H.I.V. and those with mental disabilities. In fact, most of the adults suffer from some form of disability.
And on the top floor is an art gallery that opens onto a sweeping veranda, lined with flowering plants and with some of the most magnificent Hudson River views in the city.
It is easy to forget that you’re in a low-income housing building. The administrators joked often when I was there about the chic woman who had jumped out of a cab and inquired about rents because she wanted a river view, only to be told to her befuddlement that the building was for the poor. “She was shocked,” they chuckled.
There are no security guards. There is no commotion. There are no signs of institutional living like names above doors. There isn’t even so much as a crayon mark on any of the walls. This is an oasis of civility and tranquility and culture inhabited — and to some degree, self-policed — by people whom the world would rob of those dignities.
So why so much emphasis on beauty and art, I asked?
One administrator responded resolutely: “You don’t just give a person four walls to live in. You give them something to be inspired by.”
Ellen Baxter, the founder and executive director of Broadway Housing Communities, an unassuming woman whose braided ponytail swept the middle of her back, chimed in that “art and nature show the other side of poverty.” She continued, “Poverty denigrates people and dehumanizes people.”
Another administrator said that the environment helped to “stabilize the parents to provide a platform for the children.” And those children, she said, can create “pathways out of poverty” for the whole family.
As Lady Bird Johnson once famously said, “Where flowers bloom, so does hope.”
The administrators talk a lot about community and citizenship and the building being a village of people supporting and protecting each other, and it strikes me how apropos the village metaphor is.
They have taken the most extreme cases, given them a warm, safe, stable and, yes, beautiful place to live, while treating them with dignity and respect. And the transformations of the adults, and, more important, the outcomes for the children have been incredible.
The Dorothy Day Apartments have been open since 2003, and they have had no arrests and no teenage pregnancies, unless you count the girl who was pregnant when she moved in.
Most of the children went through the Head Start program in the basement, which now mostly serves the surrounding community. None of the children have dropped out of school. A handful have even earned scholarships to the city’s better private schools. Of the 10 children who have graduated from high school, eight have gone on to college and one has just graduated from college. (None of the adults in the building have ever been to college.)
The building runs mentoring programs and literacy programs and English as a second language programs. It maintains a computer lab and this week launched a partnership with what is essentially an international, Internet-based book club for boys in the building. (The girls’ group will begin next week.) It’s fantastic.
I know what you’re asking now, because it’s the same thing I asked: how much does something like this cost, because it sounds too good to be true?
Well, the cost of the building plus renovations was $17 million. So if it houses 190 people, that works out to about $89,500 a person, not including most of the children served by the day care center.
But let’s put that into the context of prison construction, for instance. According to the New York State Commission of Correction, 1,000 new jail beds will have been built between the end of 2007 and the end of 2011 in the counties of Albany, Essex, Rensselaer and Suffolk at a cost of $100,000 per bed.
Furthermore, as Broadway Housing Communities points out on its Web site, “permanent supportive housing for an individual costs taxpayers $12,500 annually, compared to annual costs of $25,000 for an emergency shelter cot; $60,000 for a prison cell; and $125,000 for a psychiatric hospital bed.”
In the long run it’s a bargain and builds more productive citizens — starting with little girls like Madison who bring the sunshine into the basement.
by Mark Holmgren, EVP
United Way of Tampa Bay
Note: this is the third and final installment of our series on Homelessness. If you want to read the first two installments, click here for Part One and click here for Part Two.
In Florida, there is a growing awareness of economic factors that are impacting not only persons of low income, but the middle class as well. Escalating property insurance and taxes are major contributors to the community’s increasing concern about affordable housing. Companies are increasingly concerned about what they call “workforce housing.”
Foreclosures are up. Businesses are finding it more difficult to attract employees because of the total cost of housing is so expensive. While I don’t have any current data to cite, I do wonder how many middle class folks are just a few paychecks from becoming homeless themselves.
The lack of affordable housing has its natural effects. People on fixed incomes will move away. The best and the brightest prospects for the jobs that exist in our community will go elsewhere. People will lose their homes. Financial institutions will suffer; some will close their doors. Money will get tighter, and so on. None of these problems are any one individual’s fault. And they are no one organization’s to solve.
