Table of Contents:
Phase 1
Challenge 3: Collect Resources
For this challenge, I focused on resources that explained the history and context of poverty, with special regard for homelessness and food insecurity.
3 Videos:
Ruff Institute of Global Homelessness. (2023, September 2023). Lessons from Lived Experience: Building Solidarity and Community Knowledge for Housing Justice [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bg32RZpqwko
DW Documentary. (2022, October 25). Food security - A growing dilemma | DW Documentary [Video]. YouTube.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wu7PjKawjwI
CNBC. (2023, July 16). Why The US Can't Solve Hunger [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfTMARbcYaU
3 Podcasts:
Whitehead, D. (Host). NCH "Voices of Homelessness" [Audio podcast]. NCH. https://audioboom.com/channels/5048767-nch-voices-of-homelessness#
Siers-Poisson J., Taylor N. (Hosts). Poverty Research & Policy [Audio podcast]. Institute for Research on Poverty, University of Wisconsin-Madison. https://www.irp.wisc.edu/resource_type/podcast
Young, D. (Guest). Fighting Poverty, Strengthening New York [Audio podcast]. Community Service Society https://www.cssny.org/podcast/episode/evictions
2 Scholarly Articles:
Hobbs, S., & King, C. (2018). The unequal impact of food insecurity on cognitive and behavioral outcomes among 5-year-old urban children. Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, 50(7), 687–694. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jneb.2018.04.003
Berry, E. M. (2020). Food Insecurity, Social Inequity, and Sustainability. In World Review of Nutrition and Dietetics (pp. 95–104). S. Karger AG. https://doi.org/10.1159/000507489
3 News Articles:
Bharat N., Cicatello J., Guo E., & Vallabhaneni V. (2020, May 11). Homelessness and Job Security: Challenges and Interventions. University of Michigan School of Public Health. https://sph.umich.edu/pursuit/2020posts/homelessness-and-job-security-challenges-and-interventions.html
Samuel, S. (2023, September 2). "A Canadian study gave $7,500 to homeless people. Here’s how they spent it." Vox. https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/21528569/homeless-poverty-cash-transfer-canada-new-leaf-project
Kurtz, H. Reagan Budget to Slash Housing Aid. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1985/01/30/reagan-budget-to-slash-housing-aid/f04754a4-6737-4550-bc4e-df8df0e56e84/
2 Research-based Articles:
Gabriel, I., Schoen, E., Ciudad-Real T., & Broslawsky, A. (2020, August 24). Homelessness and Employment. Homelessness Policy Research Institute https://socialinnovation.usc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Homelessness-and-Employment.pdf
Iosso, C., Rein, M. (2022, September 2022). https://www.icphusa.org/reports/long-and-winding-path-the-burden-of-repeated-shelter-eligibility-denials-on-families-and-shelter-providers
2 Passed Articles of Legislation
State and Local Housing Programs – Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing, H.B. 0090, 2021 Reg. Sess. (MD. 2021). https://mgaleg.maryland.gov/mgawebsite/Legislation/Details/HB0216?ys=2021RS
Social Services Programs - Eligibility and Enrollment. H.B. 0323, 2023 Reg. Sess. (MD. 2023). https://mgaleg.maryland.gov/mgawebsite/Legislation/Details/hb0323?ys=2023RS
Reflection Prompts
What did you learn about your issue from this challenge?
Creating effective legislation to fix problems is a massive problem that requires precise wording and fair implementation. The beginning of my research involved me understanding what the cause of homelessness, poverty, and food insecurity were. At a certain point, I had enough resources to start asking where the process of providing and creating solutions started. Looking at legislation, I read something that I feel is likely always true:
... the bill would require the development of an established policy on affordable and fair housing at the county level to identify the goals and objectives necessary to take meaningful actions that will “affirmatively further fair housing,” and the metrics with which counties would measure them. This assessment will resource demanding for local jurisdictions. If local jurisdictions cannot meet the demands of the bill, then they are not eligible for certain DHCD funding, which could serve to harm the jurisdictions with limited resources – the communities that need this funding the most.
What was successful or least successful? Why?
Something I realized very early on while looking for sources was that each source focused on trends for a specific area. I tried to figure out which local and regional trends could apply to the homeless and poor collectively, which I don't think was an effective use of time. That's why I later went back to the podcasts and news articles as a way of understanding context instead of trying to only apply data to a problem.
