My Address at the East Plano Islamic Center Eid Celebration

 בִּגְדֵיכֶ֔ם וְאַל לְבַבְכֶם֙ וְקִרְע֤וּ

 Rend your hearts, not your garments.

 

My name is David Gruber. I am a rabbi, here in Collin County. In this capacity, I work primarily with interfaith couples and officiate their weddings. I also serve as the Development and Communications Director for the Metro Dallas Homeless Alliance (MDHA). The mission of MDHA is to lead the development of an effective homeless response system that will make the experience of homelessness, in Dallas and Collin Counties, rare, brief and non-recurring.

I wanted to sincerely thank you for the honor of speaking here tonight. Special thanks to my friend, Ekram Haque, for inviting me.

Fasting is easy. Let me repeat that, fasting is easy. Now, at this moment you might be saying to yourself, justifiably, "What does this guy know? HE never observed Ramadan!"

And, of course, you are right. So allow me to clarify. Fasting alone is RELATIVELY easy. "Relative to what," you might ask. Relative to true change, relative to true spiritual growth.

This was an idea that Maimonides, the great rabbi and philosopher, who also served as a physician in the court of Salah a-Din, emphasizes, drawing on the works of Aristotle. He explains that the most difficult things to change are not your volitional actions, but your behavioral traits and characteristics, that lead to many of your actions. Modern science backs this up, as scientists explain that 40% of what we do in our day to day lives is pretty much automatic. We don't think; we just do. And changing in this area of our lives, innate behaviors and well established habits, is so hard, because it actually requires rewiring of neuron pathways in our brains.

However, difficult does not mean impossible, and difficult certainly does not mean, "don't have to". If Ramadan teaches us anything, it teaches us that! And so, we must embark on a journey of change and growth that is not easy. We must fix faulty innate behaviors and bad well established habits. In short, in the words of the prophet Joel, we must rend our hearts, not our clothes. And as the great Quaker thinker, Parker Palmer, said, you should not be afraid to let your heart break, because once it breaks, your heart becomes open. You understand that spiritual growth is not something that happens in isolation in your heart, but by becoming a better person to others through your now open heart.

When we allow our heart to look out on the world, and take the world in, our heart cannot but soften, but also be ashamed and grievous. Here are some random facts that relate to poverty and homelessness, issues I work on everyday. We live in Collin County, one of the wealthiest counties in the country. Just south of us in Dallas County, though, 20% of the population lives below the poverty line. That is 435,000 people. Just let that sink in. In Dallas and Collin Counties we count the homeless once a year. We found 3,810 homeless individuals, and we know that is not everyone. Almost 4,000 people! Here in Plano last year, a homeless veteran received a housing voucher, a document that says that Uncle Sam will pay the landlord who rents him an apartment, anywhere within a 50 mile radius. Do you know how many apartment complexes he had to go to before he found a landlord willing to rent to him? 71. You heard correctly, 71.

What the prophet Joel, what Parker Palmer, what Maimonides, what the practice of Ramadan all call on us to do is to not accept this. They say to me, David, open your heart, you can do better! Do not accept the status quo. They call on our society, open your hearts, do not accept the way things are! You can do better. The richest country on the face of this earth can alleviate poverty, end homelessness, and make sure that everyone enjoys the bounties it has to offer. The call is out, the message is clear. Let us hope we heed this call and listen to this message. If we do, Inshallah, our community will be a better place.

Where We Are, Where We Are Going, and Who is Helping Us Get There

It can get pretty busy around here, at MDHA! That is why it is important, from time to time to take a quick snapshot of where we are in our work, and where we are going. Check out this blog post we recently published, which spells it all out: Building Dallas' Homeless Response System - Where We Are and Where We Are Going.

Our progress, to date and moving forward, is due to many wonderful people. We recently got a shot in the arm to strengthen MDHA with the addition of six board members! Thank you, Vickie Ebner, Brooke Etie, Karen Hughes, Regina Levine, Thomas W. Mills, Jr., and Ikenna Mogbo, for joining our board.

