what stands in the way of abolishing houselessness in Dane County?
Kevin: People ask if I like working at the Beacon, and… No, I don’t like working at the Beacon, because it involves taking care of homeless and poor people. That’d be nice, if it went away someday, or if were to get it to a very low number. But then I do love it too, it is rewarding. Just unfortunate circumstances.Beacon
This is Kevin, a volunteer at the Beacon. Madison’s largest daytime shelter.Kevin: I don’t think homelessness is ever going to end. It would take a profound leap of faith by our government. I don’t want to get too political, but that’s what it would take. We do what we do with the Beacon- love, compassion, whatever have you, get the job done with what we have.Kevin has supported the Beacon for two years- and is concerned for Beacon’s ability to meet the needs of the constantly-growing homeless population.Kevin: The number of guests coming through were under a hundred back then. If we got over a hundred, a hundred an ten, we thought it was a big day, back then. Today, we served 189 for lunch, so that’s what we’ve been seeing. I don’t think we even get under a hundred people to come for lunch anymore. Those days are over.The Beacon is operated by 7-10 staff and up to a dozen volunteers. On average, they support about 240 individuals every day of the week.Jack: The Beacon is an amazing place, one, because I am accepted, being a performing clown and ADHD and autistic. And there’s a lot of unmedicated people here. So if we can get a doctor or somebody in here, to make it easier for these people to just have somebody there, because these people do care about you, they care about us, and i know why they’re here.This is Jack, one of the people using Beacon’s services. To Jack, the most precious aspect of the Beacon is the community that holds it together. Today, we will hear from Jack, Kevin, and many other people connected to the Beacon about what makes this community precious- and precarious.Passion
Ellen: I think it’s clear that the Beacon is there for people, and in the winter especially, like right now. It’s just so good for people to have a place they can spend 8 hours out of the cold.This is Ellen, another volunteer at the Beacon.Ellen: I’m still there because I think the Beacon is a great place and I think it offers so much, I’ve seen people get jobs, get housing, get help with drug addictions, and it’s just exciting to see that people get help… Homelessness seems like an unsolvable problem, but in Madison it seems like you can make a dent in it.Ellen feels optimistic about Beacon’s ability to make a difference- in part because of how welcoming it is.Ellen: It’s good that the Beacon is a place that people who are on drugs can come in and get taken care of and get help. I know that there are some people turn people away who are intoxicated or on drugs, and that means that they’re out on the street and if they get an overdose they don’t get help. I have seen, in my 7 years at the Beacon I’ve seen three overdoses, and all of them got help immediately and were saved.Clyde: And obviously they have turnover and whatever, but their staff is so dedicated, you can’t work there without caring… You wouldn’t last for more than a day. You have to appreciate the work and deal with it, and the staff has been such a strong part of that.Ruth: The dedication of the people who work there I really admire, both volunteers and staff, that have that kind of dedication.You just heard Ruth and Clyde. For them, passion is essential to working at the Beacon.Ruth: I have seen staff manage this with such grace and good humor, often.Clyde: We found a lot of satisfaction from the people who are so appreciative. We always mention when we come home that we’ve never been thanked so much in the day.Erin: Through all of the changes, it doesn’t matter what volunteers are there or what’s going on, everybody that I’ve interfaced with has been very kind and welcoming, whether it is someone there trying to get services or staff or security people, everybody is kind and fun and friendly.This is Erin. For her, mutual appreciation is what builds and sustains the Beacon’s community.Bonding
Ellen: I didn’t realize that I would get this connection, and how much I’d value it, because I do look forward to it.Barry: Because I volunteer on the same day every week, and always in the kitchen, I’ve gotten to know the people on the Monday kitchen crew. And they’re very very nice people, and I see them every Monday, and we share stories and say hello. And then, of course, we get to work. Part of the benefit is getting to know the people, other volunteers.For many volunteers like Barry and Ellen, the community network is equally valuable to the services they provide.Ruth: I find it frustrating, gratifying… I try to tell myself that what I bring to the Beacon is support to the experts. My time could be spent being more engaged and being part of the process, but it is not possible for me. Even while what I do may be mundane, what I can bring to it is a positive attitude, try to bring good listening skills. It has helped me enlarge my vision of care and community, it’s a place that I would not necessarily find myself in my day-to-day activities.Building community is a value shared by most at the Beacon, not just the volunteers.Jack: I came here, and so, it’s like… I feel safe here, people love me here, they know. There’s that group, that network… My favorite part: smiles, friendship, bonds, and the camaraderie, we go to church together.The Beacon is more than the staff and services listed on the website, it is the collaborative efforts of the entire communal network that inhabits this two-story building.Jack: And I’ve been successfully off hard drugs for the entire time I’ve been at the Beacon, because of these people. It has also inspired me to become an EMT, the Beacon. I’m starting school soon.While the Beacon’s community is precious, it is formed around the issue of homelessness- which is rendered invisible or at best distorted in mainstream media, from news to entertainment.Conditions Exposed
Ruth: The people that you meet, the perspectives, you stay grounded in reality and what the world is like. It’s easy to live in my neighborhood that’s comfortable and beautiful and has lots of things going on. It would be easy for me to stay in that small space and never really have an appreciation for the difficulties that other people in the larger Madison community are going through. And that’s how we all have to be engaged with that, to make a difference, to make Madison a place where everybody can do well and be happy.For Ruth, being a part of the Beacon’s community has challenged her to notice- and become critical of -the isolating bubble of financial privilege.Clyde: We often come home very thankful that we’ve had the opportunities to do a lot of the things we have… The family, the structure. And we also know of a lot of family and friends who have people in their family, kids or other members of their family in the house, that if those members did not have their family’s complete support they would be out in places like the Beacon.Mainstream culture often portrays homelessness as an uncommon combination of unfortunate circumstances. But at the Beacon, many volunteers and staff have a more proximal perspective.Clyde: A lot of the people at the Beacon have just lost that support group, whether it’s family, friends, or whatever. And once you’ve lost that support they can’t make a go of it. Almost everybody I know falls into that category- if their family was gone tomorrow, they would be out in the streets. And that’s what you gotta realize sometimes: that we’ve been blessed by the support groups we have, and others have not.For those working at the Beacon, homelessness is not an invisible social category- but a deeply neglected and dear community.Ruth: Understand that people are suffering in my community and they need help for us all to do well, to thrive.Some of the individuals supporting Beacon have a personal connection to homelessness, too.Barry: I had a family member when I was young, who was homeless, for two years, and so the Beacon is very pertinent to me in that respect.Charkice: Prior to me being at the Beacon, I was too homeless, I came out of a domestic violence situation in Texas. I left Texas to come to Madison. There were no resources, so I had to go to stay with a friend, and they recommended me to the Beacon.This is Charkice, a Guest Services Specialist at the Beacon. Witnessing the neglect that unhoused visitors are facing is draining for her- and other staff, too.Charkice: It just breaks my heart, with the Beacon… We don’t have a lot of staff, and safety is an issue now. We got 4-5 folks at the front, a lot of us are older women, we’re here for the mission, we’re here to help people. These people don’t have anywhere to go and they pile up in the Beacon, and it’s 250 of them, and 200?!The dedication of Beacon’s volunteers, visitors, and staff is what keeps them afloat. But the resources needed to move Beacon forward are lacking.Ruth: I often times leave there kind of, I don’t want to say empty… but tired! The energy at the Beacon is such that it can draw it from yourself. And I’m sure it does to the staff, because they seem so focused on doing good work. And I do like being there, but it’s a hard place to be…Jack: Sometimes, they just get sad. I think that they get sad and they just can’t interact, because something gets to them. It’s like being an EMT- you see all these people that are here and need love, care, acceptance. And then you got the other people, I don’t even need to mention- who are already out. So I feel that, maybe they need some therapy, maybe they need a vacation, they need a break. So if it was a bigger facility, a bigger staff, they wouldn’t be so overworked.Some challenges of working at the Beacon come from the inherent conditions of experiencing- or being in proximity to -homelessness. But the majority of the struggle is a consequence of structural overwhelm.Vision Limited
