Bringing Phoenix Home: It’s Everyone’s Responsibility
By Leona June Christensen
Photos courtesy of UMOM New Day Center
Numbering yourself among the homeless may be only two paychecks away.
“A lion’s share of our population is in a precarious position,” says Jacki Taylor, executive director of the Phoenix-based Arizona Coalition to End Homelessness (AZCEH).
An alarming number of families in the North Valley and across America are living paycheck to paycheck without a safety net. A twist of the unexpected—an illness or loss of employment—may be all it takes for that family to join the ranks of millions of Americans who struggle to survive without shelter.
“About 60 percent of the households in Maricopa County are literally two paychecks away from being homeless,” Taylor says. “The disparity between the cost of living and the increase in wages has continued to grow. Wages have not kept pace with the cost of living. We know the gap between those who have and those who have not continues to grow significantly. Poverty is on the rise, so that’s a very scary statistic.”
According to the AZCEH, the annual “Point-in-Time Street Count” calculated 14,960 homeless people in Arizona, including 7,300 homeless people in the Phoenix metropolitan area. Among those counted, 56 percent were living in shelters or transitional housing, with the remaining 44 percent living on the streets or otherwise unsheltered. About 18–24 percent of them are veterans.
About 41 percent of Arizona homeless are families with children. These children are twice as likely to go hungry as are their peers. The National Alliance to End Homelessness reports domestic violence as one of the most frequent causes of homelessness for families.
While there are no easy answers, the AZCEH says the solution to end homelessness is everyone’s responsibility. From politics to compassion, each person can be part of the answer to one of the community’s most heartbreaking problems.
“The first challenge is changing political will,” Taylor says. “It’s only through the voter constituents that we can impact our legislators. Once we start influencing policy and funding, we decide as a state that affordable housing is a priority for all people, even the chronically homeless that are mentally ill or substance abusers. The second is doing your part, whether that is supporting legislation that moves toward the end of homelessness, advocacy, donating money and getting involved in fund-raising for affordable housing or shelter services.”
The nonprofit organization helps ease the homeless crisis throughout Arizona by supporting the efforts of local communities to provide social services and shelter to men, women, and children, and to increase awareness of the plight, as well as support advocacy.
A vigilant watchdog, the coalition works tirelessly to help pass legislation that would help relieve the conditions that cause homelessness, keep track of bills that other organizations are trying to pass, and monitor the impact of those bills.
“[Acting as] watchdog is watching for those things that may sneak up on us,” Taylor says. “If you are not really watching what is happening at the Legislature, you are never going to know that strikers are happening.”
Strikers are bills in which language is struck and then replaced with new verbiage that may differ from its original intent. During the previous legislative session, there was an unexpected introduction of a striker that the AZCEH learned was being introduced to dissolve statewide homeless trust funds. The advocacy group was able to draw awareness among its statewide members that the striker was in progress. Thanks to their timely intervention, each organization serving homelessness received financial support rather than one group garnering another’s share of funding.
“The legislative process is cumbersome, complex, and very time-consuming,” Taylor says. “Most of our members who have a concern about what is going on at the Legislature are so involved in providing direct service to homeless people that they don’t have time to monitor what is going on. The AZCEH is there to raise the red flag when it needs to be raised, and say that we need your voice now.”
During the 2007 legislative session, the Coalition advocated for an increase in funding to the Department of Economic Security homeless line item. Those funds had not been increased in more than a decade.
“The Legislature, at the end of the day, approved the allocation of up to [a] $1 million increase in that funding,” Taylor says. “The funding doubled. That was a positive outcome, very much a win for homelessness. It was wonderful! We [still] need to do more.”
Each year, the Arizona Coalition to End Homelessness hosts a conference that educates attendees on the issues that surround homelessness. The fourteenth annual conference, “Weaving the Community Web,” is slated for October 15–16, at the Black Canyon Conference Center located at 9440 N. 25th Ave. in Phoenix. The public is welcome and encouraged to attend.
“To end homelessness, every segment of the community needs to pull together and be involved—individuals, the business sector, the faith community, nonprofits, and government,” Taylor says. “We all need to join hands, if truly we want to end this phenomenon in our state.”
This year’s keynote speaker highlights Denver’s Road Home, a ten-year plan to end homelessness. By uniting the community, Denver has generated 500 affordable-housing units within two years and decreased the number of homeless families by that number.
“Denver is proving that housing and support services are the key,” said Taylor. “Support services help individuals and families stabilize long-term to sustain their self sufficiency. Their success phenomenally excites us. We can learn a lot.”
Despite staggering statistics, Taylor remains optimistic.
“I believe we can end homelessness,” says Taylor. “We have the capacity to address the needs of every homeless person in our state, if we have the political will. One of the first big hurdles is for each Arizonian to truly embrace in their heart the belief that homelessness is not acceptable for any person in our state.”
For more information to help end homelessness, or to attend the conference, log on to azceh.org.