By Jim
Last December 2, Bennie Milliner, Executive Director of Denver’s Road Home (DRH)
(tasked with implementing the city’s 10-year plan to end homelessness) presented a proposal to Denver City Council’s Finance and Services Committee that would get the ball rolling on what at that time was called a Solutions Center. This proposal followed an unsuccessful two-year effort by the City to find a location for the “24 Hour Rest and Resource Center” which, at the time the urban camping ban was passed, the mayor and others had promised would be built to provide vitally needed emergency shelter and services to homeless people.
The center, modeled after a similar program in Seattle, would be a referral-only resource which would provide “short-term behavioral health, housing and other services to help stabilize homeless and other individuals” before connecting them to longer term resources. Several currently and previously homeless individuals as well as some homeless advocates were in the audience, some of whom spoke during the public comment period. After thinking for nearly two weeks about a comment Mr. Milliner made during his presentation, on December 15 I sent him an email about it, which is printed below. As of today, February 2nd, I have not received a reply from Mr. Milliner.
Dear Mr. Milliner:
At the City Council’s Finance and Services Committee on December 2 you expressed surprise that anybody might think that people utilizing the proposed Solutions
(or intervention) Center would not be free to leave at any time and wondered why anybody
might have any doubts about that. I think that deserves an answer. This email is an attempt to do that.
Apparently early on in discussions and planning about this Center, people in the neighborhood of the proposed site were extensively consulted about this project. As Billie Bramhall mentioned in her comments to the committee, this is as it should be. But as she also mentioned, the largest stakeholders for this project are the (largely homeless) people who will be using this Center. To the best of my knowledge homeless people were never consulted in
this process. (While I am no longer homeless, the first I heard of this project was when it was formally announced about 5 weeks ago.)
If homeless people had been involved in the early discussions, you would have heard their concerns and any misunderstanding probably would have been cleared up. There *is* interest among such people as demonstrated by the fact that there were at least two currently and two previously homeless individuals in attendance at the December 2 meeting. Yet, sadly, there appears to have been no effort to involve these stakeholders in the early discussions.
Your example at the December 2 meeting of somebody wishing to leave the Center possibly having a “next destination” of the 16th Street Mall was a surprise to me based on the materials I had seen about this Center. Those materials include the packet provided at the last meeting of the Homeless Commission, including the November 6 announcement, the discussion at the November 18 meeting of the Commission, and a probably too brief look at the website for the Seattle Center. Admittedly, I am particularly sensitive to people trying to ram things down my throat, but when I read about locked doors (which is what that “time delay” on the doors, mentioned both in the packet and on Seattle’s Center’s website, is) and statements such as “there [will be] adequate staff and security resources to ensure that no one leaves the facility without staff escort or without a planned discharge and adequate transportation,” alarm bells (no pun intended) did go off.
I am the person at the Commission meeting who asked the question, “If I were homeless and had police contact and the police wanted to refer me to the Center and I didn’t want to go, what would happen?” This was a follow-up to Benjamin’s question, as the answer to that concerned me, and I thought the matter needed to be probed a little more. (Sadly, I have forgotten both Benjamin’s question and your answer to it.) Of course, I used the police in
my hypothetical situation because they are the agents of coercion in our society.
In response to that question it sounded to me like you were dancing around the issue of how voluntary participation with this Center would really be and I let the matter drop when I thought pursuing Last December 2, Bennie Milliner, Executive Director of Denver’s Road Home (DRH) (tasked with implementing the city’s 10-year plan to end homelessness) presented a proposal to Denver City Council’s Finance and Services Committee that would get the ball rolling on what at that time was called a Solutions Center. This proposal followed
an unsuccessful two-year effort by the City to find a location for the “24 Hour Rest and
Resource Center” which, at the time the urban camping ban was passed, the mayor and others had promised would be built to provide vitally needed emergency shelter and services to homeless people.
The center, modeled after a similar program in Seattle, would be a referral-only resource which would provide “short-term behavioral health, housing and other services to help stabilize homeless and other individuals” before connecting them to longer term resources. Several currently and previously homeless individuals as well as some homeless advocates were in the audience, some of whom spoke during the public comment period. After thinking for nearly two weeks about a comment Mr. Milliner made during his presentation, on December 15 I sent him an email about it, which is printed below. As of today, February 2nd, I have not received a reply from Mr. Milliner. it further would not yield anything productive. If the views and concerns of homeless people about this proposed Center had been pursued early on with the same vigor as discussions with the neighborhood, there would have been more time and space to develop such thoughts and I suspect misunderstandings would have
been avoided. Instead, materials developed solely to address concerns of the neighborhood were presented as fait accompli, leaving homeless people and those of us who are wary of how they might be treated to let our fears run wild.
