At a June 21 reception hosted by Coast Capital Savings Credit Union, Philip Mangano, chair of the US Interagency Council on Homelessness, described a new administrative movement in more than 200 cities in the United States, to begin initiatives that will end chronic absolute homelessness within 10 years. He explained that the idea is predicated on the work of Malcom Gladwell’s book, “The Tipping Point”. It tells us, he said, that “modest resources invested in intelligent action can achieve success when we focus on the result of the investment.” Mangano said that this is equally true in business and social development. Baselines are required to define the problem; benchmarks incrementally define success; best practices (“that is, what actually works”) are applied with a modest but consistently available budget. Over time the objective is achievable. Why are these cities so sure that they can afford to end homelessness in 10 years? Because, he says, they’ve run cost-benefit analyses, and see that they can’t afford not to. In Boston,119 people “on the street” were studied over a five-year period. In that time they were admitted into hospitals a total of 18,000 times, at a cost of $1,000 each just for admission processing (not counting ambulance, police, treatment or medication). In Reno, two policemen tracked the costs of managing some of their most familiar homeless “clients” as they pinballed from services to shelters, jails, hospitals and so forth. They discovered that one person can cost $50,000-100,000 over only a few months. One man, who had been on the streets for ten years or more, had clearly cost the government over a million dollars, with no difference made to his lifestyle. In San Diego, Mangano said, 15 homeless people were followed for 18 months. In that time they cost $3 million in government services: an average of $200,000 per person. “The city fathers, having assumed that homelessness didn’t cost them much at all, were shocked. They realized that they could have rented these people oceanside condos with servants for less than that.” [For details of these cases and the US national initiative see http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060213fa_fact and http://www.usich.gov ] Ad hoc, unco-ordinated crisis intervention is most expensive and least effective, Mangano said. Permanent supportive housing, as a package tailored individually to each client, is less expensive and more effective. The new effort involves a process of identification, outreach, and housing with concurrent wraparound services. There is no transition from a shelter through transitional or second-stage housing; clients are invited to come off the streets, directly into their own apartments. Housed clients are provided with an outreach worker and therapeutic team to help them stabilize and settle, and to make their way over the long term. Mangano said that 20 American federal agencies have now come together as partners on this issue. “Incremental investment that produces results and a return on investment are making a difference. We now have 222 cities involved.” He mentioned the success of the Rough Sleepers Initiative in the UK, in which the number of people sheltering on the street has dropped 75% in five years. (The RSI is recognized as a “best practice” by the UN. See http://www.unesco.org/most/westeu18.htm.) He also cited a 28% reduction in absolute homelessness in San Francisco since that city began its program. Mangano said that the use of sound business planning is a crucial element in the success of these programs. He encouraged the audience “not just to ladle soup or make emergency shelter beds – although you need to keep this going ­ but to plan with an end in mind. Without a business plan things only get worse.” “When modest resources are consistently focussed on intelligent action toward the most visible expression of the big social problem, change becomes possible. Change to a problem that was once deemed intractable reaches a tipping point. This creates a portal to address all the less visible housing issues and others related to them.”

Do what we can, summer will have its flies.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

While serving lunch to the homeless on Sunday one of the “brown-bag lunch” people commented about the weather that “summer is better than winter.” A few days earlier I received and e-mail from the editor of www.somethingcool.ca who having read “Water and Shade” was wondering about an article on summer weather and the homeless to go with his “Winter in Hell” series. I am sure that many people would, greatly mistakenly, believe as these people did that it is only winter weather that poses a threat to the homeless and that summer weather is enjoyable. I would remind all that Hell is a hot place, a damn hot place and that winter weather effects would not stand “a snowballs chance in hell”.

The ability to luxuriate in hot, sunny weather is taken for granted by most people who have access to shelter from the elements and access to luxuries like running water. I will not attempt to compare winter vs. summer for the two seasons present very different survival challenges to the homeless. I will bring to the reader’s attention some of the realities of “summer in the city”.

Number one on the list, and by far the most threatening to health and life, is WATER – the very stuff of life. The homeless obviously have no convenient taps to step up to and fill a container with water to drink. They cannot afford to step into the store and buy bottles water. How often have you seen a sign stating “Washrooms are for Customer use only”, aimed at banning the homeless from using these PUBLIC washrooms, denying the homeless access to a source of life giving drinking water. Some use the denial of access to water as a method of “encouraging” the homeless to move along – to another neighbourhood. Yes, you need drinking water in the winter but your system does not need nearly the same amount of water in the winter. As the weather warms up the human body requires more and more water to sustain life. On a blazing hot sunny day you need liters of water to avoid heat stroke or death. Part of the difficulty is that water is heavy, as demonstrated by the many items such as portable basketball nets that use water as ballast. You cannot carry a days supply of water with you which means you need to refill you water containers regularly or risk your health. The brown bag lunch people from above are aware of this and on Sunday they did not bring hot coffee but instead provide iced tea. On previous hot Sunday’s they have even brought bottled water, perhaps a bit of an expense but in truly hot weather a necessity for people.

During periods of sunny weather the sun itself becomes an enemy, with sunlight threatening to inflict serious burns on those who lack shelter from the deadly rays. If you cannot afford to buy drinking water you have no money for sunscreen. Compound this with the current practice of the Abbotsford police to drive the homeless from place to place and I have been seeing many bad, painful sunburns. Speaking of police harassment, winter weather tends to discourage them from leaving the shelter of their cars. So as the weather improves the police are more comfortable out of their cars and so can spend more time on homeless harassment. The suns rays serve also to heat you up further in addition to the heating caused by the air temperature. Again you face the very real threat of heat stroke as your core temperature climbs and you lack both water and shelter.

Summer hot weather brings with it numerous headaches. Insects, from mosquitoes to poisonous spiders, all plaque the homeless who have no place to seek refuge from their attacks as summer flourishes. Food spoils so fast. Winter is a little cool, but that coolness helps prevent food spoilage and when you have no mechanical refrigeration you depend on nature. During winter you can keep any foods such as fruit or vegetables handed out by the Salvation Army for several days. During hot muggy weather even bread can go moldy after just one day. What this means is that you must find food every day since you cannot keep any food from quickly spoiling.

Summer means sweating. You really need to shower more often and wash you clothes to avoid smelling badly. Hot sweaty sticky weather makes your feet sweat heavily. Without new socks or the ability to wash the few pairs (IF you have more than one pair) your feet blister, sometimes badly and the person is reduced to a painful hobble to move around. Without somewhere to be able to get off your feet and let them heal they just get worse. Socks (the shelter could easily give out 12+ pairs a night – if they had that kind of supply) and bandages for blisters are items much in demand at the Salvation Army emergency shelter. For those who are unable to get their feet looked after there is only pain, until they reach the point that they are hospitalized. Which is an expensive result of not investing in a preventative measure – the distrubution of free socks.

Then there are the general side effects of hot weather. Bad tempers. Fatigue because it is to uncomfortable to sleep. Heat exhaustion or heat stroke when you cannnot find a place to either cool down or shelter from the intense heat. Like a series of rainy days can wear on you and cause your mood to be negative, so to do a series of hot sunny days stress you – to the point you are looking for rainy days for relief.

Personally I myself found the weather of winter to be less of a problem than summer, with the effects of winter weather easier to counteract and live with.