If you have gotten this far in this series, you are likely wondering what the answer is. If I had to answer you quickly, I would admit that I am not sure. Not all that helpful, I know. But on reflection that admission actually points to an answer and it is this. No one person or group or business or church or government has the prescription. Major social and economic problems cannot be effectively addressed by any one sector or by a political party or by a few of us.
But perhaps all of us can create a response to homelessness together. In fact, I believe (and yes some have called me naïve or a dreamer once or twice in my life) – but I do believe that most social change is possible when we work for it together. Democrats and Republicans, Christians, Jews, Muslims and those with other beliefs, the conservatives and the liberals, the entrepreneurs and the union leaders, the wealthy and the poor and everyone in between.
I believe fiscal conservatives can work with fiscal liberals. I believe each individual can carry his or her political persuasions to a common table around common issues. I believe differences of race and gender are assets to collaborative actions that in the end strengthen all of us.
I believe this, not because I think this is just a dream to aspire for, but because it happens. That spirit of cooperation and action for the common good is what spawned the United Way in Denver back in 1887. And such spirit is alive in Tampa Bay.
The United Way of Tampa Bay works hard to be that hub of the community wheel. We are not so much an organization as we are a movement of people and organizations trying to do things together that will strengthen the community and help people one individual at a time. Our ability to have impact as an organization is directly tied to people like you and employers like yours, and government representatives, and community leaders, and every day people working together at the common table.
When I was younger – and perhaps more idealistic than I am today – I read Thoreau. You likely did, too. I don’t recall the direct quote, but I remember the effect of his words. Thoreau spoke of reform and said that it always begins with the self. When I think of that great American now, I relate what he says to “change.”
To change the world around us also means we have to change ourselves. We know that’s true. We know it intellectually, and we feel it emotionally, and we can embrace it spiritually. Still it is important to remember that few of us change ourselves all by ourselves. We need help and support.
Each of us as individuals won’t change the community by ourselves. United Way, the organization, won’t change community conditions like homelessness by itself. But United Way as a movement of people and organizations can make the kind of change we want to make. The spirit of cooperation is a powerful principle to guide us as we craft change, together and as individuals, toward a better place for everyone.
There are numerous efforts throughout Hillsborough and Pinellas County to address homelessness. If you want to know more, if you want to get involved, please contact us.
For further reading and information consider the following:
Opening Doors of Opportunity (PDF)
A Ten Year Plan to End Homelessness in Pinellas County
Pinellas County Coalition for the Homeless is an independent community based not-for-profit organization that provides public education, advocacy, program support, capacity building and technical assistance to the homeless service community.
The Homeless Coalition of Hillsborough County is actively addressing funding, public policy, advocacy, and planning opportunities to address homelessness and affordable housing issues in Hillsborough County.
Hillsborough County Affordable Housing Report (PDF)
Attainable Housing for Hillsborough County’s Growing Economy.
Pinellas Hope
Read our blog entry about Pinellas Hope and link to their website.
Mark Holmgren has served as the Executive Vice President of United Way of Tampa Bay since August 2005. He moved to Tampa Bay from Edmonton, Canada, where he was active with United Way and also helped develop shelters and innovative, long-term housing for the chronically homeless. You can reach him at mholmgren@uwtb.org.
by Mark Holmgren, EVP
United Way of Tampa Bay
Note: this is the second installment of our series on Homelessness.
If you have not read the first installment, please click HERE.
In my many years working directly with the homeless I never met one who deserved to be so. Most were there because of tragedies they were not able to overcome on their own. Some were there because they just ran out of money. We could blame them for that, but I have never understood the benefit of doing so.
I cannot fathom trying to sort the homeless into those who deserve to be homeless and those who do not deserve to be.
Homelessness will not be solved by the politics of personal blame. We won’t get far if Democrats and Republicans pit liberal spending against trickle down economics because neither, alone, is enough.