We were particularly gratified to receive a number of grants during the months of May and June. There is no way we can get where we need to be going without the support of these fine philanthropic organizations:

• Carl B. and Florence E. King Foundation - $15,000
• Feldman Family Foundation - $15,000
• Graham & Carolyn Holloway Family Foundation - $5,000
• Harold Simmons Foundation - $25,000
• Hillcrest Foundation (Bank of America, N.A., Trustee) - $12,000
• M.B. and Edna Zale Foundation - $15,000
• United Way of Metropolitan Dallas - $20,000

Florence E. King

(Courtesy of the Carl B. and Florence E. King Foundation)

 

This is especially true regarding contributions (italicized above) to the MDHA Flex Fund, because most of the minor but impactful expenditures, that this fund pays for, may not be covered through existing federal, state and local grant funds, and therefore cannot be addressed through existing programs. There is no substitute in this area for private philanthropic support! With the most recent grant above from the Carl B. and Florence E. King Foundation, total contributions to this fund just topped $120,000, but the needs it addresses have anything but slowed down. 

You can check Our Wall of Champions for a full list of our supporters. We can't thank them enough! Now, we don’t want them to get “lonely”, so head on to this page to join them: Become a Champion – Give to MDHA!

Learning and Practice (the NOFA is here!)

Housing First: Ending Homelessness, Transforming Systems, and Changing Lives.

At MDHA we strive to be a learning organization internally, and we see one of our most important fields of activity in enhancing the knowledge and performance of our grantees and partners through a variety of learning, training, networking and development opportunities. Our President and CEO, Cindy J. Crain, even shares her reading list, as part of the State of the Homeless Address.

Perhaps one of the most important books in our field just came out earlier this year, Housing First: Ending Homelessness, Transforming Systems, and Changing Lives. This book, written by the people who first developed the Housing First model, is eminently readable, as well as well-sourced. We are reading it, and we recommend you do too. We are even posting choice quotes on our social media. We are also brushing up on Opening Doors, the national strategic plan to end homelessness. We will be regularly posting key ideas from this document that guides our work, and the work of our counterparts in every American community, on our social media.

This learning will be tremendously helpful, as we enter the busiest, most critical time of the year for any CoC, the Continuum of Care (CoC) Program Competition. The Notice of Funding Availability (NOFA) just came out, and we don't have much time! We have created a dedicated page on our website for the local competition, to help our grantees and potential grantees, which you can bookmark. We will be putting out regular notices on that page, through our CoC listserv, the Constant Contact list, and on our social media. Good luck!

Building Dallas’ Homeless Response System - Where We Are and Where We Are Going

Where We Are:

Systems:

• Established a community strategic work plan, to build an effective homeless response system for Dallas, aligned with Opening Doors, the national strategic plan to end homelessness.
• Laid the groundwork for a Coordinated Access (or Assessment) System - CAS, a system where all persons are assessed, using a common, uniform, objective and evidence based assessment tool, so they may be prioritized for service and matched with the services that will best help end their homelessness as quickly as possible.  
• As Dallas awaits federal funding necessary to fully deploy its CAS, it has already deployed the core of the system, the housing priority list, actively managed by a dedicated expert. Once a person is assessed and has all documentation needed to be housed, they go on to this dynamic list. Housing programs populate their housing units exclusively from that list, as quickly as possible, in order of priority.

Data:

• Developed a partnership with PCCI for an HMIS customized to Dallas, rolling out in the second half of 2016, to get much higher quality and quantity of data necessary to better track performance and drive improvement in programs serving more than 8,800 clients annually.
• Brought Austin Street Center into HMIS, growing shelter coverage from 3% to 25%.
• Marshaled 600-700 volunteers for Dallas’ most comprehensive Homeless Count to date.

Capacity:

• Instituted new learning, training and development opportunities for homeless providers.
• Founded the MDHA Flex Fund, to pay for minor but impactful expenses that can help individuals resolve their homelessness.
• Led the peaceful and housing-oriented clearing of Tent City, housing as many residents as possible, facilitating the sheltering of many who could not yet be housed, and creating a name by name list to follow up with everyone to ensure they are eventually housed.

Where We Are Going:

Systems:

• The Dallas Commission on Homelessness is marshalling the support of the community for building out an effective homeless response system.
• Build an updated 2016-2017 strategic work plan, building on the lessons of the last 15 months, and the existing strategic work plan.
• Fully build out and deploy Dallas’ Coordinated Access (or Assessment) System - CAS

Data:

• Roll out the new PCCI HMIS, to achieve higher quality and quantity of data necessary to better track performance and drive improvement in programs serving the homeless.
• Bring all shelters and other service providers into HMIS, growing shelter coverage, as close as possible to 100%.
• Marshal 1,000 volunteers for Dallas’ most comprehensive Homeless Count to date in January 2017.

