SPEAKER 1: All right.Thanks for hanging in there until the wend.We are now about to begin our third and final panel.And this will be focusing-- although our last presentationwas a good transition, which was sort of VA databut very much an academic research project approach.But this panel will have some academic and research

SPEAKER 1 [continued]: perspectives and our chair will be Kate Destler, who'sa professor in the School of Policy Governmentand International Affairs.

KATE DESTLER: Thank you all to the endurance prizewinners who are here.Good afternoon everyone.The first paper I'd like to-- or the first posts I'd liketo welcome up here are Kim Bullock and Beverly Jackson whocome from the Georgetown School of Medicine,speaking to us about life, the margins of homelessness,and teaching students about resiliency and the working

KATE DESTLER [continued]: poor..Thank you very much.

KIM BULLOCK: Thank you.This is always exciting.I enjoy-- both Dr. Jackson and I enjoycoming because it gives us an opportunityto get out of academia in one sense,hiding behind sort of all that ivory tower and moveinto, I think, a more similar in terms of rigor,

KIM BULLOCK [continued]: but more advocacy, more a community engaged environment.And that's obviously very, very important in terms of the workthat we do in our professional lives.Service learning is a very good foundational start

KIM BULLOCK [continued]: for our students to get them into the communityand to begin to immerse themselvesinto what's really important about what they'll be doingfor the rest of their lives.And it's not just simply doing physical examsand making diagnoses, but it's connectingwith people across all different walks of life.Last year we addressed issues specifically dealing

KIM BULLOCK [continued]: with service learning-- how it integrates community engagementwith the homeless community.And Dr. Jackson I felt that maybe we'llsort of expand that a little bit to lookat those individuals that are more at risk, what we termed--and what others have also termed-- on the margins

KIM BULLOCK [continued]: as a way of seeing what dynamics and what featuresmay be similar, but may be distinctive,which is very important, especially for providersso that they don't pigeonhole this population into focusingon strictly homeless population.

KIM BULLOCK [continued]: So the purpose of us focusing on those at the marginsis to see what we can do to educate studentsto look a little bit more broadlyand to see what are some of the unique aspectsthat we can do to help guide and support

KIM BULLOCK [continued]: and be mutually beneficial.So "Life on the Margins of Homelessness, Teaching StudentsAbout Resiliency and the Working Poor" is the title.And I'm going to let Beverly initiate this presentationand I will come back with the reflectionsthat the students have.

BEVERLY JACKSON: Hi everyone.This is sort of a work of the heart for Kim and myselfas we're working with our studentsas well as working on the topic.And I want to just provide some basic discussionpoints about the area-- this area, the District of Columbia,

BEVERLY JACKSON [continued]: and the surrounding area in northern Virginia as wellas Maryland.We have sites that are in both northern Virginiaas well as the District of Columbia.There are in this general region--you may have heard this before-- but there

BEVERLY JACKSON [continued]: are 1,231 homeless families made up of 3,795 people,including 2,236 children.These are people without permanent addressesor living together with other familiesin an overcrowded situation.But there's been an increase of 50% since 2010.

BEVERLY JACKSON [continued]: So this is a number that's on the rise.You may have heard that recently.But just 23%.And this is sort of a new statisticbecause often these people have been in the workforce.But in the last few years, fewer and fewer percentageof these people are employed.

BEVERLY JACKSON [continued]: That means they're becoming on the chronically homeless framerather than just being occasionally or incidentallyhomeless, because of maybe a fire or an accident.It's moving toward more of a chronic element.You've probably heard about the point in time studythat's done in all the jurisdictions every year.

BEVERLY JACKSON [continued]: The point in time study is done by volunteers,but the council of governments-- Metropolitan Washington Councilof Governments-- which extends as far into Virginiaas Prince William County.The close in counties of Maryland--not below Baltimore County-- the relativelyclose in counties of Maryland all the way out to Anne Arundel

BEVERLY JACKSON [continued]: county.All work together with the Metropolitan Washington Councilof Government and then do analysis in the annual pointof time count.And they found nearly 600 families who'vebeen living in DC's emergency shelterswere being housed through the Family Re-housing

BEVERLY JACKSON [continued]: and Stabilization Program.How many of you have heard about that?Rapid re-housing?So I'm going to talk a little bit about that.600 families who have been in shelterswere moved into DHS rapid re-housing.23 families were in units funded by the Department of Housing

BEVERLY JACKSON [continued]: and Urban Development's rapid re-housing demonstrationprogram.And then there's an additional groupin veterans rapid re-housing.So there are different rapid re-housing programsthat move people into housing and then give them upto, in some cases, a year-- In some cases

BEVERLY JACKSON [continued]: that's even been extended-- to try to get on their feetand then be able to pay below market raterent in the apartments where they've been housed.But what we found in the past year,that homelessness was up 3.5% region wide.

