latest release:
Kevin: People ask if I like working at the Beacon, and… No, I don’t like working at the Beacon, because it involves taking care of homeless and poor people. That’d be nice, if it went away someday, or if were to get it to a very low number. But then I do love it too, it is rewarding. Just unfortunate circumstances.This is Kevin, a volunteer at the Beacon. Madison’s largest daytime shelter.Kevin: I don’t think homelessness is ever going to end. It would take a profound leap of faith by our government. I don’t want to get too political, but that’s what it would take. We do what we do with the Beacon- love, compassion, whatever have you, get the job done with what we have.Kevin has supported the Beacon for two years- and is concerned for Beacon’s ability to meet the needs of the constantly-growing homeless population.Kevin: The number of guests coming through were under a hundred back then. If we got over a hundred, a hundred an ten, we thought it was a big day, back then. Today, we served 189 for lunch, so that’s what we’ve been seeing. I don’t think we even get under a hundred people to come for lunch anymore. Those days are over.The Beacon is operated by 7-10 staff and up to a dozen volunteers. On average, they support about 240 individuals every day of the week.Jack: The Beacon is an amazing place, one, because I am accepted, being a performing clown and ADHD and autistic. And there’s a lot of unmedicated people here. So if we can get a doctor or somebody in here, to make it easier for these people to just have somebody there, because these people do care about you, they care about us, and i know why they’re here.This is Jack, one of the people using Beacon’s services. To Jack, the most precious aspect of the Beacon is the community that holds it together. Today, we will hear from Jack, Kevin, and many other people connected to the Beacon about what makes this community precious- and precarious.Passion
Ellen: I think it’s clear that the Beacon is there for people, and in the winter especially, like right now. It’s just so good for people to have a place they can spend 8 hours out of the cold.This is Ellen, another volunteer at the Beacon.Ellen: I’m still there because I think the Beacon is a great place and I think it offers so much, I’ve seen people get jobs, get housing, get help with drug addictions, and it’s just exciting to see that people get help… Homelessness seems like an unsolvable problem, but in Madison it seems like you can make a dent in it.Ellen feels optimistic about Beacon’s ability to make a difference- in part because of how welcoming it is.Ellen: It’s good that the Beacon is a place that people who are on drugs can come in and get taken care of and get help. I know that there are some people turn people away who are intoxicated or on drugs, and that means that they’re out on the street and if they get an overdose they don’t get help. I have seen, in my 7 years at the Beacon I’ve seen three overdoses, and all of them got help immediately and were saved.Clyde: And obviously they have turnover and whatever, but their staff is so dedicated, you can’t work there without caring… You wouldn’t last for more than a day. You have to appreciate the work and deal with it, and the staff has been such a strong part of that.Ruth: The dedication of the people who work there I really admire, both volunteers and staff, that have that kind of dedication.You just heard Ruth and Clyde. For them, passion is essential to working at the Beacon.Ruth: I have seen staff manage this with such grace and good humor, often.Clyde: We found a lot of satisfaction from the people who are so appreciative. We always mention when we come home that we’ve never been thanked so much in the day.Erin: Through all of the changes, it doesn’t matter what volunteers are there or what’s going on, everybody that I’ve interfaced with has been very kind and welcoming, whether it is someone there trying to get services or staff or security people, everybody is kind and fun and friendly.This is Erin. For her, mutual appreciation is what builds and sustains the Beacon’s community.Bonding
Ellen: I didn’t realize that I would get this connection, and how much I’d value it, because I do look forward to it.Barry: Because I volunteer on the same day every week, and always in the kitchen, I’ve gotten to know the people on the Monday kitchen crew. And they’re very very nice people, and I see them every Monday, and we share stories and say hello. And then, of course, we get to work. Part of the benefit is getting to know the people, other volunteers.For many volunteers like Barry and Ellen, the community network is equally valuable to the services they provide.Ruth: I find it frustrating, gratifying… I try to tell myself that what I bring to the Beacon is support to the experts. My time could be spent being more engaged and being part of the process, but it is not possible for me. Even while what I do may be mundane, what I can bring to it is a positive attitude, try to bring good listening skills. It has helped me enlarge my vision of care and community, it’s a place that I would not necessarily find myself in my day-to-day activities.Building community is a value shared by most at the Beacon, not just the volunteers.Jack: I came here, and so, it’s like… I feel safe here, people love me here, they know. There’s that group, that network… My favorite part: smiles, friendship, bonds, and the camaraderie, we go to church together.The Beacon is more than the staff and services listed on the website, it is the collaborative efforts of the entire communal network that inhabits this two-story building.Jack: And I’ve been successfully off hard drugs for the entire time I’ve been at the Beacon, because of these people. It has also inspired me to become an EMT, the Beacon. I’m starting school soon.While the Beacon’s community is precious, it is formed around the issue of homelessness- which is rendered invisible or at best distorted in mainstream media, from news to entertainment.Conditions Exposed
Ruth: The people that you meet, the perspectives, you stay grounded in reality and what the world is like. It’s easy to live in my neighborhood that’s comfortable and beautiful and has lots of things going on. It would be easy for me to stay in that small space and never really have an appreciation for the difficulties that other people in the larger Madison community are going through. And that’s how we all have to be engaged with that, to make a difference, to make Madison a place where everybody can do well and be happy.For Ruth, being a part of the Beacon’s community has challenged her to notice- and become critical of -the isolating bubble of financial privilege.Clyde: We often come home very thankful that we’ve had the opportunities to do a lot of the things we have… The family, the structure. And we also know of a lot of family and friends who have people in their family, kids or other members of their family in the house, that if those members did not have their family’s complete support they would be out in places like the Beacon.Mainstream culture often portrays homelessness as an uncommon combination of unfortunate circumstances. But at the Beacon, many volunteers and staff have a more proximal perspective.Clyde: A lot of the people at the Beacon have just lost that support group, whether it’s family, friends, or whatever. And once you’ve lost that support they can’t make a go of it. Almost everybody I know falls into that category- if their family was gone tomorrow, they would be out in the streets. And that’s what you gotta realize sometimes: that we’ve been blessed by the support groups we have, and others have not.For those working at the Beacon, homelessness is not an invisible social category- but a deeply neglected and dear community.Ruth: Understand that people are suffering in my community and they need help for us all to do well, to thrive.Some of the individuals supporting Beacon have a personal connection to homelessness, too.Barry: I had a family member when I was young, who was homeless, for two years, and so the Beacon is very pertinent to me in that respect.Charkice: Prior to me being at the Beacon, I was too homeless, I came out of a domestic violence situation in Texas. I left Texas to come to Madison. There were no resources, so I had to go to stay with a friend, and they recommended me to the Beacon.This is Charkice, a Guest Services Specialist at the Beacon. Witnessing the neglect that unhoused visitors are facing is draining for her- and other staff, too.Charkice: It just breaks my heart, with the Beacon… We don’t have a lot of staff, and safety is an issue now. We got 4-5 folks at the front, a lot of us are older women, we’re here for the mission, we’re here to help people. These people don’t have anywhere to go and they pile up in the Beacon, and it’s 250 of them, and 200?!The dedication of Beacon’s volunteers, visitors, and staff is what keeps them afloat. But the resources needed to move Beacon forward are lacking.Ruth: I often times leave there kind of, I don’t want to say empty… but tired! The energy at the Beacon is such that it can draw it from yourself. And I’m sure it does to the staff, because they seem so focused on doing good work. And I do like being there, but it’s a hard place to be…Jack: Sometimes, they just get sad. I think that they get sad and they just can’t interact, because something gets to them. It’s like being an EMT- you see all these people that are here and need love, care, acceptance. And then you got the other people, I don’t even need to mention- who are already out. So I feel that, maybe they need some therapy, maybe they need a vacation, they need a break. So if it was a bigger facility, a bigger staff, they wouldn’t be so overworked.Some challenges of working at the Beacon come from the inherent conditions of experiencing- or being in proximity to -homelessness. But the majority of the struggle is a consequence of structural overwhelm.Vision Limited
Charkice: I sit there every day and see there is no cycling of people, these people are not getting the help they need. I see lots of older, people here, and they’re vulnerable. Seeing a couple of them that died, from vulnerable situations, situations that could have been prevented had they had owned places and had the resources to be, and assistance with barriers.Originally, Beacon was intended to simultaneously expand and shrink its community- but right now, that is not the case.Alisha: Ever since I started at the Beacon in 2022, it was clear that Beacon was trying to be both. It was trying to be a place where case management could be offered to get people to stabilization, and then it also appeared to be a basic needs met, “put a band-aid on”, but not take it a step further.This is Alisha, the volunteer manager at the Beacon. The combination of basic needs and stabilization she mentions is what initially appealed to many of the volunteers.Alisha: I appreciate the effort involved at the Beacon in creating a place for people who are without housing to have a shelter, and also to access resources that might help them to become housed or improve their situation.Alisha: What we liked is that they offered services to try to help people to get out of the homelessness situation as well as help with the day-to-day resources to help them get by. We thought that was a great approach- and we still do.Currently, the stabilization services are lacking- and the Beacon is able to expand and sustain its unhoused population, but struggles to transition them out of their conditions.Capacity Overwhelmed
Alisha: And, in order to have the that many people we’re serving, per day, with the staff ratio, and with the type of issues that our population has… Unless you provide case management you can’t serve this many people and get them stabilized. You can serve that many people and put a Band-Aid on, do the basic needs, but then you can’t be expected to do the stabilization part.The overwhelm the Beacon is facing is two-fold: one, it is running out of space…Ellen: The Beacon can only take so many people and, I think, right now they’re taking more people than they ever planned for. It’s not a big enough building for the number of people who are there.And, without additional support from external services, the staff-to-visitor ratio keeps shrinking.Charkice: You can’t safely guard people, help them and show them resources, you can’t do 1-1 with anybody because a fight is going to break out. We don’t have what we need. We then see a lot of older people die- they’re being targeted, getting hit, scammed, and they just sit there and waiting for hope. They’re sitting and waiting for someone to say, “okay we got a nursing home for you, do you need help with this, with that” We need somebody to come to them. They just gonna sit at Beacon, and sit there until someone come and help them. That’s just how it is, that’s how it is…Beacon staff are forced to spread their time and resources thin, and are often unable to provide the in-depth support that many visitors need.Lindberg: The people who are working at the Beacon are overwhelmed, they’re calling in sick a lot, a lot of people are quitting, and then word gets out that it is not a good place to work, and then no one wants to work there. And it’s a problem that is growing and growing, and starting to spill out into the community.This is Lindberg, former Community Liaison at the Beacon.Lindberg: I resigned from the Beacon… So I could take a more assertive effort, to hopefully find progress and dignity and respect…Many at the Beacon are not willing to accept the current conditions. Lindberg, along with other individuals and organizations, is attempting to change how Dane County provides for the Beacon. In the coming weeks, we will explore what the initiative is trying to accomplish- and how Dane County, unhoused communities, and homelessness services are responding to it.Reconnecting
Lindberg: There are many people who feel the same way but are not in a position to speak the way I do,... They can’t afford to lose their job…While the initiative aims to cease overwhelm at the Beacon and expand stabilization services, Beacon’s community is committed to persisting.Jack: The staff, the volunteers, the actual network of the homeless people that care for one another- we feed each other, we keep each other warm, we’re there for each other when we have bad days. When we have bad days we keep each other from messing up.The Beacon is a precious community space for many. It is also systemically neglected- and this way of functioning is unsustainable.Charkice: With Lindberg leaving, it’s almost like, ‘What should we do now’. There is nothing, nothing! Since he left there is nothing. We got the same resources that come in, they set up a shop there, and just sit there. But some people, you gotta bring the resources to them, because they’re mentally ill. His initiative is like, “man, I understand what you’re saying”. Because, there is a sense of hopelessness now. There is a sense of hopelessness at the Beacon. If we had that at the Beacon, because everyone comes there like… we are a dumping ground. If we had case management, or something, more than what we offer, it would be a major success story.
Sydney // if you want to change your substance use but you’re unhoused, it is really challenging, because how are you supposed to deal with sleeping in the cold, having that heightened anxiety or trauma response because you are not in a safe space? You’re actively in fight or flight. What’s gonna calm your nerves is substance use. If you take away that coping skill, what does that person have?This is Sydney Verbauwhede. She is a part of Dane County’s Comprehensive Community Services- a psychosocial rehabilitation program.Sydney // I work in the community with people people who have severe substance use, and seeing how much the system does not support them, and the struggle for housing…Sydney’s program works closely- though not exclusively -with the homeless population of Dane County. When her clients are unhoused, Sydney’s impact on their substance use and mental health is plateaued.Sydney // And w/out stability, how can build your future, or get a job, or work towards sobriety… when your basic needs are not being met?Brad // The shelter can house people overnight on an emergency basis more people than ever before, but again, that’s not housing.This is Brad Hinkfuss, Executive Director of Housing Initiative, a nonprofit that provides permanent, supportive housing for those experiencing mental illness and homelessness.Brad // We’ve got some interim steps to help support the population. None of those are long-term solutions.Torrie // My whole thing in addressing homelessness is… I’m gonna talk about housing all the time. We need housing, that’s the only whole solution to ending homelessness.This is Torrie Kopp Mueller, Coordinator of the Dane County’s Homeless Services Consortium, a “partnership of agencies, funders, advocates, and formerly homeless persons committed to preventing and ending homelessness”.Torrie // But we need a crisis response that’s very strong in place. So, those shelter options, with services. That’s they key…Due to the housing crisis, they’re unable to extend their support.Torrie // The staffing right now, they’re putting out the fires, and not really able to address those issues to connect with housing.And it’s not just them- throughout Dane County, services are stretched thin by the housing crisis.Alisha // There’s just not enough units to go around. So, if that were able to be relieved and we were able to get affordable housing that would take a chunk out of who we’re serving every day, because they would be able to live on their own, not need additional services for assistance, and they would not need the Beacon’s assistance. And that has really contributed to how many people we see each day.This is Alisha Henning, the Volunteer Manager at the Beacon, Madison’s largest daytime shelter.Alisha // Building rapport is difficult when you have a very low staff to guest ratio, because it takes time and get to know the individual you are serving to be able to build that trust and respect up.Our last episode- Binding The Beacon -focused on the communities that congregate at the Beacon- and what challenges they face. Today, we’re going to take a look at the primary challenge: lack of housing.Ryan // A lot of these people are disabled, they’re elderly, they’re going through chemo, their bodies are failing, they have substance abuse disorder, and a lot of them are on disability, and there’s no way disability would be able to afford the apartments within Madison.This is Ryan, a visitor at the Beacon.Ryan // To be able to live in the downtown area, you have to have family, friends, networks, and you have to maintain them almost perfectly. You cannot be on any sort of substances, you cannot be a hardcore, violent alcoholic. You have to follow all these rules to maintain these friendships and then live with these people in groups in these apartments. In these 3, 4 bedrooms, just to be able to share the responsibility of paying rent. Whereas, in the homeless community a lot of these people don't have friends, community. I mean all I have is my sister left, I don’t have anyone, anything like that. No one wants to pair up with a stranger for an apartment, let alone a guy that was just homeless.Dane County and city of Madison both have affordable housing programs- but they’re not enough for the unhoused population.Alisha // I think that affordable housing is an issue, where it’s actually affordable, for individuals who are on a fixed income- there’s not a lot of that in town.
The root causes of lack of affordable living extend beyond Dane County.Satya // All of the funding that is available from the federal, state, county, city level is all focused around creating housing that is affordable at a certain income level.This is Madison Mayor, Satya Rhodes-Conway.Satya // I don’t think that anyone would argue that the response to people responding to homelessness has been sufficient, and the federal government has completely adjudicated responsibility in this arena, as has, frankly, WI state government. This is a problem that’s left to local governments to try and deal with, and in WI the local governments have completely inadequate funding to be able to deal with this problem.Housing-related funding that the city and County are able to receive is limited. And, those few resources are split up further before reaching the unhoused population.Satya // There’s basically three places where we need a lot more housing production in terms of income levels. One is the 0-30%. Another, sort of surprisingly, is 80-100% EMI. If we could get more of those units, folks who are in that income band could move from… They’re currently renting down into units that are for the 60-70% EMI. If we could create more housing for that 80-120% band of income, we could free up units for folks that make less money. And then the 3rd place is opportunities for 1st-time home buyers. And then there again, if we create more opportunities, we can free up more housing to be available for other folks who can’t afford buying at this point.A trickle-down approach may prevent homelessness from spreading dramatically, but it does not provide enough for those already experiencing it.Brad // Much of what the city is doing has to do with tackling the market-rate housing. That’s going to be for people with stable incomes who are not coming from situations of homelessness or what have you. There are bits and pieces in there that try to address homelessness, but those projects tend to involve, tax credits. Let’s say you have a building that’s gonna have 100 units, there are maybe 10-15 that are set aside for lower income people. Not necessarily homeless, just lower-income. So, the larger housing picture, while kind of an emergency in itself, the portions of that that address homelessness tend to do so around the edges, and not in the ways that my organization is trying to do that. Certainly there are some lower-income people being served. I can guarantee you they are not buy n’ large people who have been homeless for many years, who have severe and persistent mental illnesses. There are people who have gone through some rough times, but again there’s a broad range here.While not all unhoused individuals are jobless, many simply do not earn enough to afford the current rental market.Sydney // Some places this “income restricted” and you’re still paying over $1,000/mo, which is still really challenging for anyone in this space right now.Much of current housing is already unaffordable for many of Beacon’s visitors. But the prices keep rising further- and not everyone can keep up.Alisha // What I’ve seen over the last few years is that 65+ has dramatically increased as far as the people we’re seeing in that age demoraphic at the Beacon. Individuals over and over have said when they have arrived that they might be in their 80, having never experienced homelessness before. They say, “I’ve rented an apartment for 12 years, same place, management company left, new management company came in. They raised the rent sometimes up to 300 dollars/month.As a nexus for the unhoused communities in Dane County, the Beacon has a pulse on common challenges those communities face. So does Madison Homeless Union, a grassroots collective focused on advocacy and immediate aid.Pearl // So there’s many reasons why dane county homeless population continues to grow. One being that rent continues to go up.This is Pearl. She’s been a part of Madison Homeless Union since inception.Pearl // Many of the folks that I knew in these encampments that remain on the street have social security, and it’s almost impossible to get housing in Dane County, particularly Madison, on social security. So, that becomes a huge barrier. Madison is very landlord-heavy.Rental prices are a barrier for many Dane County residents, but so are policies favoring landlords.Pearl // A lot the laws that are passed rely in landlords’s favor. So, landlords have more discretion in who they allow in their apartments, and it becomes more easy for them to file evictions. So, not only is money a barrier, but people who have criminal records, people who have low credit scores… One guy I knew who had a house with his wife got a divorce. He had a job, and he had lost the house in the divorce and he had ended up on the encampment at Randall Park not because he didn’t have money for housing, but because he had no renter history, since he owned a house.For some of Beacon’s visitors, money is not a problem- landlords are.Charkice // I went to the Beacon, there as really no help for me, so I pretty much had to do everything that I could on my own. With whatever… just googling and trying to find my own resources and my own help with a special needs child.This is Charkice, a former employee at the Beacon. She has experienced homelessness in the past- and Beacon was unable to help her.Charkice // When I was homeless, and I was looking for a place, I ran into a lot of barriers with CCAP…CCAP is a website that provides public access to most court records in WI.Charkice // I had an old eviction back in 2003… 2004, when my son passed away. Stopped working, was depressed, it’s just so many different stories. When my son died from cancer, and CCAP had that eviction in 2004. Here it is 2023, a landlord brought that up, 19 years later, even though I’m working and making money, and I’ve been a good citizen, my credit was fair, I was building it back up. You know, I had the income, everything. Somebody brought that up 19 years later, and ran it to someone else who didn’t look like me who had drug charges that was current.Some things have changed since then. In 2023, the state Supreme Court drastically reduced the length of time that many types of eviction records stay on CCAP — from 20 years down to two years. Even with this barrier down, however, there are too many to face.Ryan // Of course, we need less strict, absolutely insane landlords that will completely deny you on the spot.According to a Cap Times article by Danielle DuClos, county eviction case filing rates are at their highest since 2021.Ryan // Madison is almost like a tourist trap. People come in to see the capitol, State St, the museums on their road trip over the summer. And, I just… Am not sure if I do want to stay here. I’ve been here for 4-5 years, but I've been homeless for almost 2 now. And I just don’t feel like I can stay in Madison if I can’t have a place to live.
