What We Need To Know About Homelessness In Anchorage - Working My OLÉ Class Notes

Our Friday Homelessness OLÉ class speaker was late Friday afternoon.  The class monitor, at one point, was going to call the day's class off.  But someone in the class suggested we get to know each other and why we were taking the class.  And as we did that, we learned the speaker was on the way besides.  I had my iPad and took notes.

There were about 30 students.  Everyone's 'older' since OLÉ classes are aimed at retired folks.  A lot more women than men.  I gave the class monitor my notes to go along with hers to give to the speaker - there are seven more sessions.

I went home and sifted through the notes which were chronological by speaker.  I wanted to focus more on the ideas than the speaker.  I grouped similar comments.  Then I tried to see differences in the kinds of comments, the different perspectives they represented, etc.   I was trying to condense this as much as possible without losing content, but also to help make us as conscious as possible of how different kinds of comments reflected different needs and interests.

Then I did that again.  Here are my final two iterations of people's comments.

Here's the second cut:

General Issue	Specifics
Opinions - general	Never seen it so bad System isn’t working Need to do something
Opinions - Specific	Protect public spaces In My neighborhood Tired of being afraid
Solutions  - housing	Build Housing Homeless Housing on Park Strip Use empty buildings - like Sam’s Club Tiny Houses
Need to Know more	Learn from the homeless What are the resources? What are the different types of homeless? How much low income affordable housing is there in Anchorage? What are trends from past until now? Definitions of homelessness.
Things individuals can do to help out Larger societal problems that create homeless people	-

And here's the third cut.

General	More Specific
Perspectives for Looking at Homeless	View of ‘victims’ of the homeless View of the homeless population View of ‘solvers’ of homelessness
Ways to ‘solve’ homelessness	Solve problems caused by homelessness -To community -To homeless Solve problems that cause homelessness
Information we want	Definitions of homeless Categories of homeless (assuming different categories can be handled in different ways) Total # of homeless # in each category of homeless # of those transitioning out of homelessness each year # of new homeless each year # of chronic homeless Definitions/categories of low cost housing Data on available low cost housing in Anchorage Data on successful approaches elsewhere Current costs of homelessness to -MOA -Residents with homes -Homeless residents -Others Resources available -Funds allocated -Positions allocated -Expertise available -Resources still needed Sources of homeless people (why people become homeless)
Solutions	Money -Taxes -Lottery More low cost housing Mental health services Addiction help Employment help Health Costs help

There are a lot of savvy people in the class coming at this from different perspectives.  I hope I've been reasonably faithful in how I've pulled together the comments.  Once I had these frameworks, I did add a few more items in (particularly things we want to know).  I was concerned that we distinguish between short term fixes to help individuals who are homeless and people who are affected negatively by nearby homeless cams on the one hand, and how to 'fix' the societal changes in the US that are causing homelessness, that Anchorage, on its own can't 'fix'.  Changes in wages, job security, student debt, veteran's physical and mental health issues resulting from their service, access to health care, etc.  It's in there, but not that explicitly.

We've got different people coming in to talk to us over the next seven weeks.  Though I don't think that we've got any homeless folks coming in to talk.