What might you do differently?
I would have changed the way I started doing research. I think the most useful thing I did was look for key words and questions asked during podcasts, seminar recordings, and edited videos to create a mental map of what "the problem" is. If I could restart, I would have made a list of the things I knew and then looked up sources that would be the most true and real to what the experiences are for homeless and poor people.
How will this challenge help you moving forward?
The idea of checking my own internal narratives about the homeless and poor will help me a lot when I'm doing Phases 2 and 3. A big goal for me is that I want to be able to apply my understanding in a meaningful way and I think the ability to empathize effectively is a key part of that.
What questions do you have after completing this challenge?
What do the trends mean to experts in the field? Is it more effective to have many organizations solve homelessness in a small region, or to have a few global organizations focus on the whole world? How do other systems (the justice system, technology, other public services) play into the homelessness, poverty, and food insecurity?
Challenge 4: Dive Deep
Source Summary
For the deep dive, I chose to listen to a few episodes of NCH's "Voices of the Homeless". Each episode is about 45 minutes long, so I listened to 4 episodes for a total of 3 hours of content.
Each episode is a conversation of real people's stories and experiences being homeless, and then a transition into invidual people's suggestions for solving homelessness.
Episode 1 was a good introduction for me into the experience of what it means to be homeless. Both guests, David Mizell and Joel Segal, discussed their backgrounds, why they became homeless, and how they secured housing. The key takeaway from this episode was just how different the causes are for homelessness. A lot of people assume that the cause is either drug abuse or poor decision making, which is true sometimes, but the point that leaders in the field are making is that those assumptions are not always the case, and the underlying beliefs that people justify with those assumptions aren't true. There were people from dysfunctional families, people from law school, orphans, and successful people with drug abuse conditions.
Joel Segal in Episode 1 referenced his privilege as making his homelessness a different experience than most. As a law student, he knew a lot of people that were able to provide for him and give him transportation and shelter while he was disabled.
Joel Segal: "There has to be a national grassroots movement like what Martin Luther King Jr. led in the 60s. We need a movement that can get a bill passed in Congress that will provide cities and towns with billions of dollars to provide affordable housing for everyone who needs it, even if they don't have a penny."
Christina Garcia and Kelvin Lassiter in Episode 2 both said "What was most helpful was having staff with lived experiences." Certain services have specific times or dates that people on the street can't really make time for the way that people with stable housing and jobs can. One thing I realized while listening to this is: just like how I can't expect everyone to understand my life as a minority, I can't expect to be more knowledgeable about homelessness than someone who experienced it myself.
While listening, I saw some parallels with the sources from Challenge 3, especially with the idea that the amount of paperwork and time that it takes to house individuals is detrimental. When people are constantly on the move, it's ineffective to make people wait weeks or months to be able to fill out forms, find places, and wait on others to work with them.
There were multiple times throughout the podcast episodes that the host and guests explained how different systems influence homelessness. In Episode 3, there was an explanation that the foster care system contains over 250,000 children, many who will end up homeless after turning 18. That statistic made me ask if there were other government departments that were responsible for addressing how their work affects homelessness - it turns out every government department is a member of the Interagency Council on Homelessness which I am still doing research on.
One question asked during that episode was about child protection in relation to homelessness. The response from the guest was that the family of the guest wrote them off and ignored their requests for help after hearing of their homelessness and pregnancy.
In Episode 4 the discussion was about law enforcement physically abusing people, how few resources public organizations have, support for the elderly, and more. The episode discussed the reality that some homeless people face physical harassment from law enforcement officers, which can make them feel unsafe even while they are in the process of getting housed. Both guests discussed their experiences with being housed and how even safe housing wasn't always stable due to poor conditions, unhelpful leadership, or erratic housemates.
With each episode showing me that theres so many factors behind each person's experience, I had to ask myself what it means to solve homelessness.
Reflection Prompts
What did you learn about your issue from this challenge?
I was given specific examples of what homeless and poor people have to do to survive, the choices they have to make (living, income, etc.). A lot of the guests on the podcast discussed how they survived rape, living in dangerous environments, or how they generally had a lot of support getting to stable housing. I heard good suggestions concerning how to deal with homelessness, and also what problems are stopping the general public from increasing their understanding.
What was successful or least successful? Why?