Since 2009, Madison’s homeless population has seen growth and decrease- but has never dipped below 500.Brad // The number of people that we see that are homeless from year to year has not substantially changed. There’s a lot of plans that are offered, there’s a lot of things that are put out there, I mean there is a lot of good work being done. Thre’s a lot of good organizations. We’ve got 115 housing units. We are literally housing over 250 people at any given point in time. All of those people, or most of them, would literally be on the streets homeless right now if not for this organization. Many other organizations can say similar things about the good work that they are doing. But we continue to have this same, or very similar number of homeless people from year to year, and the needle is not really moving. We may be introducing some services that are good things, and I applaud that, I support those efforts, but we’re still falling short of a really comprehensive and meaningful solution that addresses this, and we (are yet to) see those numbers going down.The current infrastructure is failing to resolve homelessness as is- but the crisis continues to grow, new risk factors are likely to further destabilize the situation.Brad // There are risk factors, and some of them, frankly, are kind of scary. For example, there’s rental assistance that’s available now, that’s supposed to… the federal rental assistance that will be cut off… It’s long been forecasted to end, come, I think, September of this year. There are a huge number of people who are being kept out of eviction and therefore out of homelessness by virtue of the eviction prevention funding. If that eviciton funding truly goes away in Septmeber, we’re gonna see an uptick in evictions, which of course will translate into an uptick in homelessness.We will further unravel tenant rights in future episodes. For now, we can conclude that lack of affordable housing, paired with additional obstacles from leasing policies, is what’s fueling the current homelessness crisis in Dane County.Sydney // Structural injustice, it is challenging for people to meet their basic needs. And what I mean by that is barriers to getting housing could be, you have to pay for an application, but if you don’t have the money to pay for that, like you’re stuck already at square one, or if you don’t have a computer or a phone. There’s so many barriers, and not enough resources at people’s fingertips. There’s a lot of shame, stigma around people who are unhoused.Stabilization services available to unhoused individuals in Dane County can’t build a home or fight landlords. But their work remains crucial, even if they cannot address the root of the problem.Brad // If you’ve got, especially, an untreated mental illness, or have been homeless for a long time, it is very unlikely that you’re going to get out of that situation on your own. So, those people are not gonna be helped just by the production of units.Sydney // It’s not just homelessness, when people are unhoused that they people are dealing with. It’s such a complex situation, it is likely paired with mental health and so many challenges, that it’s a bigger picture problem, and not just like “we need housing”...Brad // There’s a need for housing, a need for units in the first place. You need to have a place to bring people, spaces to offer to them that are safe and secure, where they have an opportunity to thrive. But the space in itself is only part of the equation. And the people who have been chronically homeless, who have been homeless for a long time, there is almost always something else going on. They need support. It doesn’t mean necessarily that they gonna need it for the rest of their lives, although they may, but it’s about connecting them with the right services. And that means having people who are good at what they do that are working with these folks, and are providing that assistance.In the beginning of this episode, we introduced the overwhelm that stabilization services are facing. In part, it comes from the housing crisis, but some organizations also lack funding.Satya // In general, our nonprofit community is doing very hard work with inadequate support. The folks that are working particularly in the homelessness area are trying very hard to provide good services to a community that has very high needs. If, again, there was any sort of financial support from the state or the federal for this work, we might actually be able to pay people the wages that they deserve to do this difficult work, and provide a level of services that people experiencing homelessness deserve. But we’re operating in an ecosystem that simply does not have enough resources.
The Mayor says that Madison is allocating as many resources as they can to homelessness- but it is not enough.Satya // It is just entirely not true false to say that the city does not prioritize spending money homelessness. I also want to come back to that it is not possible for the city to take capital, one-time capital dollars, and shift them to ongoing operations, that’s just not how our budget works. To say, for example, that we should not have spent money on public market, or transit, or a new fire station… Those are all capitol projects- we’re going that money on capital projects no matter what. Now, you could argue that we could do a fire station instead of a homeless shelter or vice versa, but none of that money can be transferred to operate the Beacon or a homelessness shelter, or go to other homeless services.Over-capacity and under-funded, the services isolate in order to survive, and no longer operate as a network.Lindberg // As the rate has spiked over the last year, they’re all overwhelmed. They don’t have time to be at the Beacon all the time.This is Lindberg Chambliss, former Community Liaison at the Beacon.Lindberg // They are overwhelmed with working out with the community, with people who are sleeping outside, or working with people who have doubled up. Or, say, the Tenant Resource Center- they have an office over at Winnebago and they are overwhelmed as is, so they can’t send any of their staff to Beacon to help those guests in addition to the people they already serve. So, the homelessness field is extremely overwhelmed.With the city and county struggling to provide sufficient aid, stabilization services are beginning to look for new solutions.The last episode introduced a petition by Lindberg, written after he quit his job at the Beacon.Lindberg // The initiative is basically 4 demands. One is for income-based housing, which is somewhat of a long-term demand, it’s not gonna happen overnight.To Lindberg, income-based housing refers to “rental housing where the cost is determined by a tenant’s income, typically capped at a percentage (e.g., 30%) of their earnings. This model ensures affordability for low-income individuals and families, reducing financial strain and housing insecurity.In the case of Dane County, that would look like “allocating funds, land, or tax incentives to develop and maintain affordable housing units. This can include direct subsidies, partnerships with nonprofit developers, or expanding public housing programs. Such investments help prevent homelessness, stabilize communities, and promote economic mobility by ensuring that residents can afford safe and stable housing without sacrificing other necessities like food, healthcare, or transportation.”Lindberg // But then, the other three are administrative demands, which basically ask the department of Human Services to deploy workers from their already existing programs to the Beacon, which is another one of their programs, so we can more efficiently and effectively support guests there. Stabilize them, get them out of the Beacon, raise their quality of life. By doing that, it makes the environment far less overwhelming for everyone there.On December 3rd 2024, Lindberg sent an email to 13 county officials with the four demands, and is yet to receive a response from any of them.Lindberg // In the initiative, the first thing I did was write a letter to county city officials to have a hand in meeting these demands, or really they have a hand in the lack of effectiveness and efficiency leading up to this initiative. And I asked them, “why are we here, why aren’t you doing this already”. And the letter gives a lot of information to offer support.The initiative aims to address the overwhelm from both ends: housing and stabilization.Lindberg // A lot of these programs, Beacon unincluded, are county-contracted programs. So, you have the Beacon, a county-contracted program, and it falls under the Housing Act of Affordability Division under the Department Human Services. Then you have the Aging and Disability Resource Center, which is also another county program. Now, a lot of the work that they do could support Beacon guests, and they do support some Beacon guests. You have the Behavioral Health Division, and they have a bunch of case management programs, and they have the Behavioral Resource Center. Those programs, they could help unhoused people, but not adequately. Those programs, the Aging and Disability Center and all those behavioral health programs, they work off-site, you have to call them or go to their office, rather than them being on site. When they’re not on site, and someone who doesn’t have a phone or a device to email with, or cognition to navigate a bus schedule, or money for a bus or a gas ticket… When they don’t have any of that, there’s all these barriers to getting the help they need.For Lindberg, Beacon is the sweet spot for improving the homelessness service network.
Alisha // Out of Salvation Army, Porchlight, or the Beacon, it would make sense for it to be the Beacon, because of Beacon’s operating hours. So many things that need to be done in terms of case management need to be done with organizations that are 9-5 organizations. And so, it doesn’t make any sense to not have case management at the Beacon, if the goal is, again, stabilization. If the goal is immediate need and a band-aid effect, then case management is not needed. But if the goal is stabilization, it would make sense for the county to put case management there versus the overnight shelters just because of the operating times.
Let’s take a pause. Today, we’ve overviewed the issue of housing, which is the 1st demand on Lindberg’s petition. In the next episode, we will peek around the other three demands and survey the challenges that stabilization services are facing.Ryan // It’s just mostly the fact that there’s a lot of places that are mismanaging resources. We have a couple places throughout Madison that sort of go about mental health in their own different ways, but not a lot of them know about each other, or know about other resources. I’m still learning, two years into this, about newer and newer resources and I was finally just able to get into a problem, that’s Journey Mental Health, there’s CCS. And I’m medically [...] and I have multiple disabilities. I need those resources. And social workers keep getting more and more stressed out by the lack of resources, and I’m not gonna have any of those, nobody will.
IntroMatvei // You’re listening to Disbanded, a podcast exploring what stands in the way of abolishing houselessness in Dane County. This episode takes a different format: there is not a single theme or a single host. Instead, you will hear a round table discussion by four individuals who are currently experiencing houselessness, joined by an ally.Matvei // And before we begin, just one more thing: none of the unhoused people featured in this or prior episodes have been compensated for their work. And they should be- so Disbanded has launched a Patreon page at patreon.com forward dash c forward dash disbanded underscore pod. All proceeds will go directly to unhoused people who have shared their stories on this platform. You can read the financial model in full on our Patreon’s “about” page.[everyone giggles]Fox: As you stuff your face with a brownie.Bre: As I'm eating a brownie, yeah.Jack: Get your clown on, whoop, whoop.Bre: It's Brianna, but everybody calls me Bre, I prefer that, so. And I'm advocating for the homeless. I'm being a voice for the voiceless. And I think that's pretty important because everybody deserves to use their voice. There's a lot of power in that.Morgan: I'm Morgan. I used to work at the Beacon. I am here on behalf of the Dane County Homeless Justice Initiative.Carveal: Hey everybody, my name is Carveal. Everybody generally knows me as smooth because they have a problem with pronouncing that. And that's alright. I'm in exile and I'm experiencing this walk of life as far as interacting with people who are less fortunate. My superpower is observation.Jack: My name is Jack Burke. I'm late diagnosed, ADHD, age 38. I'm on the spectrum. I am a street performing artist, I like being a clown. I'm also a domestic violence survivor and that's why I've been homeless the past three months.Fox: My name is Fox. I am brand new to the area, but like Jack, I'm also running from a domestic abuse situation that I was in. And being around the people that I am now, I am better than I was. Originally from Mississippi. So if you hear a Southern accent coming out of this voice, there you go.Carveal: So you got the Southern twang.Fox: That's what you get.Bre: Yep. You got to say right.Carveal: Southern twang.Fox: That's what you get.Carveal: What you get.Bre: You gotta add the Y into the get.Fox: Why we gotta add a Y into the get, Bre?Bre: That's how the Southern accent works. I mean, yeah, given the fact that you and I are both Southern.Carveal: That Texas girl. She from down down yonder.Fox: Down yonder. All right, y'all. Okay, come on now.Carveal: Smooth wants to go get that food.Carveal: Yeah, I'm kind of finna turn the Joe Pesci on y'all. It's Breakfast for me.Fox: If smooth don't get food, smooth gonna eat the rest of us.Bre: Oh, no. Eat the clown first.Fox: Yeah, eat the clown.Jack: I might taste a little funny.Carveal: Not my preference. Not my preference.Fox: You want another one of these brownies over there, Smooth? There’s two more.Carveal (while chewing): Yeah, let me get one. I was just thinking, like, yeah.Fox: Oh, God. [giggles]In regards to the homelessness, there should be divisions, you know, for the disabled.Multiple people: Senior and elderly.Morgan: The disabled shouldn't be falling into homelessnessCarveal: Period. Yeah, no. The shouldn’t. They should be put up.Bre: They struggle the most with jobs. Especially now that DEI is on.Morgan: Most of them can't work. And then if you're on a fixed income through social security and then somebody, the landlord's up to your rent…Carveal: I don't know what's US’ problem with throwing away their people, but we got it bad. They just throw the old people away like...Fox: Well, see, what I've noticed with the elderly is anytime they've made a comment to staff at a shelter, the staff will be like, well, you can just go stay at a nursing home. No, nursing homes are endgame for the elderly.Bre: And are they going to pay for that nursing home? Are they going to pay for their spot at the nursing home?Fox: Exactly, exactly!Morgan: A lot of them are perfectly independent and they could live alone. Like, there's one gentleman there that I can think of who gets $900/month for social security. Landlord left. New landlord comes in. Jacks up the rent $500. Now all of a sudden you can't afford the rent because you're on a fixed income of $900. Yeah, it's like the rent's $1500/month.Fox: They recommend nursing home or hospice and it's like, no, those two things are in game for the elderly. That's not something for now. They need something now.Bre: There's somebody that just lost their service animals because the landlord jacked up the rent. They became homeless and had to give up all their service animals.Jack: My mother, her rent was just raised from $750 a month to $900 and she only gets $780 a month. So she's fortunate enough, we've got a family that can cover that rent, but she just as well could have easily been homeless or in a spot where she had to find somewhere else to rent because of the housing and the rating of the rents.Morgan: Yeah, and finding a rent for $750 is almost nonexistent.Carveal: I'm just looking like, okay, “that was all of her money, just on rent”. What’s she eatin’?Fox: Yeah, exactly.Jack: We know. Not a lot!Carveal: My man, y'all coming for these people's everything, how are they going to sustain theirselves? So with that being said, the money's there! These people play too much and it's an insult to a lot of our intelligence, at least mine.Bre: You can't hide us.Carveal: Like you can't tell me the money's not there.Fox: No, there's no way to hide us because we have voices. And we matter. And we're going to speak out.Carveal: I'm watching you. Donations, donations, donations, donations… But where's that grant money? What are you doing with that? What are you doing with that if everything that we see or what you have the public dealing with is donations? Why are you handing people stale, old food from the food pantry?Bre: Expired food. We've had expired milk at the women's shelter.Carveal: Expired donated food.Fox: Expired string cheese, expired yogurt, expired everything. And then the next day these women who ate that food end up getting food poisoning because we've been given expired food.Bre: I've gotten food poisoning from the Beacon, just a hot water spigot.Carveal: I've gotten food poisoning several times. It just didn't make no sense to complain about it when you know what it is.Fox: And you know where it came from.Fox: Because if you go to the staff and say, “oh, I got food poisoning from the snack that you gave us that day”…Carveal: You know, what can I do about it? You sick.Fox: Exactly. It's like, “go to the doctor.” What's the doctor going to do? The doctor's just going to prescribe me ibuprofen and send me back.Bre: I want to highlight that Fox injured herself the other day.Fox: Yeah, exactly.Bre: On ice. And we're forced to go out on this ice when it's slippery. They don't want to take care of the sidewalks. They don't want to salt it, or let alone the parking lots and driveways for the shelters. So we get injured because they don't care about us.Fox: The first time I fell, I fell on my back. The second time I fell, I fell on my knee. My knee is completely bruised up. My ankle is killing me on this side.Bre: And she's not the only one. There's another one who just got back into homelessness. And now she's wearing a whole brace that takes up her entire leg. Yeah. Because of the ice.Carveal: At the men's shelter, they have a washer and dryer. Probably more than one. Probably like two sets. And only the staff can use them.Matvei // According to Porchlight staff, the washer and dryer are for volunteers.And these guys are back there. They're so not kept. Or these older men who can't control their faculties no more. Or these people with conditions. They're defecating on their self. And they're in these soiled clothes. And you let them… And they just land in it. It's just terrible. Just outright bad hygiene. You can smell it as soon as you walk through the door. And there's washer and dryers there. You see this guy's a hot mess. He drank too much. He got pee running down his leg. He could barely stand. He's got food in his hair and in his beard or whatever. He needs help. Wash his clothes or give him a set of clean clothes already. There's a washer and dryer on deck. These people are walking around with bags and bags of soiled clothes.Bre: The laundry list at the beacon can only take so much.Carveal: But there's a washer and dryer right here. At least one.Morgan: And there are broken dryers at the Beacon right now too. The county still hasn't fixed them.Fox: Correct me if I'm wrong, Bre, but over at Salvation Army we can only do our laundry there. Because we have the washer and dryer for it. But we can only do it twice a month.Bre: That's correct. The wait list at the women's shelter for the laundry is... There's only two slots per day. And it's only like an hour or hour and a half slot. Right? It's seven to eight and then there's eight to nine.Matvei // According to Salvation Army Women’s Shelter staff, the waitlist for laundry is about a week long.Morgan: How many women frequent the women's shelter at night? Was it like 80 people?Bre: I think more. I think it's uprooted over a hundred now.Matvei // According to the same staff, the shelter was close to capacity at the time this episode was released.Fox: Because all the beds upstairs are full. The gym is almost completely full. And then the back room we have for the disabled and elderly people. Those are all full. And then you've got these other women that are new to the city that know about the Salvation Army that come in. And they're like, oh, “you have to sit in this chair until 8:30 at night.”Bre: Oh, you have to come in intoxicated too.Fox: If you come intoxicated you get obviously in the naughty chair. You don't get food. You have to sit there. You have to sit in the naughty chair and sober up before you can go to your bed.Carveal: They're doing this to adults?Fox: Yep, yeah. Adults. And if there's more than like one person coming in intoxicated, they all have to stand there or sit right there in front of the office and get laughed at by other people that are coming in like, oh, “those people are in the naughty chair.”Carveal: They're basically getting put in the chair with a dunce cap on.Bre: Exactly. Or even if they're known to drink and they come in sober, they're still put in the chair because they're known to drink even without the proof that they're drunk.Carveal: So you're taking their food from them because they're inebriated, right?Morgan: Yeah, like as if that makes sense…Carveal: But if you would eat food, would sober you up.Bre: But what her excuse is. Oh, if they eat, they're going to throw up. They don't want them to throw up. But you also want them to sober up, right? Either way, if they eat, if they throw up, either way, they're sobering up.Carveal: So you don't want to do your job, so you're not going to do your job.Fox: But make this make sense. At Porchlight, yeah, I'm going to put it out there. At Porchlight, the men are, and the women that go over there because they don't feel safe at the women's shelter or they're trans, they're going for female to male. Tell me why porch light guests can bring in outside food, but the people over here at Salvation Army say, “no outside food or drink.” And if you do bring it in, guess what they do with it? They throw it away. What if that was the last of my food stamps that you just threw away and I was saving it for the next day? But see, us over at the women's shelter, we have to leave our outside food outside at the bike rack. But then we wake up the next day and somebody that's left earlier than we did swipes our food.Carveal: What they're doing nowadays at the men's shelter, they're dumping people's stuff out. Right there at the door. It's water. If it's water, don't worry about it. Okay, yeah, right now they're not on that with the food, but they're...Fox: Like if we come in with like a sweet drink, they're like, oh, okay, well, you're going to have to dump that out.Carveal: Yup, yup. And I'm really not... I can't blame them.Bre: I'm sorry, but water does not help...Carveal: These guys are coming in falling on their face. You know, and this is the only logic, why I would take somebody's possible food away as if y'all ran amok so much. I can't monitor nothing because I'm not monitoring what you're bringing in organically. Food, drink, you know. If you could come in with a plate of brownies and they could be... They could be bud brownies. Now you back here acting crazy, you know.Fox: But for a while there, the women's shelter wasn't doing bag checks like they normally did. Now they're getting more staff and they're like, “oh, well, we've got all this extra staff. Now we can do bag checks and stuff.” And if they find food in your bag, they take it. They pocket it and then they throw it away or they keep it for themselves. There's many a time where we go to stand in line to go check in and we're standing out there at 4.30 in the freezing cold waiting for 5:00am to come around to let them let us in. We normally don't get in the door until like 5:08, 5:10, almost 5:30. And it's... We have elderly people over there with walkers and wheelchairs and stuff like that and you're making them sit out there in the cold?Bre: You have a fire department. You got your fire trucks. You got your police department. You got everything out there. You got your schools. But you don't have a good place for the homeless. You don't. No. And you don't want to put the money towards it. Yeah, you had the beacon. You're paying for the beacon and all those other things that are necessary. But it's not taking into account all the other people that aren't able to access the beacon. Like one of them was a family. And that's something I want to start addressing on here as well, the families. There's a wait list at the family shelter and not every time people become homeless, families become homeless, these kids are on the streets because they can't get into the family shelters. That list is insanely long. They're full.Morgan: Yeah, the family shelter has been full for, I want to say at least a year, if not six months.Fox: That's just crazy.Morgan: Yeah, so all these kids have nowhere to go.Bre: You want to talk about like dire situations and things that need to be urgently addressed, families. These kids should not have to be experiencing it. And I'm not saying take away these kids from their families because they're experiencing homelessness.Fox: Never do that. Especially families with new babies that are just newborn. Like what are they supposed to do? Sit out in the cold with their newborn child and have that child freeze to death? And then that's on the city.Bre: Yeah, because the hospital's not going to keep them.Morgan: One of the hardest things I saw at the beacon was this young mom and her two-day-old baby who I had to tell them I didn't know where they were going to sleep tonight.Carveal: I feel like if people, the powers that be, who got duties to be obligated to, if they had more drive and were more genuine towards doing their job, these things with the people, the homelessness would break down.Jack: I did notice that my motivation and how I felt, I felt great after the focus group that we had at the beacon. Not just because we got paid for our time to be there. There was a lot of good points. We all felt like we got something across. We were talking about how we needed a crisis worker at the beacon. Whenever there's a situation with somebody with PTSD, mental health, it's just going through a rough day to diffuse. There was a lot of lovely things. What else was in the discussion?..