BEVERLY JACKSON [continued]: And they blamed it mainly on DC.And in DC, a number of complex factors,including a history of high poverty rateand the loss of affordable housing,contributed to the increase.That sort of sanitized language about-- in DC,there's been a strong move to destroy low income housing

BEVERLY JACKSON [continued]: and replace it with housing for people who are of higheror middle class income.They have a little shell game thatis played where they'll go into the low income housing areasand say, if you cooperate and move here for a little whileor to a homeless shelter for a little while,

BEVERLY JACKSON [continued]: you'll get first right to live in this mixed income housing.But it never happens.They do it neighborhood by neighborhoodthroughout the city and it never happens.It's just a little shell game.But who are the homeless?This is region wide.A number of people-- but this isn't still

BEVERLY JACKSON [continued]: a huge number of people-- unemploymentis a critical element.But a number of the people have chronic substance abuse,some severe mental illness.But you see that the numbers are relatively small percentagesof the actual total.

BEVERLY JACKSON [continued]: Physical visibility is probably one of the largest numbersof people.But there is just no housing-- no accessible housingand no affordable housing to deal with these people.The number of homeless-- I mentioned that.

BEVERLY JACKSON [continued]: The veterans rapid re-housing-- and soyou had some of the discussion about veteran's affairs.65 single veterans and 16 families with a veteranwere in rapid re-housing via Veterans Administration.But data collected this year finds

BEVERLY JACKSON [continued]: that each jurisdiction, not just the District of Columbia,has observed that the greatest barrier to any homelessnessis the lack of a single or an areaof fixed, affordable permanent housingopportunities for the lowest income households.It's just not there, not in any of the jurisdictions.

BEVERLY JACKSON [continued]: Our service learning community siteswere all over the areas from Arlington Street People'sAssistance Network, my sister's place, the McKenna Center,Georgetown Ministry center, whichis in a variety of sites in the District of Columbia,

BEVERLY JACKSON [continued]: in most of the wards.Five, Six, Seven, and Eight in the District of Columbia.So we were in a variety of areas with a varietyof different programs-- Some rapid re-housingand other types of housing.Kim, did you want me to just do a quick overview?

BEVERLY JACKSON [continued]: We fielded seven service learning teamsand I'm going to profile about four of them,working with homeless persons and transitional housingand rapid re-housing.But just to give a little quick overview-- in Arlington County,we worked with 479 homeless persons via ASPAN.

BEVERLY JACKSON [continued]: And the students in service learning at Georgetown--this is the School of Medicine, so all of themare studying to be physicians.Not necessarily a specific area, you know,whether they're going to be internists--they haven't really decided.This is their first exploration of that.

BEVERLY JACKSON [continued]: But this is a required course.Every student who goes through Georgetownhas to take a service learning time frame.And it's not just the time they been spend with other familiesand the individuals who are homeless.There's coursework that also goes along with this,looking at them studying their own bias

BEVERLY JACKSON [continued]: and trying to get through that so that theycan deal with human beings as individuals ratherthan as stereotypes.In Arlington, they work with-- 45%of the homeless persons they work with arefamilies with children.32% percent chronically homeless,

BEVERLY JACKSON [continued]: and this is an area that is increasing.This means over and over they are experiencing homelessnessand it's not something that's just an incidental time frank.Father McKenna Center at North Capital and I streetsin DC's Ward Six, they conducted a health fairand provide health consultation to residents.

BEVERLY JACKSON [continued]: Tenant Empowerment Network in DC ward Eight.Here, they work with rapid rehousingand found a lot of good outcomes in termsof the participants who were involved in thatand they were able to-- many of themable to maintain their housing.And the summit at St. Martin's apartment,

BEVERLY JACKSON [continued]: which it looks just lovely.The people there were selected by lottery.And that's how they got the housing.So it's just a little bit of housingin these specific sites for large, large numbers of people.Kim?