This podcast helped me a lot to understand what gets people into and out of homelessness, and also what the experience is while homeless. The format made it very easy to tune into the stories and get why homelessness is difficult for people in different ways, and why a one-solution-fits-all approach assumes that all homeless poeple are the same.
I will say that I went into this podcast expecting to hear a lot about people were fighting homelessness, which made me miss a few key details when the guests were describing their experiences. I had to change that notion when I remembered that phase 1 was about understanding, which also involves hearing stories and being able to listen to people's first-hand experiences
What might you do differently?
I would have gone into this podcast with a different mindset.
How will this challenge help you moving forward?
This challenge gave me multiple human resources to look at for guidance in focusing my efforts - a lot of the speakers are members of nonprofits or write articles about the truth of homelessness, which I can reference to gain more first-hand knowledge.
More importantly, it reminded me that I'm doing research with the intent of understanding a system, not with the goal of providing a solution or being an expert.
What questions do you have after completing this challenge?
What is being done to address the differences in experience for homeless people? What is it like for people in rural areas vs. in cities? Hot vs. cold? Can we address all of these things with "stable housing", or do regional differences drastically change how we help homeless people? What about mental disorders? Do we have resources for these people in jails, on the street, and for children and parents?
Phase 2
In general, this phase expanded my range of knowledged and invited me to ask more questions about the causes of homelessness, how we address it, and who it affects.
Challenge 5: Attend an Event
For this challenge, I attended a virtual seminar on the cause of homelessness.
The main speakers for this event were Gregg Colburn, an assistant professor of real estate in the University of Washington's College of Built Environments. Ph.D. in Public Affairs, Humphrey School of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota, and Lyndia Downie, president and CEO of Pine Street Inn.
The purpose of the event was to promote a book by Dr. Colburn called "Homelessness is a Housing Problem". There was a presentation and a conversation between Dr. Colburn and Ms. Downie, with the presentation statistically showing that the most commonly believed factors that cause homelessness are generally unrelated.
According to the 2019 Point-in-Time homelessness census (Seattle/King County), homeless people said that job loss led to homelessness over 20% of the time, with Alcohol/Drug Use and eviction following up next at ~15%. There was an analogy made that I think sums up the problem pretty well.
Ten friends decide to play a game of musical chairs and arrange ten chairs in a circle. A leader begins the game by turning on the music, and everyone begins to walk in a circle inside the chairs. The leader removes one chair, stops the music, and the ten friends scramble to find a spot to sit - leaving one person without a chair. The loser, Mike, was on crutches after spraining his ankle. Given his condition, he was unable to move quickly enough to find a chair during the scramble that ensued.
What caused Mike's chairlessness?
The following slides were all about per capita rates of homelessness in certain cities and counties, and potential explanations. This part is what I found interesting - multiple explanations for poverty had no statistical correlation based on either city or county. In general, ℝ² was less than .2 for each correlation.
This was true for individual and local explanations.
The Point-in-Time (PIT) count is a count of sheltered and unsheltered people experiencing homelessness on a single night. This count is conducted annually in January by Continuums of Care (CoCs) as required by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
The PIT count per capita for the homeless would be the total PIT count divided by the total population of the area. This gives a per-person ratio of homelessness in that area.
For example, if a city has a PIT count of 500 and a population of 50,000, the PIT count per capita would be 500/50,000 = 0.01. This means that for every 100 people in that city, there is 1 person experiencing homelessness.
- A. % income below poverty level vs. PIT count (per capital)
While there's no correlation between the two, being poor in affluent areas is harder than being poor in a poor area.
- B. Rate of serious mental illness vs. PIT count (per capital)
- C. Rate of substance use disorder vs. PIT count (per capital)
People do drugs all over the US.
- D. Race (percent Black/African American) vs. PIT count (per capital)
I was personally surprised by the lack of correlation in race, but as Dr. Colburn says,
“Race doesn’t cause homelessness, racism causes homelessness”.
Locally:
- A. Average temperature in January vs. indexed homelessness
This one didn't make sense to me at first, but the point was that certain people believe that homelessness is less common in colder states.
- B. Benefit/rent ratio vs. family PIT count (per capita)
Maximum welfare benefit divided by median two-bedroom rent. This one also confused me at first - the idea is that people believe that pricing people out of shelter is unsustainable at all levels.