Capacity:

• Continue to enhance knowledge and performance of homeless providers through learning, training and development opportunities.
• Grow MDHA Flex Fund, to pay for minor but impactful expenses that can help individuals resolve their homelessness.
• Build robust street outreach, to proactively engage, shelter and house unsheltered individuals through MDHA’s CAS.
• Facilitate action by the City of Dallas and other related entities creating more permanent supportive housing and affordable housing.

Building Dallas’ Homeless Response System - A Glossary of Basic Terms[i]

Homeless and Chronically Homeless
The Homeless Emergency Assistance and Rapid Transition to Housing (HEARTH) Act of 2009, generally defines an individual or family as homeless if that individual/family, “lacks a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence,” or “has a primary nighttime residence that is a public or private place not designed for or ordinarily used as a regular sleeping accommodation,” or lives, “in a supervised publicly or privately operated shelter designated to provide temporary living arrangements (including hotels and motels paid for by Federal, State or local government programs for low-income individuals or by charitable organizations, congregate shelters, and transitional housing)…” The same act generally defines[i] a homeless individual or family as chronically homeless if that individual/family, “has been homeless… continuously for at least 1 year or on at least 4 separate occasions in the last 3 years,” and that individual or family’s head of household has a disability.

Emergency Shelter

The modern fight against homelessness can be traced to the landmark McKinney-Vento Act of 1987. The focus at the time was on responding to homelessness as a short term crisis through the use of emergency shelters. Today, the ideal shelter is oriented towards housing, and serves a vital, quite distinct role from the role envisioned in 1987. They provide temporary shelter, with the constant expectation that they move their clients into housing as soon as possible.

Housing First vs. Treatment First/Housing Readiness

In the Treatment First/Housing Readiness approach (which was prevalent in the 1990s and early 2000s) the focus is on managing homelessness, linearly and methodically making people “housing ready” and only then permanently housing them. This approach usually requires the attainment of milestones prior to a person being provided permanent housing (e.g. taking classes, saving a certain amount of money, maintaining sobriety, finding employment). Housing First, a robust, evidence based alternative to housing readiness emerged in the early 2000s. This approach argues that homelessness is a housing crisis, that everyone is housing ready, and that homelessness is best solved by the provision of housing, with supports and services tailored to the needs and preferences of persons experiencing homelessness. This approach usually requires only two conditions: Clients abide by the terms of their leases, and meet with their case managers on a regular basis. Due to the fact, that Housing First works for 85% of clients and above, the consensus of scholars (and hence) the policy of the Federal Government, is that all programs should follow this method.

Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH)

Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH) is a nationally recognized, proven and cost-effective solution to the needs of vulnerable people with disabilities who are homeless, institutionalized, or at greatest risk of these conditions. The PSH approach integrates permanent, affordable rental housing with the best practice community-based supportive services needed to help people who are homeless and/or have serious and long-term disabilities - such as mental illnesses, developmental disabilities, physical disabilities, substance use disorders, and chronic health conditions - access and maintain stable housing in the community[ii].

Rapid Rehousing (RRH)

This model first gained prominence during the Great Recession. Non-chronically homeless individuals are quickly housed, and offered intense wrap around services for a limited time, so they can get back on their feet and move on in 90-180 days.

Transitional Housing (TH)

The HEARTH Act of 2009 defines this as, “Housing the purpose of which is to facilitate the movement of individuals and families experiencing homelessness to permanent housing within 24 months…” These more traditional programs have historically followed the Treatment First/Housing Readiness approach. The Federal Government has encouraged communities to gradually move away from these programs due their lower success rate and higher cost, in comparison to PSH and RRH.

Continuum of Care(CoC)

A Continuum of Care (CoC) is a geographically based group of representatives that carries out the planning responsibilities [related to housing programs and services for the homeless, funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development or HUD]… These representatives come from organizations that provide services to persons experiencing homelessness, or represent the interests of the homeless or formerly homeless.” (HEARTH Act Interim Rule, page 45423) The CoC is required to designate a collaborative applicant to apply to HUD for CoC funding on behalf of all of the local applicants as well as designate a Homeless Management Information System (HMIS) administrator. The local CoC (for Dallas and Collin Counties) has designated the Metro Dallas Homeless Alliance (MDHA) as the collaborative applicant and HMIS administrator.