Charkice: I sit there every day and see there is no cycling of people, these people are not getting the help they need. I see lots of older, people here, and they’re vulnerable. Seeing a couple of them that died, from vulnerable situations, situations that could have been prevented had they had owned places and had the resources to be, and assistance with barriers.Originally, Beacon was intended to simultaneously expand and shrink its community- but right now, that is not the case.Alisha: Ever since I started at the Beacon in 2022, it was clear that Beacon was trying to be both. It was trying to be a place where case management could be offered to get people to stabilization, and then it also appeared to be a basic needs met, “put a band-aid on”, but not take it a step further.This is Alisha, the volunteer manager at the Beacon. The combination of basic needs and stabilization she mentions is what initially appealed to many of the volunteers.Alisha: I appreciate the effort involved at the Beacon in creating a place for people who are without housing to have a shelter, and also to access resources that might help them to become housed or improve their situation.Alisha: What we liked is that they offered services to try to help people to get out of the homelessness situation as well as help with the day-to-day resources to help them get by. We thought that was a great approach- and we still do.Currently, the stabilization services are lacking- and the Beacon is able to expand and sustain its unhoused population, but struggles to transition them out of their conditions.Capacity Overwhelmed
Alisha: And, in order to have the that many people we’re serving, per day, with the staff ratio, and with the type of issues that our population has… Unless you provide case management you can’t serve this many people and get them stabilized. You can serve that many people and put a Band-Aid on, do the basic needs, but then you can’t be expected to do the stabilization part.The overwhelm the Beacon is facing is two-fold: one, it is running out of space…Ellen: The Beacon can only take so many people and, I think, right now they’re taking more people than they ever planned for. It’s not a big enough building for the number of people who are there.And, without additional support from external services, the staff-to-visitor ratio keeps shrinking.Charkice: You can’t safely guard people, help them and show them resources, you can’t do 1-1 with anybody because a fight is going to break out. We don’t have what we need. We then see a lot of older people die- they’re being targeted, getting hit, scammed, and they just sit there and waiting for hope. They’re sitting and waiting for someone to say, “okay we got a nursing home for you, do you need help with this, with that” We need somebody to come to them. They just gonna sit at Beacon, and sit there until someone come and help them. That’s just how it is, that’s how it is…Beacon staff are forced to spread their time and resources thin, and are often unable to provide the in-depth support that many visitors need.Lindberg: The people who are working at the Beacon are overwhelmed, they’re calling in sick a lot, a lot of people are quitting, and then word gets out that it is not a good place to work, and then no one wants to work there. And it’s a problem that is growing and growing, and starting to spill out into the community.This is Lindberg, former Community Liaison at the Beacon.Lindberg: I resigned from the Beacon… So I could take a more assertive effort, to hopefully find progress and dignity and respect…Many at the Beacon are not willing to accept the current conditions. Lindberg, along with other individuals and organizations, is attempting to change how Dane County provides for the Beacon. In the coming weeks, we will explore what the initiative is trying to accomplish- and how Dane County, unhoused communities, and homelessness services are responding to it.Reconnecting
Lindberg: There are many people who feel the same way but are not in a position to speak the way I do,... They can’t afford to lose their job…While the initiative aims to cease overwhelm at the Beacon and expand stabilization services, Beacon’s community is committed to persisting.Jack: The staff, the volunteers, the actual network of the homeless people that care for one another- we feed each other, we keep each other warm, we’re there for each other when we have bad days. When we have bad days we keep each other from messing up.The Beacon is a precious community space for many. It is also systemically neglected- and this way of functioning is unsustainable.Charkice: With Lindberg leaving, it’s almost like, ‘What should we do now’. There is nothing, nothing! Since he left there is nothing. We got the same resources that come in, they set up a shop there, and just sit there. But some people, you gotta bring the resources to them, because they’re mentally ill. His initiative is like, “man, I understand what you’re saying”. Because, there is a sense of hopelessness now. There is a sense of hopelessness at the Beacon. If we had that at the Beacon, because everyone comes there like… we are a dumping ground. If we had case management, or something, more than what we offer, it would be a major success story.
Sydney // if you want to change your substance use but you’re unhoused, it is really challenging, because how are you supposed to deal with sleeping in the cold, having that heightened anxiety or trauma response because you are not in a safe space? You’re actively in fight or flight. What’s gonna calm your nerves is substance use. If you take away that coping skill, what does that person have?This is Sydney Verbauwhede. She is a part of Dane County’s Comprehensive Community Services- a psychosocial rehabilitation program.Sydney // I work in the community with people people who have severe substance use, and seeing how much the system does not support them, and the struggle for housing…Sydney’s program works closely- though not exclusively -with the homeless population of Dane County. When her clients are unhoused, Sydney’s impact on their substance use and mental health is plateaued.Sydney // And w/out stability, how can build your future, or get a job, or work towards sobriety… when your basic needs are not being met?Brad // The shelter can house people overnight on an emergency basis more people than ever before, but again, that’s not housing.This is Brad Hinkfuss, Executive Director of Housing Initiative, a nonprofit that provides permanent, supportive housing for those experiencing mental illness and homelessness.Brad // We’ve got some interim steps to help support the population. None of those are long-term solutions.Torrie // My whole thing in addressing homelessness is… I’m gonna talk about housing all the time. We need housing, that’s the only whole solution to ending homelessness.This is Torrie Kopp Mueller, Coordinator of the Dane County’s Homeless Services Consortium, a “partnership of agencies, funders, advocates, and formerly homeless persons committed to preventing and ending homelessness”.Torrie // But we need a crisis response that’s very strong in place. So, those shelter options, with services. That’s they key…Due to the housing crisis, they’re unable to extend their support.Torrie // The staffing right now, they’re putting out the fires, and not really able to address those issues to connect with housing.And it’s not just them- throughout Dane County, services are stretched thin by the housing crisis.Alisha // There’s just not enough units to go around. So, if that were able to be relieved and we were able to get affordable housing that would take a chunk out of who we’re serving every day, because they would be able to live on their own, not need additional services for assistance, and they would not need the Beacon’s assistance. And that has really contributed to how many people we see each day.This is Alisha Henning, the Volunteer Manager at the Beacon, Madison’s largest daytime shelter.Alisha // Building rapport is difficult when you have a very low staff to guest ratio, because it takes time and get to know the individual you are serving to be able to build that trust and respect up.Our last episode- Binding The Beacon -focused on the communities that congregate at the Beacon- and what challenges they face. Today, we’re going to take a look at the primary challenge: lack of housing.Ryan // A lot of these people are disabled, they’re elderly, they’re going through chemo, their bodies are failing, they have substance abuse disorder, and a lot of them are on disability, and there’s no way disability would be able to afford the apartments within Madison.This is Ryan, a visitor at the Beacon.Ryan // To be able to live in the downtown area, you have to have family, friends, networks, and you have to maintain them almost perfectly. You cannot be on any sort of substances, you cannot be a hardcore, violent alcoholic. You have to follow all these rules to maintain these friendships and then live with these people in groups in these apartments. In these 3, 4 bedrooms, just to be able to share the responsibility of paying rent. Whereas, in the homeless community a lot of these people don't have friends, community. I mean all I have is my sister left, I don’t have anyone, anything like that. No one wants to pair up with a stranger for an apartment, let alone a guy that was just homeless.Dane County and city of Madison both have affordable housing programs- but they’re not enough for the unhoused population.Alisha // I think that affordable housing is an issue, where it’s actually affordable, for individuals who are on a fixed income- there’s not a lot of that in town.