- C. Sample cities were governed by Democrats 85% of the time. Not all Democratic cities have problems with homelessness though.
What was suggested?
The suggestions were to create operating investment funds for housing support, maintenance, services, and housing construction. For areas where housing is hard to create, changes to regulations and land use policy are needed.
I agree with the general sentiment that diagnosing homelessness as a problem with the homeless themselves is a method of undermining solutions, and that we need to understand how homelessness works across the US before we create wide-reaching solutions.

Post-slide Conversation
The discussion on homelessness highlighted that it’s an issue affecting multiple identities. It’s not just the visibly mentally ill, who make up about 25% of the homeless population, but also includes individuals who may be employed but living out of their cars, and women and children in shelters.
The musical chairs analogy was used to illustrate the lack of sufficient housing opportunities for different groups of people. The problem persists even when encampments are cleared, indicating that the issue is not just about the visible presence of homelessness, but a deeper systemic issue.
The discussion pointed out recent issues with rental affordability, prices moving off the income spectrum and a lack of lending options for those in need. In addition, the “Housing-first” approach was discussed as a potential solution, emphasizing that it should involve more than just providing housing. It should also include support systems for the individuals. However, the failures in addressing homelessness might be to its implementation and not the model itself.
The conversation ended with the statement:
However, it requires addressing the mismatch in supply and demand for housing, which isn't just the fault of institutions - it's a broader societal issue.
Reflection Prompts
What did you learn about your issue from this challenge?
This seminar provided me with a deeper understanding of homelessness, emphasizing that it’s a systemic issue rather than an individual or local one. It challenged a lot of my misconceptions about the causes of homelessness and highlighted the need for comprehensive solutions. I was surprised to hear that a lot of the common causes for homelessness are statistically not the root cause.
What was successful or least successful? Why?
This event was able to remove some of the "more likely" causes of homelessness, and even gave a reasonable set of policies that could help in preventing it. However, I feel like it didn't adequately address the stages of homelessness people face before they they actually lack shelter. One thing that could have been explored further is the role of individual communities in addressing homelessness. Even though the seminar focused on systemic issues and policy changes, the role of local communities, grassroots initiatives, and nonprofit organizations that address homelessness could have been discussed more.
What might you do differently?
In hindsight, I could have prepared questions or discussion points could to delve deeper into other during the seminar, like other true correlations between the environment and homelessness. Just like I said, I could have asked about community initiatives or local policies in Seattle to get additional insights.
How will this challenge help you moving forward?
Understanding the systemic nature of homelessness, the misconceptions surrounding it, and the potential solutions discussed during the seminar will be useful regardless of the challenge option I choose for Phase 3, and it should help me when revisiting some of the challenges from Phase 1, especially the interviews. I really want to do meaningful advocacy for Phase 3, and I think being able to provide something useful to the public to think about will help in addressing the problem.
What questions do you have after completing this challenge?
How can the “Housing-first” approach be effectively implemented on a large scale? What are the potential challenges? Has academia done its part in tackling homelessness in the same way we tackled COVID? (This question was explicitly asked by a member of the in-person group)
Challenge 6: Attend a Meeting
For this challenge, I attended a town hall meeting for the public to meet and ask questions to the College Park mayor and council candidates. (October 30th, at Tawes Hall on the College Park campus) Before the meeting, I submitted a question asking the council candidates to expand on their plans to improve affordable housing and mental health in the area, and to see if they had any ideas as far as communicating with residents. Unfortunately, not every candidate was able to attend.
The Council Candidates
Before the actual Q&A session, I had the chance to talk to a few of the candidates, specifically Jacob Hernandez and Bryan Haddad. I asked them basically to expand on what I had read in their bios concerning effective communication and affordable housing, and what they said was that they both wanted to focus on getting the vacancy rate down through taxes and developer communication.
During the meeting, I was able to hear specific plans and goals from each of the delegates. Since my focus was mainly to understand more about what may or may not be effective in College Park and nationally, I'll put my key takeaways in paragraph form instead, so that I can explain what was important to me as I listened.
There were three questions asked to all the delegates, with each delegate being given a short amount of time (~2 minutes) to answer.
- What are your plans for addressing the state of mental health in College Park?