Homeless Management Information System (HMIS)

The HEARTH Act mandates that federally funded homeless service providers (CoC programs and others) report on their performance through a Homeless Management Information System (HMIS), to track performance and drive improvement of each individual program and the community as a whole.

Homeless Response Systems

The HEARTH Act of 2009, imbued CoCs with an enhanced role. It envisioned CoCs and their lead agencies creating comprehensive homeless response systems that, using a Housing First approach, would efficiently and effectively, coordinate and deliver evidence based solutions that would prevent and end homelessness. The HEARTH Act tasked the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH), an independent federal agency, which brings together 19 different federal entities, with writing a national strategic plan to end homelessness. The plan titled “Opening Doors” was presented to the President and Congress in 2010, and has been updated and revised a number of times, most recently in June 2015. The revised Opening Doors plan calls for retooling the homeless response system, by transforming homeless services into crisis response systems that prevent homelessness and rapidly return people who experience homelessness to stable housing.
____________________________
[i] Many parts of this glossary draw their language from Opening Doors, as amended in 2015. See http://usich.gov/resources/uploads/asset_library/USICH_OpeningDoors_Amendment2015_FINAL.pdf

[ii] For the final rule that updates this definition, see https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2015/12/04/2015-30473/homeless-emergency-assistance-and-rapid-transition-to-housing-defining-chronically-homeless#h-7

[ii] http://www.tacinc.org/knowledge-resources/topics/permanent-supportive-housing/

 

Ending Homelessness, Homeless Response Systems and MDHA – a Link “Primer”

Would you like to learn more about ending homelessness, homeless response systems and MDHA? We recently compiled this handy link “primer” to help you out with just that. Happy learning!

Opening Doors – the National Strategic Plan to End Homelessness:

http://usich.gov/resources/uploads/asset_library/USICH_OpeningDoors_Amendment2015_FINAL.pdf

About MDHA:

http://www.mdhadallas.org/what-is-mdha/

MDHA in Depth:

http://www.mdhadallas.org/mdha-in-depth-2/

Homelessness in Dallas:

http://www.mdhadallas.org/state-of-the-homeless-address-2016/

http://www.mdhadallas.org/2016-homeless-count/

http://www.mdhadallas.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/HDX-PIT-All-Summary-2016.pdf

2015-2016 Continuum of Care Strategic Work Plan – Building an Effective Homeless Response System:

http://www.mdhadallas.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/CoCSWP-2015-2016-FINAL1.pdf

http://www.mdhadallas.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/CoCSWP-2015-2016-3-Q-Report.pdf

Housing First Efficacy:

http://endinghomelessnessmdha.blogspot.com/2016/04/it-works-sample-of-research-on-efficacy_1.html

https://www.amazon.com/Housing-First-Homelessness-Transforming-Changing/dp/019998980X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1466107055&sr=8-1&keywords=housing+first

MDHA Flex Fund:

http://www.mdhadallas.org/the-mdha-flex-fund/

http://endinghomelessnessmdha.blogspot.com/2016/05/solomons-ticket-out-of-homelessness.html

Building an Effective Homeless Response System:

http://endinghomelessnessmdha.blogspot.com/2016/03/the-how-to-of-building-effective.html

http://endinghomelessnessmdha.blogspot.com/2016/03/dallas-commits-to-building-effective_14.html

http://www.marc.org/Community/Homelessness-Task-Force/Assets/HTF-coordinated-intake-graphic-web.aspx

Coordinated Access Blog Post Series:

http://endinghomelessnessmdha.blogspot.com/2016/03/coordinated-access-blog-post-series.html

http://endinghomelessnessmdha.blogspot.com/2016/03/coordinated-access-heart-of-effective.html

http://endinghomelessnessmdha.blogspot.com/2016/03/coordinated-access-in-action-in-tarrant.html

http://endinghomelessnessmdha.blogspot.com/2016/05/coordinated-access-in-action-in-tarrant.html

http://endinghomelessnessmdha.blogspot.com/2016/05/coordinated-access-in-action-in-tarrant_11.html

http://endinghomelessnessmdha.blogspot.com/2016/05/coordinated-access-in-action-in-dallas.html

Tent City Closure:

http://www.mdhadallas.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/I45-Encampment-Closure-Report.pdf

http://endinghomelessnessmdha.blogspot.com/2016/05/tent-city.html

http://thescoopblog.dallasnews.com/2016/05/tent-city-closed-so-where-do-dallas-homeless-go-from-here.html/