The root causes of lack of affordable living extend beyond Dane County.Satya // All of the funding that is available from the federal, state, county, city level is all focused around creating housing that is affordable at a certain income level.This is Madison Mayor, Satya Rhodes-Conway.Satya // I don’t think that anyone would argue that the response to people responding to homelessness has been sufficient, and the federal government has completely adjudicated responsibility in this arena, as has, frankly, WI state government. This is a problem that’s left to local governments to try and deal with, and in WI the local governments have completely inadequate funding to be able to deal with this problem.Housing-related funding that the city and County are able to receive is limited. And, those few resources are split up further before reaching the unhoused population.Satya // There’s basically three places where we need a lot more housing production in terms of income levels. One is the 0-30%. Another, sort of surprisingly, is 80-100% EMI. If we could get more of those units, folks who are in that income band could move from… They’re currently renting down into units that are for the 60-70% EMI. If we could create more housing for that 80-120% band of income, we could free up units for folks that make less money. And then the 3rd place is opportunities for 1st-time home buyers. And then there again, if we create more opportunities, we can free up more housing to be available for other folks who can’t afford buying at this point.A trickle-down approach may prevent homelessness from spreading dramatically, but it does not provide enough for those already experiencing it.Brad // Much of what the city is doing has to do with tackling the market-rate housing. That’s going to be for people with stable incomes who are not coming from situations of homelessness or what have you. There are bits and pieces in there that try to address homelessness, but those projects tend to involve, tax credits. Let’s say you have a building that’s gonna have 100 units, there are maybe 10-15 that are set aside for lower income people. Not necessarily homeless, just lower-income. So, the larger housing picture, while kind of an emergency in itself, the portions of that that address homelessness tend to do so around the edges, and not in the ways that my organization is trying to do that. Certainly there are some lower-income people being served. I can guarantee you they are not buy n’ large people who have been homeless for many years, who have severe and persistent mental illnesses. There are people who have gone through some rough times, but again there’s a broad range here.While not all unhoused individuals are jobless, many simply do not earn enough to afford the current rental market.Sydney // Some places this “income restricted” and you’re still paying over $1,000/mo, which is still really challenging for anyone in this space right now.Much of current housing is already unaffordable for many of Beacon’s visitors. But the prices keep rising further- and not everyone can keep up.Alisha // What I’ve seen over the last few years is that 65+ has dramatically increased as far as the people we’re seeing in that age demoraphic at the Beacon. Individuals over and over have said when they have arrived that they might be in their 80, having never experienced homelessness before. They say, “I’ve rented an apartment for 12 years, same place, management company left, new management company came in. They raised the rent sometimes up to 300 dollars/month.As a nexus for the unhoused communities in Dane County, the Beacon has a pulse on common challenges those communities face. So does Madison Homeless Union, a grassroots collective focused on advocacy and immediate aid.Pearl // So there’s many reasons why dane county homeless population continues to grow. One being that rent continues to go up.This is Pearl. She’s been a part of Madison Homeless Union since inception.Pearl // Many of the folks that I knew in these encampments that remain on the street have social security, and it’s almost impossible to get housing in Dane County, particularly Madison, on social security. So, that becomes a huge barrier. Madison is very landlord-heavy.Rental prices are a barrier for many Dane County residents, but so are policies favoring landlords.Pearl // A lot the laws that are passed rely in landlords’s favor. So, landlords have more discretion in who they allow in their apartments, and it becomes more easy for them to file evictions. So, not only is money a barrier, but people who have criminal records, people who have low credit scores… One guy I knew who had a house with his wife got a divorce. He had a job, and he had lost the house in the divorce and he had ended up on the encampment at Randall Park not because he didn’t have money for housing, but because he had no renter history, since he owned a house.For some of Beacon’s visitors, money is not a problem- landlords are.Charkice // I went to the Beacon, there as really no help for me, so I pretty much had to do everything that I could on my own. With whatever… just googling and trying to find my own resources and my own help with a special needs child.This is Charkice, a former employee at the Beacon. She has experienced homelessness in the past- and Beacon was unable to help her.Charkice // When I was homeless, and I was looking for a place, I ran into a lot of barriers with CCAP…CCAP is a website that provides public access to most court records in WI.Charkice // I had an old eviction back in 2003… 2004, when my son passed away. Stopped working, was depressed, it’s just so many different stories. When my son died from cancer, and CCAP had that eviction in 2004. Here it is 2023, a landlord brought that up, 19 years later, even though I’m working and making money, and I’ve been a good citizen, my credit was fair, I was building it back up. You know, I had the income, everything. Somebody brought that up 19 years later, and ran it to someone else who didn’t look like me who had drug charges that was current.Some things have changed since then. In 2023, the state Supreme Court drastically reduced the length of time that many types of eviction records stay on CCAP — from 20 years down to two years. Even with this barrier down, however, there are too many to face.Ryan // Of course, we need less strict, absolutely insane landlords that will completely deny you on the spot.According to a Cap Times article by Danielle DuClos, county eviction case filing rates are at their highest since 2021.Ryan // Madison is almost like a tourist trap. People come in to see the capitol, State St, the museums on their road trip over the summer. And, I just… Am not sure if I do want to stay here. I’ve been here for 4-5 years, but I've been homeless for almost 2 now. And I just don’t feel like I can stay in Madison if I can’t have a place to live.