KIM BULLOCK: Can you see-- just moving this forward.

KATE DESTLER: Just click it.

KIM BULLOCK: Very good.The previous site that was just up on the screen there,Apartments at St. Martins-- theseare some of the topics that were includedas part of the student's interactions with the residentsthere.And you can see that it's a diverse number of topics.

KIM BULLOCK [continued]: And these were developed by the residents themselves.So they basically asked them whatdid they want to hear about-- nutrition, diabetes, HIV, footcare, smoking cessation.So there's a lot of health related information as well asnon-health related information as well.

KIM BULLOCK [continued]: I think that the core here is whatdid the students and the faculty actuallygain from this experience.And what I did was divide this up between faculty and studentsand then the residents themselves.And this is from three of the different sitesthat we worked at.And you see here listed social framework,

KIM BULLOCK [continued]: not a disease-focused model of learning.And that's very important, to see everyonewithin a more socially deprived frameas opposed to seeing individuals within a heavilymedicalized system.And you saw back on the other slidethat although there are a lot of individualswho are on the margins who are homeless that

KIM BULLOCK [continued]: have medical issues, that that's not the central focusand it shouldn't be the central focus.Diversity versus monolithic.Listening to the stories of the individualsreally makes the most power and the most change.And the human narrative is what's important.Building mutual relationships.And Beverly mentioned about addressing the implicit bias.

KIM BULLOCK [continued]: You only know what you think you know,which is a quote from one of the faculty actually.And then confronting power dynamicsand informing and sharing with individuals as opposedto instructing, which is somethingthat students had to absorb and process,because they saw themselves as instructors.

KIM BULLOCK [continued]: Increasing multicultural groups.These were two of the multicultural groupsthat they've worked with here in Arlington because there'sa very large Ethiopian and Latino Latina familypopulation at one of the sites.Prevention focused and looking at individualswho are the working poor that are not necessarily homeless.

KIM BULLOCK [continued]: Their emphasis was on prevention rather than intervention--preventing falling into homelessnessand using all of the resources to support them to maintaintheir status within the transitional housingor rapid housing, rapid cycling type of model.And then improving social capital, which I think

KIM BULLOCK [continued]: is the most important of all in terms of strengtheningfamilies out of homelessness.These are moments of reflections from the families.What was the central thing that theythought was important interfacing with the students?It was listening.It wasn't anything else.It was what they learned.It was having the students listen to their life stories.

KIM BULLOCK [continued]: It was interesting that this sortof correlated with what the faculty and students felt--validating their humanity, communicatingwith them along humanistic grounds,and providing them with hope, and seeing themselvesboth sort of struggling in the same issues,because many of the students starting out as first yearmedical students didn't see themselveswithin a power structure and neither do the families.

KIM BULLOCK [continued]: So there was actually a sense of hopefulness for both groups.Relationship building-- they saw the studentsan opportunity to build relationships and increasetheir awareness about their own health, confidence,skill building, and self-efficacyare some of the things that they came away with.And then the most important I thinkwas practical outcomes anchoring these families

KIM BULLOCK [continued]: into the community to prevent them from slippinginto homelessness.Identifying those social supports,community supports, and resourcesthat would help to anchor them into their areas of need.So health prevention and health promotion, thoseare the different elements there.And then finally just moving ahead.

KIM BULLOCK [continued]: This is everyone is a winner.By looking at families and individuals,learning the importance of self-advocacy,strengthening and empowering and activating themselvesto the needs that they need to resolve as opposedto having a fix it attitude, whichis what the students initially came with.

KIM BULLOCK [continued]: And students learning about the living conditionsof the families so that they could be empowered in future.These are just some of the referencesthat the students read.And I just want to reference-- those of you thatenjoy Ted Talks, great Ted Talk that was just actually doneby one of our Georgetown studentswho has a story of homelessness from wherehe derived his strength from.

KIM BULLOCK [continued]: Grew up in a middle class environmentand quickly spiraled down into living on the marginsand then eventually homeless out of a car.And then his family, single family,had to rise like a phoenix out of the ashes.And he's now at Georgetown in his first year.

