The Framework for an Equitable COVID-19 Homelessness Response
Priorities from Native-Indigenous People
About
Why was this document created?
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to unfold, old patterns are reasserting themselves with historically marginalized communities being left out of the planning and response process. These patterns have resulted in predictable gaps in the pandemic response that have left our most marginalized neighbors at unacceptable risk. There is a clear need for further guidance to local jurisdictions who are planning for the response and recovery of the pandemic, in order to ensure that the priorities of historically marginalized communities are centered in the response.
How was this document created?
The National Working Group on Historically Marginalized Communities
The National Innovation Service (NIS) Center for Housing Justice team, along with other national leaders, started by creating a national working group on historically marginalized communities. The working group brings together a small group of national and local policy experts and advocates alongside direct service providers and people serving the communities most impacted by the pandemic. It includes representatives from mid-sized cities, rural areas, and denser cities.
Listening Sessions
Population Specific Briefs
After conducting the listening sessions, the NIS Center for Housing Justice created population-specific briefs to summarize the ideas of each of the ten communities and offer suggested actions that local jurisdictions can take in response to the concerns and priorities raised by people who are being marginalized. This document focuses on the concerns and priorities of Native-Indigenous community members participating in the listening session.
How is the document organized?
The brief is organized around 4 categories:
Space
Stuff
Staff
Systems
The four categories are based off of Dr. Paul Farmer’s Space, Stuff, Staff, and Systems Framework, a regular theme for Farmer across his work to address global health crises. These four categories are used in this brief to identify and organize essential elements within what people are experiencing and how best to respond to these experiences. You can read more about his framework here.
Under each of the 4 categories there are two sections:
What we heard
What we should do
The what we heard section summarizes the direct response of Native-Indigenous listening session participants. The what we should do section offers up suggested actions from the NIS Center for Housing Justice that local jurisdictions can take in response to the concerns and priorities raised by Native-Indigenous community members in the listening session.
To download an interactive pdf of the information below, click here.
Space
What we Heard
End gender segregation policies that lead to inefficient allocation of shelter resources. Shelters with gender segregation policies can lead to separation of families and under utilization of critical resources for people experiencing homelessness. One person described how a women’s shelter may have many open beds and a men’s shelter full but because of gender segregation policies the men go without shelter, unable to use the beds in the women’s shelter. Another person described having to stay unsheltered in camps in order to stay with her husband, despite waiting in long lines trying to get access to the few shelters that would allow them to stay together. People explained that many people stay in camps because they feel safer being able to stay with partners and family then in segregated shelters.
Require shelters to keep families together, including multigenerational family members. People expressed the importance of close kinship networks and multigenerational families as support systems for survival and a lack of understanding of this cultural importance among shelter providers. They described harmful family separation policies being used by some shelters. One person described instances of Native-Indigenous families choosing to live in tent cities or encampments due to policies that would separate children over 8 from their parents based on gender.
Create safe space for people experiencing homelessness to quarantine. People described a lack of ability to quarantine during COVID that was connected to rising housing costs, lack of access to emergency housing, and poor encampment policies. The encampment policies included police harassment of encampment residents, sweeps that led to destruction of property, and little to no coordination with the homelessness system to create safe alternatives. People in the southwest described the growing number of elderly people experiencing homelessness due to housing cost and the effects it has on being able to stay safely quarantined during the pandemic.
What We Should Do
Ensure crisis options that allow for families, as defined by those seeking housing, to safely stay together. Shelter policies that do not take into account the cultural importance of families remaining together within Native-Indigenous communities actively harm these communities. The work of many cities, counties, and states to move people into non-congregate crisis options during COVID-19 serves as a proof point that it is possible to re-imagine a crisis response that offers a safer, more dignified solution, including solutions for larger sized and extended families.
Address systemic barriers to accessing crisis options and long-term housing for Native-Indigenous communities. Housing justice agendas must also take into account the historical and systemic racism that have given rise to the housing precarity that many communities are facing today. This includes historic and continued theft of Native-Indigenous lands and explicit policies that were used to limit access to wealth and capital for Native-Indigenous communities. Communities should use CDBG-CV dollars to invest in neighborhoods with high numbers of vacant houses or housing below code in order to create additional housing options for people experiencing homelessness and ESG-CV dollars to target rental assistance to members of marginalized communities to be used in the communities being revitalized and in any neighborhood of their choice. Simultaneously communities should end the decades-long practice of divesting in operating funds. Include long-term operating fund/reinvestment clauses in any new development occurring alongside CDBG-CV dollars. These investments would also allow communities to begin to think about alternative housing development and sustainability models and structures including affordable housing that is fully owned and operated by individuals and housing collectives in the community, removing private landlords from the engagement.
Stuff
What We Heard
Ensure adequate public showering facilities. People identified the lack of access to showering facilities for people experiencing homelessness as a big issue not only because of public health concerns, but also because, for many people experiencing homelessness, employment depends on being able to have access to showers. One person described their employment status depending on this access to look and smell presentable for employment and that it has led to loss of job and income.
What We Should Do
Ensure all people experiencing homelessness have access to services that meet their basic needs. The lack of access to clean showers, hand washing, restrooms, and clean water and food can be deadly during a pandemic. Communities should ensure that CARES Act funds are being used to ensure that all people have access to services that meet their basic needs. Reimagining emergency housing and prioritizing access to permanent housing will also assist in ensuring Native-Indigenous communities have access to these services.