MDHA Partnership with PCCI:

http://endinghomelessnessmdha.blogspot.com/2016/01/a-data-driven-alliance-to-end_12.html

Solomon’s Ticket out of Homelessness

(Image taken by Kevin B., a Wikipedia contributor)

As we have mentioned, on the virtual pages of the MDHA blog, Ending Homelessness, former Executive Director of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH), Laura Zeilinger, argues that the essence of transforming homeless services into an effective unified homeless response system may be summed up in the right entity asking the right question: An effective homeless response system is one where individual programs no longer ask, "Will this person be successful in our program?" Rather, the system as a whole asks, “What solutions best match the needs of this person or household, and will end their homelessness quickly and permanently?"

In asking this very different open-ended question, we acknowledge that a one-size-fits-all approach is never the right one. Instead, solutions must match the needs of the person, more than one solution might be needed, and a progressively “lighter touch”, should be preferred wherever possible. This not only allows clients to get the precise help they need; it also allows the system to concentrate, better target, and more efficiently deploy its costlier investments in time and money (in descending order, permanent supportive housing, rapid rehousing, emergency shelter, etc.) on those individuals and families who really need them.

Solomon’s* case is illustrative of just this idea. He was living in Tent City, since late November 2015. In a handwritten letter, he explained that he was originally from Camden, New Jersey, and had lived in Dallas for years, working for Campbell Soup, Pepsi and Lockheed Martin, as well for a local food pantry. At 67, he was still eager to work, but could not find a job. He was living off of a meager $600 a month in Social Security benefits, and in the meantime was helping out two different friends at Tent City, with the challenges they were dealing with.

In the same letter, Solomon explained that he had a sister back in Camden, who had invited him to live with her. This would end his homelessness quickly and permanently, and as a bonus, reunite him with the granddaughter he had not seen in two years. In essence, what Solomon was telling us was that he could self-resolve his homelessness. In this sense, Solomon is not the exception in the world of homelessness, but the rule. Experts estimate that as many as 70% of those who experience homelessness, experience it once, for a very short time and never again. They actually never “show up on the radar” of homeless service agencies! They self-resolve.

If you think about it, this makes sense. As Cindy Crain mentioned in the State of the Homeless Address 2016, most of us are not really “one paycheck away” from homelessness. Most of us have (if not financial, at least) social reserves we can take advantage of. We have a social network of family and friends we can call on in a time of need. Homelessness, especially ongoing homelessness, and particularly unsheltered homelessness, occur when poverty and financial crisis “crash into” the lack of that social network. When one can no longer utilize social reserves, when one’s social network has disintegrated, one can end up homeless. Now, Solomon still had that social network. The only problem was the social reserve he was invited to utilize was about 1,470 miles away! If only there was some way he could utilize this far off reserve…

Fortunately, last year, we founded the MDHA Flex Fund, with the generous support of United Way of Metropolitan Dallas, who seeded the fund with $38,742. This fund is designed to cover these minor but impactful expenditures, that can help clients resolve their homelessness. Shavon Moore, our Continuum of Care Program Coordinator, had interviewed Solomon, had ensured he was in active case management, and that he had been accurately assessed and documented as homeless. She then completed the MDHA Flex Fund one-page form, documenting the specific need, and how filling it would help Solomon resolve his homelessness. She went online, and found that a Greyhound bus ticket from Dallas to Camden would cost a little more than $200. She added this to the form, and verified that this need could not be funded through other available resources. With the quote from the Greyhound website, she submitted the form to Rebecca Cox, our Vice President, who approved the request. Wayne Waslien, our CFO purchased the bus ticket online for Solomon. With that they ended his homelessness quickly and permanently. That bus ticket was quite literally Solomon’s ticket out of homelessness! 

Since the initial funding from United Way, we have received funding from the Dallas Baptist Association ($5,000), the Graham & Carolyn Holloway Family Foundation ($5,000), the Hillcrest Foundation, Bank of America, N.A., Trustee ($12,000), the M.B. and Edna Zale Foundation ($15,000), and the Wells Fargo Foundation ($5,000). We are also heartened by the fact that Mayor Mike Rawlings recently publicly called for contributions to the MDHA Flex Fund. We hope you too will get on board, and contribute. With your help, the MDHA Flex Fund will continue to provide literal and figurative tickets out of homelessness to many more folks, just like it did for Solomon. 

* Name changed to preserve the client’s privacy.