KIM BULLOCK [continued]: Then finally this I think encapsulates whatwe want the students to feel.And this was written by Langston Hughes, whowere talking on the way over here,rose himself from the ashes of homelessnessand struggles to become obviously a very famous poet."But well son, I'll tell you-- lifefor me ain't been no crystal stair.

KIM BULLOCK [continued]: It's had tacks in it and splinters and boards torn upand places with no carpet on the floor, bare.But all the time, I's been a climbing on and reachinglandings and turning corners and sometimesgoing in the dark where there ain't been no light.So boy, don't you turn back.Don't you set down on the steps, because you'llfinds it's kind of hard.

KIM BULLOCK [continued]: Don't you fall now, for I still going, honey.I still climbing.And life for me ain't been no crystal stair.Thank you.[APPLAUSE]

KATE DESTLER: Thank you very much.And next we have Marian Moser Jones,who's a historian coming to use from the MarylandSchool of Public Health.The title of her talk is "An Enduring Silence-- Race,Racism, and Homelessness in Historical Perspective."

MARIAN MOSER JONES: Thank you all for staying.Let's pull this up.All right.So I want to talk today about something that maybe I don'thave the right to talk about.But I'm an academic and we talk about the things

MARIAN MOSER JONES [continued]: that nobody else can talk about maybe-- the people whowork for government agencies or have some political constraintsdon't talk about.And I chose this photo to go with my talkbecause there's sort of this sense

MARIAN MOSER JONES [continued]: this almost-- you don't know the ethnicityof this woman, the race, the ethnicity of this woman.In fact, you don't know that it'sa woman except that it's a Jim Hubbardphotograph from the 1980s.He was a photographer who took a lot of photos of homelessnessin the 1980s.And it's sort of idea of when someone becomes homeless,

MARIAN MOSER JONES [continued]: all of these other aspects of identity in the waywe've constructed homelessness sort of all disappearinto the identity of the homeless person.So the chair mentioned, I'm a historian.I'm a social historian of the 20th century.I look at-- one of the things I'm

MARIAN MOSER JONES [continued]: looking at is the response to homelessness,to contemporary homelessness, which the homelessness thatbegan in the '70s, not old skid row or tramps and hoboshomelessness.And looking at it with a historical lens and a policylens.So if you look at the issue of race and homelessness,

MARIAN MOSER JONES [continued]: in the Annual Homelessness Assessment, the AHAreport to Congress, you have to dig deep into volume two.And in fact volume two for 2013 isn't-- couldn't even find ityet.And you'll find that in fact African-Americansor black Americans-- and I'm going

MARIAN MOSER JONES [continued]: to just use the term black Americansto encompass people of immigrant backgroundas well as people who were born here--are greatly overrepresented among the sheltered homelesspopulations.So whereas black Americans represent 12% or 12.5%of the general population, black Americans

MARIAN MOSER JONES [continued]: represent somewhere around 37%-- 36% to 39%of the sheltered homeless populationover the past few years.And this has been an enduring phenomenon since the 1980s,since enumeration began in the 1980s.

MARIAN MOSER JONES [continued]: And yet there is very little research on this.And so I wonder, well, why?Why is this absent?In fact, if you look at the National Allianceto end homelessness, state of homelessness annual reports,they're very widely used, well-regarded reports.

MARIAN MOSER JONES [continued]: The word race or ethnicity or African-American or whiteis not used, although you'll see thatthe representation, the visual representations or otherwise.In fact, the main way that people are categorized--and if you think of race, we're notthinking of obviously a biological category.It's a social category and something that we as a society,

MARIAN MOSER JONES [continued]: that's a historical category, was a legal category.And so that's not the category, the kind of categories,that are used with categorizing people who are homeless.We use sheltered versus non-sheltered.We use families versus individuals.We use chronic versus non-chronic.Veteran, non-veteran.

MARIAN MOSER JONES [continued]: And so again, there's a whole different social structureof categorization in which this other structure disappears.And some of you who are involved in servicesmay argue that this system of categorisation, thisis the meaningful system of categorisationbecause we're talking about how to match people to services

MARIAN MOSER JONES [continued]: and get people out of homelessness, right?And I see your point.However, there has been some researchon how race-- and it's obviously relatedto how people are treated based on their raceand on historical patterns of racial segregation-- affectsservice outcomes.There's been very little, but a little bit.