Since 2009, Madison’s homeless population has seen growth and decrease- but has never dipped below 500.Brad // The number of people that we see that are homeless from year to year has not substantially changed. There’s a lot of plans that are offered, there’s a lot of things that are put out there, I mean there is a lot of good work being done. Thre’s a lot of good organizations. We’ve got 115 housing units. We are literally housing over 250 people at any given point in time. All of those people, or most of them, would literally be on the streets homeless right now if not for this organization. Many other organizations can say similar things about the good work that they are doing. But we continue to have this same, or very similar number of homeless people from year to year, and the needle is not really moving. We may be introducing some services that are good things, and I applaud that, I support those efforts, but we’re still falling short of a really comprehensive and meaningful solution that addresses this, and we (are yet to) see those numbers going down.The current infrastructure is failing to resolve homelessness as is- but the crisis continues to grow, new risk factors are likely to further destabilize the situation.Brad // There are risk factors, and some of them, frankly, are kind of scary. For example, there’s rental assistance that’s available now, that’s supposed to… the federal rental assistance that will be cut off… It’s long been forecasted to end, come, I think, September of this year. There are a huge number of people who are being kept out of eviction and therefore out of homelessness by virtue of the eviction prevention funding. If that eviciton funding truly goes away in Septmeber, we’re gonna see an uptick in evictions, which of course will translate into an uptick in homelessness.We will further unravel tenant rights in future episodes. For now, we can conclude that lack of affordable housing, paired with additional obstacles from leasing policies, is what’s fueling the current homelessness crisis in Dane County.Sydney // Structural injustice, it is challenging for people to meet their basic needs. And what I mean by that is barriers to getting housing could be, you have to pay for an application, but if you don’t have the money to pay for that, like you’re stuck already at square one, or if you don’t have a computer or a phone. There’s so many barriers, and not enough resources at people’s fingertips. There’s a lot of shame, stigma around people who are unhoused.Stabilization services available to unhoused individuals in Dane County can’t build a home or fight landlords. But their work remains crucial, even if they cannot address the root of the problem.Brad // If you’ve got, especially, an untreated mental illness, or have been homeless for a long time, it is very unlikely that you’re going to get out of that situation on your own. So, those people are not gonna be helped just by the production of units.Sydney // It’s not just homelessness, when people are unhoused that they people are dealing with. It’s such a complex situation, it is likely paired with mental health and so many challenges, that it’s a bigger picture problem, and not just like “we need housing”...Brad // There’s a need for housing, a need for units in the first place. You need to have a place to bring people, spaces to offer to them that are safe and secure, where they have an opportunity to thrive. But the space in itself is only part of the equation. And the people who have been chronically homeless, who have been homeless for a long time, there is almost always something else going on. They need support. It doesn’t mean necessarily that they gonna need it for the rest of their lives, although they may, but it’s about connecting them with the right services. And that means having people who are good at what they do that are working with these folks, and are providing that assistance.In the beginning of this episode, we introduced the overwhelm that stabilization services are facing. In part, it comes from the housing crisis, but some organizations also lack funding.Satya // In general, our nonprofit community is doing very hard work with inadequate support. The folks that are working particularly in the homelessness area are trying very hard to provide good services to a community that has very high needs. If, again, there was any sort of financial support from the state or the federal for this work, we might actually be able to pay people the wages that they deserve to do this difficult work, and provide a level of services that people experiencing homelessness deserve. But we’re operating in an ecosystem that simply does not have enough resources.
The Mayor says that Madison is allocating as many resources as they can to homelessness- but it is not enough.Satya // It is just entirely not true false to say that the city does not prioritize spending money homelessness. I also want to come back to that it is not possible for the city to take capital, one-time capital dollars, and shift them to ongoing operations, that’s just not how our budget works. To say, for example, that we should not have spent money on public market, or transit, or a new fire station… Those are all capitol projects- we’re going that money on capital projects no matter what. Now, you could argue that we could do a fire station instead of a homeless shelter or vice versa, but none of that money can be transferred to operate the Beacon or a homelessness shelter, or go to other homeless services.Over-capacity and under-funded, the services isolate in order to survive, and no longer operate as a network.Lindberg // As the rate has spiked over the last year, they’re all overwhelmed. They don’t have time to be at the Beacon all the time.This is Lindberg Chambliss, former Community Liaison at the Beacon.Lindberg // They are overwhelmed with working out with the community, with people who are sleeping outside, or working with people who have doubled up. Or, say, the Tenant Resource Center- they have an office over at Winnebago and they are overwhelmed as is, so they can’t send any of their staff to Beacon to help those guests in addition to the people they already serve. So, the homelessness field is extremely overwhelmed.With the city and county struggling to provide sufficient aid, stabilization services are beginning to look for new solutions.The last episode introduced a petition by Lindberg, written after he quit his job at the Beacon.Lindberg // The initiative is basically 4 demands. One is for income-based housing, which is somewhat of a long-term demand, it’s not gonna happen overnight.To Lindberg, income-based housing refers to “rental housing where the cost is determined by a tenant’s income, typically capped at a percentage (e.g., 30%) of their earnings. This model ensures affordability for low-income individuals and families, reducing financial strain and housing insecurity.In the case of Dane County, that would look like “allocating funds, land, or tax incentives to develop and maintain affordable housing units. This can include direct subsidies, partnerships with nonprofit developers, or expanding public housing programs. Such investments help prevent homelessness, stabilize communities, and promote economic mobility by ensuring that residents can afford safe and stable housing without sacrificing other necessities like food, healthcare, or transportation.”Lindberg // But then, the other three are administrative demands, which basically ask the department of Human Services to deploy workers from their already existing programs to the Beacon, which is another one of their programs, so we can more efficiently and effectively support guests there. Stabilize them, get them out of the Beacon, raise their quality of life. By doing that, it makes the environment far less overwhelming for everyone there.On December 3rd 2024, Lindberg sent an email to 13 county officials with the four demands, and is yet to receive a response from any of them.Lindberg // In the initiative, the first thing I did was write a letter to county city officials to have a hand in meeting these demands, or really they have a hand in the lack of effectiveness and efficiency leading up to this initiative. And I asked them, “why are we here, why aren’t you doing this already”. And the letter gives a lot of information to offer support.The initiative aims to address the overwhelm from both ends: housing and stabilization.Lindberg // A lot of these programs, Beacon unincluded, are county-contracted programs. So, you have the Beacon, a county-contracted program, and it falls under the Housing Act of Affordability Division under the Department Human Services. Then you have the Aging and Disability Resource Center, which is also another county program. Now, a lot of the work that they do could support Beacon guests, and they do support some Beacon guests. You have the Behavioral Health Division, and they have a bunch of case management programs, and they have the Behavioral Resource Center. Those programs, they could help unhoused people, but not adequately. Those programs, the Aging and Disability Center and all those behavioral health programs, they work off-site, you have to call them or go to their office, rather than them being on site. When they’re not on site, and someone who doesn’t have a phone or a device to email with, or cognition to navigate a bus schedule, or money for a bus or a gas ticket… When they don’t have any of that, there’s all these barriers to getting the help they need.For Lindberg, Beacon is the sweet spot for improving the homelessness service network.
Alisha // Out of Salvation Army, Porchlight, or the Beacon, it would make sense for it to be the Beacon, because of Beacon’s operating hours. So many things that need to be done in terms of case management need to be done with organizations that are 9-5 organizations. And so, it doesn’t make any sense to not have case management at the Beacon, if the goal is, again, stabilization. If the goal is immediate need and a band-aid effect, then case management is not needed. But if the goal is stabilization, it would make sense for the county to put case management there versus the overnight shelters just because of the operating times.
Let’s take a pause. Today, we’ve overviewed the issue of housing, which is the 1st demand on Lindberg’s petition. In the next episode, we will peek around the other three demands and survey the challenges that stabilization services are facing.Ryan // It’s just mostly the fact that there’s a lot of places that are mismanaging resources. We have a couple places throughout Madison that sort of go about mental health in their own different ways, but not a lot of them know about each other, or know about other resources. I’m still learning, two years into this, about newer and newer resources and I was finally just able to get into a problem, that’s Journey Mental Health, there’s CCS. And I’m medically [...] and I have multiple disabilities. I need those resources. And social workers keep getting more and more stressed out by the lack of resources, and I’m not gonna have any of those, nobody will.