There's been a discussion recently for creating a police force in College Park, and the candidates who spoke about it in relation to the policing of mentally ill individuals noted that it would indirectly affect the ability of residents to pay their taxes. There were a few mentions of increasing support for women and the non-native population, especially Hispanic people in College Park, as resources for them were even more limited than for the general population.
One of the candidates, Suan Whitney, explicitly discussed a partnership with an existing city organization, Care Solace. Following up on that, Brian Roan also discussed making College Park a place where businesses and nonprofits feel comfortable staying in College Park and helping the community.
- How will you address affordability of life in the city?
A core part of the respsonse to this question was partnering with developers to create higher home ownership rates. A comment here that stuck with me was that the increasing prices in the area (besides inflation) indicate that goods and services are valued by the community, but that affordability is still something for the city and its legislation to focus on. I want to talk a little more about this in Challenge 7.
All of the candidates drove home the point that homelessness and shelter affordability is dependent on the city's engagement with community members in development projects, and that constant feedback is required both in terms of voice and in terms of data.
One of my classmates was there to ask about how students are currently affected by the cost of rent in the area. One of the current incumbents, Stuart Adams, talked about a student housing pilot program to waive the first month's rent for students alongside application fees.
Across the board, the candidates also discussed increasing their budget from the government to address food insecurity, poverty, and housing, with ideas such as government sponsored food stores, comprehensive rental/low-income unit programs, financial literacy programs/workshops, homeownership grants and classes, and data tracking.
The Mayor
The mayor was also given an opportunity to answer some questions from the general public. While he didn't say much that was related to my questions for the candidates, he did make a few points I think are worth sharing here.
- He believes that UMD should be seen in College Park (and PG County more generally) as a source of power for the community. There was a strong focus on improving the relationship between the university and the surrounding area.
- He believes that College Park faces some issues caused by a lack of information dissemination. Many people have questions about what social services are provided, and can't find or navigate the answers, or even worse - don't know what questions to ask.
Reflection Prompts
What did you learn about your issue from this challenge?
I learned about the practical solutions that real policymakers and advocates are making in order to address mental health, food insecurity, and homelessness in my local area. These are complex issues that require a targeted and multifaceted approach. The council candidates emphasized the importance of community engagement and the need for constant feedback. I also learned about various strategies to address these issues, and related fields to look into while doing research.
What was successful or least successful? Why?
From my perspective, the most successful part of this challenge was the opportunity to engage directly with the council candidates and hear their plans. This gave me a deeper understanding of the local issues the city faces. The least successful aspect was that not every candidate was able to attend the meeting, which meant the questions I had for certain candidates couldn't be asked.
What might you do differently?
If I had the chance to redo this, I would have asked more questions directly to the candidates and the mayor. I'm considering reaching out to the candidates who were not able to attend the meeting to understand their viewpoints.
How will this challenge help you moving forward?
I think that understanding the dynamics of local government and community engagement in addressing social issues will help me for Phase 3. Whether I choose to fundraise, donate, volunteer, advocate, or any of the other challenge options, the knowledge I’ve gained from this town hall meeting will affect my approach and hopefully increase my impact .
What questions do you have after completing this challenge?
After attending the meeting, I’m curious about the effectiveness of the strategies. How effective are vacancy taxes in reducing homelessness and improving shelter affordability, and how effective are microgrants? I would like to explore these questions further to understand the potential impact of these strategies.
Challenge 7: Create Your Own
This is kind of a repeat of Challenge 5, but I attended another seminar on homelessness, this time led by someone who was previously homeless.
Mark Miller, Reuters (Moderator) Elizabeth Chen, Massachusetts Secretary of Elder Affairs Robert Kramer, Co-founder and Strategic Advisor, National Investment Center for Seniors Housing & Care (NIC) Jennifer Molinsky, Project Director, Housing an Aging Society Program, Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies Meghan Rose, General Counsel and Chief Government Affairs Officer, LeadingAge California
This one was about the struggles that older homeless citizens will face in the coming years and have faced in previous ones. The key statistics: over the next decade, the number of US citizens over the age of 75 will increase by 45 percent, from 17 million to around 25 million. That growth is widespread, across urban, suburban, and rural communities, and heaviest among the baby boomers (who will begin entering their 80s).