MARIAN MOSER JONES [continued]: And most recently, there was a studythat came out this year that saidthat having a comprehensive caseworkerfor homeless veterans who get a HUD voucher to help findhousing actually helps the veterans find housingin better, higher quality neighborhoods, measured

MARIAN MOSER JONES [continued]: by a composite of a group of factors--socioeconomic status, average povertyrate in the neighborhood, some other factors.You can look at this research.I'd be glad to give you the site.And that it matters more for African-Americanor black American veterans than for white veterans.

MARIAN MOSER JONES [continued]: So there's also a 1999 study showing that a race or gendermatch of a caseworker affects the treatmentoutcome for black men who are experiencing homelessness.So this shows that we don't live in a post-racial society.And that is also true for homelessness.

MARIAN MOSER JONES [continued]: But for people like me who are lookingat the history of homelessness and the causes of homelessness,I'm interested why are African-Americans,black Americans, over-represented?What can this tell us about the core causes and the underlyingfactors that have created homeless,contemporary homelessness.

MARIAN MOSER JONES [continued]: And there was one article I find really intriguing about thisby Carter in 2011.He's a statistician from the census.And he said, it's a combination of the push and pull factors,that he hypothesized that racial segregation of housingmay limit access to affordable housing for black Americans

MARIAN MOSER JONES [continued]: more than for white Americans, and that more homeless sheltersare located in black communities or communities of colorwith high percentages of African-American blackpopulations.And it would pull people out of inadequate, substandard housinginto homelessness.And he found, through pretty complex modeling,

MARIAN MOSER JONES [continued]: that when a city has a high segregation level,that in fact the probability of living in an inadequate unitis significantly higher for black Americansthan white Americans.And the same for living in a crowded unit.And also that, yes, more-- there's

MARIAN MOSER JONES [continued]: a racial disparity in who becomes home--where people become homeless.So what I can offer is a historical explanationfor this.And by the way, when I talk about segregation,people often think about legal segregation, Jim Crow

MARIAN MOSER JONES [continued]: segregation.I'm not talking that.I'm talking about what we call de facto segregation.There's what's called a dissimilarity.So 100 on the dissimilarity indexwould mean that total apartheid.Everyone is totally separated residentially based on race.You see that all the cities that have really high indices

MARIAN MOSER JONES [continued]: are northern cities.So Birmingham Alabama is number 15, but allthe top ones-- New York, Milwaukee, Chicago, Newark,Buffalo, Cleveland-- they're all northern cities.So we're talking about de facto northern urban segregation.So why is this the case?

MARIAN MOSER JONES [continued]: Well historically there are factorsthat really explain this and that howsegregation could happen, could be highest in northern cities.After World War II, the GI bill passed.You had 16 million returning veterans.There was a terror among policymakers

MARIAN MOSER JONES [continued]: that we return to the Great Depressionwith the influx of workers.And so the GI Bill was passed which offered free educationand cheap mortgages for qualified veterans--especially the free education.And this, the GI bill has been praised as this great policysuccess because it-- and really leading to the creation

MARIAN MOSER JONES [continued]: of the US middle class.But far fewer black veterans than white veteranswere able to take advantage of this due to segregationof higher education.Unfortunately my own institution,the University of Maryland, was completely segregateduntil 1956.In Virginia, you had some similar things.

MARIAN MOSER JONES [continued]: And among black veterans born in the south, whichwas the majority of black veterans,there was no gain from the GI bill.And one group of economists have shown this--that while black vets born in the north and white veteransdid benefit significantly, those born in the south

MARIAN MOSER JONES [continued]: did not gain because there were too few institutions of highereducation available to them.They had been prevented from educationbefore going into the army.And so this bill, which is hailedas creating this middle class, actuallywidened the gap between black and white

MARIAN MOSER JONES [continued]: in terms of opportunity.More importantly, I would say it widened the geographic gap.That this also policy held as wonderfulof federally subsidized loans for veterans--here's Levittown, one of the biggest subdivisions, created

MARIAN MOSER JONES [continued]: in Long Island, Pennsylvania.No cash required from veterans.$67 a month.Great.It wasn't just housing.It was a community with good education, recreation.Safe and clean suburbs.There were racially restrictive covenantssaying that no black families could move in.