Bre: We have one guy there. He has autism and he's there with his mom. He had an episode and he got suspended for that episode. The thing is, that's discrimination, at one. He has autism. He can't control that part.Carveal: He can't control that condition.Bre: Another thing, I don't think people realize, and I mean, everyday people that have their homes and whatever like that, I don't think they realize how close they can be to being in the same situation we are. One job being lost. One house catching fire or whatever. Any type of incident. They're pretty close. It don't take much to put you in the situation. It's not like the thing is, the stereotype is drugs and alcohol. Every person that's homeless is drugs and alcohol. No, that's not the case. Some of us are just there because life dealt us a bad card. We're just trying to get out of it and we don't have the necessary support to keep us motivating. Realistically, all we have is each other at this point.Fox: Having friends that are in the same situation as you are, it's better because you have somebody that understands what you're going through. And it's just better because you have somebody or some people around you that can understand.Carveal: And that's one of the points I was trying to make is that, that's why I'm saying people suck more than ever. There's no…[laughter]Carveal: I know I keep saying it.Fox: I mean, you're not wrong.Carveal: There's no, there's no genuine drive. You signed up for a job that has you empathetic and interacting with people and politic. Okay, you signed up for that job, but you're not really built for it. You don't really have no intel on it. You just filled the void, you know, and now you're that, but you by you not really being that you are not really doing your job because you don't really know what's required of you or what you're obligated to do. So now, what I'm saying is this is what's been happening. People have been improperly placed when it comes to the help, you know, for, for people and they, they suck at their job. They're not, they're not taking the initiative to see how to do it better and really make things count, you know, and I'm just like, okay, this is not for you. We need somebody that's more genuine for this job. They really got passion for it. You can't put nobody in a position that's narcissistic, antisocial in a position where they got to interact with people and and not dismiss them and make things about them. You know, the who you are, you know, and that's really what's been going on. And it's in every walk of life now, just right along with, and this is what's creating the homelessness. People who are not proper for the positions of authority or duties and titles are in that place. And it's a lot of bullying. It's a lot of discrimination. It's a lot of insensitivity, dismissing, and all of those bad things that is just trickling down and perpetuating the situation. Nobody's getting help and it creates monsters on both ends. You're a monster because you ego tripping and you're not really concerned about properly doing your job and helping people. Whereas, oh, I'm not getting no help. This is tearing me up. I'm in a crab in a barrel environment. It's just radioactive toxic. It's like both of us are being turned into monsters because people aren't getting the proper help.Morgan: The proper resources aren't being given. Yeah. It would really fix the problem.Fox: That's one thing I brought up during the focus group was there's not resources out there for the people who are new to Madison who are homeless. There's no information about the shelters or the Beacon or Safe Haven or food pantries to where they can go and get a warm meal or to the Bethel where they can get free clothes and a free breakfast or lunch or whatever. That's not around the city at all. That was one point that really stuck with the person that I talked to after the focus group.Carveal: There's nobody coming to you like, “what can I help you with?” It's just a repeat. I'm watching the cycles repeat. Bill Murray, Groundhog Day. You're doing the same day over and over again and that's enabling a situation or a condition. I'm looking like, “okay, you don't have the drive to stop this cycle and this place is enabling you.” It don't make either party better. It's making them worse.Morgan: No, it's just a place to get people off the street so the city doesn't have to see it.Bre: And I want to highlight an issue I had with the staff member at the Salvation Army. She was talking to a guest who had responded to a message from a friend that was in need, like emotional support. And she told that person that she needs to worry about herself. Okay, the thing is when the staff isn't going to help us and be there for us and worry about us, all we have is the people around us and that's the family we have. I came out here with no friends, no family from Texas and the fans and family I have out here, well, they're not related obviously, but they've been there for me for the past three years. I couldn't have been, I'm pretty thankful for that. But for her to go and say that she needs to just focus on herself and not help this friend.Fox: Yeah, that's not right.Bre: That's not right. You're telling this person not to support their friend who is in an emotional distress. She's a bully. She's the type of person to tell you or a social-seal look at a young person who has issues with mobility or disabled. She's looked at me and said, God, you're so young. You shouldn't even have these issues. You've got so many issues going on. I didn't ask for this though. Then people will be like, oh, they can just go get jobs. Well, why don't they try and they just keep getting denied? You going to give them a job?Fox: Yeah, they're not going to give us a job.Bre: It's not like the shelters want to hire us.Fox: Because, it's the way we look.Jack: Some refresher courses or some training for the actual staff.Bre: Sensitivity training.Carveal: Exactly!Jack: In the beacon or at the shelter. Just something like, “hey, this is how this is a situation. How are we going to fix this? Is there a way?” Maybe, train and hire a new person that can motivate people who are actually trying to get out of being homeless spot.Carveal: That is the plan and that is what's needed. The powers that be are looking at people like numbers, not like people. People who are hired on or part of programs, they're looking at people like numbers too. Even people who aren't working, people who have the homeless situation, people are removed from their humanity so much. This is the problem. When people start thinking about having more consideration and empathy for their fellow man and take the drive. Because once you've got the genuine empathy for your fellow man, you're going to have the drive to help them. That's what's missing. Generally, people are dismissing their fellow man, period, on every level.Morgan: I think that's what's really important about sitting down and doing these podcasts and getting your stories out there is to make people who wouldn't otherwise see what's going on to see.Fox: Make them aware.Morgan. Yeah, to humanize the situations. These are people that are being affected in a very negative way based on whether it be getting aged out of their housing due to their being on a fixed income or somebody has one major medical bill that they cannot pay and now they're homeless. It's like this could happen to anybody.Bre: It's not all substance abuse.Fox: No, it's not.Carveal: No, it's depression, it's elderly…Bre: Disabled.Fox: Domestic abuse. Many people are homeless because they're running away from a domestic abuse situation.Carveal: A lot of these young black men suffer from this situation. You guys have heard it. If you've been in town long enough, it's pop culture in the black community. You come here on vacation. You stuck here on parole or probation. And with the parole or probation, now you got to worry about housing and everybody's not going to rent to you. Parole, probationer, and you're on the street. That's young black man community.Bre: Especially if you have to pay for housing. Housing is a right. Housing is a human right. We all deserve housing.Jack: Yeah, housing is something that's hard to find because just to have it somewhere safe to stay or somewhere relaxing. Last night, I got zero sleep because there was people up in hype and screaming at themselves and it's just like I'm sitting there trying to sleep. It's kind of hard for me to get up the next day and, “oh, I got to get up. I got to find clean clothes. I got to go apply for a job.” So it's like finding the housing. Where can I go that's less a mental ward? For me, it's like, “okay, there's people that are homeless.” Obviously they need somewhere to sleep and that's fine but it's like there's not as separated barrier…Carveal: There should be a segregation. There should be a because in support of what you're talking about bro, just like we've got the elderly, the disabled and people with all types of other conditions. There are predators there as well, who take advantage. You know, kleptomaniacs. It's been situations man. I don't sleep well there as well because I've been told on more than one occasion, “hey bro, you were asleep but somebody was standing over your bed while you were asleep the past couple of nights.”Fox: Yeah, see at the women's shelter we actually had to tell staff about this, but we had a male guest staying there that would literally walk past people who were going through their lockers and staring at their stuff. And they've got like their clothes hanging out so there's underwear and stuff like that hanging out and you've got somebody walking past and staring at your stuff like that. There's been multiple people coming up to me and being like, “yeah this person likes to sit there and stare at me while I'm doing something in the hallway or I'll wake up in the middle of the night and there's somebody standing at the end of my bed.” Like you were saying, and they're just staring at you while you're trying to sleep and it's like you don't know that but somebody else that's in a bed next to you tells you this the next day and it's like what?Carveal: It pretty much has us on eggshells.Jack: Yeah you can't you can't interact or do anything back to them that you could.Carveal: See the way it goes I'm gonna be scapegoated. Blame it the black guy!Bre: And a lot of time the staff won't do anything until something happens.Carveal: Right. It's a lose lose situation. He could keep making his advances he could keep saying the weird stuff but as soon as I open my mouth in defense or get physical because you invade my space…Fox: Are there suspension rules that the staff have set out that's like, “oh, well if you bully this person or if you touch this person in the wrong way you're booted out for a night or a week or a month”, depending on on on the violation that you did. But, you're standing there trying to defend yourself against this person that's coming up on you.Carveal: And it's so ridiculous it's programming, we know who to scapegoats and we know how, “okay, I could get away with this and I could still keep my job”, but and that's pretty much what it is. I know you low man on the totem pole. You this is a capitalistic society. You are not I know you're not strong enough to defend yourself so I could bully you- “go to jail!”Morgan: And that just continues to perpetuate the cycle because once you have that on your record it just makes it even more challenging to get accepted into housing. Yeah or a job. Yeah that too. It's just a cycle.Bre: The more and more you get beat down the more the more motivation you lose and it's just harder.Carveal: You stay broke and I'm gonna get rich off you.Bre: Yep we're just paychecks.Carveal: Cash cows.Fox: Yeah, and another reason why some people who are homeless can't get jobs right now is because of how they look.Bre: How they look everything they have to carry. Yeah all of it they don't like they don't want to deal with that.Carveal: Here's the thing that this is the the damage that people have to take the initiative to fix as an individual. But at the same time these places perpetuate that behavior. How many coats can a person have? How many pairs shoes can you give them? That's not sufficient. That's not helping them. Yeah, okay, it's cold outside but, hey you've they're just taking stuff that they can't even use half of the time. It's like, “they're giving it to us so I'm gonna take it.”Jack: Well I have noticed that since we've been in groups and we've been discussing things and since we've done the focus group that I actively haven't been bullied and targeted as much because people see that like we're a fabric of community that's coming together and that it's not just a bunch of white people over here trying to like be one crowd and it's like you know we're trying to integrate… I want to love everyone. I want to be a part of everything and be a part of people's lives. I got love for everyone.Bre: Everybody deserves love.Jack: I know not everybody deserves love, know everyone deserves a hug. Everyone deserves a smile like, “how you're doing, you're doing alright today?” Look, if somebody don't want to be bothered that's cool that's fine but hey, look, there's people out here and we're gonna be there for our community. Stand up, “hey, where's your smile”, you know? Every day at the desk and you're at the beach and you're smiling you're doing the best when you're there, you know. Those things that I notice whenever you're doing your barber stuff and… You (Carveal), cut you cut hair right?Carveal: Yeah.Jack: I notice that you have like you have this whole nice nice swag about that.Carveal: Right, because I want it to be in good energy you know I don't want nobody feeling uncomfortable or not. And really in my how I move is, “okay this is how I want to be done. So I'm gonna do him like that.” You you you take your respect.Fox: It's the age old saying do you want to others as you want them to do want to you. Be kind to somebody and they'll be kind back.Carveal: If you don't want no respect, yeah, be a dirt bag.Fox: Yeah exactly. Like I'm coming at you with a positive attitude but you're gonna treat me like crap.Carveal: Yeah that's not cool. And if I want if I want positivity I gotta dish it out. I gotta throw that boomerang.Bre: You can't just expect it you gotta you give what you get.Fox: Yeah you feed into the world what you want back.Carveal: This day and age that is not pop culture people. This is just the reality of it. Just take-take-take-take-take-take, and that's what's the problem.Fox: Especially with the younger generation, they're like, “oh give me-give me-give me-give me-give me. But if I give you-give you-give you, you're not gonna give it back to me.Carveal: It's programming. So, we gotta we gotta we have to hit the higher ups. Because, here's my logic, just off of observation: ain't nothing going on in America that they don't want going on, you know.Morgan: If there's money to be made money will be made.Fox: Yeah, nobody at the lower total is gonna get that money.Carveal: It's all the higher ups. Yeah so, the pandemic hit that money for them.Bre: The other day like this last week I had a really rough day. Two people approached me and they wanted to give up and I had to sit there and I hugged them. I told them don't don't give up it'll get better and honestly I don't know if it's gonna get better. I can't promise them that but after that I just took it all on. I went and sat at the bus stop and I cried for over half an hour because those people's pain wrapped around my lungs and it felt like I couldn't breathe. Those people want to get out but they're stuck in such a rut and they don't have the necessary support and people keep taking advantage of them and they just don't know what else to do. So, they just want to give up.Jack: They feel alone. They feel separated from any kind of love or any kind of hope or any kind of friendship for that matter and it makes you really feel really shy whenever you get into that situation where you feel afraid.
Carveal: So now, the numbers. The numbers.Bre: Yeah what's the numbers on that?Morgan: I'm gonna do a lot more digging on the numbers, but I will say that there's quite a few nonprofits out there, that the concentration of wealth is definitely centered at the top with the CEOs making an absurd amount of money, while the workers and patrons don't see very much of it.Matvei // Porchlight Inc. oversees the Men’s Shelter. 40% of Porchlight’s expenses in 2022, or 2.7 million dollars, were salaries and employee benefits, according to their 990 Form. The 990 Form is a tool for gathering information about tax-exempt organizations. The same form for Catholic Charities, which oversees operations of the Beacon, indicates that over $800,000 was allocated to 6 staff in 2022.Carveal: I will say the shelter staff are very close to being homeless themselves. They do not make a lot of money.Bre: And some of the staff used to be homeless.Carveal: Morality. Money over morality.Bre: And if you speak up you get fired.Fox: Or if you try to speak your mind about something at your work they're like no that's not cool. Here you go. Here's your termination paper. Goodbye.Carveal: I can understand. My biological father he was kind of a jerk but it was the truth: people ain't paying you to think. I paid you here because of the stipulations on that paper. Shut up and get to work. So now it's a call on the dignity and integrity of the people who work there, “what you're going to sacrifice?” You're going to sacrifice you as an individual or you're going to get to the money. Are you going to watch people suffer and get to the money. Or are you just going to say, “hey, okay it's an inconvenience, because I need the money. It's an inconvenience but no I can't do this like this.”Fox: It's like you keep your mouth shut and do the job and keep your job and have your money that way you're not sitting out on the street homeless with everything you own right beside you. Or you speak up and still lose that job and you're still ending up homeless.Carveal: I am strictly here, how I know you guys, is because it's been integrity over everything. And with my integrity I'm morally sound and upright. And I don't care. Yeah yeah yeah, I know what's right and I know what's wrong, and I don't turn down a lot of money. I don't turn down some things that y'all wouldn't even think I didn't turn down. But I did turn it down. That's why I'm here. And with that with me turning it down they ostracize me. They want to lie on me, assassinate my character. And I'm and I'm still down that I feel confident, even though I'm going through my hardships. Because, I stood my ground on my boundaries and what type of individual I am. Well money won't get it.Jack: For one I feel blessed to be in the conversation with you and know your outlook, and everyone here. So you know, you guys, just this makes me feel better about how we feel and like how we're going what we're going through. I know we don't always have solutions to all the problems, but any solutions that we can find… I know one thing is creative outlet, we're going to go to […] after this and we're going to go do some art. I think that it's a good thing. Maybe you just a weekly reminder, “hey let's go to this, let’s go make art”, to this let's get some conversations going. Let's check in on each other.Morgan: There is some real power in community that I think a lot of society is overlooking.Jack: So I'm so I'm very thankful.Bre: I want to I want to hit the Capitol with the sign that says, “FREE HUGS”, just didn't this this this year this whole new year it's it's just been a whole mess I think everybody needs a hug.Fox: We really need a sign at the Capitol that says, “if you need free hugs or free therapy, come to the Beacon and see Fox and Bre.” We really do need that. I give great hugs.Carveal: Y’all get on that! I'm more of a hardcore hairy type of guy so I'm more like, “love yourself.” Because, once you learn to love yourself, work on that work on that, because you if you can't love yourself, how you're gonna love anybody else? So if you down on yourself, you gotta get that together first. Because, once you once you get yourself together, then you could do more, and that's what I would encourage. I'm not the hugging guy all the timeFox: I love giving hugs!Carveal: But I'm in support of it. I would be like, “yeah, I need y'all to love yourself. Just because they view you like this don't mean you got to accept their point of view of you.” Love yourself, stand up for yourself, be confident and inspired to be on a on a better positive note than what these people try and dump on you.Jack: Hugs and snacks, for some reason, I've noticed like it makes other people feel better. When they're having a bad day, that's one of the things that makes me smile. I give someone a hug and I've got people that look forward to me coming up and hugging them. Because they know that I'm like, “hey, how's your recovery going?” I ask, genuinely ask. They're recovering alcoholics, one thing I do tell them is, “it's okay if it's day one, it's fine. And I'm proud of you no matter what you do.” No matter what you do that day you know I'm still proud of you.Bre: And if you relapse it's okay. It's okay.Jack: So, you gotta know that like you know some people, they need to know that it's okay to fail and not feel so separated. It's all right, just hit that reset button, get a hug, get in there. Get some love!Fox: It's like, “you need a hug and stuff? come to Jack.”### OutroYou’ve been listening to Disbanded, a podcast exploring what stands in the way of abolishing houselessness in Dane County. Today’s hosts were Bre, Morgan, Carveal, Fox, and Jack. Thank you for listening.You can ensure that these people are compensated for their efforts by becoming a patreon at patreon.com/c/disbanded_pod . Thank you for listening.
