What does Humboldt Plan to do to its Homeless?

Peace be with you

Phase I of the Rob  Amerman “Homeless Plan” is ready. Because I’m houseless, because I’m a houseless advocate, because I talk about houseless issues with houseless people every single day, because I have studied this type of shit for a long time, and because that’s just who I am, I am going to deconstruct this bullshit. I don’t know how many posts it will take, but I shall.

The plans title is “Humboldt County Ten Year Plan to End Homelessness,” yet in the very first paragraph the plan is “Phase I is an evolving document . . . to prevent and reduce homelessness.” How’s that ending homelessness? Shouldn’t it be a document to END homelessness?”

The second paragraph says, “core components in Phase I of the Plan recommend initial target populations and strategies required to implement sustainable and integrated approaches to impact this complex national problem.”  When you go to page 3 you see the title “Core Strategies.”  Under this title it says, “the following recommendations outline the Core Strategies Humboldt County can use under Phase II . . . to prevent and reduce homelessness.”

Besides the obvious fact that phase II has the same unaccomplished goals as phase I, what are the “strategies to prevent and reduce homelessness” recommended in the plan?  Well the Core Strategies recommend to (1) “develop and maintain accurate and ongoing data,” (2) “develop and maintain information,” and (3) “develop and maintain an evolving menu.”

What about the target population?   Under the title “Target Populations” it says “The Humboldt County Ten Year Plan: Phase I recommends expanding the target populations beyond the HUD definition.”   The HUD definition of a homelessness is:

§11302. General definition of homeless individual

(a) In general

For purposes of this chapter, the term “homeless” or “homeless individual or homeless person” includes—

1. an individual who lacks a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence; and
2. an individual who has a primary nighttime residence that is —
   1. a supervised publicly or privately operated shelter designed to provide temporary living accommodations (including welfare hotels, congregate shelters, and transitional housing for the mentally ill);
   2. an institution that provides a temporary residence for individuals intended to be institutionalized; or
   3. a public or private place not designed for, or ordinarily used as, a regular sleeping accommodation for human beings.

The only way that the County can take their Homeless policies “beyond” the HUD definition is to take it into the realm of the housed.  They want to expand the HUD definition of homelessness to include “older adults with sever mental illness and/or with co-occurring substance abuse disorders,” “foster youth aging out of Humboldt County’s Foster Care System,” “Humboldt County transitional age youth with serious emotional disorders,” and “families.”

A plan that targets people “beyond the HUD definition” should not be considered part of an “end homelessness plan.” Especially a plan that only calls for collecting data on houseless people.

This whole $70,000 plan comes down to the recommendation that data be gathered.  That’s it!  Not a single unhoused person, nor potential unhoused person, will be fed, housed, or given one ounce of dignity from this plan or the data it recommends we waste yet more money on collecting.

This segues nicely into the third Paragraph of the plan.  The third paragraph says, “due to limited resources despite increasing needs, the Plan recommends a focus on Humboldt County residents.”  What do they mean “limited resources?”  Of course the have limited resources they just fucking wasted $70,000 to write a plan that finds squandering even more money intelligent.  To put this in perspective $70,000 is more than the entire Arcata Endeavor’s food budget for the year.

Enormous amounts of money are spent so high paid Behavioral and Social Science graduates can plan, manage, and collect data on homeless people.  Hiring these high paid graduates, also called social engineers, is literately coming from money that use to actually go towards helping people.   This superfluous spending has been going on for 9 years and today houseless people have substantially less real help than ever.

I’m not through with this, I plan on writing another post on the bullshit contained in the section titled “Data of Homelessness in Humboldt County.”  I will try to pay special attention to known houseless hating bigots involved.   We see the return of push poll expert Jane Holschuh in this plan.  Also more from the anti-houseless at Humboldt Housing and Homeless Coalition, and many more bad interpretations from greedy poverty pimps.  I would do it now, but I really don’t know how to put posted notes on web pdfs, so you will have to wait until I get a printed copy of this plan. The plan will be approved Tuesday at the afternoon supes meeting.

love eternal
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