IntroMatvei // You’re listening to Disbanded, a podcast exploring what stands in the way of abolishing houselessness in Dane County. This episode takes a different format: there is not a single theme or a single host. Instead, you will hear a round table discussion by four individuals who are currently experiencing houselessness, joined by an ally.Matvei // And before we begin, just one more thing: none of the unhoused people featured in this or prior episodes have been compensated for their work. And they should be- so Disbanded has launched a Patreon page at patreon.com forward dash c forward dash disbanded underscore pod. All proceeds will go directly to unhoused people who have shared their stories on this platform. You can read the financial model in full on our Patreon’s “about” page.[everyone giggles]Fox: As you stuff your face with a brownie.Bre: As I'm eating a brownie, yeah.Jack: Get your clown on, whoop, whoop.Bre: It's Brianna, but everybody calls me Bre, I prefer that, so. And I'm advocating for the homeless. I'm being a voice for the voiceless. And I think that's pretty important because everybody deserves to use their voice. There's a lot of power in that.Morgan: I'm Morgan. I used to work at the Beacon. I am here on behalf of the Dane County Homeless Justice Initiative.Carveal: Hey everybody, my name is Carveal. Everybody generally knows me as smooth because they have a problem with pronouncing that. And that's alright. I'm in exile and I'm experiencing this walk of life as far as interacting with people who are less fortunate. My superpower is observation.Jack: My name is Jack Burke. I'm late diagnosed, ADHD, age 38. I'm on the spectrum. I am a street performing artist, I like being a clown. I'm also a domestic violence survivor and that's why I've been homeless the past three months.Fox: My name is Fox. I am brand new to the area, but like Jack, I'm also running from a domestic abuse situation that I was in. And being around the people that I am now, I am better than I was. Originally from Mississippi. So if you hear a Southern accent coming out of this voice, there you go.Carveal: So you got the Southern twang.Fox: That's what you get.Bre: Yep. You got to say right.Carveal: Southern twang.Fox: That's what you get.Carveal: What you get.Bre: You gotta add the Y into the get.Fox: Why we gotta add a Y into the get, Bre?Bre: That's how the Southern accent works. I mean, yeah, given the fact that you and I are both Southern.Carveal: That Texas girl. She from down down yonder.Fox: Down yonder. All right, y'all. Okay, come on now.Carveal: Smooth wants to go get that food.Carveal: Yeah, I'm kind of finna turn the Joe Pesci on y'all. It's Breakfast for me.Fox: If smooth don't get food, smooth gonna eat the rest of us.Bre: Oh, no. Eat the clown first.Fox: Yeah, eat the clown.Jack: I might taste a little funny.Carveal: Not my preference. Not my preference.Fox: You want another one of these brownies over there, Smooth? There’s two more.Carveal (while chewing): Yeah, let me get one. I was just thinking, like, yeah.Fox: Oh, God. [giggles]In regards to the homelessness, there should be divisions, you know, for the disabled.Multiple people: Senior and elderly.Morgan: The disabled shouldn't be falling into homelessnessCarveal: Period. Yeah, no. The shouldn’t. They should be put up.Bre: They struggle the most with jobs. Especially now that DEI is on.Morgan: Most of them can't work. And then if you're on a fixed income through social security and then somebody, the landlord's up to your rent…Carveal: I don't know what's US’ problem with throwing away their people, but we got it bad. They just throw the old people away like...Fox: Well, see, what I've noticed with the elderly is anytime they've made a comment to staff at a shelter, the staff will be like, well, you can just go stay at a nursing home. No, nursing homes are endgame for the elderly.Bre: And are they going to pay for that nursing home? Are they going to pay for their spot at the nursing home?Fox: Exactly, exactly!Morgan: A lot of them are perfectly independent and they could live alone. Like, there's one gentleman there that I can think of who gets $900/month for social security. Landlord left. New landlord comes in. Jacks up the rent $500. Now all of a sudden you can't afford the rent because you're on a fixed income of $900. Yeah, it's like the rent's $1500/month.Fox: They recommend nursing home or hospice and it's like, no, those two things are in game for the elderly. That's not something for now. They need something now.Bre: There's somebody that just lost their service animals because the landlord jacked up the rent. They became homeless and had to give up all their service animals.Jack: My mother, her rent was just raised from $750 a month to $900 and she only gets $780 a month. So she's fortunate enough, we've got a family that can cover that rent, but she just as well could have easily been homeless or in a spot where she had to find somewhere else to rent because of the housing and the rating of the rents.Morgan: Yeah, and finding a rent for $750 is almost nonexistent.Carveal: I'm just looking like, okay, “that was all of her money, just on rent”. What’s she eatin’?Fox: Yeah, exactly.Jack: We know. Not a lot!Carveal: My man, y'all coming for these people's everything, how are they going to sustain theirselves? So with that being said, the money's there! These people play too much and it's an insult to a lot of our intelligence, at least mine.Bre: You can't hide us.Carveal: Like you can't tell me the money's not there.Fox: No, there's no way to hide us because we have voices. And we matter. And we're going to speak out.Carveal: I'm watching you. Donations, donations, donations, donations… But where's that grant money? What are you doing with that? What are you doing with that if everything that we see or what you have the public dealing with is donations? Why are you handing people stale, old food from the food pantry?Bre: Expired food. We've had expired milk at the women's shelter.Carveal: Expired donated food.Fox: Expired string cheese, expired yogurt, expired everything. And then the next day these women who ate that food end up getting food poisoning because we've been given expired food.Bre: I've gotten food poisoning from the Beacon, just a hot water spigot.Carveal: I've gotten food poisoning several times. It just didn't make no sense to complain about it when you know what it is.Fox: And you know where it came from.Fox: Because if you go to the staff and say, “oh, I got food poisoning from the snack that you gave us that day”…Carveal: You know, what can I do about it? You sick.Fox: Exactly. It's like, “go to the doctor.” What's the doctor going to do? The doctor's just going to prescribe me ibuprofen and send me back.Bre: I want to highlight that Fox injured herself the other day.Fox: Yeah, exactly.Bre: On ice. And we're forced to go out on this ice when it's slippery. They don't want to take care of the sidewalks. They don't want to salt it, or let alone the parking lots and driveways for the shelters. So we get injured because they don't care about us.Fox: The first time I fell, I fell on my back. The second time I fell, I fell on my knee. My knee is completely bruised up. My ankle is killing me on this side.Bre: And she's not the only one. There's another one who just got back into homelessness. And now she's wearing a whole brace that takes up her entire leg. Yeah. Because of the ice.Carveal: At the men's shelter, they have a washer and dryer. Probably more than one. Probably like two sets. And only the staff can use them.Matvei // According to Porchlight staff, the washer and dryer are for volunteers.And these guys are back there. They're so not kept. Or these older men who can't control their faculties no more. Or these people with conditions. They're defecating on their self. And they're in these soiled clothes. And you let them… And they just land in it. It's just terrible. Just outright bad hygiene. You can smell it as soon as you walk through the door. And there's washer and dryers there. You see this guy's a hot mess. He drank too much. He got pee running down his leg. He could barely stand. He's got food in his hair and in his beard or whatever. He needs help. Wash his clothes or give him a set of clean clothes already. There's a washer and dryer on deck. These people are walking around with bags and bags of soiled clothes.Bre: The laundry list at the beacon can only take so much.Carveal: But there's a washer and dryer right here. At least one.Morgan: And there are broken dryers at the Beacon right now too. The county still hasn't fixed them.Fox: Correct me if I'm wrong, Bre, but over at Salvation Army we can only do our laundry there. Because we have the washer and dryer for it. But we can only do it twice a month.Bre: That's correct. The wait list at the women's shelter for the laundry is... There's only two slots per day. And it's only like an hour or hour and a half slot. Right? It's seven to eight and then there's eight to nine.Matvei // According to Salvation Army Women’s Shelter staff, the waitlist for laundry is about a week long.Morgan: How many women frequent the women's shelter at night? Was it like 80 people?Bre: I think more. I think it's uprooted over a hundred now.Matvei // According to the same staff, the shelter was close to capacity at the time this episode was released.Fox: Because all the beds