Staff
What We Heard
Get violent police away from people experiencing homelessness. Police exploit their power and authority all over the country. Participants called for the removal of funds from police forces and removing law enforcement from working with people experiencing homelessness.
Create a community outreach patrol. Instead of funding police forces who brutalize Native-Indigenous people experiencing homelessness, participants discussed a community based outreach patrol. The patrol would be trauma-informed and have access to cultural services they would assist people in finding resources to address housing and service needs.
Native-led services are needed in the homelessness services system. It is critical to fund and support more Native-Indigenous led organizations to work within the homelessness system, particularly those that employ Native-Indigenous people with lived experience. Participants described non-Native services being discriminatory, using racist language, and not understanding their cultural ties or lived experiences. One participant described a staff who tried connecting by claiming she was a “Cherokee princess grandma” and another participant explained that without being part of the Native community a provider could never truly understand the culture.
What We Should Do
Remove policing from the homelessness system. People experiencing homelessness have consistently reported extremely high levels of unhelpful police engagement; this is compounded by being Native-Indigenous. As communities plan their Cares Act expenditures it’s clear that these dollars should not be used to fund policing activities--inclusive of ‘outreach’ teams that include police or encampment enforcement that includes often violent sweeps. Instead they should be used for community based services operated by Native-Indigenous community organizations that can help to put community safety and accountability back into the hands of Native-Indigenous communities to be done in ways that align with their culture and customs.
Build, support, and fund dignity-based services led by Native-Indigenous and other communities most impacted by homelessness. As Cares Act dollars are used to develop new service delivery models, dignity-centered care and service delivery must become the standard across all services and systems. Dignity-centered care in this context means implementing a holistic approach that seeks to comprehensively address the short and long term needs of an individual or family; to respond to the mental health effects of generations of stigma and discrimination faced within Native-Indigenous communities; and to increased access to Native-Indigenous operated services in Native-Indigenous communities by equipping them with the support to apply for and administer federal funds. Communities should implement new performance management systems that prioritize feedback from people who are experiencing homelessness, including the Native-Indigenous community, routinely engage frontline staff in identifying policy barriers to serving individuals, and inform local and federal policy changes.
Systems
What We Heard
Restrictive shelter policies are causing harm. People described many restrictions in shelters accessed during the pandemic, including meal times, curfews, and bathroom restrictions. One person described it to feeling like they were in jail, even worse because if it were jail it would be because they broke a law and in shelters they had done nothing wrong, they were only experiencing homelessness. They believed these restrictions should be lifted.
Quickly deploy resources for people experiencing homelessness - the pandemic response is a proof point of the ability of the system to do so through emergency sheltering. The pandemic helped to open up more spaces and sites for sheltering people and increased access to unemployment benefits and stimulus benefits through the shelters. People explained that more of this is needed through the pandemic and that they system must also get these resources to people who do not enter shelters. Those that did not enter shelters were harassed on the streets and are not getting access to benefits.
Police brutality and racism causes harm to Native-Indigenous people experiencing homelessness. Racial discrimination against Native-Indigenous people combine with unchecked police forces has lead to police violence against Native-Indigenous people experiencing homelessness. People had multiple examples of such violence, including:
the shooting of a Native-Indigenous street vendor in Seattle,
An example of an unlawful arrest and planting of evidence that lead to a police shooting,
An example of a former police officer who is Native being harassed on the force, losing employment, and becoming homeless, and
An example of sexual assault and excessive force by a police officer during an arrest
Racism causes trauma. Services must address the trauma caused by racism. Participants gave examples of people claiming all Native-Indigenous people are drunks and live off of government money and how this caused real pain. Another talked about the trauma connected to the stigma of being Native and having a substance abuse disorder and how it contributes to struggles with recovery.
What We Should Do
Implement a crisis response that ends the use of large congregate shelters and creates dignity- based, safe, temporary crisis options as a bridge to long-term housing. Current approaches to shelter that utilize large congregate settings are often actively harming people, particularly Native-Indigenous communities that experience higher rates of discrimination in shelter systems. Rather than complex and harmful shelter programs, communities should begin to transition their resources to creating an array of dignity-based, safe , temporary crisis options. Cares Act funds should be used to abolish large congregate shelters and create systems that house people rather than simply warehouse them. This will require long-term planning to shift funding away from large congregate shelters and toward:
hotel/motel/SRO options for temporary use,
the re-shaping of transitional housing stock to create more dignity based crisis options.
targeted prevention and diversions services, including financial support to kinship networks and direct cash transfers to individuals and families, that leads to less dependence on more formal crisis options, and
more immediate and direct access to long term housing through rental assistance and the development of affordable housing prioritized for marginalized communities.
These temporary crisis options should be connected to supportive services that can quickly deploy assistance such as public benefits to individuals accessing any of the options.
Divest from policing and invest a portion of the funds in housing and services to Native-Indigenous and other communities most impacted by police brutality. In addition to restricting Cares Act dollars from funding any police activity, funds from current city, county, and state budgets should be actively divested from policing and moved over to the creation of housing and community support. It is critical that the housing and services created through these funds is led by Native-Indigenous communities that can address the traumas of racism and systemic oppression the community faces on a daily basis.