One final note about this. While I can’t and won’t attempt to speak for others, another fact that gives me concerns about such a center, and probably helps fuel my paranoia about it, is the fact that I am at odds with what appears to be the view that drives much of official discussion about homeless people in Denver.
Specifically, homeless people tend do be viewed as problems that need to be fixed. I disagree with this view, even when limited to those who are usually identified as having substance abuse and/or “mental health” issues. (And I find the terms “mental health” and, particularly, “behavioral health” highly problematic.) I am more inclined to view the homeless individual as the “identified patient” in family systems therapy, with the larger society being the family. It is not just the “identified patient” that needs to change but the whole family (i.e. society) that must change.
As Arnold Mindell perceptively notes in his book City Shadows: Psychological Interventions in Psychiatry (ISBN 0-14-019162-3), “Such concepts are not always greeted enthusiastically by city officials” (p. xiii). Based on my experiences in Denver I think that is putting it mildly. But if you or anybody associated with Denver’s Road Home would be interested in a viewpoint other than what I believe to be our culture’s dominant one, I recommend that book. I will admit that it is a bit dated (1988) and perhaps there are good materials which are more recent. Still, I think City Shadows is a useful book.
So this has been my attempt to explain why some of us were concerned about how voluntary this proposed Center (whatever its eventual name) would be. I hope you found it useful. And in the future I hope the Homeless Commission/DRH finds ways to bring people experiencing homelessness into discussions about things that will affect them early in the planning stages. Maybe you can keep that in mind as you and the Commission consider what changes to make to the Commission as you begin moving beyond the initial 10 year plan.
(Editor’s Note: The Denver City Council on December 22nd voted unanimously to approve the $2.325 million purchase of a building at 405 S Platte River Drive, in the Athmar neighborhood, for the “Solutions” Center. The Center is expected to open at the end of 2015 after renovations are completed and service provider(s) are selected.)
(tasked with implementing the city’s 10-year plan to end homelessness) presented a proposal to Denver City Council’s Finance and Services Committee that would get the ball rolling on what at that time was called a Solutions Center. This proposal followed an unsuccessful two-year effort by the City to find a location for the “24 Hour Rest and Resource Center” which, at the time the urban camping ban was passed, the mayor and others had promised would be built to provide vitally needed emergency shelter and services to homeless people.
The center, modeled after a similar program in Seattle, would be a referral-only resource which would provide “short-term behavioral health, housing and other services to help stabilize homeless and other individuals” before connecting them to longer term resources. Several currently and previously homeless individuals as well as some homeless advocates were in the audience, some of whom spoke during the public comment period. After thinking for nearly two weeks about a comment Mr. Milliner made during his presentation, on December 15 I sent him an email about it, which is printed below. As of today, February 2nd, I have not received a reply from Mr. Milliner.
Dear Mr. Milliner:
At the City Council’s Finance and Services Committee on December 2 you expressed surprise that anybody might think that people utilizing the proposed Solutions
(or intervention) Center would not be free to leave at any time and wondered why anybody
might have any doubts about that. I think that deserves an answer. This email is an attempt to do that.
Apparently early on in discussions and planning about this Center, people in the neighborhood of the proposed site were extensively consulted about this project. As Billie Bramhall mentioned in her comments to the committee, this is as it should be. But as she also mentioned, the largest stakeholders for this project are the (largely homeless) people who will be using this Center. To the best of my knowledge homeless people were never consulted in
this process. (While I am no longer homeless, the first I heard of this project was when it was formally announced about 5 weeks ago.)
If homeless people had been involved in the early discussions, you would have heard their concerns and any misunderstanding probably would have been cleared up. There *is* interest among such people as demonstrated by the fact that there were at least two currently and two previously homeless individuals in attendance at the December 2 meeting. Yet, sadly, there appears to have been no effort to involve these stakeholders in the early discussions.