You’re listening to Disbanded, a podcast exploring what stands in the way of abolishing houselessness in Dane County.Before we begin, two things: this episode contains casual profanity — and in case that’s an issue for you, we will release a censored version next week on Patreon, which you can join for free at www.patreon.com/c/disbanded_pod. Speaking of Patreon, none of the unhoused people featured in this or prior episodes have been compensated for their work. And they should be — that’s why Disbanded has launched a Patreon page. All proceeds will go directly to unhoused people who have shared their stories on this platform. We appreciate any support you can provide, whether that’s sending a couple dollars our way or sharing this podcast with a friend.With that, let’s dive in.Kyler // Being homeless… it can be a choice or it could just happen to anybody.This is Kyler, a formerly unhoused person.Kyler // It can happen to you tomorrow, bro. With the way that the world is going right now, like if you are in the situation of being homeless, 1,200 dollars is a lot of money. That seems like a million. That seems like a goal so far away. On top of that, trying to find a job being homeless… like fitting a standard.Kyler has experienced recurring yet short-term houselessness.Kyler // Do I really wanna start life over with everything that just happened…? I look left, I look right. Looking left, I see all these tall-ass fucking buildings. I wanted to jump. I just lost family, love of my life, my kid. I wanted to jump. But I looked right, and I was like, “You know, life could be just better on the other side, if I just gave it a try.”Kyler // I have not only been a client of the Beacon, but I’ve also worked in the nonprofit — I worked at Urban Triage at one point.Urban Triage is a Black-led and Black-centered nonprofit “empowering Black families and engaging community systems and resources to eliminate barriers in education, health, accessibility and class.”Kyler // And now I currently reside with Porchlight, so it’s not like I’m not like I was once a client of Tellurian’s, at their THP program.Tellurian is an addiction treatment center in Madison. Their Transitional Housing Program (or THP) “supports residents experiencing houselessness and searching for housing, employment, and behavioral health services.”Kyler // My first time I ever experienced homelessness was 18, when I got out of the foster care system. And it was just like, the church on the East Side Washington. They probably had a day center, but I wasn’t resourceful enough, I was 18, I was freshly out of whatever school, didn’t know shit about shit.Kyler // It was in the middle of winter… And at that time, it was 2010, 2011, so this is a whole different criteria, vibe here in Madison. The transition for me was just appalling, I just went straight to a hospital, and just to be dropped off downtown, essentially.With over a decade of experience, Kyler knows the ins and outs of the houselessness system — but it’s never easy to navigate.Kyler // And it’s hard for me right now, because I’ll be real with you, I’m 33-years-old, and I’ve still seen the same people from that Grace Gospel church at the Beacon. That’s like 15 years ago, shorty. So you wanna talk about chronic homelessness? When I’m saying I’ve seen some dudes from 15 years ago, when I was 18, that’s a real issue, yo. So you know what I’m thinking, “bro, you’ve been homeless for 15 years, what’s going on? Is it the system? What’s against you?” But now, working in the field, I see what it is. They’re criteria based: “Oh, are you convicted of a crime, or a felon? Well, if you have any felonies, you’re automatically exempt from this.”Kyler’s story stitches together the many broken links in Dane County’s houselessness network, revealing how the broader systems built to resolve houselessness instead perpetuate it. Along with Kyler, you will hear stories of other unhoused people, as well as allies from and beyond the service network.Kyler // And in their mind, it’s just like, “I got my Foodshare so I can eat, I got my insurance just in case I get sick.” But how are you gonna go to the hospital when right now, all the hospitals are booked? Like, when you know the system, “Oh, let’s go to Tellurian Dane County Care Center!” Booked. “Let’s go to Solstice.” Booked. “Let’s go to the Emergency Room and claim suicidal.” Booked. Like, where are you gonna go? There’s nowhere to go!Before establishing any connection to a service, many unhoused people are turned away by the lack of availability.Sydney // As a case manager, I’ve helped some of my clients get housing, and it takes months.This is Sydney Verbauwhede from Comprehensive Community Services. You may remember her from Episode 2.Sydney // How are you expected to get to an appointment when there’s so much in your way?Kyler // You gotta do a SPDAT form to get on a list for housing, so now you’re waiting.Service Prioritization Decision Assistance Tool, or SPDAT, is assessment tool for determining which unhoused clients should receive assistance first.Kyler // Bro, I got homeless in August of 2023, I didn’t sign a lease, being on that criteria list, until June 26th of 2024. And I know there’s people that have been on it longer.When a client can access a waitlist rather than simply get turned away from an under-available service, they are faced with countless legal hoops to jump through.Navigating those legal obstacles often requires information that is difficult to access for those without proper technology or education.Kyler // But, that’s the thing, they’re not teaching you, that you may have gotten selected but you still need to get the basic criteria. Do you have housing references, do you have a renting history? It’s against you still. If you’ve been homeless for 2 years, how the fuck are you gonna get a housing reference?And once a client is able to enroll themselves into a service, they face barriers of physical inaccessibility.Amy // When you already have limited resources, it is not just easy-peasy buying a bus ticket to another side of town, finding someone to take you…This is Amy Lindley, Development and Communications Manager at Tenant Resource Center, a nonprofit whose mission is to “advocate for housing justice and thriving communities.”Amy // It’s not easy going all over town, especially when you have to take all your belongings with you, to go to different organizations.Kyler has had experience navigating systems like that since an early age — so he didn’t have much to share on this.Kyler // I’ve always carried myself in a way knowing that I’ve been through worse and that I can actually… I was one of those kids in foster care that always had a backpack, because I didn’t know if I was going to the same home. I bounced around that much. I always transitioned since 9-years-old. I would like to say, I was always in survival mode, since 9-years-old.Few unhoused people share Kyler’s background, and encounter more challenges in navigating the system.Lindberg // Those programs, they help unhoused people, but not adequately…This is Lindberg from the Homeless Justice Initiative — you may remember him from our first two Episodes. Homeless Justice Initiative aims to secure income-based housing and provide adequate, effective stability support to those experiencing houselessness.Lindberg // Those programs work off-site, you have to call them or go to their office. When they’re not on-site, and someone who doesn’t have a phone or cognition or money… there’s all these barriers to getting the help they need…With too many obstacles just to get to the service, many unhoused people cease their attempts to connect with the support system.Kyler // The clients aren’t motivated. They don’t seem motivated. But how are you gonna be motivated when… Now they got that computer set up, you gotta give an ID to use a computer. Some people don’t have IDs.Kyler had the ability to make it through those logistical and physical barriers. But, upon accessing the services, they would often be unable to help.Kyler // Even the employees, making $20 an hour, who wants to bust their ass trying to take care of another grown ass man for $20/hour? They’re not getting paid enough.Many services lack adequate resources to efficiently provide for their unhoused clients.Shawn // The facility was designed for 125-150 guests per day. We’re averaging 240-260, one day we had 305, in August. And that alone… and the space, while it’s accommodating, it was never designed… it was an office building that was converted for this purpose. It was never designed to fully serve individuals and do all that we’re trying to do in terms of the contract. When you get to that level of individuals coming through there per day, it gets difficult to provide the basic level of services.This is Shawn Carney, Executive Director of Catholic Charities. Catholic Charities are a contractor for the Beacon, Madison’s daytime shelter.Shawn // We are certainly open to anything we can improve. We’re limited by space, and not the funding. It’s really the space.Whether it’s funding, space, or another issue, few houseless services are operating from a place of abundance. But even when they do, a singular service is rarely able to provide a complete solution.Kyler // To see where it is now, knowing that there’s a couple day centers, I think it’s really legit. But the question is, is it enough?Kyler // Because that’s only two places people can go to in a day. I mean, there’s a lot more women at The Beacon now, too, and they only get two places, YWCA and Salvation Army. That’s not enough for them, especially the ones with kids and things like that who need the whole support to build themselves up to be where they wanna be.Most services in Dane County are tailored to address one specific issue that their client may be struggling with. But those experiencing houselessness rarely face a single problem.Amy // In terms of demographics of people seeing evictions, first and foremost is racial demographics… from our 2023 report, it was 51% of households who received an eviction filing were Black households. We’re also seeing a significant portion of households who experience rental problems where one household member has a disability or criminal record… for Latine households, there is also disparity for stable housing.Majority of Dane County’s unhoused population is multiply marginalized. And in order to stabilize themselves, they need the problem tackled from multiple ends at once.Kyler // A lot of people with chronic homelessness don’t even know what credit is. And here in Madison, a place that’s all about fucking credit, if you ain’t got credit, you ain’t getting shit here. I can promise you, 80 or more percent of those people sitting at The Beacon are sitting at less than 600. Especially us in the African-American community, we’ve had people that sabotage our credit already. They use our socials for their own bills, or they might have an OG (original gangster- slang) who might put a light bill in your name, when you’re 16 in high school. And there’s things like that, too, that people don’t understand because they already had a huge disadvantage after 18: “Why am I 18 and I have a 320 credit score and I don’t even know anything about credit?”And for multiply-marginalized folks, which, again, make up most of Dane County’s unhoused population, there is further obstacles to connecting with the services.Kyler // The Beacon needs a lot more, they do need more professional help. It’s not just the staff. It can be the clients. How are you gonna relate to someone when you’re homeless at 60 and it’s a person who’s 18-years0old fresh out of school, who may be doing this for an experiment? “Oh, I’m only here for my school thing.” To me, you’re not only getting anywhere with this mature person, you’re gonna traumatize a fucking student, throwing them into that field.When it comes to working with unhoused clients, staff may not have the necessary knowledge or experience to meet their client where they’re at — especially when the client is multiply marginalized.Kyler // You got a bunch of white motherfuckers basically trying to basically coach you, Black people, on how to make yourselves better, when they don’t even know what i’s like to be Black. We don’t have enough Black advocates or Black professionals willing to help with the homelessness. I can only ask, if I’m homeless right now and you’re my case manager, so you know I have no place to go, and you’re driving back home to Lake Geneva, where your house is, why would I even try build a relationships with you?Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, is home to numerous lakefront mansions and is generally considered an affluent town.Kyler // You just told me, “Well I don’t know sir, I don’t know where I’m gonna be able to put you to house tonight, but I’m gonna go to Lake Geneva.” I just lost it: “You, you live in Lake Geneva? And you’re my case manager?” Even when I’m down, I know I have enough decency for myself to be like, “You will never be able to understand what I go through every day, I’m gonna need somebody different.” I understand sometimes why people get a little distanced and pushed off, because it’s not that they don’t want to understand. It’s just, how can they? They will never be able to understand, look at what’s going on in the big house.Kyler // If you can’t even get yourself to understand or put yourself into that person’s shoes or culture, it’s like… What I’ve told my friends right now, “You wanna know what it’s like to be homeless: You got a car, right? Go drive that car to the rest area, sleep in your car, do it for 3 days straight, see what your body and your mind does to you in that moment.” Actually stay at the rest area for three days, I’m talking straight up, 72 hours. You can’t leave. You got shower, bathroom access, but you gotta figure out how to make it from this area. A lot of my friends are like, “Why would I do that when I can go home?” And I was like, “That’s the issue, you’re not even trying to understand what the issue is.” Do you know what it’s like to sleep in your car, when it’s 70 degrees in the morning and it drops down to 20 at night? When you wake up in the morning and you don’t know where to use the restroom at, that’s another thing to try to navigate. We’re human beings, we go to sleep and we need to release what we have the next day. Not having the resources for that, and having people who just don’t understand that shit?When services are unable to understand their client, they cannot provide them with adequate help.Carveal // I believe in gratuity. At the same time I’m like, my gratuity is being stomped down. It’s hard to be grateful, when you know what you’re capable of and you’re not doing it. You could be doing more. Like, you’re doing things that sufficient to you, “I did this, you should be grateful."This is Carveal, who also appeared in the previous episode.Carveal // And it’s like, “Yeah thanks, but could you stop doing what you think I need and do what I’m telling you I need, I need help like this.” I’m tired of seeing you just handing me what you want, and “be grateful!” No. How can I be grateful when you’re a jerk, you’re handing me stuff that I… Okay, how many coats can a person get before they turn into that person who’s lugging their whole life around?Even when clients can to reach a service that is able to understand them and provide adequate support, that one service will only tackle a part of the entire problem.Kyler // You got these people who are offering all these insurance to these people, you want them to sign up for a quota base or audit base. Cuz everyone is like, “You need to go to The Beacon and see the unsheltered shit and see if you can get people signed up for it so our insurance can get what they need as far as meeting quotas.” But you’re not guiding these people like, “Hey if you sign up for insurance, this might help you get yourself into a residential in-care facility.”
In order to actually stabilize their clients, the individual services must work together — but that often isn’t the case.Amy // When you’re experiencing homelessness, I cannot imagine a more frustrating thing than going to one organization, and them saying “We’re on the East Side, you actually have to go get this form signed on the West Side”.Services tend to be physically apart from each other — and that prevents them from reaching their clients, and working together.Alisha // If you wanted to get people stabilized you’ve gotta have other people involved to get DHS as a whole connected people to services. If we don’t have case management… those individuals (cognitively stable) will be able to get stable without support or case management services, but that is a huge minority of the people we serve. Getting connected with these services is quite lengthy and detailed.This is Alisha Henning, Volunteer Manager at The Beacon. She appeared in our first two Episodes.Alisha // Mental health issues, substance use issues, maybe they have a cognitive deficit or a learning disability - there are so many factors that go into getting someone stabilized that you have to have case management for all of those pieces to fit together.But with no place currently providing a comprehensive service package, Kyler was forced to constantly be on the go.Kyler // I think The Beacon does a great job, they do what they can with what they have. Volunteers do a great job doing the meals, helping people shower, doing the laundry. But, you don’t want people to just resort on that. In that field, “I gotta go somewhere at noon. Why? I gotta get my lunch.” Or, “I gotta check in some place at 8, I gotta do a shower and some shit.” I remember like, crashing at the homie’s couch, and then being like, “Hey I’m gonna be right back, I gotta get my check-in.”With issues of accessibility, resource shortage, and systemic disconnect, unhoused people find themselves in an environment that worsens rather than alleviates their conditions. This manifests most vividly at the men’s shelter.A brief interjection: At the moment, I do not have enough information to compare the conditions between men’s and women’s shelter. Therefore, I am choosing to mostly reference the men’s shelter. The women’s shelter will be dedicated an episode of its own later on.Kyler // At that time, in 2010-11, Porchlight had, they had the Grace Gospel Church over at West Washington. Now, knowing that that was one of the first homeless shelters that they had here in Madison, it was a dark place for me. I was at a position, going in and out of jail, so I was like, “Going to a homeless shelter, after going to jail?” It was crazy to me. It essentially looked the same, just like a food hall with a bunch of bunk beds, and it was crammed, just very, like, sickening. No security, you either had the top bunk or the bottom bunk. You had a little community room, that’s not even as big as this [room].The room Kyler is referring too is roughly 15x10 feet.Kyler // And on top of that, you got almost close to 200 people in here.The systemic scarcity of the service network creates a physically and mentally degrading environment.Ed // I believe that we need the Department of Health to be in all of these places and see things like the men’s shelter, where there’s still bugs there from when they had gnats. They were infected with gnats, they had to close down the bathroom for a week. No more showers there for a week.This is Ed, a resident of Porchlight. He has asked to remain anonymous, so his voice has been edited.Ed // And, I’ve also seen some of these creepy crawlers going across the floor. You don’t know if they’re lice or what they are. And, I myself, this is embarrassing, came down with lice, and I went through some real trouble to get treated with that embarrassment.Kyler // It gravitates already in a slippery slope, the odds are against you no matter what. If you’re going into the shelter, as a person, your dignity and your pride are already fucking shot. Whatever your situation is, if you know you’re going to a homeless shelter to sleep that night, you already in that mindset of, “Damn, this is fucked up, this is fucked up, this is where I’m at? This is what I gotta do with myself?” So think about everyone who’s already doing that, and having to make something of themselves.Degrading environments create a sense of despair among many of the people experiencing houselessness.Kyler // Already being kicked down in the mud, you don’t even know if you can shower every day like you used to, and that’s another thing that I really had to teach myself when I was homeless — the essentials of everyday being. Brushing your teeth, washing your face, and taking a shower, that shit’s so important to your mental health, dude! There’s nothing like taking a cold (or hot) shower after a long-ass day. Already having on your mindset, “I’m going to this dirty-ass shelter? I feel dirty as fuck already,” so it’s gonna corrupt your mind and you’re gonna feel dirty.Ed // It’s like being in your own Groundhog Day movie, some people say it that way.Carveal // It's just a repeat. I'm watching the cycles repeat. Bill Murray, Groundhog Day. You're doing the same day over and over again.When perpetual despair cycles through the service system, it creates a culture of desperation.Kyler // Imagine if I wasn’t gonna be proactive, imagine if I didn’t have the drive, if I lost it… Bro, I’d still be that motherfucker right now. And I’ve seen, people from last year, that are still there. It’s so hard… You can see people are just trying and then they are like, one bad day, or one bad phone call. You are looking forward to the small things at that point, like “Shit, CDA just picked up my application.” Or, “I just got a call from Porchlight for a 2-room apartment.”Jack // It gets stressful whenever there are negative things going on around you…This is Jack — you may remember him from the previous episode.Kyler // It gets kind of scary sometimes, and you get sick, and living at the shelter, and you’re supposed to be applying for a job — you’re so mentally exhausted, worn out, it’s hard to get out and feel motivated enough to do what you need to do. Some days you don’t even want to shower, just because you’re so down because of what’s going on around you.The houselessness services most readily accessible get their clients stuck focused on survival — and block their ability to envision a better future.Ed // You can sense people right away, not just by reading their faces, but when you read some of these faces, just look at them for one second, they’re haunted. They’re these beat up old guys in chairs and with walkers, and they probably think, “This is how I’m gonna die.”Peter // There’s a lot of fear and aggression at the shelter. It’s not a place where people can heal or rise above. Basically, keep yourself down between one thing and the other.This is Peter.Peter // I managed to get 105k/year, I was a first-level programmer, and then all of the sudden things fell apart… going to the shelter is the worst thing in my opinion. In the last year I've decided not to go to the shelter even though I was camping and there are laws against that, but at least I wasn’t between people doing drugs, and always negative and stealing and aggressive.Kyler // At The Beacon, people trynna steal your shit. People find out you have interviews like this, they gonna try to steal your phone. For whatever purpose, like, just to hold you back down. And God forbid don’t loose your fucking wallet.Ed // What happened to me there, and anybody there, who’s tried to live there, is that it’s rampant, almost nonstop drug traffic there. Which is to say that all the noise that comes in with these haptic people coming in anytime of the day or night, even if you wanted a simple nap in the morning or the afternoon, you’re lucky to get one. At night — forget it.The culture of substance use, theft, and aggression that Peter, Kyler, and Ed describe is a consequence of the systematized despair unhoused people acquire while working through the service network.Peter // I don’t drink, I've done other things — you need to shut down your brain sometimes. It’s sad but understandable.Peter // The problem with most people is those social security checks, or the money they make, it is spent in ways that are not productive at all. If you don’t have anything in life, and the situation is so bad in the shelter, it creates a need for something else.Unhoused people have no space for respite, and their despair spills back into the services.Kyler // Beacon staff get through a lot, the clients treat them like shit. Y’all could at least assist them in ways that make them appreciated for what they do, cuz it seems like you’re just sending them out to the wolves. The security guards are scared of the people. They don’t want to get spit on and cut up. A lot of risks to it. And the police presence doesn’t do anything but put fear and irate people even more.The frontline service staff are not at fault for majority of the system’s flaws — but they’re the ones experiencing the spillover of despair.Shawn // We’re having 250 on average show up… Just taking care of the basic services is very difficult and demanding, and it’s also where the costs come in… To run The Beacon, the first year of the contract cost us 260 thousand and now it’s gonna be close to 2 million. All those variables come together and it does create a lot of tension at The Beacon.When sustained for long enough, this tension initiates a cycle of mistreatment.Kyler // And then people say, “Oh, you can use our address.” But then the mail, it never get delivered. And in Madison, it seems like if they know that when you have that Aberg address on your ID — denied, no matter what. If you have The Beacon as your address — denied, automatically. Because you’re using a “homeless person’s”… But it’s like, “Well, where else am I supposed to get my mail, if I don’t have family and support and friends?” And this is all I reside to, like, I have to pay for a P.O. box to feel… Equal?Kyler // Some people can’t even make it in, because of course you had the criteria, of “You gotta be there at a certain time.” If you didn’t make it there at that certain time, whatever. And I mean, you might get a more sympathetic guy who might give you some leniency, but everyone is so hardcore on the homeless, that it’s like, “Nah, you didn’t make the deadline, so you sleeping outside,” is what it felt like. Cuz that’s initially what it was, “You know you’re supposed to be here at, let’s say, 7. You got here at 7:05. Now, I can be cool and kind and let you stay,” but they look at you, “Oh, you’ve been a nuisance in the past, you know better. Nah, we ain’t gonna accept you.”As support systems become worn out by sustained tension, they loose structure and stability that prevents mistreatment, whether from clients, or staff.Ed // I’ve heard of bad fights breaking out at Safe Haven as well, and I’ve heard nasty things about how women are treated at Salvation Army.Lorenzo // What bothers me is the staff, if they got a personal problem, they reflect that onto the inmates. Literally straight to the inmates, the staff start to act like, tough. Just trying to make us feel like they got the power about everything and they got to decide when you gotta shit, when you gotta smoke, when you gotta do everything.This is Lorenzo, former client of Porchlight.Lorenzo // They cross the line because it’s not just talking to you, it’s grabbing to your arm, saying “go there” or things like that. That’s excessive, that’s what law enforcement is supposed to do on the right thing, but they’re not law enforcement.Beyond Kyler and Lorenzo, many other clients of Porchlight have reported abuse from staff at the men’s shelter — and we will hear more on that in future episodes.Kyler // It’s so much easier to ban a client from coming back just because you don’t want to deal with them anymore, and let’s just be real because people are like, “I don’t wanna deal with this shit. Ban.” And it gets repetitive. When you have these bans for these people… If you get banned from the shelter, you’re closing your door to a lot of resources.The degrading environment perpetuates hostility from both staff and clients, and this cycle drowns those experiencing houselessness.Ed // It really sucks man, I’ve heard no less than 4 people, probably 3 men, 2 women, who come out and tell you, “I just wanna die.” They’re suicidal. And I feel that way myself. But it’s like the old song, “I just keep hanging on.” And a buddy of mine, 73-years-old, 3 years older than me — suicidal. He’s just had a shitload of real bad luck physically, takes a shitload of meds, some of those have messed him up.The system does more than fail to uplift its clients: It pushes them down. In response, they begin to evade, rather than connect, with the system.Kyler // You go in there, your mind is like, “What the…” There’s people that are scared to go to The Beacon. I was in the field, I used to ask, “Have you gone to The Beacon?” “No man, I drove past there on the bus, I don’t know, that looks like too much.”Kyler // Look at all the money they put into the new Central Library. It’s a homeless club, gee! That’s a nice-ass fucking library, yo, that’s a really nice library, but you guys put all that money into a fucking library instead of making something for the homeless? Cuz the homeless people just go in there now. It’s not supposed to be for the homeless. But that’s the missed cue. It’s full of homeless people. So help them out. Make them something around that area.Kyler could not tolerate the despairing conditions at the shelter — and chose to live outside.Kyler // Like, what do you do? And you resort to what you know, and that’s just survival, dude. I walked around with a fucking hammock. Hammock, dude.And of course, Kyler isn’t the only one to have made that decision.Peter // I was keeping myself around Madison parks, trying to keep clean and not draw attention. As far as being able to have some rest, it is much better than the shelter. The shelter is basically doing the opposite. You don’t get rest, you get stress there.At the same time, those who choose to leave the degrading service environments lose layers support.Kyler // It was fucked up bro, it was the hardest day for me mentally, I remember I went to The Beacon, I was freezing cold, because it rained at 6 a.m. I was dead asleep. And I just called my dad, “I don’t know if I can do this”. I mean, they’ve been rooting for me, and I’m like, “I think I might have to go.” It broke me down in a more humbling way.Kyler // Where the fuck can I go at 6 a.m.? It’s cold, I can’t just walk into a building. Where are you gonna use the bathroom, to defecate right in the morning? That’s the resourcefulness, of knowing the small stuff of survival… where can you feel genuinely safe? I’m gonna feel dirty all day, I’m gonna force myself to jump into this cold-ass dirty lake just to feel clean. It’s hard, in the summer time, when I see people outside and it’s hot.Kyler and Peter had the ability to sustain themselves through these challenges — but for demographics like the elderly, leaving the environment, however degrading it may be, is too dangerous.Lorie and Robert // We have some that’s in their 80 and they should not be living on the street. Where they should be put in assisted living. Hospice, something.This is Lorie and Robert.Lorie and Robert // I just watched two vets personally die in front of me at the nighttime shelter. Just right before Christmas.Peter // The people are realizing that the shelter is not a place you can really go because you accumulate more stress there. People realize that and try to camp out on the street, which is better for their mental health but then you end up with more people on State Street.Those who are able to leave the degrading environments struggle to find a space of their own.
