tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31059674.post593292228501075285..comments2011-08-01T20:08:55.500-07:00Comments on limnrix: HOPEJanethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09835366522393170982noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31059674.post-69842815908836806352010-01-28T11:22:09.285-08:002010-01-28T11:22:09.285-08:00I'm glad you were in a busier area where the o...I'm glad you were in a busier area where the opportunities for stupidity became much clearer. I didn't trust many of these volunteers for the reasons you mentioned - ignorant and incompetent, but condescending and self important, compounded by the LCD effect of groups. I agree that the main change the survey was trying to make was aesthetic, implying that the problem is visibility, not the underlying economic causes. As I said, our neighborhood was mostly abandoned, and the buildings around us may have been full of couch-surfers.<br />I didn't realize they'd had police escorts last year, as well.<br />Even a group of 4 with too cops was too big. Two is perfect. We had two people approach surveyees and the rest of us hung back ominously.<br />I felt it was important not to pressure those we found to go to a shelter because I knew it would just make their night worse (like the girl and her uncle you found who ended up being shuffled around for hours, if not months).Janethttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09835366522393170982noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31059674.post-70331823297108145892010-01-28T06:48:36.608-08:002010-01-28T06:48:36.608-08:00I was out there too this year, and wow, the stupid...I was out there too this year, and wow, the stupidity amazed me, from the cop who insisted that people would be "camping out" under the trees in the park because it was warm (uh, not actually, because it was so muddy) to the inability of my fellow volunteers to understand how to approach a person or how to fill out the bubbles on the one-page survey. Also, there was a fair amount of Junior League-style condescension that I wanted to slap out of a couple of my fellow volunteers. (I was actually stuck in a group of 7 for most of the night, by the way, until the team leader finally consented to have 3 of us split off.) <br /><br />Did you get anyone picked up by the vans, and how long did you have to wait? We had to wait over an hour. The guys doubted that the van was actually coming. <br /><br />I agree that the cops probably set the wrong tone for both the volunteers and the interviewees. Apparently, there were cops last year as well, however.<br /><br />I also don't know what good this did. One major problem is that the survey is really only counting street homelessness - a huge number of people/families are couch-surfing or sleeping on floors because they were priced out of housing. (How many? Yeah, exactly.) We ask people in the streets if they have a place to sleep, so we can count "staying with a friend" as homeless, but if they are staying with a friend, they're probably home asleep at 2am, not milling about waiting to be asked for their status. We're really only counting "nuisance homeless". The visibly homeless.<br /><br />You're right about the visibility of the night - a teenage girl was hanging out on 125th St, at 3am, with her homeless uncle, hoping that a team would come by and offer her uncle housing. So, of course we shipped him off in the van, but the van just took him to Bellevue, the giant processing center on 30th and 1st Ave, which many people refused to go to. We have no way of knowing what actually happened to anyone who was shipped off, or how they were treated. <br /><br />I also wonder how, on this night, the city can claim to have room for anyone who asks. Did people get kicked out of shelters or moved to more remote ones in the weeks before this? How long will the people we put in Monday night be allowed to stay? What's going to happen to these guys six months from now? Etc. etc.<br /><br />-- NadaNadahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06049648666810652439noreply@blogger.com