Your example at the December 2 meeting of somebody wishing to leave the Center possibly having a “next destination” of the 16th Street Mall was a surprise to me based on the materials I had seen about this Center. Those materials include the packet provided at the last meeting of the Homeless Commission, including the November 6 announcement, the discussion at the November 18 meeting of the Commission, and a probably too brief look at the website for the Seattle Center. Admittedly, I am particularly sensitive to people trying to ram things down my throat, but when I read about locked doors (which is what that “time delay” on the doors, mentioned both in the packet and on Seattle’s Center’s website, is) and statements such as “there [will be] adequate staff and security resources to ensure that no one leaves the facility without staff escort or without a planned discharge and adequate transportation,” alarm bells (no pun intended) did go off.
I am the person at the Commission meeting who asked the question, “If I were homeless and had police contact and the police wanted to refer me to the Center and I didn’t want to go, what would happen?” This was a follow-up to Benjamin’s question, as the answer to that concerned me, and I thought the matter needed to be probed a little more. (Sadly, I have forgotten both Benjamin’s question and your answer to it.) Of course, I used the police in
my hypothetical situation because they are the agents of coercion in our society.
In response to that question it sounded to me like you were dancing around the issue of how voluntary participation with this Center would really be and I let the matter drop when I thought pursuing Last December 2, Bennie Milliner, Executive Director of Denver’s Road Home (DRH) (tasked with implementing the city’s 10-year plan to end homelessness) presented a proposal to Denver City Council’s Finance and Services Committee that would get the ball rolling on what at that time was called a Solutions Center. This proposal followed
an unsuccessful two-year effort by the City to find a location for the “24 Hour Rest and
Resource Center” which, at the time the urban camping ban was passed, the mayor and others had promised would be built to provide vitally needed emergency shelter and services to homeless people.
The center, modeled after a similar program in Seattle, would be a referral-only resource which would provide “short-term behavioral health, housing and other services to help stabilize homeless and other individuals” before connecting them to longer term resources. Several currently and previously homeless individuals as well as some homeless advocates were in the audience, some of whom spoke during the public comment period. After thinking for nearly two weeks about a comment Mr. Milliner made during his presentation, on December 15 I sent him an email about it, which is printed below. As of today, February 2nd, I have not received a reply from Mr. Milliner. it further would not yield anything productive. If the views and concerns of homeless people about this proposed Center had been pursued early on with the same vigor as discussions with the neighborhood, there would have been more time and space to develop such thoughts and I suspect misunderstandings would have
been avoided. Instead, materials developed solely to address concerns of the neighborhood were presented as fait accompli, leaving homeless people and those of us who are wary of how they might be treated to let our fears run wild.
One final note about this. While I can’t and won’t attempt to speak for others, another fact that gives me concerns about such a center, and probably helps fuel my paranoia about it, is the fact that I am at odds with what appears to be the view that drives much of official discussion about homeless people in Denver.
Specifically, homeless people tend do be viewed as problems that need to be fixed. I disagree with this view, even when limited to those who are usually identified as having substance abuse and/or “mental health” issues. (And I find the terms “mental health” and, particularly, “behavioral health” highly problematic.) I am more inclined to view the homeless individual as the “identified patient” in family systems therapy, with the larger society being the family. It is not just the “identified patient” that needs to change but the whole family (i.e. society) that must change.
As Arnold Mindell perceptively notes in his book City Shadows: Psychological Interventions in Psychiatry (ISBN 0-14-019162-3), “Such concepts are not always greeted enthusiastically by city officials” (p. xiii). Based on my experiences in Denver I think that is putting it mildly. But if you or anybody associated with Denver’s Road Home would be interested in a viewpoint other than what I believe to be our culture’s dominant one, I recommend that book. I will admit that it is a bit dated (1988) and perhaps there are good materials which are more recent. Still, I think City Shadows is a useful book.
So this has been my attempt to explain why some of us were concerned about how voluntary this proposed Center (whatever its eventual name) would be. I hope you found it useful. And in the future I hope the Homeless Commission/DRH finds ways to bring people experiencing homelessness into discussions about things that will affect them early in the planning stages. Maybe you can keep that in mind as you and the Commission consider what changes to make to the Commission as you begin moving beyond the initial 10 year plan.
(Editor’s Note: The Denver City Council on December 22nd voted unanimously to approve the $2.325 million purchase of a building at 405 S Platte River Drive, in the Athmar neighborhood, for the “Solutions” Center. The Center is expected to open at the end of 2015 after renovations are completed and service provider(s) are selected.)