Pages

Monday, October 07, 2019

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.



No comments:

Post a Comment

Comments will be reviewed, not for content (except ads), but for style. Comments with personal insults, rambling tirades, and significant repetition will be deleted. Ads disguised as comments, unless closely related to the post and of value to readers (my call) will be deleted. Click here to learn to put links in your comment.