Ending Homelessness Together #9 — Finding Common Sense

In a recent Santa Barbara Independent article, Executive Editor Nick Welsh called for “homeless czar” to break through the silos, cut through the red tape, and lead the charge toward a rapid end to homelessness.

I don’t think that Nick was calling for a new authoritarian government, “Only I can end homelessness” - I think he was seeking a way to rally all of the troops working with homeless people: government agencies, nonprofit service providers, churches, philanthropists, business leaders, law enforcement, and volunteers to break down the walls of regulation, political in-fighting, competition for limited resources, and NIMBY opposition to new solutions.

If only it were so simple as a powerful individual on a white horse.

But, I think we can apply the wisdom of the streets to the mélange of efforts working at cross purposes and struggling to each justify themselves to the world and keep the funding flowing. We have learned in the last six years in Santa Barbara, that ending homelessness means surrounding someone with love, empathy, some resources, and a clear pathway to permanent housing. And, it doesn’t really matter how that person is housed or who is leading the charge. The wisdom is that a sustained collective effort brings success.

We have seen this work in so many other places. Teams of workers build the bridges. Teams of programmers have built our digital age. Teams of practitioners surround our troubled school kids and develop plans for success. Teams of scientists and industry are making us resistant to the Coronavirus. The collective shared expertise and distributed labor of high functioning teams solve all problems and enable the most efficient, most sustainable and most effective solutions to win out.

I would argue that we don’t need a czar, we need high functioning teams in every region of the County to lift each person off the streets and into permanent housing.

This is why I have focused on creating champions for change. We need people who are able to see how the systems work at the level of the streets, people who can garner resources through collective energy to build housing, build services, and win community support.

Do we need leaders? Yes. We need people who say yes to opposition, who are not daunted by seemingly insurmountable odds, and who won’t quit when things look gloomy. I believe many of you reading this are those people!

Solutions require collaboration and collective impact that is sustained through a consensus-building and momentum harnessing group of leaders. It is my opinion that within our business community, government agencies, social sector providers, church members, and philanthropy that we already have those people - now, let’s start rowing in the same direction from a perspective of hope and abundance.