I could not be more frustrated. We have blown a HUGE opportunity to have a community plan to prevent and end homelessness that people would have buy-in to and we could all rally around. But its been a bit of a disaster from the get-go and it continues to be a joke. A plan, for a shelf somewhere, but we can check the box in our HUD grants and get the point.
READY-SET-GO
First of all, we hired CSH to do a community plan ($38,000), but CSH didn’t think that was what they were being hired for. We hired them without a bid, it was a “sole source” hire.
Second of all, we all got a one month notice about a 2 day process we were expected to participate in. Needless to say, that didn’t work out so well for many of us. And they planned it in a location (far north side) so that no homeless people showed up.
Third, they didn’t let us audio or video tape it, and now they won’t let us get the notes from the sessions. (The decision not to allow video or audio was a local decision, not the people we hired) The decision not to give us the facilitators notes is CSH.
This was supposed to be a “community plan” and elected officials, committee members, community members, service providers, clergy, people experiencing homelessness . . . and anyone interested was supposed to attend. Well, two alders (Barbara McKinney and Rebecca Kemble) were there, and one county board supervisor (Heidi Wegleitner). It was primarily service providers – primarily those funded by the United Way. A few community members, a lot of city staff and a few county staff.
To put this in perspective. I was only able to attend half the event.
THE REPORT
After two days of “fish bowls” where “experts” talk for a period of time among themselves and everyone listens. Then people get one minute to give input about what they heard. A day and a half later they came up with a plan for us. They did a power point presentation and half of them rushed to the airport in the middle of it and left town.
Funny thing about the “Community Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness” – there wasn’t one word about preventing homelessness. Seriously. There were other flaws too – I won’t go into them.
THE COMPLETELY REWRITTEN REPORT
So yeah, Martha Cranley from the United Way and (and I think mainly) Kristin Rucinski from The Road Home re-wrote the plan with the help of one of Kristin’s interns or students. From what I’ve read, its a much, much better plan. It doesn’t really look at all like the first one, and there are new ideas and concepts in there that were not discussed at the fishbowls, at least not the ones that I attend (I was only able to attend half)
We got the plan on April 29th and its supposed to be approved on June 24th.
PUBLIC INPUT
Opportunity Number 1
Funny thing is, when it was sent to on the 29th it was sent in an email that had the heading “Reminder of May HSC Membership Meeting, May 3rd – NOTE CHANGE OF LOCATION FOR THIS MEETING ONLY” and then there was no note, just the agenda for the meeting. I never opened the email cuz I had seen the agenda and knew the meeting place had changed. Silly me. When we got to the meeting, you know how many of the approximately 50 people in the room had read it. Three, one was me but I don’t count cuz I was sitting next to Kristin who was going to present and I was talking to her before the meeting and she gave me a copy and I quickly read it in the meeting. So really, 2 people did. Why, because no one realized it was attached.
At this meeting, we tried to correct this by asking that our next full meeting be devoted to talking about the plan. That request was denied by the chair and they sent people off to figure out an additional meeting for us all to go to.
They told us not to worry, we could give input the following times:
May 5th – City CDBG Committee Meeting, 5pm, MMB Room 260
May 9th – City County Homeless Issues Committee, 6:30pm, CCB Room 354
June 24th – HSC Board of Directors Meeting, United Way, 3rd Floor Board Rooms
Opportunity Number 2
I was the only one besides the report writers to show up. The Commission didn’t have a copy of the report in front of them. They forgot to call on me until I stood up and raised my hand. The primary city staff person who essentially hired and staffed the 2-day event left the room when I walked up to the table. The Commission said this wasn’t their plan and the presentation was informational only. The staff and United Way said this is the plan that they should be making their funding decisions on. And the staff told them that one of the areas that they will be looking at this summer is homeless funding. I pointed out the silliness of my “giving input” to a committee that isn’t approving the plan and thinks its just informational and that if the staff are basing funding decisions on this – THIS SUMMER – they should probably have a copy. When I did give input the staff sort of reprimanded me for being critical. It was harsh enough that it prompted the chair to thank me for being the only one that shows up for public input and the staff apologized after the meeting. But, so much for welcoming public input.
Opportunity Number 3
The meeting was cancelled. Because the staff who walked out of the room when I walked up to speak didn’t properly notice the meeting and it got cancelled about 2 hours before the meeting.
WHAT’S NEXT
They scheduled another meeting Thursday June 9th from 4 – 6 at the Villager Mall Community Room to get input. I hope they are planning to get committee members, elected officials, people experiencing homelessness and others to this meeting. But I’m not counting on it. That’s probably my job. And getting it publicly noticed for said committees and elected officials will probably be a herculean feat and likely won’t happen at all and I’m probably the only one that has thought of that at the moment, but then again, they probably weren’t planning on inviting the decision makers in our community to give input to the, you know, community plan.
A DIFFERENT VISION
LET’S CREATE A DAMN COMMUNITY PLAN WITH BUY-IN FROM, YOU KNOW, THE COMMUNITY!!!!!!! And hey, lets practice that “equity” thing everyone likes to talk about and hear from . . . say it with me . . . THOSE MOST IMPACTED!!! And lets do it right. There’s no rush. This doesn’t need to be approved in 5 weeks. If we do it right, we can have a plan that maybe the city and county, staff and elected officials and the community members all agree on and then we could work on it together.
Hey, a girl can dream, can’t she? Next up, world peace. Or maybe just a HUD required gaps analysis – but I’m sure our community has no gaps in homeless services, does it?
