A recent headline blared: Homeless New Yorkers are being sent to San Antonio, other U.S. cities. Is it true? Are they sending them to Dallas? What is MDHA going to do about this?
OK, folks. Sound the “all clear”. No one is exporting homeless folks. It’s a myth. In fact, if you read the pamphlet from NYC, it states very clearly that all this is is a family reunification program.
What is a family reunification program? Here in Dallas, if you were evicted from your apartment and arrived today at The Bridge, Austin Street Center or Family Gateway, one of the first solutions they would suggest would be to help you reunify with your family. That is better for you, and it allows the shelter to use their limited resources to help those who really need them. If your family lives in Dallas, and are willing to take you in, the shelter might give you a bus pass or order you an Uber, to help you get to your destination.
Now, let’s say your family lives in Camden, New Jersey. Once again, the best and most cost-effective option may still be family reunification. We just have to help you get there. Fortunately, we and our partners have programs that will pay for your travel.
However, just like the program in NYC, and just like we would do if your family was here in Dallas, we don’t just put you on a bus. As our Vice President of Programs, Shavon Moore, is known to quip, “We are not running a travel service!” We will, first, carefully verify that you do have family in the locale you are going to and that they will take you in. Only then will we pay for your travel. Once you arrive at your destination, you are no longer homeless.
So, like we said above, sound the “all clear”. No one is exporting homeless folks. It’s a myth.
What we really have to ask is: Why do people invent these myths? Because homelessness makes us uncomfortable. How is it that in the richest country in the history of civilization we have more than half a million men, women and children, experiencing homelessness, at any given time?
If we are honest with ourselves, the obvious answer is that something has gone horribly wrong in our society, and we need to take responsibility for ourselves and fix this problem by housing the homeless.
The thing is, that’s hard work. So, we look for excuses. It’s the homeless folks’ fault that they are homeless, is the most common excuse. If only they did x, y or z, they wouldn’t be homeless, we tell ourselves. The data and the consensus of researchers in the field tell us that this is nonsense, of course.
A close favorite excuse is that homeless folks we encounter are not from “here,” so they shouldn’t be our problem. Other cities must be busing them in. Those cities should solve the problem, not us.
And yet, every time we measure this, it turns out that about 85% of homeless folks are from “here,” regardless of where “here” happens to be. And a long-term VA study found that when you consider folks from “here” going elsewhere, in-migration and out-migration cancel each other out.
It’s time we stopped making excuses, here in Dallas and everywhere else, and just ended homelessness, by housing every last man, woman and child, who lack a home. All we need to do is decide that we will. It’s long past time we did.