Peter // And it doesn’t look good if there’s people sleeping on the side of the street or in those cubbies… unfortunately. But I understand their decision. I was camping myself.Most environments outside of services are not designed for supporting unhoused people — and become degrading, just like the system those unhoused people are trying to get away from.Peter // There’s many places downtown where police comes in and says you can’t be here but go to the other side, they send you around. I used to follow people on State Street because they used to be my friends, and I noticed the police was doing almost a game — block to block, going in circle. Not finding them a place where they can actually be. It seemed like they were just trying to put a patch on the issue, but not something definitive or something that would solve the problem.Whether within or beyond service environments, unhoused people are met with lack of aid at best, and oppression at worst. And that reinforces the degrading cycle again.Peter // Unfortunately, State Street when I came here 20 years ago it was a bit better than today. It is a lot more chaos, because of homeless people, most of them I know… I used to like State Street much better. I really don’t understand why that is, why we steal from each other because one, might thing we are all in the same boat, but that’s the reality of homeless people.As both the service system and broader communities fail to respond to the cycle of deterioration, isolation becomes the solution to houselessness.Kyler // There’s so much more we could do but we’re focused on building jails, building bus routes and shit bro…Kyler // “We’ll spend the money on a new jail, target our homeless and put them into that cycle.” Because that’s all it does. My buddy got arrested for trespassing. You get arrested for trespassing now? As a homeless person? He was just walking through a lot at a time he wasn’t supposed to. What’s that do for your guys’ money, putting him through the court process. You know this person is homeless, and you wanna put them in a system where they don’t have money, give them a record that makes it even harder for them to succeed.Kyler // The Salvation Army is so discrete, all you see is “Salvation Army”.Salvation Army is Dane County’s overnight women’s shelter.Kyler// But if you go in the parking lot, you’d be like, “Oh shit.” MG&E had to build those fences around The Beacon, so it looks hidden almost.Kyler // It is in the cut. And then you don’t get to walk in the front door. Cuz, it just says “The Beacon” on East Wash. You have to go on Main Street to be like, “Oh, that’s the homeless place.”The design of the service system, which includes the carceral complex, ceases to re-integrate people into society, and instead insulates them from it.Tyler // People don’t see half of the stuff that happens at The Beacon. Because, we’re in the back of the building, and it’s like a fenced in little area. Nobody gets to see everything, and there’s fights every day.This is Tyler, a 22-year-old trans man.Tyler // Nobody gets to see half the pain we go through. People see ambulances and cops leaving but do they know why? That’s the question, let that sink in. Do they know why the ambulances and cops are there 24/7. Half of the people don’t understand what we have to go through on a daily basis. I was told that homeless people would never find love.Pearl // We know from the county, who released some numbers a couple years ago when we asked for them, that 1 in 7 people enter the Dane County jail homeless.This is Pearl from Madison Homeless Union, a collective providing direct aid to unhoused people.Pearl // At the time the number of the jail was about 750, during the pandemic…As of March 5th, the jail holds 764 people. While I was unable to verify the number Pearl provided, nationally 1 in 7 people entering jail are houseless.Pearl // That’s over 100 people who enter jail homeless, and a lot of those people cannot afford bail. When they sit in jail waiting for court dates, they loose their jobs, and then they face an eviction, and they can’t get their belongings, and all their belongings get set out on the curb… I’ve seen this before, I knew somebody who sat for 5 months, who was homeless, and had a camper.Pearl // Because that camper sat for 5 months, it was then infested with mice, and was no longer inhabitable by the time Dane County Jail said, “Oops, sorry, I guess we’re gonna drop all charges 5 months later and release you on a Sunday at 5 a.m. in the dark, with nothing.”Isolation is not a long-term solution, but it both hides and perpetuates the deteriorating despair that unhoused people are subjected to. For Kyler, navigating all of this meant insulating from the label of “homeless”.Kyler // When I’m going in, “Hey, are you guys hiring,” I look like a person that could work. So I presented myself in a way that I wasn’t homeless, but when I got my job I would be like, “Hey man, I’m kind of going through a little transition right now, I’m just bouncing around, trying to get my footing, had a bad break up, XYZ.” When you communicate it that way, people can understand you.Kyler had the resources to appear and act like a housed person. But most cannot detach themselves from that label as easily or consistently — and face paralyzing stigma.Tyler // People look at us and then are like, “Oh, you’re homeless? That’s not quite what I had in mind.” I mean, I walk down the street, I get weird looks all the time. People think I’m weird. When I say, “Hey, I’m homeless I need a little bit of help, I’m kind of short on something, I didn’t get paid yet. I have a job” And they’re like, “Ohhh, you’re homeless.” And then we get weird looks.Lorie + Robert // From what I understand, Madison is built around the university. And if you don’t fit in university or the rich, “We don’t want you here.”So, with all of this in their way, how do people survive through houselessness in Dane County? One answer is, community.Lorie + Robert // It’s the way I was raised, to care about people and worry about people and do whatever I can for them no matter what. You give your last dollar to them if you need it or the shirt off your back.Lorie + Robert // Here I said, getting out of the hospital from open heart surgery, and you got to give these people this, “Don’t give up, there’s still hope out there.” And give them that positive attitude, carry out the hate, “Don’t let this give up yet, there’s still life.”Lorie + Robert // I just found out that I have a bunch of blood clots in my lungs. It was hard coming down here, but you know what, I did it. I’m actually very proud of myself. Because I get to speak out for everyone.Kyler // If you knew how homeless people network, and the connections they do… Cuz they all link together, they commute together.While unhoused people find ways of sustaining themselves, whether within or beyond the service network, survival is not the solution they want.Kyler // When we’re talking about a population of homeless less than 800 people in Dane County, which Madison holds by itself 250,000 people alone… That’s not a lot of people. We got so much money and you all can’t even house 800 other people? That’s crazy to me.Kyler // This is the North, bro. We’re the North of the North. We have the money and the resources, we have one of the best colleges in the nation, best supported schools, but we can’t put in money for 800 people?Kyler // We have all types of shit that we could fucking do, bro. And the thing about Wisconsin is we usually do that kind of shit! We’re all about supporting locals and rebuilding for our state alone. And Dane County is really big on it, so like what happened?Thank you for listening to this episode of “Disbanded.” If this was a valuable experience for you, please share it with a friend. If you got no friends, you can support us financially on Patreon. If you got no money either, say hi to us when you see us.
Anya // I’m Anya, I’m 18. So far I’ve been homeless for a year. The shit that I’ve experienced while being homeless is crazy. It’s also played a lot on my mental health. Over the past year I’ve had quite a few breakdowns. There was a few times where I wished that I was dead and that I did not have to deal with this. But it’s hard, you know, because you have to keep going and see the light through the tunnel. But when you're homeless, you don't really see that.Morgan // You’re listening to “housing last”, a community-driven podcast exploring what stands in the way of ending homelessness in Dane County. Every other episode is driven entirely by members of the unhoused community. Today, we will hold a round-table discussion among four: Anya, whom you’ve just heard, Kat, Bre, and Quinn. I’m one of your hosts, Morgan, you’ve also heard from me in Episode 3.Ryan // Hey, this is Ryan from Episode 2! Before we begin, two things: this episode contains mild profanity- in case that’s an issue for you, we will release a censored version next week on Patreon, which you can join for free at patreon.com/housing last.Kyler // Heyo, and speaking of Patreon, none of the unhoused people featured in this or prior episodes have been compensated for their work. And they should be! that’s why we have a Patreon page. All proceeds will go directly to unhoused people who have shared their stories on this platform. This is Kyler, from Episode 4. Stay in tune!Everyone // laughterBre // Alright, well I’m Bre.Quinn // I am Quinn- She/Her.Bre // Kat, you want to introduce yourself?Kat // My name is Kat Miller, I’m 55 years old, and I’ve been homeless for a little over a month and a half right now. This ain’t the first rodeo I’ve gone on with this, I did this 16 years ago when my husband died. And, this last time around, I’ve lost my partner of 12 years on mother’s day of 2023, and I tried to keep it together for as long as I could, and being laid off from the day job, and my other jobs that I had being seasonal, the bottom just kind of fell out right before thanksgiving, and I ended up losing my apartment, my service animals, because I’ve had PTSD with night terrors.Kat // I’m just kind of one of those people who fell through the cracks, because if you’re not 60 and older, you’re not getting disability from the federal government or the state, or you have kids, you kinda get swept under the rug, being in this grey area, nobody really wants to help you and it’s kind of a discouraging thing. It’s not fun for anybody, it really isn’t, and it does take a toll on the mental health. It’s just hard all the way around. And being young as you are, Anya, I can’t imagine half of the stuff that goes through your head.Anya // You see a lot of depression, a lot of addicts, alcoholics, a lot of that is hard, especially when you are like…Bre // So young.Anya // Yeah, when you’re so young and you’ve never really seen shit like this before. And I’ve been homeless, on and off, my entire life, but I’ve never really had to deal with this, because I was such a child and didn’t really understand what homelessness was until I became homeless last year, well, in 2023.Bre // We had somebody that was 93. 93! She was standing out in the heat, the rain, the cold, because they wouldn’t let us in. This was before we started taking a stand at the shelter and getting the emergency weather to let us in early. This was before, this was like last year, before all this revolutionizing has started happening between the homeless. But she was just the kindest old lady. And I just don’t see how anybody would want to have her in a situation like this. And it was both her and her son that had ended up homeless. And because they ended up homeless, they ended up separated because there was not a shelter that would take them both in together. Because the women’s shelter won’t let you in as a family. The men’s shelter, they’re very picky. And the family shelter has a really, really long waiting list. And, even then, you have to have children below 18.Anya // Me and my family, we tried to get in there one time. And I was still in high school at this point. And they wouldn’t let us in because I was 18. And they said that it didn’t matter if I was in high school or not, I was 18, I could not go in. Because we were not considered a family at that time, and that’s sad.Kat // That’s a sucky situation. You’re still family no matter what age you are. In my lifetime, like I said I’ve buried a husband. I’ve buried a partner of 12 years. My eldest son and my youngest daughter are both deceased. And I still have my eldest daughter, who’s 32, but she lives in another state. And I’ve got another son that’s 29, and he actually serves in our armed forces. And I’ve had people question me about, well why haven’t you told your kids what’s going on? My daughter has some other things, financially, that are going on, that she doesn’t need me adding more stress to her for that. But my son, he’s a military police officer. He’s a captain. And he’s got like two units with 30-35 guys. And they’re out by the Polish-Ukrainian border. And it’s like, no my son does not need to know this because he’s got damn near 60 men besides himself that he’s got to worry about. Because God only knows what Putin and the Russians are going to do. I’d rather my son be safe, and his men be safe, than him having this on his mind and distracting him to where it would cost them their lives, or worse. But I get criticized for making those choices, and it’s like, you’re not in my shoes. You’re situation is different than mine, number one. Number two, you have to give that respect, because I’m doing this from a parental standpoint. Yeah, my kids are grown. But I’m looking out for their safety because at the end of the day, I’m still mom to them. That’s the thing. And our job as a parent is to make sure we look out for our children.Bre // And even at the shelter you become sort of a mom for a few other people there, too. People that need the support.Kat // Yeah, Quinn calls me grandma. And I got a bunch of them that come up and they call me Momma Kat, and everything. But even so, with everybody that comes up to me and they talk to me about their problems or their situations, I don’t tell them what to do. I just give them food for thought. I give them suggestions, and it’s a take it or leave it kind of thing. You can either take this and maybe do something with it, or if it doesn’t suit you, okay, at least it’s food for thought. Not this constant barrage that you get from some of the social service workers about, “oh well you better do this and you better do that”. And it’s like, that’s not what fits with my program. So, why am I going to waste the energy doing it.Bre // The bottom line, to have this understanding that homeless people have feelings too. They feel emotions, and they deserve to be treated like human beings just like everyone else. At the end of the day, all they are is somebody that was dealt a bad card or didn’t have enough support, so they either turned to the bottle or they turned to a drug because nobody else was there. So, there’s some sort of decline or somebody let them down, or landlord just wasn’t that helpful. They just kick you out.Bre // Two months before your lease expires, even though you had the means to pay an extension. I had the means to pay the extension, but two months before my lease was supposed to go up, they had rented it to somebody else. And I was back on the streets.Kat // One of the other things that has almost, in a way, killed me, that I’ve heard from 2-3 other people, is that a lot of these social service agencies blame us for being homeless. And I sat there, and I've worked in social services before in the city of Chicago, and I sat there and was like, “no, not everybody chooses this.” You’ve got people that have severe mental health issues, and after a fashion, they get taken out and put into general society to try to function, which they can’t do. And that’s why they’re in their situation.Kat // There is other people, like you’ve said, Anya, that are alcoholics, junkies, and it’s a way of life that they’ve chose.Matvei // Hey, this is Matvei, host of prior episodes. A brief interjection: saying that people with addictions "chose" their way of life oversimplifies the reality of addiction. It's more accurate to say that addiction is a disease, and disease erodes choice.Kat // And then there’s other people, like myself, I didn’t choose this. It was financial circumstances that have caused this whole thing.Kat // Each one of us is in this situation for various reasons, but we are not to blame for it. And if somebody if were to say something, that kind of eats in your brain a little bit. It’s like, “no”.Bre // I had an interview, I had a job interview, it was a phone call interview, but it was for a phonecalling position with […]. Now, mind you, I’ve went through office professionals training, I’ve had my medical assistant certification, I’ve had my medical office certification. But even though I’ve aced the interview through the phone, I wasn’t invited back for another interview. I was very open with them about my situation- I’m in this situation, I’m not gonna hide that fact.Kat // That’s the thing. Even with me and the stuff I’ve noticed, trying to get a job with my issues and my mobility issues, a lot of places don’t even wanna take a chance on me, because some of my medications… And I know this from my last job, they have a list of certain medications that kind of knack you out of that box for even being hired, you know.Bre // And most places that are hiring will, because of the stereotypes surrounding homeless people, they see hiring a homeless person as a liability, because they don’t know what that person is capable of. They don’t know who that person is. But they know their situation and what type of people are usually in the situation, because that’s just how society views them, so it makes that 10x harder for anybody that is homeless, even at a young age, too, to get a job and get out of it.Bre // I’ve been told, “well, they can just go get a job.”Anya // Yes, it’s not as easy as that sounds.Bre // It’s not as easy for the homeless to get a job. If you tell them to get a job, give them a job.Kat // That’s the thing, you gotta be willing to give a chance on people. I mean, I’ve got an applied associate in emergency medicine, I’ve got an associate in bio psych, I’ve got a BA in cybersecurity, and because of the situation I’m in, nobody wants to even be bothered with me.Quinn // I think it was Bre who said this, but we are an entire population in this country. Because, everybody has a stereotype that homeless people are just like, they’re nothing. They’re nobody.Bre // I still struggle with the views that are put upon the community. And even being disabled as well, mentally and physically.Kat // Just call it as it is, the stigma that they’ve placed on the homeless.Kat // I mean even with movies and TV programs, they don’t portray the homeless the right way. Like we’re living in the gutters and everything else. It’s like, are you kidding?Bre // Especially when there’s staff members, some of them are hell bent on knocking you down sometimes, instead of picking you up.Kat // That’s the thing. Nobody should knock anyone down, they should be there to give them a helping hand. One of the great things, and I know it’s still going… After my husband passed away, we actually started a scholarship for Native Americans. For them returning to school to get GEDs or continue their education, or for first-time students. And each year, the donations from all the letter writing and everything else that we’ve done, we’ve raised a couple million dollars. My husband has been dead 16 years now, and we started this 14 years after he died. And we’ve actually helped put almost 700 Native American students through school. And it’s like it just takes one person to make a change, to make it better for someone else. Even if it’s acknowledging them. Giving them a smile. Saying good morning, good afternoon, good evening. You don’t know what that can do for a person. And that’s the thing. People don’t realize that. They just kind of look down their noses at us going, oh you’re one of the homeless scum. And it’s like, no. We’re not scum. We’re individuals. We’re a diverse group of people, that yeah, we have emotions, we have thoughts, we have feelings. But at the end of the day, we’re still individuals.Bre // Nothing but druggies and alcoholics.Kat // They’re lazy. Don’t want to work. Want everything on a silver platter. There’s people that are over at Sally that are way older than me and they shouldn’t even be there.Matvei // Sally is slang for Salvation Army, which is women’s overnight shelter of Dane County.Kat // They should be in places where they can get assisted living help. And it’s like they’re in their 70s and their 80s going through this. And it’s like, I thought we were supposed to take care of our elders.Anya // I want to say something more about homeless shelter. So, the one that we stay at, I was there almost, probably, 16 years ago. I was three-years-old. And it has changed so much. When I was little when I was there, they helped so much more. The facilities were so much better. They were cleaner. And now, being there today, it’s changed. The staff were much more friendly. And now it’s like the staff don’t care.Quinn // I have a thought regarding the staff. I’ve noticed a lot of the staff, certain people, they treat it like a job instead of a passion, which I don’t think is how you should approach a job like that. You shouldn’t go there thinking about your paycheck and when you’re going to get home. You should go there because you genuinely want to be there to help people.Kat // That’s the thing. And it’s that compassion and that empathy.Bre // Yeah, you got to have compassion and empathy to work in this job.Anya // You do, because, at the end of the day, you don’t know what a person is going through.Bre // That’s why I loved having Morgan at The Beacon, because she had that compassion and empathy. She wanted to make a change.Kat // Right. Even in Chicago, they’re now assimilated into another organization, but there was a place called Anawim Center, which was for Native Americans that were low-income or homeless. We used to do prayer circles. We tried to help them out with as much resources as we could. My late husband was a part of their team. I, myself, was teaching them how to be able to use computers, you know, how to protect themselves when they’re online, different things like that. And one of the things that we always ran in to, even with the grant writing and everything, was, the Catholic church, as a whole, will not budge. There’s a certain minimum amount that they will do to help the homeless. Other than that, if you can’t help yourself, they won’t be bothered. And with resources being limited the way they are, compared to when you were three-years-old, until now, I mean, even with me at 16 years, and I’m coming from the homeless system in Chicago to a place that I don’t even know. I can’t even get around out here because I have no knowledge of Madison whatsoever. So, I’m kind of like stuck. I came from around Edgerton, Janesville area. I know that. But that was when I had a car and everything. I don’t have a car now. But it’s just trying to get transportation to go where you need to go. Trying to get people that are willing to sit up and help you. And you’ve got other organizations that, they only want to give you like a couple of crumbs, and they expect you to do everything else. And it’s like, but it doesn’t work like that. If you don’t have the financial resources to do what you need to do, how do you do it?