The first few minutes were spend analyzing a recent report made by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. One key point that I've heard a lot from showing up to these events and asking around in-person is that we frequently lack the resources to accomodate the needs of multiple types of indiviuals across the US. Since the number of homeless older people has been rising, the need for affordable housing will continue to grow, because of the increasing number of older adults, and because of increased income disparities and the challenge of providing both housing and healthcare for them. In general, the people most likely to need care and social services when they are older are people those with low incomes.
Most of our federal programs only accomodate about a third of the housholds in the US, and this data only includes households without children/other dependents. Long-term care services cost on average $40,000 per year, and the majority of adults over 70 will need them at some point - and in general assisted living costs around $63,000 per year.
On top of all this was a conversation between the moderators and a previously unhoused citizen who commented on the difficulty of not only finding but navigating through the resources available to her. Different national departments, like the ones for housing and health, plus language barriers, varying eligibility criteria, and rules can make the process of finding housing or support complex and challenging.
What did you learn about your issue from this challenge?
I learned about the complexities involved in addressing this issue, such as the need for affordable housing and healthcare, and the difficulties in navigating available resources. It's one thing to deal with the problems most homeless people face, and another one to deal with the problems that aging adults face, but addressing the combination of both requires us to look at the way that we treat older adults. We don't encourage healthy aging - the debate over supporting Medicaid and Medicare in the last few years is proof of this.
My key takeaway was a quote saying that homelessness doesn't start when you have no shelter, but when you start the path to missed bills, selling personal items, and moving to smaller locations to save money. The last few months have affected the way I see homelessness, but that specific quote was what put the pieces together for me.
What was successful or least successful? Why?
The most successful part of this was gaining firsthand insights from a previously unhoused citizen, and learning more about a specific set of homeless individuals. It provided a real-world perspective that I didn't really get from just listening to people share their stories. However, I felt the event could have been more successful if there were more discussions on actionable solutions and examples of times when solutions helped people in similar cases.
What might you do differently?
If I had the chance to redo this challenge, I would have prepared some questions beforehand to engage more actively during the meeting. I'm not sure if there was explicit time for it, but I would have probably emailed one of the speakers beforehand so that I could see if I could ask about those actionable solutions.
How will this challenge help you moving forward?
This challenge has inspired me to look for organizations that address the needs of specific subsets of homeless individuals, and to see what other marginalized communities. I'm interested in seeing where I can make a difference, such as volunteering or working with organizations that address 'specific types" of homelessness.
What questions do you have after completing this challenge?
What does accessibility look like for aging adults? Does focusing on decreasing the cost of Medicaid and Medicare actually affect the unhoused, or does working on solutions to problems commonly faced by older citizens just slow the rate of homelessness in those populations? I'm also interested in seeing what advocacy looks like for these groups, and have been looking at the organizations represented in this talk, including LeadingAge California.
Phase 3
Challenge 8: Fundraising Challenge
I wanted to do something a little bigger than just telling my family and friends about an organization so that it would have a little more impact. For about the last three years, I've been working alongside an internet music label called Dismiss Yourself, helping them with analytics, and I suggested to the owner of the label, Tyler, that we take advantage of one of our streaming services to support the National Coalition for the Homeless, which provides access to emergency assistance programs that help locals with healthcare, food, and housing. Essentially, the streaming service Bandcamp provides us with a base of 100 free music download keys to share to our supporters, and because of sales, we're sitting on around 100k. My idea was to have our Youtube subscribers, Twitter followers, and Discord members show proof of donation in return for free keys for our next few releases (with the artist's permission, ofc). This one's unfortunately not done yet (outside of asking my friends and family to donate to the Coalition) due to poor planning - we just started looking for other companies to write up contracts so that we can create more official ways of organizing future releases so, nothing new is coming out for the time being.
Challenge 9: Volunteer Challenge
For the majority of my life I've been volunteering at my old church's food pantry. I took this semester and the Thanksgiving break to go back and help out during peak hours. A lot of families come in to get Thanksgiving items, and since nobody likes going into the freezer where all the cheese, turkeys, and other meats are stored, I brought a heavy coat, a few friends, and my brother.