upstairs are full. The gym is almost completely full. And then the back room we have for the disabled and elderly people. Those are all full. And then you've got these other women that are new to the city that know about the Salvation Army that come in. And they're like, oh, “you have to sit in this chair until 8:30 at night.”Bre: Oh, you have to come in intoxicated too.Fox: If you come intoxicated you get obviously in the naughty chair. You don't get food. You have to sit there. You have to sit in the naughty chair and sober up before you can go to your bed.Carveal: They're doing this to adults?Fox: Yep, yeah. Adults. And if there's more than like one person coming in intoxicated, they all have to stand there or sit right there in front of the office and get laughed at by other people that are coming in like, oh, “those people are in the naughty chair.”Carveal: They're basically getting put in the chair with a dunce cap on.Bre: Exactly. Or even if they're known to drink and they come in sober, they're still put in the chair because they're known to drink even without the proof that they're drunk.Carveal: So you're taking their food from them because they're inebriated, right?Morgan: Yeah, like as if that makes sense…Carveal: But if you would eat food, would sober you up.Bre: But what her excuse is. Oh, if they eat, they're going to throw up. They don't want them to throw up. But you also want them to sober up, right? Either way, if they eat, if they throw up, either way, they're sobering up.Carveal: So you don't want to do your job, so you're not going to do your job.Fox: But make this make sense. At Porchlight, yeah, I'm going to put it out there. At Porchlight, the men are, and the women that go over there because they don't feel safe at the women's shelter or they're trans, they're going for female to male. Tell me why porch light guests can bring in outside food, but the people over here at Salvation Army say, “no outside food or drink.” And if you do bring it in, guess what they do with it? They throw it away. What if that was the last of my food stamps that you just threw away and I was saving it for the next day? But see, us over at the women's shelter, we have to leave our outside food outside at the bike rack. But then we wake up the next day and somebody that's left earlier than we did swipes our food.Carveal: What they're doing nowadays at the men's shelter, they're dumping people's stuff out. Right there at the door. It's water. If it's water, don't worry about it. Okay, yeah, right now they're not on that with the food, but they're...Fox: Like if we come in with like a sweet drink, they're like, oh, okay, well, you're going to have to dump that out.Carveal: Yup, yup. And I'm really not... I can't blame them.Bre: I'm sorry, but water does not help...Carveal: These guys are coming in falling on their face. You know, and this is the only logic, why I would take somebody's possible food away as if y'all ran amok so much. I can't monitor nothing because I'm not monitoring what you're bringing in organically. Food, drink, you know. If you could come in with a plate of brownies and they could be... They could be bud brownies. Now you back here acting crazy, you know.Fox: But for a while there, the women's shelter wasn't doing bag checks like they normally did. Now they're getting more staff and they're like, “oh, well, we've got all this extra staff. Now we can do bag checks and stuff.” And if they find food in your bag, they take it. They pocket it and then they throw it away or they keep it for themselves. There's many a time where we go to stand in line to go check in and we're standing out there at 4.30 in the freezing cold waiting for 5:00am to come around to let them let us in. We normally don't get in the door until like 5:08, 5:10, almost 5:30. And it's... We have elderly people over there with walkers and wheelchairs and stuff like that and you're making them sit out there in the cold?Bre: You have a fire department. You got your fire trucks. You got your police department. You got everything out there. You got your schools. But you don't have a good place for the homeless. You don't. No. And you don't want to put the money towards it. Yeah, you had the beacon. You're paying for the beacon and all those other things that are necessary. But it's not taking into account all the other people that aren't able to access the beacon. Like one of them was a family. And that's something I want to start addressing on here as well, the families. There's a wait list at the family shelter and not every time people become homeless, families become homeless, these kids are on the streets because they can't get into the family shelters. That list is insanely long. They're full.Morgan: Yeah, the family shelter has been full for, I want to say at least a year, if not six months.Fox: That's just crazy.Morgan: Yeah, so all these kids have nowhere to go.Bre: You want to talk about like dire situations and things that need to be urgently addressed, families. These kids should not have to be experiencing it. And I'm not saying take away these kids from their families because they're experiencing homelessness.Fox: Never do that. Especially families with new babies that are just newborn. Like what are they supposed to do? Sit out in the cold with their newborn child and have that child freeze to death? And then that's on the city.Bre: Yeah, because the hospital's not going to keep them.Morgan: One of the hardest things I saw at the beacon was this young mom and her two-day-old baby who I had to tell them I didn't know where they were going to sleep tonight.Carveal: I feel like if people, the powers that be, who got duties to be obligated to, if they had more drive and were more genuine towards doing their job, these things with the people, the homelessness would break down.Jack: I did notice that my motivation and how I felt, I felt great after the focus group that we had at the beacon. Not just because we got paid for our time to be there. There was a lot of good points. We all felt like we got something across. We were talking about how we needed a crisis worker at the beacon. Whenever there's a situation with somebody with PTSD, mental health, it's just going through a rough day to diffuse. There was a lot of lovely things. What else was in the discussion?..
Bre: We have one guy there. He has autism and he's there with his mom. He had an episode and he got suspended for that episode. The thing is, that's discrimination, at one. He has autism. He can't control that part.Carveal: He can't control that condition.Bre: Another thing, I don't think people realize, and I mean, everyday people that have their homes and whatever like that, I don't think they realize how close they can be to being in the same situation we are. One job being lost. One house catching fire or whatever. Any type of incident. They're pretty close. It don't take much to put you in the situation. It's not like the thing is, the stereotype is drugs and alcohol. Every person that's homeless is drugs and alcohol. No, that's not the case. Some of us are just there because life dealt us a bad card. We're just trying to get out of it and we don't have the necessary support to keep us motivating. Realistically, all we have is each other at this point.Fox: Having friends that are in the same situation as you are, it's better because you have somebody that understands what you're going through. And it's just better because you have somebody or some people around you that can understand.Carveal: And that's one of the points I was trying to make is that, that's why I'm saying people suck more than ever. There's no…[laughter]Carveal: I know I keep saying it.Fox: I mean, you're not wrong.Carveal: There's no, there's no genuine drive. You signed up for a job that has you empathetic and interacting with people and politic. Okay, you signed up for that job, but you're not really built for it. You don't really have no intel on it. You just filled the void, you know, and now you're that, but you by you not really being that you are not really doing your job because you don't really know what's required of you or what you're obligated to do. So now, what I'm saying is this is what's been happening. People have been improperly placed when it comes to the help, you know, for, for people and they, they suck at their job. They're not, they're not taking the initiative to see how to do it better and really make things count, you know, and I'm just like, okay, this is not for you. We need somebody that's more genuine for this job. They really got passion for it. You can't put nobody in a position that's narcissistic, antisocial in a position where they got to interact with people and and not dismiss them and make things about them. You know, the who you are, you know, and that's really what's been going on. And it's in every walk of life now, just right along with, and this is what's creating the homelessness. People who are not proper for the positions of authority or duties and titles are in that place. And it's a lot of bullying. It's a lot of discrimination. It's a lot of insensitivity, dismissing, and all of those bad things that is just trickling down and perpetuating the situation. Nobody's getting help and it creates monsters on both ends. You're a monster because you ego tripping and you're not really concerned about properly doing your job and helping