Kat // Like I said though, you have all these diverse people. You know, me and Bre, we’re handicap. Quinn’s trans. You’re a young person. And me, like I said, I fell through the cracks because I’m in between everything, at my age. And it’s like, where do we get these resources, you know, who do we talk to? Are they even going to give us the time of day when we seek out these resources? And I get that we have to do the footwork and everything, but every now and then, we still need somebody to reach their hand out and go, okay, here, let me help you.Quinn // Yeah, that’s why I was asking about a job assistance program because it would be nice if you had employers who were actually willing to take the extra step and reach out to the homeless community and offer jobs to homeless people.Bre // I also know there’s those job agencies, aside from FSET. People Ready and QTI, I believe QTI is the other one. I know that those are two, like, temp agencies. They’re not permanent jobs, but it’s getting you money. It’s something.Matvei // FSET stands for FoodShare Employment and Training, a free program that helps FoodShare members build their job skills and find jobs. People Ready is a nationwide network, of temp agencies offering staffing services to job seekers. QTI is a human resources and staffing firm.Kat // I’m still trying to explore Madison and what they have available. And it’s a little hard to be able to do that because I’ve got all of my medical stuff that I’m trying to take care of at the same time, plus I’m trying to jump through hoops for all this other stuff that I’ve got to jump through hoops for, and it’s like, okay, when do I have time for myself, really?Quinn // Yeah, I’ve only been here for eight months, which, wow, almost a year. Time flies by fast.Anya // That’s another thing with medical. At the shelter, they don’t really give a care. Like they don’t care. My mother’s diabetic, and one of the rules at the shelter is that we can’t bring in food. And being, my mom is a diabetic, her blood sugars can drop any time. And they drop fast.Bre // And they tell you you can’t bring in snacks, any food, none of it. No drinks, none of it. And they tell you that, even for those diabetics, that you have to go down to the office when you’re starting to have that issue.Anya // I’ve seen my mother, I’ve seen her blood sugars drop really fast. Like you have to be quick to get her food. There’s no time to go down to the office to get her something. You have to give her something right then and there.Bre // Yeah, you can’t wait. You have to have something on hand. And they’re actively preventing that for people who are diabetic in the shelter.Kat // I mean, I’m a hypoglycemic, and I’ll admit, I stash candies in any pockets that I have, because I know one of the times that I actually fell out, I was actually at my sister’s and it was Christmas Eve. We were sitting, talking about what we’re gonna cook, and all of the sudden I went into this catatonic state. She was trying to get my attention and I wasn’t coming out of it, and one time she poked me, I just literally sideways out of the chair. The next thing I know, I wake up in the emergency room, I got her screaming at me, “I’m going to fucking kill you!” And I’m like, “wow, hold on. First of all, where am I, what happened?” And the doctor called me and said, oh yeah, the thing that got you here- your blood sugar dropped a ton. And I’m going, “what?” I mean, it’s not fun.Anya // I’m not gonna lie, it’s scary seeing my mom’s blood sugar drop so low that she can’t move. One time we were at a hotel room, her blood sugar was so low, she kept trying to fall asleep, but she could have gone into a coma right then and there.Quinn // And they expect you to be able to get to the office when you’re in that state?Anya // They don’t understand that.Bre // Or have somebody run down- there’s not enough time. There’s not enough time, there’s no time to waste. My dad’s diabetic. I’ve lived around it. There is no time at all to waste when it comes to diabetes.Anya // My father has gotten sleep apnea, and there’s been a few times where my mom has woken him up cuz he wasn’t breathing.Quinn // I wanted to also bring up how the shelters won’t give you medicine. I’m pretty sure that they’re not even allowed to give you stuff like painkillers. They say it’s because, “it would be a liability”, but let’s be real, that’s not a good reason to not do something, just them being scared.Bre // Ibuprofen…Quinn // Tylenol…Bre // Really? Something you could easily have on hand to make somebody at that shelter a little less irritable, you know.Kat // One of the things that got me, especially with me having food allergies too, I got the printout from the […] and it said what my food allergies and medications were, and I showed it to one staff member because I was looking for the manager at Sally. And they were like, “oh, all these medications you got, you gotta turn them in, you gotta ask us for them.” And I’m like, “oh, no”.Matvei // Unfortunately, Housing Last was unable to receive a comment from Salvation Army in time for this episode’s release.Anya // One of the things that I’ve experienced a lot of is mental health. A lot of people think that mental health does not take a big part, but it does. And, for the amount that of mental health that I’ve experienced, it’s a lot. Like, anybody that was in my graduating class, they would not be able to handle this shit. The first day, they would be crying for permission to go home. And that’s one of the things that I did not do. I’ve experienced a lot in my life.Anya // There was this one time in middle school, I was close to actually killing myself because… I’m not gonna go into too much of why, but mostly because of things going at home and school, it was just all piling up, and it did not make me feel seen, I just wanted to die right there. I was literally thinking of ways that I could kill myself. And the only reason I didn’t was because of my cat, because I’m his person. He bonded with me, I don’t know why, but he bonded with me very strongly. And, he’s literally my entire world. If I didn’t have him, I would be dead.Kat // That’s how most animals are- they seek out the ones hurting the most and they try to heal them.Anya // And it’s hard being in the shelter, because I don’t have my cat. I had to put him in foster homes, I had to switch him out 4 times already. And I’ve been close to getting rid of him. A lot of people experience depression, that’s one of the biggest things. Because, in the situation that we are in, it’s hard to not be depressed, not wonder where we’re gonna be in five years.Anya // Or even next week. And one of the things that I’ve experienced most is depression and suicide. I’ve thought a lot about killing myself a few times that I’ve been here, and my friends have helped a lot, my cat helped. And, it’s… mental health is one of the things that people don’t really talk about. It’s pushed aside, most people just ignore it, and I find that really heartbreaking…Bre // They just see as something that didn’t exist back in their day.Anya // They see it as something that’s not important but it is.Kat // And now, with the way they treat it, it’s like “oh, everybody’s got mental health issues. Get over it.” But it doesn’t work like that.Anya // It’s not something you can just get over overnight.Kat// And I understand where you’re coming from- when I was just a few years younger than you, and I was grateful… I myself was a drug addict, because I was hanging out with my older relatives, and they got stuck babysitting me. My dad, didn’t even know how seriously screwed up I was. And when he found out, it broke his heart, it really did. I spent 6 months in the in-treatment program, and the one thing I still kick myself for every day is that I didn’t realize how sick my father was. A few weeks after I got out of drug rehab, about a month after I turned 14, I lost my dad to lung cancer. And then three months after that, I lost my grands, and they were the ones that raised me. Being set adrift in the world, and you’re trying to navigate it, before you’re an adult, it’s hard. It really is. And that plays into the whole depression and everything, you know.Quinn // And now, there have been a couple times when I tried to kill myself.Quinn // I struggle also with depression and suicidal ideation since […] my dad died. Since being homeless, I’ve had a few episodes where I’ve wanted to do it. It was like, “I’m going to do it.” But I would stop myself , thankfully. It’s hard.Bre // I applaud anybody’s perseverance to be in this lifestyle and still keep going. Because it is incredibly difficult.Kat // That’s what this resilience is all about. I like to be there for people that really need that. Need somebody just to listen to them.Bre // Everybody needs somebody.Anya // And I have a friend… I’ve been friends with her for five years, and she was an addict, and there was one time she literally took almost every single drug in the book, and were in the shelter for the night, getting ready to go bed… She was on the floor almost, quite literally, dead. And they had to rush her to the hospital. And she came to me the next day, she was mad at me, and [inadible- cut] she started crying, because she did not want to be here anymore. I think that night, she was trying to kill herself, I really do.Anya // It’s hard to see my friends, including my boyfriend, say that they did not want to be here, they want to just crawl up and die. And it’s hard seeing people I love wanting to be dead.Bre // And on top of that, you’re feeling that pain, kind of bricks on your chest. Most of us at the shelter, we are empaths, we feel real deeply, real intensely, and when we see somebody that we care about going through something that they don’t know they’re gonna make it through, we take on that pain with them. I’ve been told, you know, “worry about yourself.” Worry about yourself?! I can’t worry about myself when I’m feeling their pain on top of mine. So it’s our shared pain at that point. I’m going to do everything to not only be there for myself, but be there for them. Because, if they have nobody else for them, they’re going to think that they’re alone. And that’s something you don’t want somebody to feel- alone. Because when they feel like nobody is going to care if they’re gone.Anya // And that’s what I’ve done a few times- I’ve pushed aside my pain in order to help my friends get through theirs.Quinn // I’m an empath too, and I’ve been doing the same- I’m not going to say names, but I have a friend who’s in the mental hospital right now and nobody is there visiting her. So I feel like it’s on me to visit her. And, she wants me to focus on myself, and I’m trying to also focus on myself, trying to doublethink it, but I can’t just focus on myself entirely. You’re my friend, I care about you. And the fact that you’re in this situation, it makes me sad. So I want to be there for you, that makes me feel better, to be there for you.Quinn // She’s going through a lot. And I want there to be there for her as much as I can- “hey, I actually understand you. I know a lot of people don’t , but I do. We’re best friends, and I mean that. I mean that we’re best friends, that we’re going to stick through this together. I mean that I’m here for you, that I understand you.Anya // It’s hard, but it’s also helped me a lot with what I’ve had to go through, and honestly it has helped me… Before I ever became homeless, I didn’t really know anything about the streets, I didn’t really know the city, I didn’t know how to get my way around. But when I did become homeless, I started hanging out with my friends, I started to learn so much about being a junkie, an addict, an alcoholic, and how to find my way around the city. I feel like it has helped me a lot, to learn, it has helped with my experience of being 18 and homeless.Bre // There are good, honest people in these shelters. Talented.Anya // Very.Bre // I mean, I paint. I love to paint. I make amazing works of art. I want everyone’s talents to be seen. I want everyone to be heard. And I am glad that you guys are here being heard. This is y’all using your voices, and that’s the number one talent a person can have is their voice, and speaking up, and standing up for what’s right. And at the end of the day, no one can take your voice away from you. This isn’t The Little Mermaid, okay? You keep your voice. Don’t let anybody ever take that away from you.Kat // Besides your dignity and your respect for yourself.Bre // And don’t ever let anybody ever bring you down. Anybody. At the end of the day, nobody should ever matter more to yourself than you.Bre // At the end of the day, it’s what you think about yourself that matters more than anybody else that you think matters.Bre // You got to love yourself.Anya // You got to love yourself before you can love anybody else.Kat // What’s the old saying? Opinions are like A-holes, everybody’s got one. It’s like yeah okay, that’s your opinion.Bre // Doesn’t mean it’s always right.Kat // Yeah, it doesn’t mean nothing to me because my opinion is what matters most.Bre // We’re living our truth.Kat // That’s the thing.Bre // I had wrote on the computer. We had a webcam right between these two words and it says, “stay true.” That way any time I’m on there, I see these words “stay true.” Because I wouldn’t want to live a lie.Kat // I’ve got a rock that’s in my rolling suitcase packed up in my locker back at Sally , and it’s like this iridescent perfectly square rock with a snail on it. And it’s got this glitter paint, and the snail’s rainbow and everything else, and it’s got glitter paint over it. But the one thing is at the top, and my late husband used to always say that about me. “I’m a resilient person.” No matter what happens, I’m resilient. I look at that every now and then, and I can hear his voice. And it’s like, I’m trying. I’m trying to put that one foot in front of the other, but sometimes it gets hard. It really does.Quinn // I think it was Bre who said this, we’re a population. We are a whole population of this country.Anya // There’s this one quote. It goes, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” And ever since I found out that quote, it’s been my favorite quote. I have part of it on my class ring to help remind me to be the change that I want to see in the world. And I think one of the changes right now is being this, having a voice, sharing what it’s like to be homeless and giving another perspective.Quinn // I agree. I want that, too.Lindberg // Hey, this is Lindberg from You’ve been listening to “Housing Last”, a community-driven podcast exploring what stands in the way of ending homelessness in Dane County.Matvei // If this was a valuable experience for you, please share it with a friend. If you got no friends, you can drop us a dollar on Patreon. If you’re unable to support us financially, say hi to us when you see us.
Carveal // I’ve watched guys who don’t even drink, now they’re absolute alcoholics. If they don’t have a drink in the morning, now they’re sick like they’re heroine addicts. Young guys, old guys, like bro how did you turn around and be 45 and then get turned into an alcoholic? Like, you’ve been to college and everything so the parties and stuff, and you weren’t like this last year, or a couple months ago.This is Carveal. You’ve heard him in Episodes 3 and 4.Carveal // No bro, you’re killing yourself. And I’m seeing it, it’s people who’s got them, “here, bro, c’mon drink with me.” “no, I’m a working guy, I’m accustomed to waking up in the morning and having a cup of coffee and being active.” And now I’ve been turned into an alcoholic that’s waking up to a pint before 8’am and it’s 7:30.Precise and recent statistics on unhoused people in Dane County are lacking, but the general estimate is that around 1 in 6 people have a substance use disorder.Peter // And they kind of give up. If people are all day long at a place like Safe Haven or the Beacon, they’re only confronted with that reality, so they’re more likely to give up. They don’t see people that switched or managed to get something good out of it. They’re seeing that stagnant reality where nothing changes.This is Peter. He first appeared in the fourth Episode.Peter // And it’s easy to give up. For me, it’s one of the worst things about being homeless: seeing those place and having the idea that one day, you get used to it and accept it. Because, that’s when you’ve basically given up.Peter// People get housing, and they F it up, so to speak, within very short time. Because, it’s almost like they can’t live otherwise. You hear very similar things about jail- people, when they get out, they want to go back in, because they don’t know how to live outsideUnhoused people are not a monolith- but they do struggle with motivation and substance use at higher rates than those privileged with housing security. In Episode 4, we explored how the service system enables and perpetuates homelessness. Today, we will focus on what it’s like to be in the sand trap of homelessness.Karla // Last week we were averaging 320 people, depends on the ratio of case managers to clients.This is Karla Thennes, Executive Director of Porchlight Inc., operator of Dane County’s men’s emergency overnight shelter. Currently, Porchlight is overwhelmed- and so are the other shelters.Shawn // The facility was designed for 125-150 guests per day. We’re averaging 240-260, one day we had 305, in August.This is Shawn Carney, Executive Director of Catholic Charities, which are the contractor for the Beacon, Madison’s daytime shelter.Ryan // Places like safe haven that are more affordable transitional housing, it’s also a dayshelter and that’s a huge problem.This is Ryan, you also heard him in Episode 4. Safe Haven is a day shelter for adults with mental illness.Ryan // I’ve been going there often and it’s honestly kind of sad. I went there this Saturday and there was only this one lady working there keeping track of this place making sure nobody was messing around, fighting, doing illicit drugs. They’ve honestly gotten a lot worse.Casey // The budget that we’re in now, we’ve advocated for increased funding for the Beacon so they can advocate for more case managers.This is Casey Becker.Casey // The Division that I manage is Housing Access & Affordability Division, and our division holds contracts for services that hold homelessness and prevent home ownership, and also support economic development. That funding ended up getting erased because the Beacon lost another major funding source in the same year. So instead of being able to expand services, we had to maintain the services we already have.Currently, the shelter system is experiencing a two-fold crisis: resource scarcity and clientele overflow.Shawn // When you get to that level of individuals coming through there per day, it gets difficult to provide the basic level of services.Karla // when we started in 2024, the county gave us funds for 2 additional case managers, for all of 2024.Karla // I can’t say, “I need 1:10 ratio” because I don’t have room for 50 case managers.Many unhoused people spend significant amount of their day within the shelters, and the conditions of the shelter environments significantly impact their wellbeing.Ed // I’ve talked to several men who have said that, probably women as well, that they had good health as did I, before I got here.This is Ed from Ep 4. To provide privacy, his voice has been edited.Ed // Now all that shit is going around, I just went through 5 months, no kidding, of this bronchial effect, this bronchial problem that’s been going around, and it is rampant in there still. It’s supposed to be a seasonal thing, it’s perpetual in there.Allie // we did stage a direct action against porchlight last year… that was organized by some porchlight tenants based on the living conditions at porchlight properties.This is Allie from Madison Tenant Power, a collective defending tenant rights to decommodified housing, fair leases, timely repairs, and safe living conditions.Allie // it’s a known fact that most of the properties that porchlight runs have some sort of safety hazard: roaches, rodents…High population density and lack of resources create unsanitary environments. But conditions within the shelters tend to be generally harmful, with or without overwhelm.Peter // Once [food poisoning] got all the coworkers, because I was working for 6 months at the shelter as a volunteer, and there were 3 or 4 friends of mine that had basically severe stomach problems, diarrhea, for three days ongoing.This is Peter, you’ve heard him in Episode 4.Peter // I grew up in Italy with good food, and I think the food in the jail as bad as torture. If you want to torture people, you give them that kind of food. Some people wouldn’t feed their cats, dogs, with food of that quality. One of the worst things, I’ve never had anything like that. It wasn’t just me, many got it. Some of the people that were working, many of the guests… Food that is very bad. I’ve been at shelter for over 2 years, and i really don’t recommend it. it’s bad food, it’s stuff stolen, you don’t sleep well, the showers are really bad, you can’t even clean yourself there, and of course no one is gonna get motivated.Scarcity extends in multiple directions within the shelter network. As a result, the environment becomes damaging to its tenants.Carveal // My first night coming into men’s overnight shelters, and I already got my past trauma- as a kid, I used to get in trouble. So I was locked up a lot, and yeah, going into that men’s shelter felt like going into county jail. And the environment reminded me of county jail, it’s worse than county jail. I’m from Chicago. The county jail that I’m accustomed to is pretty rough…Brian // The system is not meant to encourage family.This is Brian. He’s the founder of the “Homeless Romantic” Initiative, which you can find on Facebook.Brian // I’d rather give my kids up than talk about the family shelter. I love my kids but.. I don’t want my pet to struggle with me. I’d rather fix it and move on. It’s an unhealthy environment. I’ve seen children, pets, significant others, people who want to bring others along with them, and it’s the worst thing on the planet. I don’t want to ever have my family in this environment.Harmful conditions affect the physical and mental wellbeing of the shelter’s tenants. And when people are held in the shelter system for months or years, they become drained.Carveal // If you don’t want incidents to where you could be having words with something or turn into a physical altercation, you have to have an endurance. And most people don’t. I’ve watched people that came in like they were saints, and that endurance didn’t last long, the stamina wasn’t there. And before you know it, they had words and now it’s a full-blown fight because you’ve been dealing with it for so long, like “okay, I’m gonna keep my rationability, my composure, I’m gonna be mature. Obviously you have a condition.” And then, so much of it is exhausting, and you’re like, “I can’t contain myself, I’m not a machine.The constant accumulation of stress from the shelter system leads to traumatizing experiences.Carveal // You’re homeless, so that’s a dysfunctionality. And, yeah, you might not have condition on paper but just the fact that you’re dealing with this situation, that you don’t have a roof over your head has you with a condition undiagnosed. You know, the trauma is there. The trauma is there.As the everyday life of shelter clients fills with trauma, they struggle to find the drive to change their conditions.Peter // Not being supervised, they turn themselves into worse problem, or amplify themselves. Mixing all those people in the same rooms, if they don’t get any help, they basically end up making each other worse and causing more problems amongst themselves. They should not be having people living there for 3-4 years, living in the same dull and mind-rotting monotony. it doesn’t yield any results, it what gets them down and accustomed to that lifestyle, they basically accept it.The shelter environment deprives its tenants of drive and motivation. And that enables self-destructive behavior.Peter // You get 1000 dollars, you should go towards rent, not buying things that last for 2 days. majority people, when you don’t see them… it’s understandable, people need ways to cope, but that doesn’t solve the problem. immediate need, but you never gonna solve the problem They can work a couple of days well, get the first paycheck, and then decide to do a lot of partying and not show up at the job again. It’s a reality that I’ve seen many times at work. I worked two times for a temp agency, and that was steady work, but I saw people coming and going way too often. That’s the reality sometimes, they get the chance but don’t take it.Carveal // It’s a sand trap, being in these places, as far as in regards to the Beacon, or Porchlight. Because, it’s an institute. You’re being programmed to institutionalization and all that’s around you. And before you know it, you misprioritize what you should spend your money on. I’m watching these guys, they get lost and they’re hanging out with each other, and they forget their priorities. And then they resent thyself, and then they misprioritize again, because of the negative influences… Yeah, some of these guys, they get on social security, you know, and that be 1200, 1500 bucks. Game-changing money, you know, you could do something about your situation with that money. And they’re lost it, they’re blowing it.The cycle of degradation within shelter conditions pulls people into behaviors that resemble the stigmatized stereotypes of homelessness.Carveal // The drinking is really bad, and it’s a drinking town, it always has been. WI is a drinking state. But even with the 9pm cap on when you can buy alcohol, the alcohol is so damaging in Madison, when it comes to the homeless. They’re drinking to numb the pain of the reality that they’re dealing with, and they’re very sensitive people. And then they gotta wake up and look themselves in the mirror behind the night, what they did previously. And they’re ashamed. They don’t want to feel that shame and they’re back drinking. And they get lower and lower and just give up and don’t care no more. This is it. I can see it in them, they feel like they can’t get up.Those drained by the shelter environments for prolonged periods of time are at risk of self-destructive surrender. And the broader homelessness service system fails to intervene.Tyler // Because I’ve been going to the Beacon on and off, every time I’m there it’s just people sitting there or sleeping that’s not being productive. Just sitting there all day for 8 hours, doing nothing. Half of the time it’s fights, police is there, the ambulance is there too. What’s just going on? Because I remember, three years ago, they had, “you wanna get a job? Bet, somebody will be right there with you. You want an application done? A staff member will sit right there with you?..” That’s how it used to be at the Beacon , it used to be so good.This is Tyler. He was a part of Episode 4.Tyler // Food Stamps do what they need to do. I just wish that the other people that would come in would be like, “hey, I’m from this organization, I’m here to help you”, and not just set up and sit there and do nothing for 2 hours. Cuz then, yeah, we’re gonna give you a look like, “who the hell are you, why are you here? We don’t know you.” You gotta make yourself known.Peter // Those places… looks like they send people there to give up, not hope to climb out of it. It’s almost the last stage, a place like that would have the chance to, “let’s see those people, how we can help each one individually.” I don’t see to much of that happening. I see the same people staying there for three years, and not managing to change their life. It looks like a bit of the opposite of what it should be.Ed // At one point, I was told by the local cops, “stop calling us about these things”. They don’t want to hear about noise complaints, and they don’t want to hear about when the heat goes out in the apartments. Every time there is a cold snap. She told my social worker, “we don’t want to hear about that anymore.”Ed // they like to punish you here if you speak out.The scarcity of resources within the shelter system creates a damaging environment. These conditions put at risk people’s ability to lift themselves up. And instead of giving a hand, the broader service system deepens the sand trap.It’s important to note that certain services within the network are successfully supporting their clients. The system as a whole is not representative of its individual parts- and we will explore them in later episodes.Peter // The Solstice House, it was basically when very cold days of the winter were happening, I found out about this place on Milwaukee St by E Washington. And they allow for people to stay for 5 days. There were lots of the guests that were actually speaking to the staff. I remember myself involved in the conversations, and that was an actually helpful experience. Speaking to people who care about who’s there, they want’ to get to know you and your situation specifically. Not when you’re just one of the 250 guys and they want to get you done and move to the next day.But services that provide more support than harm are scarce and overfilled. Majority of Dane County’s unhoused population exists within the degrading conditions of the shelter system.Kyler // I fully know that some of these property managements that get their clients from Beacon, know that their clients are going to jail, and plot on kicking them out, knowing that they’re going to jail.This is Kyler from Episode 4.Kyler // How discouraging does that sound? I’ve heard, people keeping residents to get the rest of the court money, and when the court money ran out, now they kick them out.The negligence within the service system enables exploitation.Carveal // The money is there, and they go and do what they want with it, and then demand more and say, “we’re doing this, that…” They have their token moments, they have their token people- “well, here’s John, we’ve known John for some time now, and we help him a lot.” And John is the revolving door guy. Because you’re not really getting John no help, he’s got a condition. He’s an addict and an alcoholic, so he’s gonna keep getting kicked out because he’s not getting no real help because he keeps turning his apartment or whatever you house him at into the spot and now you kick him out. Now he needs your guys’ help all over again, because you’re not really helping him. You’re putting a bandaid on a broke arm.Peter // i don’t think they want everyone in a house because from what i understand, the more people need their services the better they get paid.