MARIAN MOSER JONES [continued]: And this was widespread throughout northern cities.So black veterans were kept out of the suburbs, kept outof education, and this widened both educational gapand the gap in terms of housing, and significantlythe wealth gap, because this was huge wealth creationprogram for white Americans, because people would

MARIAN MOSER JONES [continued]: buy their house in 1950, sell it 20 years later for muchmore money, pass on that wealth to their kids, whodid the same thing.So many black Americans remain in the central citywith dilapidated housing and fewer services.

MARIAN MOSER JONES [continued]: Additionally, you had urban renewal.This is Pruitt-Igoe, the most infamous urban renewal projectin my home town of St. Louis.It was knocked down in 1969.And basically it was urban destruction.The sad thing is you have the church is remaining.The only thing that's remaining that they left is the church.

MARIAN MOSER JONES [continued]: But they destroy a community and build this prison-like housing.And of course, it didn't work.And meanwhile, you have white flight to the suburbs,and you also start to have black flight.So what Du Bois called "the Talented Tenth"start to fly out of the suburbs.So the community leaders, doctors, and lawyers,and business owners.

MARIAN MOSER JONES [continued]: So you have post civil rights era segregation.And so you have many people left behindin the inner city, dilapidated rental housing.There is no incentive for landlords to maintainthis affordable housing.So what if the housing becomes uninhabitable?

MARIAN MOSER JONES [continued]: You have mold, rats, and of course violence, lack of heat.What happens?Well, can you double up with family?For a while, maybe.So there's a push factor there.But even then, people have been talking about how homelessnesshas always existed.I would say that's not true, that in the United

MARIAN MOSER JONES [continued]: States-- in 1976, my mentor, Kim Hopper, gave me this quote."The housing industry trades on the knowledgethat no Western country can politicallyafford to permit its citizens to sleep in the streets."There was not widespread homelessness.What happened was there were many peopleliving in very marginal housing in inner cities.

MARIAN MOSER JONES [continued]: The institutionalization did not cause homelessness on its own.Again, people were being dischargedinto marginal housing in cities like New York and Chicago,into single room occupancy hotels.Meanwhile, you have the return of Vietnam veteransin the 1970s amid a time of shrinking job opportunities.

MARIAN MOSER JONES [continued]: And I'll just skip over this.But so by the 1970s, what I like to sayis that all coalesced into a perfect storm.You have this rotting housing.You have returning vets with little opportunity.You have the deinstitutionalization.And then you have urban renewal.

MARIAN MOSER JONES [continued]: And now we have this great new policy in citiesto bring back the wealthier people.In New York in the '70s, tax abatements,so we convert those SROs to fancy condosso that bourgeoisie people like mewill move back into the city.And out go the people who are marginally housed.

MARIAN MOSER JONES [continued]: And from what I can see, this is what's happening right now.What happened in the '70s is now happening in DC.And I will just end-- I'm going to skip with this.These are couple of interviews I did that talk about, thatvalidate this.You see this nationally.You see it in LA.Suddenly Skid Row is no longer full of old white men

MARIAN MOSER JONES [continued]: who are alcoholics.It's full of young black men who are not necessarily alcoholics,who may be veterans with PTSD and other problems.But there's a mismatch.You have this Skid Row model and youhave many-- a diverse population that'snot being treated properly according to Skid Row.

MARIAN MOSER JONES [continued]: And yet you have the representationin the 1980s of homelessness as a white phenomenon.And this really echoes the 1930s representationwhere in fact she was actually a Native American woman,but de-identified and made into this symbol of the depression.

MARIAN MOSER JONES [continued]: I'm just going to end with this.Norweeta Milburn, who's a homelessness researchpioneer from UCLA and one of the few researchersof color, one of the very first researchers of color,to get into homelessness researchin the '80s at Howard University.And I asked her why, you know, why is this,

MARIAN MOSER JONES [continued]: that this representation issue-- and she saidno one cares about a schizophrenic black manon the streets.If you talk about a woman and her child,if you talk about a veteran who's returned from war,it's a more compelling picture.And then she said simply, the homeless advocatesrealize that.So I'm going to end on that note,

MARIAN MOSER JONES [continued]: because we're running out of time.But I could go on and talk about that more.