people. Whereas, oh, I'm not getting no help. This is tearing me up. I'm in a crab in a barrel environment. It's just radioactive toxic. It's like both of us are being turned into monsters because people aren't getting the proper help.Morgan: The proper resources aren't being given. Yeah. It would really fix the problem.Fox: That's one thing I brought up during the focus group was there's not resources out there for the people who are new to Madison who are homeless. There's no information about the shelters or the Beacon or Safe Haven or food pantries to where they can go and get a warm meal or to the Bethel where they can get free clothes and a free breakfast or lunch or whatever. That's not around the city at all. That was one point that really stuck with the person that I talked to after the focus group.Carveal: There's nobody coming to you like, “what can I help you with?” It's just a repeat. I'm watching the cycles repeat. Bill Murray, Groundhog Day. You're doing the same day over and over again and that's enabling a situation or a condition. I'm looking like, “okay, you don't have the drive to stop this cycle and this place is enabling you.” It don't make either party better. It's making them worse.Morgan: No, it's just a place to get people off the street so the city doesn't have to see it.Bre: And I want to highlight an issue I had with the staff member at the Salvation Army. She was talking to a guest who had responded to a message from a friend that was in need, like emotional support. And she told that person that she needs to worry about herself. Okay, the thing is when the staff isn't going to help us and be there for us and worry about us, all we have is the people around us and that's the family we have. I came out here with no friends, no family from Texas and the fans and family I have out here, well, they're not related obviously, but they've been there for me for the past three years. I couldn't have been, I'm pretty thankful for that. But for her to go and say that she needs to just focus on herself and not help this friend.Fox: Yeah, that's not right.Bre: That's not right. You're telling this person not to support their friend who is in an emotional distress. She's a bully. She's the type of person to tell you or a social-seal look at a young person who has issues with mobility or disabled. She's looked at me and said, God, you're so young. You shouldn't even have these issues. You've got so many issues going on. I didn't ask for this though. Then people will be like, oh, they can just go get jobs. Well, why don't they try and they just keep getting denied? You going to give them a job?Fox: Yeah, they're not going to give us a job.Bre: It's not like the shelters want to hire us.Fox: Because, it's the way we look.Jack: Some refresher courses or some training for the actual staff.Bre: Sensitivity training.Carveal: Exactly!Jack: In the beacon or at the shelter. Just something like, “hey, this is how this is a situation. How are we going to fix this? Is there a way?” Maybe, train and hire a new person that can motivate people who are actually trying to get out of being homeless spot.Carveal: That is the plan and that is what's needed. The powers that be are looking at people like numbers, not like people. People who are hired on or part of programs, they're looking at people like numbers too. Even people who aren't working, people who have the homeless situation, people are removed from their humanity so much. This is the problem. When people start thinking about having more consideration and empathy for their fellow man and take the drive. Because once you've got the genuine empathy for your fellow man, you're going to have the drive to help them. That's what's missing. Generally, people are dismissing their fellow man, period, on every level.Morgan: I think that's what's really important about sitting down and doing these podcasts and getting your stories out there is to make people who wouldn't otherwise see what's going on to see.Fox: Make them aware.Morgan. Yeah, to humanize the situations. These are people that are being affected in a very negative way based on whether it be getting aged out of their housing due to their being on a fixed income or somebody has one major medical bill that they cannot pay and now they're homeless. It's like this could happen to anybody.Bre: It's not all substance abuse.Fox: No, it's not.Carveal: No, it's depression, it's elderly…Bre: Disabled.Fox: Domestic abuse. Many people are homeless because they're running away from a domestic abuse situation.Carveal: A lot of these young black men suffer from this situation. You guys have heard it. If you've been in town long enough, it's pop culture in the black community. You come here on vacation. You stuck here on parole or probation. And with the parole or probation, now you got to worry about housing and everybody's not going to rent to you. Parole, probationer, and you're on the street. That's young black man community.Bre: Especially if you have to pay for housing. Housing is a right. Housing is a human right. We all deserve housing.Jack: Yeah, housing is something that's hard to find because just to have it somewhere safe to stay or somewhere relaxing. Last night, I got zero sleep because there was people up in hype and screaming at themselves and it's just like I'm sitting there trying to sleep. It's kind of hard for me to get up the next day and, “oh, I got to get up. I got to find clean clothes. I got to go apply for a job.” So it's like finding the housing. Where can I go that's less a mental ward? For me, it's like, “okay, there's people that are homeless.” Obviously they need somewhere to sleep and that's fine but it's like there's not as separated barrier…Carveal: There should be a segregation. There should be a because in support of what you're talking about bro, just like we've got the elderly, the disabled and people with all types of other conditions. There are predators there as well, who take advantage. You know, kleptomaniacs. It's been situations man. I don't sleep well there as well because I've been told on more than one occasion, “hey bro, you were asleep but somebody was standing over your bed while you were asleep the past couple of nights.”Fox: Yeah, see at the women's shelter we actually had to tell staff about this, but we had a male guest staying there that would literally walk past people who were going through their lockers and staring at their stuff. And they've got like their clothes hanging out so there's underwear and stuff like that hanging out and you've got somebody walking past and staring at your stuff like that. There's been multiple people coming up to me and being like, “yeah this person likes to sit there and stare at me while I'm doing something in the hallway or I'll wake up in the middle of the night and there's somebody standing at the end of my bed.” Like you were saying, and they're just staring at you while you're trying to sleep and it's like you don't know that but somebody else that's in a bed next to you tells you this the next day and it's like what?Carveal: It pretty much has us on eggshells.Jack: Yeah you can't you can't interact or do anything back to them that you could.Carveal: See the way it goes I'm gonna be scapegoated. Blame it the black guy!Bre: And a lot of time the staff won't do anything until something happens.Carveal: Right. It's a lose lose situation. He could keep making his advances he could keep saying the weird stuff but as soon as I open my mouth in defense or get physical because you invade my space…Fox: Are there suspension rules that the staff have set out that's like, “oh, well if you bully this person or if you touch this person in the wrong way you're booted out for a night or a week or a month”, depending on on on the violation that you did. But, you're standing there trying to defend yourself against this person that's coming up on you.Carveal: And it's so ridiculous it's programming, we know who to scapegoats and we know how, “okay, I could get away with this and I could still keep my job”, but and that's pretty much what it is. I know you low man on the totem pole. You this is a capitalistic society. You are not I know you're not strong enough to defend yourself so I could bully you- “go to jail!”Morgan: And that just continues to perpetuate the cycle because once you have that on your record it just makes it even more challenging to get accepted into housing. Yeah or a job. Yeah that too. It's just a cycle.Bre: The more and more you get beat down the more the more motivation you lose and it's just harder.Carveal: You stay broke and I'm gonna get rich off you.Bre: Yep we're just paychecks.Carveal: Cash cows.Fox: Yeah, and another reason why some people who are homeless can't get jobs right now is because of how they look.Bre: How they look everything they have to carry. Yeah all of it they don't like they don't want to deal with that.Carveal: Here's the thing that this is the the damage that people have to take the initiative to fix as an individual. But at the same time these places perpetuate that behavior. How many coats can a person have? How many pairs shoes can you give them? That's not sufficient. That's not helping them. Yeah, okay, it's cold outside but, hey you've they're just taking stuff that they can't even use half of the time. It's like, “they're giving it to us so I'm gonna take it.”Jack: Well I have noticed that since