Social activists need to realize that a small business owner who doesn’t want a homeless person sitting by the front window is not automatically an uncaring person. At the same time, the business owner should realize moving social problems to the next block is not the answer either.
It is reasonable and natural for us to be fearful of homelessness. It is understandable to be wary of a scruffy looking man standing at our front door or tapping on our car window. Most of us are not equipped to deal with a delusional old man talking to himself in the middle of the road. Most of us have no idea how to reach out to help a woman who is foraging through the trash.
When I hand five dollars to the homeless veteran standing on the off ramp, I am saddened to think of his situation and to know that I really have no clue how to help him. I imagine you feel a similar sadness and that sense of wishing you could do more. So yes, it’s not easy. The problems are complex, not simple. None of us can change much by ourselves.
Just as none of us have achieved our success without the help, support, and guidance of others, it is also true that the problems of our neighbors are connected to us as a community. Why? Because ultimately social problems affect all of us.
We all know, for example, that the health problems individuals face have social and economic consequences. We all know a healthy workforce is more productive than one prone to sickness and days off from the job. Blaming individuals for unhealthy habits is no more effective than blaming an employer for not promoting healthy lifestyles at work. Pointing fingers is rarely an effective strategy.
While mental illness, alcoholism, abuse, and the lack of personal resources do cause homelessness, there are social conditions that contribute, that help to create an environment in which homelessness becomes a growing problem and concern.
The answers to such conditions are ours to address, not only to help the homeless, but to help ourselves.
Come back on Monday, March 10th for the third installment on Homelessness.
Mark Holmgren has served as the Executive Vice President of United Way of Tampa Bay since August 2005. He moved to Tampa Bay from Edmonton, Canada, where he was active with United Way and also helped develop shelters and innovative, long-term housing for the chronically homeless. You can reach him at mholmgren@uwtb.org.
by Mark Holmgren, EVP
United Way of Tampa Bay
This is the first part of a three part series on Homelessness.
The homeless problem in Tampa Bay may not be 
as great as one might experience in Chicago, Detroit, or Miami, but I doubt a homeless person in our community is making such an observation.
Homelessness may be a complex societal problem, but for the homeless it is a devastating day to day personal experience. To him or her it makes little difference if the social problem is greater elsewhere.
The tendency for the rest of us is not to recognize a social problem until it hits a threshold of numbers and severity that we cannot help but see. Unfortunately, often when that threshold is reached, the challenges facing the community are so great it is difficult to visualize a way of resolving them.
Sometimes the reality of homelessness in our communities first becomes a concern because homeless people sleep in doorways, congregate in shopping areas, put up tents on public ground, and bring along the substance abuse or mental illness that often accompanies a homeless person. Our own discomfort often precedes our understanding of the considerably greater discomfort of being without a home.
It’s hard to admit, but sometimes society seems to care more about where the homeless are located than the actual homelessness itself. The reactions are understandable. Even though I have worked in human services most my life and have built housing for the homeless, I have experienced the personal discomfort of a homeless person knocking on the front door of my home, asking me for money or food, or work.
There I am, in my home, my door open to an unshaven man in dirty clothes that don’t fit him, and I am wondering about my safety. I feel nervous because I know he wants something from me. I am wishing he had knocked on another door. It is hard to be charitable when doing so somehow feels threatening. It is difficult to do the right thing when a social issue like homelessness is standing at your front door looking you in the eye, not only asking for your help but bringing the problem a few feet away from your living room.
We tend to forget that the panhandler or the bottle collector or the old woman in tattered clothing jabbering to herself on the corner were not born that way. When I served as a community worker in the urban core of a major city, I quickly learned that the street people there had been nurses, farmers, engineers, policemen, railroad workers, members of the PTA — not to mention fathers and mothers.
Something happened in their lives. They lost their job, suffered a personal loss, became mentally ill. Some took to drugs or drinking. Young people abused at home escaped to the streets and fell into prostitution or drugs or both. Women ran from a violent spouse with little more than the clothes on their backs. The stories told were many and varied, but there was a common undercurrent to nearly all them: no one aspired to live on the street.
Come back on Wednesday for Part 2 of this series.