I also took this time to interview the Director of Food Services, Mary Kay Coughlan, who organizes the schedules and relationships with other businesses in the area. She is responsible for running the food pantry, organizing volunteer hours, expansion, and more. She also performs tasks I didn’t expect, like looking for grant money and discussing payment with local food suppliers. When I asked her what motivated her, she explained that her reasoning for being so involved with the pantry was due to a personal circumstance that had affected her significantly. Due to poor management in her husband’s payroll administration, their family income and saved funds were falling, and they had to take out multiple loans in order to feed themselves. Mary Kay told me that she wishes she had known about the support that food pantries and other local organizations provided, and that now she wants to give make sure that people in our area know about those resources, even if they don’t use them.
Challenge 10: Advocacy Challenge
Thanks to the NAEH, I was able to find my local congresspeople (Senators Ben Cardin and Chris Van Hollen, alongside Representative Andy Harris) and send letters to them about supporting the Housing ACCESS Act, and opposing the amendment to cut funding for programs that decrease homelessness.
The content of the Housing ACCESS Act letter to the senators:
Support the Housing ACCESS Act
Dear Senators Ben Cardin and Chris Van Hollen,
I urge you to cosponsor the Housing ACCESS Act.
In my experiences supporting this community I have witnessed firsthand the pressing need for comprehensive solutions to address homelessness. The Housing ACCESS Act represents a significant step towards providing essential support and resources to those in our community who are most vulnerable and in need of stable housing. This act would greatly benefit people experiencing homelessness in my community - your district.
Creating supportive housing for people with extremely low incomes who have disabilities and/or complex health challenges requires both housing assistance/rental subsidies and tenancy support services. These critical resources help clients find affordable rental units, understand their rights of tenancy, address issues with landlords and fellow tenants, and make connections to other services and amenities to thrive in their communities. However, complex and overlapping regulations for housing and services can stall the creation of supportive housing. Recognition of tenancy support services as a Medicaid-covered service has the potential to significantly increase the number of people who can benefit from supportive housing, but making the administrative transition to a Medicaid model can be challenging for local homeless services organizations. And we know too many providers are experiencing significant staff turnover and challenges with high caseloads because funding levels are not commensurate with the cost of delivering services. The Housing ACCESS Act would do two important things: 1. It would align federal and state housing and health care resources. Within one year of enactment, the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), in consultation with the Secretaries of Housing and Urban Development and Treasury, would issue guidance to state Medicaid agencies, public housing agencies, Continuums of Care, and housing finance agencies about how to serve people in need of housing and services in an integrated manner. Specifically, the guidance would help these agencies align their eligibility criteria and eligibility determination processes to ensure people are receiving both housing and services through the simplest eligibility process possible. If a jurisdiction implements this through partnership among multiple agencies, there would be a crosswalk of eligibility criteria, and each participating partner would ensure that their individual criteria are accounted for. For example, housing developments financed with Low Income Housing Tax Credits could house anyone who is receiving Medicaid housing supports. 2. It would clarify how federal funds can be used to support local homeless services providers in building their infrastructure to seek Medicaid reimbursement. Billing Medicaid requires financial systems and information technology capacity that most homeless service providers don’t have yet. Providers need startup capital to build their administrative capabilities until Medicaid reimbursements begin flowing in several months later. The Housing ACCESS Act would encourage providers to seek reimbursement for supportive housing services from state Medicaid programs by requiring HHS to explain how providers may receive such reimbursement, and clarifying which federal funds can be used for provider capacity-building grants. Importantly, the Housing ACCESS Act has minimal costs and does not require new policies and new programs. Moreover, the legislation would not just serve people experiencing homelessness; other people with extremely low incomes and acute health care needs would also benefit, including people experiencing unnecessarily institutionalization, exiting the justice system, and cycling between licensed care settings and the streets. Thanks for your consideration. Please tell me whether you will cosponsor the Housing ACCESS Act. Sincerely, [me]
The content of the letter to our representative about the funding cuts:
Oppose House of Representatives' Amendments to Cut Funding and Increase Homelessness
Dear Representative Andy Harris,
The last thing the House should do is impose severe cuts on the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), its affordable housing programs, or its homelessness programs. The Senate’s FY24 Transportation-HUD Appropriations Bill would increase funding for Homeless Assistance Grants by $275 million, which would allow more people experiencing unsheltered homelessness to be brought inside. The Senate’s proposed increase in funding for Tenant Based Rental Assistance to $31.7 billion would help more low-income families to avoid homelessness. The House should follow the Senate’s bipartisan example and reject amendments that have been filed that would reduce HUD funding to FY19 levels and another by almost $5 billion. The House should also reject amendments that would single out individual programs for steep cuts—including reductions in rental assistance and fair housing back to FY19 levels, a reduction of 50% in Community Development Block Grants, and a 100% cut in Housing Opportunities for Persons With AIDS. The Alliance has singled out two amendments which would increase homelessness among vulnerable groups. One has already been considered out of order, and will not face a floor vote. The other would impose punitive and unnecessary requirements on people assisted by HUD; it is still in play and deserve your strong opposition. Representative Ralph Norman (R-SC) has filed an amendment (13) to prevent implementation of the Equal Access (“Equal Access in Accordance with an Individual’s Gender Identity in Community Planning and Development Programs”) rule for shelter and services.
