Good News Day at Deedspeakout
Readers have observed that Deedspeakout is often bleak in subject matter and short on hopefulness. We concur – the news in the areas we discuss isn’t encouraging these days – but we have vowed to dedicate one blogging day per month to “stories not entirely devoid of hope.” We’ve chosen the 13th – easy to remember, and with its well-known connotations, we’ll offer a bit of cheer on a day traditionally thought of as unlucky.
We have two stories today, both focused on solutions to knotty (“wicked”) social issues.
The first concerns how a city in Illinois (Rockford, 90 mi. NW of Chicago, pop. 150,000) that decided to eradicate homelessness has succeeded. The second concerns how educators in this time of pandemic can bridge the stubborn digital divide between connected and unconnected.
- The First City in America to End Homelessness
Beth Sandor, co-director of Built to Zero at the nonprofit Community Solutions:
“I think for so long we believed in most communities that homelessness is just something we are going to have to live with. Rockford is in the process of transforming that idea and really demonstrating what it looks like to live in a community where homelessness is not normal.”
Rockford arrived at a plan and then implemented it: first, reach “functional zero” homelessness for veterans (achieved in 2018); next, reach the same goal for the chronically homeless; finally, reach functional zero for all remaining groups – young people, families, and the recently-unhoused.
The city responded to a challenge issued by the Administration in 2014, and signed on to work with Community Solutions using a new approach, choosing first to focus on homeless veterans. The key to their success was treating every veteran as the unique individual they were, and consulting directly with other agencies with whom veterans interacted to develop a holistic, lasting solution.
Jennifer Jaeger, Rockford’s community services director:
“At the same time, we were taking that data and publishing it monthly, leading to more community accountability. That community accountability led to more community involvement and buy-in. It was really about focusing and crystallizing our efforts on the population—pulling everybody to the table and holding everybody accountable.”
That same process – focus on the individual, with strategies adapted to particular needs – was followed for the other homeless groups, as the collection of real-time data and analysis continued.
Examples: for more tech-savvy homeless individuals, the team turned to social media – e.g., Facebook Messenger – to communicate quickly; in the case of older, chronically homeless persons the goal was developing trust and a personal relationship (one chronically homeless man was persuaded to move to a residency hotel when he learned he could watch Chicago Cubs games regularly).
Every city has its own history (as we say, “same melody, different key”), so Rockford’s approach and solutions don’t represent a “cookie-cutter” formula for ending homelessness elsewhere. For example, the housing market there is more affordable than in a metropolitan center like Chicago; the tangled net of agencies that serve the homeless in LA or NYC makes a “focus on the individual” approach far more challenging.
But here’s what matters:
“The first step for a community is to have the political will to actually end homelessness. ‘Rockford had a very progressive mayor who saw the value of using data to iterate and drive decisions and applying that to the challenge of ending homelessness,’ Sandor[=Beth Sandor, co-director of Built for Zero] says. ‘And now with the new mayor, he has also kept that going.’” [Emphasis added]
Rockford is one of 80+ cities working with Community Solutions’ Built for Zero program, which provides a toolkit for data collection/analysis (real-time data on the homeless is vital, as the once-a-year data collection required to receive federal funding for homeless services is outdated by the time it’s submitted), and an advisor, plus tech support for working with the software the program employs.
- How to Bridge the Digital Divide in Education
Our second story is by an ESL teacher who teaches immigrant children in NYC. As someone who’s taught in the public school system there in schools just one zip code distant but a world apart in terms of educational privilege, Elana Rabinowitz has some suggestions (for NYC specifically, but they’re relevant elsewhere):
First: Divide the school year into fairly short terms, and re-assess after each term. In cases where education is going to be online, devote more resources to digital teaching.
“Perhaps we can use this digital age to have schools from different parts of the country converge and discuss the issues with each other—this could be a time for kids to connect around the nation.” She suggests that the same could happen with teachers – inter-school discussion and brain-storming groups as well as professional development. Tech-savvy teachers and staff from schools already well along the digital highway could provide support to those from schools just starting out on their journey: “While not ideal, this would create some equity in education across neighborhoods and districts, by providing all schools access to the same training, resources, and professional development that is already made available to better-funded schools.
Second: Create Wi-Fi hotspots in neighborhoods where families can’t afford a fast Internet connection (and in rural areas where access is spotty or non-existent). Some corporations have provided hotspots, but the movement hasn’t gone nation-wide.
Third: Help children engage in outdoor learning activities: “Consider shadow tag instead of regular tag, outside yoga, anything that can help get our children healthy, active, and safely socialized.”
Fourth: Encourage older teenagers to get internships – many are taking a “gap year” and they can themselves continue to learn through a more adult-like experience – in music, art, academics, all of which can be done remotely. And they can create virtual peer networks for mutual support.
Fifth: If a family is wealthy enough to start a “learning pod,” ask them to consider inviting a student whose family can’t afford this luxury to join the group.
Rabinowitz: “Your child is not going to die from lack of education, but the damage done from separate but equal is irrevocable.”
Just to close on a more Deedspeakout-like note: “separate but equal” is a euphemism for “separate and unequal,” as history and the present demonstrate every day in every way.