we've been in groups and we've been discussing things and since we've done the focus group that I actively haven't been bullied and targeted as much because people see that like we're a fabric of community that's coming together and that it's not just a bunch of white people over here trying to like be one crowd and it's like you know we're trying to integrate… I want to love everyone. I want to be a part of everything and be a part of people's lives. I got love for everyone.Bre: Everybody deserves love.Jack: I know not everybody deserves love, know everyone deserves a hug. Everyone deserves a smile like, “how you're doing, you're doing alright today?” Look, if somebody don't want to be bothered that's cool that's fine but hey, look, there's people out here and we're gonna be there for our community. Stand up, “hey, where's your smile”, you know? Every day at the desk and you're at the beach and you're smiling you're doing the best when you're there, you know. Those things that I notice whenever you're doing your barber stuff and… You (Carveal), cut you cut hair right?Carveal: Yeah.Jack: I notice that you have like you have this whole nice nice swag about that.Carveal: Right, because I want it to be in good energy you know I don't want nobody feeling uncomfortable or not. And really in my how I move is, “okay this is how I want to be done. So I'm gonna do him like that.” You you you take your respect.Fox: It's the age old saying do you want to others as you want them to do want to you. Be kind to somebody and they'll be kind back.Carveal: If you don't want no respect, yeah, be a dirt bag.Fox: Yeah exactly. Like I'm coming at you with a positive attitude but you're gonna treat me like crap.Carveal: Yeah that's not cool. And if I want if I want positivity I gotta dish it out. I gotta throw that boomerang.Bre: You can't just expect it you gotta you give what you get.Fox: Yeah you feed into the world what you want back.Carveal: This day and age that is not pop culture people. This is just the reality of it. Just take-take-take-take-take-take, and that's what's the problem.Fox: Especially with the younger generation, they're like, “oh give me-give me-give me-give me-give me. But if I give you-give you-give you, you're not gonna give it back to me.Carveal: It's programming. So, we gotta we gotta we have to hit the higher ups. Because, here's my logic, just off of observation: ain't nothing going on in America that they don't want going on, you know.Morgan: If there's money to be made money will be made.Fox: Yeah, nobody at the lower total is gonna get that money.Carveal: It's all the higher ups. Yeah so, the pandemic hit that money for them.Bre: The other day like this last week I had a really rough day. Two people approached me and they wanted to give up and I had to sit there and I hugged them. I told them don't don't give up it'll get better and honestly I don't know if it's gonna get better. I can't promise them that but after that I just took it all on. I went and sat at the bus stop and I cried for over half an hour because those people's pain wrapped around my lungs and it felt like I couldn't breathe. Those people want to get out but they're stuck in such a rut and they don't have the necessary support and people keep taking advantage of them and they just don't know what else to do. So, they just want to give up.Jack: They feel alone. They feel separated from any kind of love or any kind of hope or any kind of friendship for that matter and it makes you really feel really shy whenever you get into that situation where you feel afraid.
Carveal: So now, the numbers. The numbers.Bre: Yeah what's the numbers on that?Morgan: I'm gonna do a lot more digging on the numbers, but I will say that there's quite a few nonprofits out there, that the concentration of wealth is definitely centered at the top with the CEOs making an absurd amount of money, while the workers and patrons don't see very much of it.Matvei // Porchlight Inc. oversees the Men’s Shelter. 40% of Porchlight’s expenses in 2022, or 2.7 million dollars, were salaries and employee benefits, according to their 990 Form. The 990 Form is a tool for gathering information about tax-exempt organizations. The same form for Catholic Charities, which oversees operations of the Beacon, indicates that over $800,000 was allocated to 6 staff in 2022.Carveal: I will say the shelter staff are very close to being homeless themselves. They do not make a lot of money.Bre: And some of the staff used to be homeless.Carveal: Morality. Money over morality.Bre: And if you speak up you get fired.Fox: Or if you try to speak your mind about something at your work they're like no that's not cool. Here you go. Here's your termination paper. Goodbye.Carveal: I can understand. My biological father he was kind of a jerk but it was the truth: people ain't paying you to think. I paid you here because of the stipulations on that paper. Shut up and get to work. So now it's a call on the dignity and integrity of the people who work there, “what you're going to sacrifice?” You're going to sacrifice you as an individual or you're going to get to the money. Are you going to watch people suffer and get to the money. Or are you just going to say, “hey, okay it's an inconvenience, because I need the money. It's an inconvenience but no I can't do this like this.”Fox: It's like you keep your mouth shut and do the job and keep your job and have your money that way you're not sitting out on the street homeless with everything you own right beside you. Or you speak up and still lose that job and you're still ending up homeless.Carveal: I am strictly here, how I know you guys, is because it's been integrity over everything. And with my integrity I'm morally sound and upright. And I don't care. Yeah yeah yeah, I know what's right and I know what's wrong, and I don't turn down a lot of money. I don't turn down some things that y'all wouldn't even think I didn't turn down. But I did turn it down. That's why I'm here. And with that with me turning it down they ostracize me. They want to lie on me, assassinate my character. And I'm and I'm still down that I feel confident, even though I'm going through my hardships. Because, I stood my ground on my boundaries and what type of individual I am. Well money won't get it.Jack: For one I feel blessed to be in the conversation with you and know your outlook, and everyone here. So you know, you guys, just this makes me feel better about how we feel and like how we're going what we're going through. I know we don't always have solutions to all the problems, but any solutions that we can find… I know one thing is creative outlet, we're going to go to […] after this and we're going to go do some art. I think that it's a good thing. Maybe you just a weekly reminder, “hey let's go to this, let’s go make art”, to this let's get some conversations going. Let's check in on each other.Morgan: There is some real power in community that I think a lot of society is overlooking.Jack: So I'm so I'm very thankful.Bre: I want to I want to hit the Capitol with the sign that says, “FREE HUGS”, just didn't this this this year this whole new year it's it's just been a whole mess I think everybody needs a hug.Fox: We really need a sign at the Capitol that says, “if you need free hugs or free therapy, come to the Beacon and see Fox and Bre.” We really do need that. I give great hugs.Carveal: Y’all get on that! I'm more of a hardcore hairy type of guy so I'm more like, “love yourself.” Because, once you learn to love yourself, work on that work on that, because you if you can't love yourself, how you're gonna love anybody else? So if you down on yourself, you gotta get that together first. Because, once you once you get yourself together, then you could do more, and that's what I would encourage. I'm not the hugging guy all the timeFox: I love giving hugs!Carveal: But I'm in support of it. I would be like, “yeah, I need y'all to love yourself. Just because they view you like this don't mean you got to accept their point of view of you.” Love yourself, stand up for yourself, be confident and inspired to be on a on a better positive note than what these people try and dump on you.Jack: Hugs and snacks, for some reason, I've noticed like it makes other people feel better. When they're having a bad day, that's one of the things that makes me smile. I give someone a hug and I've got people that look forward to me coming up and hugging them. Because they know that I'm like, “hey, how's your recovery going?” I ask, genuinely ask. They're recovering alcoholics, one thing I do tell them is, “it's okay if it's day one, it's fine. And I'm proud of you no matter what you do.” No matter what you do that day you know I'm still proud of you.Bre: And if you relapse it's okay. It's okay.Jack: So, you gotta know that like you know some people, they need to know that it's okay to fail and not feel so separated. It's all right, just hit that reset button, get a hug, get in there. Get some love!Fox: It's like, “you need a hug and stuff? come to Jack.”### OutroYou’ve been listening to Disbanded, a podcast exploring what stands in the way of abolishing houselessness in Dane County. Today’s hosts were Bre, Morgan, Carveal, Fox, and Jack. Thank you for listening.You can ensure that these people are compensated for their efforts by becoming a patreon at patreon.com/c/disbanded_pod . Thank you for listening.