KATE DESTLER: Thanks.[APPLAUSE]Thank you.And to wrap things up, we have Paul Gorskifrom our very own George Mason that'scome down I-66 from the teaching at Center College.The title of his talk is "Beyond Blankets and Suits-- Mobilizingto Eliminate, Not Just Mitigate, Poverty and Homelessness."

PAUL GORSKI: Good afternoon, everyone.Good afternoon, everyone.

CROWD: Good afternoon!

PAUL GORSKI: All right.So I don't know if I should apologize ahead of time,but I have a really hard time standing stillwhen I'm talking.I need to flail my arms.And I come out of an activist traditionmore than an academic tradition.And so it's hard for me to sit still.I think I might have changed the title

PAUL GORSKI [continued]: from the one you just named.I really appreciate both of the presenters who went before me.In some ways, I feel like these presentationscould have provided a big context in some waysat the very beginning as easily as at the end.And I do think it's really critical to talk about poverty

PAUL GORSKI [continued]: and homelessness intersectionallyacross issues like race.My own work cuts across race and class and hetero-sexismand sexism and all these sorts of things.And sometimes I find that when I go to do something about class,there are some people, and particularly white people

PAUL GORSKI [continued]: who are just thankful we're not talking about race for once--and so I think it's really important as poverty,and the disproportionate number of people of colorwho experience poverty, is racism.There's no way to pull these things apart.And I think we need to talk about them like that.So just to start as a reflection.

PAUL GORSKI [continued]: I do a lot of work in schools and lookingat educational policy issues.And to write a book that I recentlywrote, reviewing the research from about the last 30years about what drives education policy when it comesto low income students and addressing what people call

PAUL GORSKI [continued]: the achievement gap, which is really an opportunity gap, notachievement gap.But sometimes the language itself drives the policy.And what I found was pretty astounding.And it sort of changed the way that I do this work.What I found was that best predictor of how well schoolswill do educating lower income youth

PAUL GORSKI [continued]: is what the adults at the school thinkis the answer to that question.If they think that people are in poverty because people aredeficient and broken and that they themselvesare intellectually inferior, morally inferior,and that sort of thing, then theycan't have that in their mind and high expectations

PAUL GORSKI [continued]: for low income students in their mind at the same time.And what's really interesting again,I think this flows really nicely from what the last presentershave talked about, is that the percent-- the answerto this question in the mass consciousness in the UShas changed around the mid 1970s.

PAUL GORSKI [continued]: If you go before that, there was a chunk of timewhere most people in the US believedthat poverty existed because of an unequal distributionof opportunity.So because of structural conditions that--and in a capitalist nation because some people profit offof the existence of poverty.

PAUL GORSKI [continued]: Keeps wages down.Around the mid 1970s, which is alsoI think not randomly, about when the sort of initial seedsof neo liberalism were born.And Reagan was running his first timerunning for president, his unsuccessful initial bid

PAUL GORSKI [continued]: and his popularization of the term welfare queen.I think a lot of that sort of coalescedinto a change in mass consciousness.And from that point till today, most peoplebelieve that people who are in poverty in the USare in poverty because they are deficient.And that drives, I think, a lot of the policy debate

PAUL GORSKI [continued]: and policy strategies that peopletry to use to address poverty.I think there's a very purposeful socializationof the US public to lead us to believe that we solve povertyby fixing people who are in poverty

PAUL GORSKI [continued]: rather than by fixing the conditions that necessitateand sustain poverty.And so I try to sort of restate that kind of reflection.I was thinking about what are the systems and structures thatensure that poverty persists.And I think if we can't get to the answer to that question,then all we're going to be doing is dealing with symptoms.

PAUL GORSKI [continued]: We're going to be dealing with homelessness because povertyexists.We're going to be dealing with hunger because poverty exists.And I think we're in this cycle of dealing with symptomsof something that's much bigger and that we'retrained to do that rather than looking up the power continuumand saying, holy smokes, how is allthat wealth being concentrated-- how

PAUL GORSKI [continued]: are we all told that arranging our economy this waywas going to create this trickle down effect when really whatit's created is a trickle up effect.And how does that relate to the growing numbersof people in poverty as well as homelessness-- and of course,