Carveal // When it comes to the homelessness, I think that during the pandemic, a lot of people lost their stability, and with that being said, all the scammers, and the activist crowds, the organizations that are helping with the charity and what not, it’s become a business, to help the poor. Like police, if there’s no violence, no need for policing, then they’re out of the job. so things happen, things to stimulate you, “oh yeah, we need more law enforcement”.Pearl // Porchlight has continued to grow, and get funding from the city and county, without much oversight. and the city and county know that there is issues, but because they are a monopoly, there are no other large orgs willing to take over some of the services.This is Pearl from Madison Homeless Union, a collective serving hot meals to unhoused people on State Street.Pearl // When they put out the RFP for the new overnight shelter, Porchlight was the only one to offer… Porchlight is the largest nonprofit who oversees homeless services, and so there isn’t another entity.According to officials of Dane County and City of Madison, the service system receives substantial oversight to prevent negligence.Satya // the city has a relatively rigorous process to track and hold accountable the orgs that we fundThis is Madison’s Mayor, Satya Rhodes-Conway.Satya // we understand both who we are serving and what services they are offering for the funds that we are providing them.Casey // we care about the folks that we serve and we want the services to be excellent for them. at the heart of that, there is a lot of shared value there. our folks wake up every day with that at the top of their mind.Housing Last is unable to determine where in the chain of command negligence takes place. But there is a disconnect between the expectations and realities of the services’ operation.Carveal // There’s no accountability back there, there’s no accountability at the Beacon. And people are aware of it, and it’s enabling.The unhoused people within Dane County struggle to find sufficient support within the service system. Therefore, reform proposals circulate within the community.Peter // an alternative: pairing up w/ people who got out…Ryan // we need more people who do social work, healthcare, care support specialists. It’s not something people think about unless you’ve gone through that trauma. [personal family story]The proposals share an emphasis on compassion and community: the two crucial factors for the persistence of unhoused people.Ryan // it’s just mostly the fact that are mostly mismanaging resources. We have a couple places around madison that sort of go about mental health in their own different way, but not a lot of them know about each other. I’m still learning about newer and newer resources and i was just able to get into a problem.Unhoused people often receive more support from their peers than from the system- and want the service network to build on, rather than erode the foundation of community and connection.Ed // We bitch a lot every day. You go right in the morning for that first smoke, or the other breaks, and people are just bitching up a storm, and I finally said to one guy, “you know, we can bitch all we want to, but it would be so much more effective if we could actually band together, have some kind of a coalition, or some force behind us.”
Micah // when we are talking about building relationships with organizations, there’s a way we need to do that work within ourselves sometimes. when we are going to be working in community with another organization, and asking how we can help one another, having the resilience of knowing what can we actually do, what’s within your limits, the skills you already have… the work we do within our organization are the building blocks of solidarity with organizations.This is Micah from Community Kitchen, a community-powered collective that cooks and delivers meals to unhoused neighbors in Minneapolis.Micah // one of the things that i think makes community kitchen really special is that we’ve been working hard on becoming less hierarchical and more including all in decision making. there is also a piece of community support within the organization, i think that’s what separates a grassroots organization from a charity.You’re listening to housing last, a community-driven podcast exploring what stands in the way of ending homelessness in Dane County. Today, 5 grassroots collectives will share their blueprints on tackling homelessness from the bottom up. The groups come from Minneapolis and Greater Boston, where struggles against homelessness relate to those of Dane County. By exploring how communities elsewhere build resilience in face of poverty and oppression, we aim to discover new blueprints towards sustainable and community-driven solutions of homelessness in Dane County.Before we begin, we want to acknowledge that this episode was a collective effort. We want to thank Kristen B for transcribing the interviews. The narrative was designed by myself and Matvei. We are honored to blend the stories of Warm Up Boston, Witch City Action, Freedom Fighters Coalition, Sisters’ Camelot, and Community Kitchen Minneapolis. Our platform is sustained by the broader Patreon community- which you can join for free at patreon.com/housinglast. I am your host, Isabelle, and thank you for listening. Let’s step into this conversation together.Miguel // We’re not a charity, a non-profit. There’s a reason people join Warm Up Boston and not a shelter or a soup kitchen, because we see things beyond that model. Obviously that hasn’t worked. They’ve been at it for quite some time and homelessness is still here.This is Miguel from Warm Up Boston, a “radical survival program that serves the unhoused community”. Like Community Kitchen, Warm Up recognizes the the current system is incapable of ending homelessness.Miguel // One of the things about Boston is we have the second highest rate of homelessness out of all other major cities. Of course, other major cities are much bigger than us and have bigger numbered populations but per capita, Boston is number two, either last year or recently. And you could look into why that is and a lot of people especially like on the right will always point to drug use or mental health conditions. But Boston has lower rates of drug use and mental health conditions than any other– a lot of other cities have higher rates. So it doesn’t correlate very well. What does correlate and what’s been shown to cause homelessness is affordable housing. And affordable housing in Boston is pretty difficult to come by. It’s one of the most expensive housing markets in the country.Brad // much of what the city is doing has to do with tackling the market-rate housing. That’s going to be for people with stable incomes who are not coming from situations of homelessness.This is Brad Hinkfuss, Executive Director of Housing Initiative, a nonprofit that provides permanent, supportive housing for those experiencing mental illness and homelessness.Brad // There are bits and pieces in there that try to address homelessness, but those projects tend to include… Let’s say you have a building that’s gonna have 100 units, there are maybe 10-15 that are set aside for lower income. not necessarily homeless, just lower-income. So, the larger housing picture, while an emergency in itself, the portions of that that address homelessness tend to that around the edges… certainly there are some lower-income people being served, but they are not buy n’ large people who have experienced homelessness…While Brad talks about Madison, same things can be said about Boston’s approach to “affordable” housing.Miguel // Last year Governor Healey passed a housing bond bill and a lot of people were celebrating that. It’s estimated to bring 60,000 housing units over some amount of time. And even with these new housing units on the market, they’re still going to come with a price tag. And that’s not going to help people who are surviving on the street. It will be a little easier for people who are already in housing.In Episode 4, we explored why people struggle to survive on the streets in Dane County. We noted systematized violence as a major source of harm.Pearl // the current mayor, and the mayor before that are strongly anti-homeless. we saw that with reindahl park…This is Pearl from Madison Homeless Union, a collective serving hot meals to unhoused people on State Street. Pearl also appeared in Episodes 4 and 6.Pearl // the Madison’s mayor wants to sweep homeless under the rug, we can house people in the men’s shelter and the salvation army, and also the jail.Miguel // The city and the state just generally do not want them on this land and the sweeps are a way to make this as miserable and painful a place to live as possible.Housing crisis and systematized violence are policy choices. And discriminatory policy is enabled by the broader cultural stigmatization of homelessness.Miguel // There definitely is a lot of anti-homeless sentiment in Boston. They do get a lot of calls, especially for fires. Literally people trying to keep warm outside is an excuse for someone to call the police and have them swept. And it’s completely ridiculous. How do you evict someone who’s already evicted? It’s one of the most morally indefensible things you can be doing.Miguel // There are several people that I've met in the very first encampment that i served at, where i just watched their mental health decline, and what the systems and the jail have done to them, and the amount of trauma harm that… I'm not sure they’ll be able to heal from this. And this is what these systems are doing. There is a lot of harm, and I'm not seeing a whole lot of help.Carveal // When it comes to the homelessness, I think that during the pandemic, a lot of people lost their stability, and with that being said, all the scammers, and the activist crowds, the organizations that are helping with the charity and what not, it’s become a business, to help the poor.Peter // i don’t think they want everyone in a house because from what i understand, the more people need their services the better they get paid.This is Carveal and Peter from Episode 6. While their claims oversimplify the operational nature of the charity complex, Carveal and Peter highlight an inefficiency within the system: it’s current design prohibits it from resolving homelessness. Housing Last will explore these trends in a later episode- and in the meantime, we recommend the book “The Revolution Will Not Be Funded”.Miguel // The reason that homelessness isn’t the top concern, the top priority of every government, state agency, is because this economic system requires people to be homeless. It requires unemployment. That’s how it runs.Despite oppressive circumstances, unhoused people persist- and so do the communities that choose to stand in solidarity with them.Skylar // The reason I’m not homeless or anybody I know isn’t homeless is because we have support systems, and we have friends we can count on. We have these relationships with people outside of our immediate sphere that can help us.This is Skylar, an organizer with Witch City Action, a direct action coalition in Salem, Massachusetts, for and by the homeless community.Skylar // And so, the reason why people who couch surf are technically homeless but they’re not, is because they have the relationships and friends, and that is the sort of thing that’s completely falling through for people who end up homeless.As existing policies become increasingly insufficient, communities thread their own safety nets.Miguel // The world is getting a lot scarier and so people are turning to organizations to find a community to fight back.Skylar // The vision that I had when I wanted to start WCA is that homeless action would be accessible to people and people stopped being scared of homeless people. My hope was that we would be able to build friendships with these people and kind of be the types of people that would be willing to stick their neck out for someone. And, I think that if we could change the way people think about these things, or help people access their family members they’re estranged from or access the friends they haven’t seen in a while to help them out, we would be able to actually solve it in a long-term way, so that people care about each other more and would be willing to help.Compassion-based relationships are crucial to the resiliency of communal safety nets. Our collectives take it a step further.Micah // We got so lucky. Organizations then started developing relationships with churches, and our relationship has been very supportive. They care about what we are doing and organize volunteers and way to support us. Other organizations often find that the churches realize it is not as fun or easy as they thought it would be, maybe it could be a mess or someone comes to the church that we do not know what to do about. Our relationship is really special. Part of our relationship being special is we have put a lot of work into communicating why what we do is important, and why we do it in the way we do. The church is a really special community we’ve connected with.The collectives’ foundational principles empowered them to flourish a tight-knit yet expansive communal network that Dane County’s homelessness service system is yet to form. By examining the blueprints of Community Kitchen, WarmUp Boston, Witch City Action, and two other collectives, we aim to synergize our own efforts in the fight towards housing justice.Skylar // The biggest ethos about Witch City Action is that we were the organization that was trying to make sure that the people who are being impacted by these laws were directly represented. When we try to figure something out, we try to ask the homeless community first and foremost.Witch City Action and the rest of the collectives base their priorities on the needs of the communities they serve.Skylar // One of the asks that we had when first starting out a couple years ago: somebody was living in a car. She was like, “you know what would be really nice? If I was able to do my laundry.” And she came up with the idea of us doing laundry day, where we would take bags of laundry, take them to the laundry, wash them and return them. And this was something that we did throughout the entirety of the encampment, when it was around: every Saturday of the month, we would go down there and take everyone’s laundry and trash bags, take them to the laundromat, and bring them back. A same-day laundromat. That was directly because one of our unhoused members wanted their laundry to get done. Those kind of things, we are able to know exactly what the community wants, and act on it. Things have changed since the encampment got swept, but now we do laundry cards, and we still fundraise for laundry day every month.This type of “call and response” listening leads to needs-based organizing, ensuring that their communities’ needs and wants are met precisely.Micah // It’s hard to make a meal they’re asking for, but let’s find a way. How can we think about the small things that bring people the feeling of being cared for with what we have. Yes, we are meeting this basic need for them, but we can also be connected.Once you listen — really listen — you can learn your community’s direct needs. That knowledge enables informed and efficient action.Skylar // Our quorum… there are at least 2 homeless people voting at every vote. So, I feel like this kind of makes sure we’re never… Because the thing about charities is that they kind of tend to decide for people what’s best for them. And that’s what we’ve seen, that’s been making the shelter system in our town kind of fail- there were some very easy things that could have been done if they had listened to the homeless community that we advocated for… They changed it, and it worked. So, by making sure that we have a platform for homeless people in town exclusively, we cannot make any organizational decision without them, our focus stays in what we’re actually trying to do, instead of getting caught up in keeping information from them.By grounding their communal ties in transparency, the collectives build integral trust. That further deepens the positive impact of every action Skylar’s community chooses to take.Skylar // We’ll be able to provide food or money for transportation, and they’ll return the favor by giving us concrete information about what’s going on in the shelter, or policy actions that they want changed, and what actions they want to see. It’s this very good cycle of getting quick feedback. We always know what’s going on in the city before it happens, or mostly in the shelter before it happens. We’re able to move much more quickly as a political organization because of our mutual aid- they trust us and we trust them. These personal relationships that we have with the people who get services are unbelievably valuable because those are the people that drive us and give us the information of what, how, and when we do things.Building radically trustful relationships is more than an impactful decision. It’s about building a model that is exponentially greater than the sum of its parts.Cole // Pretty much all of our money that we get as an organization goes directly into the [work]. All of our funding comes from donations and from grant writing. And the other thing I would say that’s unique is that our main currency besides that is that we are working with almost exquisitely trash that was being thrown in dumpsters. Like large quantities of that.This is Cole, an organizer with Sister’s Camelot in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Their focus is food justice and providing organic groceries to the community.Cole // We do between two and eight thousand pounds of groceries per week all year round. And it’s almost exclusively organic as well, which is just a real privilege.Micah // part of what makes our work possible is the organization twin cities food justice. we are so lucky to be coming in on the backs of what they have been doing. i have seen what they’ve been doing since I was a teenager with their sustainable farming work. they started partnering with organizations all over the twin city. i volunteer with them now, post-community kitchen. they have volunteers who can go to a bakery and grab extras and bring it to a shelter or site set up. we were able to connect with them so that we don’t have to pay for produce. this is also food that would have gone to waste otherwise, it is safe to serve but would get bad too soon for selling.Micah // there’s that beginning place where we already have some infrastructure in our city, which is a really incredible thing to think about. not only is there a need for organizations like community kitchen, who are serving unhoused people, but there are rooms in cities to have a space for these groundwork organizations.Grassroots collectives operate on a more local scale than the charity complex. To fully meet the needs of their communities, they must bridge their efforts.
Ernst // So I say all that to say I don’t necessarily have a huge group per say, and on the surface it may look like I do a lot by myself, but everything I do, I rely on support of others and I’m not coming up with the stuff I’m giving away, I’m not coming up with it myself. So, it’s ultimately it relies on the team work and the support of others. I lean on other people that I know that are doing the work, whether they are individuals or they belong to other entities that do similar work.This is Ernst, an organizer with Freedom Fighters Coalition, a collective based in Lynn, Massachusetts.Ernst // So if you want to do it on a bigger scale, yeah, try to link up with other people and try to find folks that have common ideas and morals and principles and get with them and try to figure out how you can help out folks in your community. Or if you don’t have the time or the capacity to go that big, just see how you can help somebody out on your day to day. But ultimately it’s just put out the energy.Cole // What I’ve noticed and heard in our group of people that we– the volunteer base plus the people we serve is that people feel really identified with Sisters Camelot as a place where they feel connected to serving the community and that feeling of feeling like there’s a way that we’re plugged into the larger group of community that that is actually an essential part of how people go from feeling– from having all the problems that are systemic to homelessness. Is it like people don’t have a sense of belonging and facility kind of on their own? And so we do provide that. It’s just a way that we do that, which is pretty important, but yeah, we don’t do policy work. We’re just trying to make it so that things don’t end up in the garbage and that is a very specific operation.Charity and policy work remain a lifeline for those experiencing homelessness. But their structure tends to limit opportunities for creating communal networks, and struggle to provide wholistic support to those experiencing homelessness. And this is where solidarity-based communities thrive.Ernst // With me, I don’t really have per say a target demographic. Honestly, anybody who needs any kind of support, in general, if I can offer some sort of assistance, I look to do that.While collectives like WarmUp Boston and Witch City Action serve specific communities, Ernst chooses to reach those between the gaps.Ernst // that was around the time that all the student-led groups were having the encampments on their campuses to talk about what was going on in the struggle in Palestine. And I was bringing those goods that you gave me and I was bringing them and I was distributing them to the different groups that were activated on their perspective campuses. So, that’s just an example. Like, I wasn’t going to turn you down and be like “hey, I’m not going to help you bridge the gap. I’m not going to help you deliver these goods to these students because they’re not homeless.” Not to say that other groups are like that, because I’ve seen them step up and help all kinds of people as well, but it just seems like they moreso have a direct focus and I moreso, if I have something you can use, feel free and have it.Freedom Fighters Coalition furthers the principle of listening to people’s needs. Having deep communal ties ensures that the network of solidarity-based collectives leaves no one behind.Ernst // If I see someone asking for help, either directly or indirectly, and I can help you, then I’m going to help you. Whether or not you really need the help, that’s not up for me to decide. I believe in energy and karma, so if you’re taking advantage of people who are being kind, then ultimately that won’t play out in your favor. I’m down to help anybody if I can help. Obviously it just comes down to consistency. I started during the pandemic when everything was just up in the air as far as how things were going to work out. And obviously mutual aid became a very big thing around that time. Coupled up with just being an empathetic person and going through some of my own hardships that I needed to rely on community to be able to help me out and once I was able to get to my feet, you know what I mean? Alright, I have to pay that forward. I gotta be able to help out other people.Once the gaps are filled, the next question becomes: how do we keep this going? How do we turn momentary relief into long-term power?Miguel // Having an organizational structure and having roles be defined and delegated and we always have a buddy with someone doing something. We have distro leads, we have two or three people helping kind of plan and coordinate our distros. We also have several committees like political education, we have two chairs to help with that. And having that redundancy is one of the most important ways we can help each other out and if someone needs to take time for themselves, they can know that they can take a step back and the work can continue.Having rigid yet flexible structure safeguards Warm Up from emergency stops. If one group is unable to finish something, another steps in.Ernst // If you’ve got less sets of hands to help you out, you can’t go about how perhaps you distribute aid the same. So maybe it goes from you had a group of people that you were going out with on a weekly basis to pass stuff out but now you don’t have those people but you know a community center that houses people that’s looking for support. Or you know another group that goes out weekly and does the same thing you are doing. You might not be able to actually physically be with them on that day of outreach, but you can reach out to that group beforehand and be like, hey, this is what I can offer y’all, or I see what you’re looking to get. I can get that for you. Where do we meet? And there you go. There’s the aid. You weren’t there to pass it out, but you got the goods to them, you gave it to an entity who is going to be able to pass it out for you, and now they’re doing the work. And you’re supporting them and they’re supporting the people and it’s like everybody at the end of the day is getting what they were looking for, in that aspect.These collectives lack the power to end homelessness. But the relational capacity allows the network to remain afloat regardless of the surrounding circumstances, extending the collectives’ action beyond reapplying the same bandaids.Cole // It’s great that people get fed from everybody’s organizations, but when you’re feeding them boxed mashed potatoes as opposed to a potato that doesn’t have any pesticides on it, those things are huge and that gap is really big when it comes to health and health outcomes, especially for people who are unhoused. To be able to feed unhoused people that kind of quality of food, there’s just this stigma around like “beggars can’t be choosers” or something, because you’re homeless you don’t get to have a good quality meal? You got to eat this white bread sandwich with some kind of deli meat you don’t even know what kind of animal is in there? I think that’s really a cool thing to think about and an important thing to think about when it comes to sort of just setting different standards for health, for equality of health that comes from food.Let’s pause here. Today, we’ve introduced 5 solidarity-based collectives from beyond Dane County. Next week, we will explore how the resilience of their network withstands the ever-growing oppression- and how their blueprints are being followed by a local collective in the heart of Madison. And yes, you’ve heard that right- not in two weeks, but next Wednesday.This episode was a collective effort. We want to thank Kristen B for transcribing the interviews. The narrative was designed by myself and Matvei. We are honored to blend the stories of WarmUp Boston, Witch City Action, Freedom Fighters Coalition, Sisters’ Camelot, and Community Kitchen Minneapolis. Our platform is sustained by the broader Patreon community- which you can join for free at patreon.com/housinglast. I was your host, Isabelle, and thank you for listening, truly. Talk to you soon.
