Housing Is A Human Right

“I Now Have A Reason To Live.”

This week the R.O.C. was a bit off of our outreach groove. We had several contributing factors to this happening. For one thing, there aren’t that many of us who are available every day to do daily outreach. There’s a total of about 6 of us who are able to do outreach at least once a week, and at this time only 3 of us are typically available every day for outreach. We were all off on Monday. Some outreach workers were out all this week. Others had doctors’ appointments. Others had required tasks and trainings from their agencies to complete. We had to set aside time to prepare for R.O.C.’s upcoming presentation next week at the Chattanooga Regional Homeless Coalition’s statewide conference. All of these factors combined resulted in a somewhat inconsistent week for outreach, but great things still happened!

The one statement quoted above from this week is a massive one and deserves all the attention it can receive. This statement was made today by one of our clients after they signed their lease and received their key to their own apartment. This client 6 months ago today, which was the day before Christmas Eve when it was literally 5 degrees, was at their camp located down a steep ravine located next to a creek. They were found lying beside a campfire with their cut-open tent as their only shelter. They could not get up due to being so weak and their legs being so swollen from complications of suffering from congestive heart failure. R.O.C. members ended up having to carry them up the steep ravine and across some railroad tracks to get them into the ambulance that had been called. After getting out of the hospital a week later, this person attempted to return to their encampment but found that someone had intentionally burned their entire place to the ground. R.O.C. members happened to be there the moment after they found their camp in this condition with no other places to go. Emergency funding was accessed to place them in a hotel room for a little over a month. There was a hope that the housing system could move fast enough within this month-long time frame to expedite the housing process due to the critical circumstances. The money ran out for the hotel room without a housing placement being secured. An arrangement was then made by R.O.C. members for them to possibly stay at Help Right. Here’s the sanctioned encampment after the hotel room was no longer an option. They refused this option for various reasons at that time, and R.O.C. members lost contact for a period of time. Then about a month ago R.O.C. members received word from the Chattanooga Regional Homeless Coalition that this particular client was now at the very top of the list of those experiencing homelessness in our area that have been identified to be the most at risk. They told us that they need this client to fill out paperwork so that they can receive an emergency housing voucher. We informed the Coalition that we at R.O.C. had not seen or heard from the client in a while, but that we would do everything we could to find them and get this paperwork filled out. Then that very same day, a few hours later, one of our R.O.C. members had this client, and the questions of how and where to find them were on their mind. As they were preparing to sit down for their agency’s weekly staff meeting. Right at that moment the client began tapping on the window right outside of the room where the staff meeting was taking place. The R.O.C. member then fled out of the building to meet them on the sidewalk. The client explained that they had just gotten back out of the hospital and did not have the energy to make it the few blocks to where they were now staying at the sanctioned encampment. The R.O.C. member assisted them with a ride and got the paperwork filled out and submitted. A few days later the client’s housing voucher was issued. From this point the client was connected with the City’s Office of Homelessness and Supportive Housing that would work to find the client a workable apartment with their housing voucher. After three more weeks of a few more hospital visits, more waiting, having a knife pulled on them by someone, going through the process of obtaining a new social security card and proof of the amount of food stamps they receive each month, having to investigate and disprove a rumor that they had died, and the prospective apartment failing inspection not once, but twice, and finally passing on the third try today. A ride to the apartment from ROC members. They finally got to sign their lease and receive their key that will lock and unlock their door but has also unlocked their will and purpose to live again.

There is a lot of excruciating detail to this housing journey laid out before you here, and that is the intention. Because the housing process is so excruciating almost every single time. For six months this person had to jump through hoops and figure out different ways to keep surviving even though their physical body was failing. And this story is one of the expedited ones that had the attention of several people involved in the process. This was the exception.

Most of the attention that should surround a statement such as this one quoted above should be centered around the massive importance of housing as a human right. What that means in the most basic of terms is that everyone should have access to affordable, permanent, safe, and stable housing of their choosing. Right now in this country, and especially in this city of Chattanooga, Tennessee, we don’t have that. That right is not owned by everyone. And this injustice is costing people who lack that right their actual real lives, and if it isn’t robbing them of that, then it is robbing them of their will to live their lives.

Take a break from reading this and go ahead and google:“Which state has the lowest rate of homelessness?”

After that, go ahead and google: “Which state has the most affordable housing?”

The answers are the same. Here is the biggest barrier that needs either the biggest hammer to smash it or the biggest key to unlock it. But it has to happen, and people's lives depend on it happening now. The solution is real. It has been proven. It has to be obtained and made real. We have housing programs that are funded and can put forward funds to house people experiencing homelessness, but those programs can’t succeed if housing remains this unaffordable.

And no, we aren’t talking about cramming people into apartments operated by slum lords that are in such bad condition or are so unsafe that most people wouldn’t want their dogs to sleep in them, just so we can have nice-looking numbers. That only leads to people being housed for a few months, and then they are back out on the streets.

They end up back out on the streets because they can’t and couldn’t possibly afford the full price of the rent that the program that housed them originally paid for for a certain amount of time. Or the place is so uninhabitable that for their own health they can no longer stay there. Or the place is so unsafe they go back to staying in a tent in the woods because they feel safer there. Or the place is in an area so unfamiliar to them that they don’t know how to access the resources they need to maintain. Or they get mistreated or wrongfully evicted by their slummy landlord.

This occurs more than either anyone knows or wants to admit. And every time it does, it deals a crushing blow to all of us working with these individuals on the front lines.

Housing must become more affordable, safe, stable, permanent, preferable, and supportive.

If we are a nation that declares independence based on everyone’s inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, then we must realize that this lack of access to housing is infringing on those rights and placing people in survival situations, oppression, and dwelling in hopelessness.

#ROCRetrospective

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#HousingNow