O P I N I O N

THE SOAPBOX

Stand up. Speak up. It’s your turn.

For decades, I have been involved with many other advocates in efforts to end homelessness in NH and worked for many years in agencies involved with housing and low-income people. I  grew up in and have worked in Manchester. I have also worked all over the state including Nashua, where I live now. Since homelessness is caused by multiple economic, social, and health-related factors, it is not easy to find effective solutions. 

Some causes:

1. When the mental health system shifted from state-run hospital-based “care” to community-based care, the money did not follow and community-based programs have been chronically underfunded by federal, state, and local entities.
2. Federal cutbacks to creating housing, maintaining the aging government  housing, increasing Section 8 vouchers, and a host of housing supports.
3. Zoning changes, complicated rules for safety issues, and other improvements that raised costs for property owners and potential developers.
4. Absentee property owners in some cases neglectful or charging exorbitant rents.
5. A shift from rental units as homes to investment properties.
6. The belief that homeless shelters are places to live, rather than the reality that they are designed to be short-term places to stay until a home is found.
7. The lack of sufficient drug treatment programs for decades.
8. The normalization of homelessness – the change from seeing it as an emergency situation to a fact of life in our cities.
9. Low minimum wage maintained while costs have soared for decades.
10. For decades, smaller NH communities have been transporting their homeless residents to the cities. 
11. A health crisis for the family breadwinner can turn to financial catastrophe.
12. The belief that religious and civic groups can take care of all social needs, including housing, instead of government. Both are needed,  with better coordination.

13. Elected officials of all parties who did not effectively address the issue and blamed one another. 

14. “Managing” homeless folks instead of creating homes is expensive and often falls to the already overburdened police force to handle. 

15. Other factors besides these. Where do we start to create solutions?

 Homeless people have often been blamed. Individual elected officials have been blamed. Bleeding heart community members have been blamed. Seeking solutions is needed instead of seeking blame.

My immigrant grandmother, Bridget Glannon, fed men from Manchester’s “hobo jungle” in her tenement home in “The Fields” neighborhood (the Grove, Green, Bell Streets area). The Sisters of Mercy, of which I am a member, created housing for needy people beginning in the late 1800s and including the late Sister Angie Whidden and other sisters founding New Horizons Soup Kitchen and Shelter in the 1980s. We also converted/sold Mercy properties for  affordable housing for low-income folks. Other groups have contributed in similar ways, but it is often only a drop in the bucket unless the big picture is addressed. 

Many individuals, congregations, elected officials, and agencies are already involved in this effort. They need support, attention to solutions instead of blame and complaints, better media coverage, better political focus from all parties. There needs to be less competition for meager grants and allotments and more cooperation. There needs to be more leadership from those affected by decisions on policy and more light shed on “movers and shakers” with financial stakes who often operate in the background while shaping policy.

No one person created or escalated our current crisis. It was and is a joint effort, a joint success or failure. We are one of the wealthiest states in the country and need to decide how to use our resources to alleviate suffering, improve our communities, and make N.H. a place in which everyone has a place to call home.

Beg to differ? Agree to disagree? Thoughtful prose on topics of general interest are welcome. Send to publisher@inklink.news, subject line: The Soapbox.

Eileen Brady is a native of Manchester and a member of the NH Sisters of Mercy. She lives in Nashua.