Miguel // The reason that homelessness isn’t the top concern, the top priority of every government, state agency, is because this economic system requires people to be homeless. It requires unemployment. That’s how it runs.This is Miguel from WarmUp Boston, whom we’ve introduced in the previous episode, along with 4 other collectives- Sisters Camelot, Community Kitchen, Freedom Fighters Coalition, and Witch City Action.Miguel // We’re not a charity, a non-profit. There’s a reason people join Warm Up Boston and not a shelter or a soup kitchen, because we see things beyond that model. Obviously that hasn’t worked. They’ve been at it for quite some time and homelessness is still here.This week, we will explore how they’ve built resilience and compassion in face of systemic oppression.Before we begin, we want to acknowledge that this episode was yet another collective effort. We want to thank Kristen B for transcribing the interviews. The narrative was designed by Matvei and myself. Our platform is sustained by the broader Patreon community- which you can join for free at patreon.com/housinglast. I am Isabelle, your host for this episode, and thank you for listening. Let’s get talking.Cole // It makes a difference in the sense that we are a collective, that there are 7 members of the actual collective itself and there’s nobody anywhere who’s a director or a board. There’s not some person in charge or some people in charge.This is Cole. Like other collectives, Sisters Camelot structures themselves horizontally. As a result, every member moves with greater responsibility- and ambition.Cole // In a way the collective is in charge in the sense that we meet and make decisions together, but all those collective members are directly involved in the actual work that’s being down on the ground, which I feel is pretty unique. And nobody is getting paid… that part, there’s a lot of organizations that are tossing a lot of money around.De-hierarchized structure extends beyond the collectives’ inner circles- to the communities that they serve.Skylar // You can do research about this all day, but the reality is that what’s written down and how things are supposed to work is never how they work in reality. Because there are so many loopholes and so many of these weird little excuses that get made for people who have basically no rights, who are homeless, that you would never see if you weren’t with them, experiencing this alongside with them.This is Skylar with Witch City Action. By horizontalizing communal relationships, Witch City Action is able to deeply understand the struggles of their people.Skylar // …Just understand that they are the experts in their experience, and you should treat them with the reverence that you would have for a professor of homeless issues. They are the people who know what’s going on in the street. You have a lot more to learn from them than you have to teach them. One of the asks that we had when first starting out a couple years ago: somebody was living in a car. She was like, “you know what would be really nice? If I was able to do my laundry.” And she came up with the idea of us doing laundry day, where we would take bags of laundry, take them to the laundry, wash them and return them […] Those kind of things, we are able to know exactly what the community wants, and act on it.An accurate understanding of communal struggles allows Witch City Action to peak their efficiency.Cole // I think what affects that and specifically what attracted me to the organization of people is that they go out of their way to put themselves in every kind of food dessert that exists in the cities. Like they deliberately– first of all, they change it up as often as possible.Needs-driven action deepens the collectives’ community integration. And that further improves the efficiency of their actions.Cole // It’s not in one place. It’s constantly changing. And yeah, sometimes it’s like, definitely the third Tuesday of the month it’s in the northeast or whatever, something to that effect. But they really get themselves around, which I feel like is very important as far as the food share part is concerned.Ernst // If you’ve got less sets of hands to help you out, you can’t go about how perhaps you distribute aid the same. So maybe it goes from you had a group of people that you were going out with on a weekly basis to pass stuff out but now you don’t have those people but you know a community center that houses people that’s looking for support. Or you know another group that goes out weekly and does the same thing you are doing.This is Ernst with Freedom Fighters Coalition. Evolving the needs-based approach drives Ernst to collaborate with the greater community, creating a synergetic network of communal care.You might not be able to actually physically be with them on that day of outreach, but you can reach out to that group beforehand and be like, hey, this is what I can offer y’all, or I see what you’re looking to get. I can get that for you. Where do we meet? And there you go. There’s the aid. You weren’t there to pass it out, but you got the goods to them, you gave it to an entity who is going to be able to pass it out for you, and now they’re doing the work. And you’re supporting them and they’re supporting the people and it’s like everybody at the end of the day is getting what they were looking for, in that aspect.Reciprocal networks foster a commons of care that leaves the fewest needs unattended. But accelerating oppression challenges the communities to maintaining their commitment to solidarity.Miguel // The biggest part, or the biggest thing about mutual aid is how much work there is to do. It never ends. These people who are living outside, surviving outside, are in constant need of help. So there is always something to do. We have two distros every week and so it takes a lot of capacity, and that has been one of the major challenges with Warm Up BostonEscalating crises push the collectives to their limits, and maintaining solidarity becomes an avalanche of stress.Miguel // But starting last year, they definitely saw an increase in sweeps and we did what we could to show up there, support. We focus on saving as much of their belongings as possible, especially their personal documents, any special items that they have. And just to cut back on the amount of physical labor it is to move everything you own. It is grueling to be forced to just get up and leave. Especially when a lot of the residents we serve have disabilities, are older in age, and all that increases so much stress. It’s a traumatic event every single time.Despite chronic stress, the collectives uphold their momentum.Ernst // And when you need a break, you gotta figure out a way to keep it moving, because the people still need help, regardless of whether you need a break or not.Miguel // We do spend a lot of time listening to residents during sweeps. It’s definitely a lot of emotions. And we do our best just to be there and listen to them. We usually show up with coffee and breakfast sandwiches and even cigarettes to help reduce the stress. And it does help a little bit, but you can never take it fully away. It is a lot for us too, to hold that space for them.The collectives’ dedication to aiding their community is unwavering. But exhaustion accumulates, with detrimental consequences.Miguel // Burn out is always there, it’s always a possibility.Lindberg 0530 // as the rate has spiked over the last year, they’re all overwhelmed. they dont have time to be at the beacon all the time. they need to be elsewhere. they have an office… they cant send any of their staff to beacon… the homelessness field is extremely overwhelmed. they need more staffingThis is Lindberg from Dane County homelessness Justice Initiative. He is the former Community Liason at the Beacon, Dane County’s largest daytime shelter.Lindberg 0930 // the people who are working at the beacon are overwhelmed, they’re calling in sick a lot, a lot of people are quitting. the word gets out that it is not a good place to work, and then no one wants to work there. the problem is growing and growing.Micah // With organizations like this, there is an amount of urgency we all feel. We want so badly to fix this issue and to do it now.This is Micah from Community Kitchen.That urgency and stress leads to us treating each other horribly, like “you showed up to your shift 5 minutes late…” Or some people are not pulling their weight, something that can happen in activist spaces. That leads to a lack of spaces to listen to others since we are living in that stressed urgency place.Charities are being drained by burnout. Solidarity-based collectives share their challenges- but their communal resiliency allows them to adapt.Micah // By us having this relational space within our organization, we welcome one another. Ask why we are here, who we are. people keep coming then. When I first started my activism journey I wish I was able to think more about the warmth and kindness part. I grew up around that, my parents are hippies and activists. I remember thinking their warmth sometimes angered me, and I still have anger sometimes. But having both… It’s important. We need to be clear on what we do not tolerate but also think about what makes people think cared for and infuse that.Skylar // It’s interesting, you never really know what worked until it’s done, but it’s friendships that we’ve made and the actual community that we have now, is like nothing else I’ve ever had in my entire life.Grounded in compassion, solidarity-based collectives flow beyond survival and flourish upward resilience.Miguel // It is pretty incredible how much visibility we have. Our Instagram is one thing but over last year, we spent a lot of time tabling at events, at shows, and other block parties, things like that. We also have a lot of workshops on screen printing and zine making. So, having a lot of community events helps with that.WarmUp Boston strategize outreach towards communities already allied to the principles of solidarity-based organizing, multiplying the depth of their outreach.1500 // If we want to come, and are excited about coming… We bring others and think of how to build on this and be in community with others. what makes us feel powerful that political landscapes cannot? Many people, including me, started thinking “what else can I do? What else is there?” So one of the things I think is special about our org and others is that I feel excited about going. I look forward to it all week. I want to tell everyone I know about it. I tell my barista when I go the coffee shop. I tell my classmates, “this is this fun thing I do, and I would to have you along.” This brings the same ethos to the people we serve. Bringing that warmth and kindness and listening.Effectiveness of the collectives’ outreach roots deeper than targeting the right communities. The foundation of compassion inherently fosters belonging- and that makes the collectives a welcoming space for all.Micah // People are coming in — volunteers — and maybe they don’t have a space where they can be around other people that are masked. I came in, as an immunocompromised person, and felt like I would not have a social space where I could connect with others. Here people are coming in. Queer people are coming in who are away from home and are going to college. That relational piece is needed to then build out an organization that can be kind, understanding… Listen to others. When there is that within the organization.Community Kitchen prioritizes belonging, raising access to joining their struggle. That perpetually expands the breadth of their network.Miguel // We have been very lucky with the amount of people who have signed up for our distros over the past year. Starting with the beginning of 2024, we saw a huge increase in people wanting to help out and that means everything.Skylar // And that’s another thing I tried to do when I was starting WCA: try to be as open as humanly possible as much as there was to be open about. Because, we don’t really have to be secretive, using super cryptography… We don’t have to be writing this kind of undercover organization, when what we’re doing is feeding people lunch and doing their laundry. And so, it was important for me to prioritize getting contact information with unhoused people themselves. As opposed to using super secure channels of communication.By strategizing outreach within allied communities and widening points of access, the collectives blossom a diverse community. But greater vibrance can become chaotic.Micah // We are not a monolith ideologically. But I know everyone that is there because they care about people and want to make sure their basic needs are met. Maybe we don’t have the same language for the things we are doing, but we have the same knowledge. We care about the same thing — we need to make sure everyone’s basic needs are met and that they feel listened to and cared for.To synchronize communal differences, the collectives set an explicit and unifying intent.Skylar // We can organize with people who aren’t specifically leftists, which I think is really important- to be prepared to work with people who are not completely ideologically identical to you. Because a community is you and everyone who lives near you, and you have to be ready to organize people who aren’t completely on your side, but you have to be ready to get them on your side, or figure out what they can do next to you as opposed to with you.Prioritizing the impact of their efforts helps organizations synergize potential conflict into determined collaboration.Micah // There is lots of inter-community stuff of feeling frustrations with different generations. There can be push back and forth between queer youth and queer elders. I think there’s really a need in these spaces to have there be room for more than one generation to be there. And to think of the different ways we may be talking about the same ideas. And how to learn from them and share that thing. It is similar across generations. When I relate to activists from my parent’s generation they see things differently and approach them differently. But we can learn so much from them, about tactics, how to make things sustainable and keep a movement going for a long period. There are people in the twin cities who have been doing this work for a long time.Miguel // We take great care in encouraging how we communicate to each other and giving space for people. We all know that this is very new for everyone who shows up. A lot of times mutual aid is people’s first step into political action and we all show up here with so much to learn and to unlearn. And we really respect that and just give a lot of care in that.By achieving communal vibrancy, the collectives nourish an inexhaustible community.Ernst // Then they’re like, you know what, that’s something I was thinking about doing but now let me just join up with you and let’s work on this project and sometimes that’s just a one-off thing like let me help you get this aid to this single individual, or it’s been other times where the same people have reached out multiple times a year and they’re like, I want to help with this and I want to help with this.Preventing burnout is a two-part equation. One, the community must be broad enough to allow individuals to respite. And, opportunities for rest must be designed purposefully.Miguel // We’ve been surprisingly stable going through this. I think that’s made possible by the amount of people that we have. Being able to have that capacity to show up every week and for each individual member. Learning how much we can give to our neighbors and how much self care we need to give to ourselves, so that’s a very important project in itself.Relationships instilled with sustainable reciprocity build upward resiliency in face of an ever-increasing demand.
Skylar // I want to make it so that when you see a homeless person on the street, you feel personally responsible for helping them. Because you are, as a member of society with resources… this is somebody in your community that you should have ownership of.The collectives’ sustenance enables a greater dedication to action, creating a cultural shift toward communal responsibility.Ernst // There’s going to be some days where you would rather probably be doing something else. But if you say you’re going to do something, especially when it comes to helping someone else who’s vulnerable and needs support, then you gotta do it.Micah // it makes me feel really proud of our city. sometimes i think, “this city sucks.” but when i actually go my mental thing of all these organizations that are doing this work, it makes me feel excited.The collectives feel confident in their perseverance- and grow optimistic about their success.Ernst // I know it’s a super cliche saying, but put out the energy that you like to see from others in hopes that turns society into a society for everybody.Skylar // We have to build the world we want to see, and we have to live in the world we want to live in. If we want to live in a world where people take care of each other, we have to take care of each other. And that’s exactly the ethos that SSP and WCA both share- if we want to have a world worth living, we have to make it.Optimism empowers ambitious visions. And they invite the collectives to lead with courageous responsibility.Ernst // Anybody has the ability to be able to go out and help. You don’t need a social media presence, you don’t need a legitimate non profit. I mean, it’s helpful, having a legitimate non-profit. And it’s helpful to have a social media presence. But like, you could walk outside your house right now and come across somebody. Either they are vocally telling you they need support or they look like they need help. Either you give them a dollar or you just give them kind energy. That’s you doing the work, right?The collectives remain limited in their resources and power. But their compassion-based solidarity makes ending homelessness feel inevitable.Miguel // We’re building, we’re fighting, doing everything we can. It’s gotta make something happen, you know? This shit has to end, right? Don’t have a lot of other options.This week, we explored how principles of solidarity bloom resiliency that extends beyond survival. Such structures are rare within the charity complex- but are necessary for confronting- and ending - the ever-escalating homelessness crisis.Housing Last is sustained by the broader Patreon community- which you can join for free at patreon.com/housinglast. I was your host, Isabelle. Thank you for trusting us with your time and attention. Until next episode, take care.
Ed // The 84-year-old man who was working there. And he would tell me occasionally, “just hang in there”. And I finally told him, “don't tell anybody to hang in here. For what?”This is Ed, a lifelong Madison resident. He has asked to remain anonymous, so we’ve altered his name and voice. Ed has also spoken in Episodes 4 and 6.Ed // I don’t drive anymore at all really. Do miss it a lot. I love once in a while I take a cab and sometimes you get in there, there’s some camaraderie there… when you tell them that you’ve driven.For over two decades, he was a cab driver. But at the age of 71, Ed has become unhoused- like many other elderly people in Dane County.Ed // As far as the older folks now, I'll tell you, there's a whole bunch of them there, older men, older women, a lot of wheelchairs, a lot of walkers, a bunch of canes.Morgan // Like, there's one gentleman there that I can think of who gets $900/month for social security.This is Morgan Caitling, a former Service Specialist at the Beacon.Morgan // Landlord left. New landlord comes in. Jacks up the rent $500. Now all of a sudden you can't afford the rent because you're on a fixed income of $900. Yeah, it's like the rent's $1500/month.Ed // Yeah, I worry about the old people there and their haunted faces.You’re listening to Housing Last, a community-driven podcast exploring what stands in the way of ending homelessness in Dane County. My name’s Amelia. I am your host for this episode.Between 2024 and 2025, elders became unhoused at a disproportionate rate in Dane County- and this trend is echoed nationwide. According to National Alliance to End Homelessness, “34 percent of older adult renters spent 50 percent or more of their income on rent in 2021, higher than any other age group. Renters aged 75 and older were the most likely age group to be severely housing cost burdened.”Ed // What I've heard from at Beacon and Porchlight is I've heard from a few guys who said that “I've been healthy my whole life until I got here.” In my case, I was pretty healthy coming in, reasonably so healthy. And the shit started piling up both ways…Those over 65 are at higher risk of becoming unhoused- and consequences of homelessness are greater for them as well.In prior episodes, we explored the broader conditions of homelessness in Dane County. Today, we want to focus on the unique challenges of one particular demographic- unhoused elders.Ed // And the men's restrooms are legendary for being dysfunctional. Oh my God. You go into the men's bathroom area and there's two sections of where the toilets are. So on your left, there's a few urinals and then two stalls. But then on your right is the main area where they have five stalls where the first one on your left is apparently out of, never going to work. So then there's a four stalls and then sometimes you go in there, this is how your morning starts. Two of them are plugged up. Your choice is wait for one that isn't plugged up or, see that plunger, you can go plunge it out.Ed is describing the lack of maintenance at the Men’s Overnight Shelter.Ed // And they had a time where everybody, I mean, they were just checking people in for the night. And suddenly, “okay, everybody, anybody that has to use the restroom, it's outside. That includes us staff. Our toilets aren't even working.” At some point the whole thing overflew on the 1st floor.Lack of basic needs in homeless shelters impacts everyone- but carries higher consequences for elders.Ed // These people pee themselves. Myself, I have a bad bladder. I’ve got a letter from the doctor that says, “he has to have access to the restroom at all times.” It doesn’t work that way. You have to stay in the line, sometimes for 15 minutes, just to pee.Ed // You wouldn't believe how many times the front handicapped door where you push a button and then the door is open, how many times that just gets effed up like every month. They just can’t maintain it regularly so it stays working.Maintenance scarcity within shelter environments tends to be chronic, and compounds into a systemic lack of hygiene.Ed // For about eight months now, and I'm not the only one by a long shot, I have been subject to a bacterial infection of your breathing, what would that be?.. I had this for eight months running. I've complained to my primary doctor, her nurses, a couple others, and you know what I heard from them? “Oh, this is a seasonal thing, it happens every time this year.” And I go, “oh, really? When does it happen for eight months in a row, and it's got hundreds of people sick at these shelters?” And they're all coughing up their asses, coughing up this icky yellow snot. And for eight months, I was never sick with anything for anything like eight months. And that's been going around, and it is so bad, my friend. Coughing. Nasty, loud, hacking. All throughout the night. Month after month, I said eight.Elders are more vulnerable to a variety of illnesses- and the unsanitary shelter environments greatly increase their risk of exposure.Ed // And this one poor old guy that I know in … wound up there with, what starts with an S and it gets under your skin, scabies. This poor damn guy came down with scabies, so he was quarantined. Every time I went to ask him about it… he's kind of hard to talk to. I said to him one day, “you know what, I'm 71 and I feel like I'm going on 80.” And he says, “well, I'm 63 years old and I feel like I'm going on 80”, and it almost looks like 80 already. I don’t know.Unhoused elders are more vulnerable physically. Socially, they encounter additional challenges as well.Ed // What bothers me the most about the old folks, not just that I'm one of them now, it's that, it's this crazy little thing called ageism. It's very rampant. It's one of the sick things about our society right now, is ageism.In the US, elderly people are often viewed as draining, unproductive, and otherwise burdening to society. But only 4% of people 65 and older live in nursing homes, and most tend to be independent. Elders are more often caregivers than care receivers- but stigmatization leads to negative self-perception.Lindberg // If they have a disability, they don’t want to talk about it because they’re embarrassed. Or, something may not seem important to them.This is Lindberg, former Community Liason [Lee-ay-zun] at the Beacon and the founder of Dane County Homeless Justice Initiative. You can find them on Instagram.Lindberg // They were sleeping outside, maybe got ran over- someone ran over their foot. That could easily happen to someone who is homeless. Or they could be injured in some way, that happens all the time. Or they caught a really bad case of pneumonia because they were sleeping outside, it was freezing and started raining, and they were caught in that for hours and had nowhere to go, or they are incontinent.Morgan // He was in a wheelchair, and he has open wounds all over his legs and feet. He was not a citizen, so he was afraid to get medical attention. He refused the hospital, when we tried to get him out there multiple times. It was getting to the point where it was so bad that losing his legs was inevitable. We were just sitting here, watching it happen and deteriorate, deteriorate, deteriorate… Tried to get Adult Protective Services involved, and they’re like, “have you tried to call an ambulance.” Well, yeah- but because of the mental block, he won’t go.1420 Ed // “They move too slowly. They're in our way. Why don't they just die?” That's kind of a theory out there. That's what goes through the air.External and internalized ageism causes unhoused elders to struggle with self-esteem. This stigmatization pairs with vulnerability- and predisposes unhoused elders to exploitation.Ed // This isn't a place where they'll steal your water bottle. They’ll steal everything. This is why I only have one set of clothes. I've got a nickname for those places which is Theft Central. You have to be on guard.Carla // We’ve been working extensively on safety measures. Prior to the pandemic, we never employed a security guard before. We have tons of new measures that we’ve never had before in shelter.[Narrated by Matvei] This is Carla Thennes, Executive Director of Porchlight Inc.Carla // We have a security guard that rounds everyone when they come in, searches bags for weapons, we have every location of the shelter minus bathrooms [with] security cameras that the shelter can watch live, or make recordings for the police.Shelters are continuously improving their safety measures- but for a highly vulnerable and stigmatized population like unhoused elders, even minor safety violations can be deadly.Ed // I'm legally blind, but I see kind of good still, and, you know, you have to dodge people left and right in those places, it's unbelievable. People just come out of nowhere, come right at you, they're not even looking. But as far as the oldsters, I'm very worried about them, and there's this old guy, he was in a chair. On the back of his chair, he has a sign that says, “Stop the Abuse of Elderly and Handicapped.”Ed // This is where I would like to be wrong. It's a question of time before somebody actually gets murdered at one of these places, or maimed and in a coma for a long time. What they’ve got- this is why it’s not safe. They’ve got these security guards who are unarmed. It’s questionable whether they can subdue a big dangerous man, and there’s a whole bunch of them. It isn't safe. If you're a big strong guy or woman, and you can beat somebody up at any given time, maybe you feel safe.Charkice // Just breaks my heart, because somebody just died a couple weeks ago. And there’s so many reasons of why she died.This is Charkice, former Service Specialist at the Beacon.Charkice // What we see is that people who’re older, they’re being targeted. They’re getting hit, scammed, sitting there and waiting for hope.The combination of vulnerability, ageism, and exploitation results in higher rates of premature deaths among the unhoused elderly.Robert + Laurie // We have some that’s in their 80 and they should not be living on the street. Where they should be put in assisted living. Hospice, something.This is Laurie and Robert from Episode 4. They both are unhoused elders.Robert // I just watched two vets personally die in front of me over at the nighttime shelter. Just right before Christmas.Ed // I have been a guest at the Beacon and the Men's Shelter for just about a year now. And I'm embarrassed to say that because it's been so long and people wonder, well, what's going wrong with you? And how come you didn't get housing yet?.. Well, there’s some reasons about that.The uniquely challenging circumstances of homelessness push unhoused elders toward despair.Morgan // They don’t trust a lot of people, they’ve been screwed by the system over and over again. Nobody really seems to be active and care about them. So, they just sit there like, “welp, I guess this is it now.” And they just kind of get complacent, because they don’t feel like help is coming. They don’t feel like anybody cares enough to help them. And it’s like, it’s not the case with the staff and everything happening at the Beacon, but they’ve just fallen through every crack society has to offer.Without adequate safety nets, hopelessness leads to chronic homelessness.EP4 Ed // You can sense people right away, not just by reading their faces, but when you read some of these faces, just look at them for one second, they’re haunted. They’re these beat up old guys in chairs and with walkers, and they probably think, “This is how I’m gonna die.”Unhoused elders face complex challenges. But homelessness only becomes overwhelming with a lack of adequate support- and that is the case for Dane County. Our next episode, which will release next week, will explore the systemic scarcity of safety nets for unhoused elders.I was your host today, Amelia Geis. Thank you for listening.