Access to housing—to shelter—is a basic, fundamental necessity. LGBTQ youth are more than twice as likely to experience homelessness than their non-LGBTQ peers, and Black LGBTQ youth have the highest rates of youth homelessness. Furthermore, 1 in 5 transgender people will experience homelessness in their lifetime. In allowing providers to discriminate, the Norman amendment would result in higher rates of homelessness among LGBTQ youth and transgender people. The Equal Access Rule and related guidance give service providers the information they need to effectively serve transgender people, in addition to their other clients, and provides a modicum of protection for LGBTQ people at their most vulnerable. In addition to voting against the Norman (13) amendment, I urge you to oppose amendments that would prevent HUD from implementing its Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule, impose drug testing, deprive non-citizens of benefits, and deny financial assistance to anyone able-bodied between the ages of 21 and 59.Thanks for your consideration. I look forward to following your votes on these amendments.
Sincerely, [me]
Challenge 11: Purchase Challenge
To complete this challenge, I bought a few Christmas cards and a bracelet, and both products support the National Alliance to End Homelessness. The NAEH collects its own data to find solutions to prevent homelessness. They work alongside federal and local organizations to create those solutions. They say they focus on policy implementation, which sounds like they focus primarily on lobbying, data collection, and public outreach to increase our knowledge of which policies and policymakers to support. They also have a division dedicated to training homeless service organizations in being more effective, in creating systems, solving problems, and working directly alongside unhoused indiviuals.
Something interesting I found about these purchases is in the reflection responses.
Don't have the screenshot here, but 10% of the purchase goes towards the NAEH.
Challenge 12: Choose Your Own Challenge
For this challenge, I created a reusable donation button meant to be placed on the front of websites. The idea was pretty simple - I just want people to have a very low commitment way of donating to an organization of my choice.
Currently all it does is allow you to donate to a GoFundMe of my choice, but I want to set it up to allow you to send money through Stripe to an account that forwards the money to any nonprofit of my choice.
Doing this through my own website was a bit difficult, since the whole thing is run on a server and not locally. There's a working client-side version in the components folder (donationButton.js and minif.js) of this repository on Github.
What did you learn about your issue from this challenge?
Mrs. Coughlan's story affected me because it helped ground me a little bit. I see that the most important part of community building is having community needs in mind. I was also able to look at how nonprofits use their donations, look at media reports to see the impact of different organizations, and learn about different local policies affecting the homeless in my state. My volunteering experience at the food pantry was a reminder of the different needs within our my neighborhood. It’s one thing to discuss homelessness, but it’s quite another to witness it firsthand from the new lens of "ranges of homelessness".
What was successful or least successful? Why?
What might you do differently?
If I was going to redo these challenges, I might have replaced my volunteering challenge with something else where I could make local impact by creating my own community system and asking people to donate to that instead.
How will this challenge help you moving forward?
The main benefits of this challenge were that they gave me the opportunity to look into organizations that I would feel comfortable working with in the future. This also showed me that it wasn't as much of a problem make changes as I thought - a lot of organizations are dedicated to making grass-roots advocacy as easy as possible, and even the challenges that required me to be creative and come up with something original were more streamlined than I thought when I took the first step. This whole phase got me to ask how I can use my computer science skills to make a meaningful app related to combating homelessness.
What questions do you have after completing this challenge?
I have a few questions about effective strategies for combating homelessness locally, how to better plan and create a fundraising event, and how to get more involved in advocacy work outside of sending emails. Which nonprofits are "most effective"? How do I find that data? We've talked a lot about data driven strategies, but most of the time the conversation was made under the assumption that we led these non-profits, but as an outsider, how do I choose?