PAUL GORSKI [continued]: to whose benefit?And one of the reasons that I find thisis so hard-- so a lot of my work is working with communityorganizations-- Catholic charities, United Way, whoever,also schools-- who think of themselvesas doing work related to poverty.And the reason why I have found that work to be so hard.Even among people who are committed to this work,

PAUL GORSKI [continued]: is that people want to think of it as a practical solution.If we just put this in place and this in place and thisin place, that will solve the problem.My experience working with people who are ostensiblycommitted to working around poverty issuesis that fundamentally, this is an ideological problem.That we have a lot of people-- we

PAUL GORSKI [continued]: don't have any shortage of strategies and initiativesand programs all over the country to address this.The problem is a vast majority of those initiativesand strategies and programs reallyare no threat to poverty and homelessness.They're really about how do we help people in povertybe a little bit more comfortable as people in poverty?How do we help homeless people perhaps temporarily

PAUL GORSKI [continued]: have a little relief from homelessnessrather than addressing the bigger conditions that--And so that's what I work, organizations around this.How do I sort of make that shift?And I think part of the-- in an activist world,we talk about a continuum of actions

PAUL GORSKI [continued]: that start with mitigative actionsand then go to transformative actions.mitigative actions are things that most students doon college campuses-- we're goingto go hand out blankets to homeless people.We're going to volunteer in a food kitchen.Maybe somewhere in the middle of that

PAUL GORSKI [continued]: is providing temporary housing.But what we don't have a lot of is what's at the other end--is how do we completely eliminatethe underlying conditions that createhomelessness and poverty?So again, we're responding.And with my students, I always talk about the two parablesand how people are kind of always--

PAUL GORSKI [continued]: most people really connect with the starfish parable,about the kid who's on the beach and all these starfishhave been washed ashore.And the kid's picking up the starfish one by oneand throwing them back in the ocean.And somebody says, you know, thereare thousands of starfish.You're not really making a difference.And the kid says, well, I'm makinga difference to this one, and throws it back.And it's like, oh, I'm getting choked

PAUL GORSKI [continued]: up just telling the story.But the truth is, no social change has happened that way.I think we're socialized to believe.I don't know if y'all are familiar with the bridges outof poverty or the circles program or the ideas thatwe'll raise people out of poverty one by one.And people are really-- thank you--

PAUL GORSKI [continued]: people are I think kind of inspired by that.The problem, of course, is social changedoesn't happen that way.So I talk about the other parableof the community and the babies, wherethere's the baby floating down the river and someonegoes out and grabs the baby, the basket with the baby,and brings it on shore.And a minute later, another baby is floating down the river.

PAUL GORSKI [continued]: And the person does that a few times and the crowds gatheringand everyone is going out and pullingbabies out of the river.And I think that is sort of what happenswith a lot of social movements of the US,but especially around poverty and homelessness.And then all of a sudden, somebodyis like, I'm going to go up river and find outhow all these babies are ending up in the river.

PAUL GORSKI [continued]: And I think that's the piece that is too often missing.Not that we don't-- and again, it's not that we don't wantto do the mitigative things.We don't want people who are homelessor people who are in poverty to freeze to death or starveto death while the revolution happens,while they're waiting for the revolution.The problem is, there's far too much energy going

PAUL GORSKI [continued]: into the revolution because people wantto see this immediate-- want to see an immediate response,immediate response.And the revolution is not going to be immediate response.And so I think to me the bottom lineis, do I advocate for policies thatare about fixing marginalized peopleor about providing some subsistence level of service

PAUL GORSKI [continued]: to marginalize people?Or do I advocate for policies thatare about fixing the conditions that marginalize people?And I think that's the shift.That's the hard shift that a lot of organizations doingthis work have to try to make.This is my grandma.I just have to throw a picture of herinto every presentation I do.

PAUL GORSKI [continued]: But this is how I started developing a consciousness.My mom's family's Appalachian coal miners.And so just kind of seeing how people were respondingto them and the kind of services that basically guaranteedthat they would stay poor or that povertywould still be a tremendous problem

PAUL GORSKI [continued]: in that region of the country.But how do we help them live a subsistence lifeso we can all feel better-- at least nobodyis starving to death.These are all things people have talked about.And I just-- really quickly, I wantto talk about when I've worked with these organizations.I've been able to basically identify

PAUL GORSKI [continued]: three basic ideologies that drive what peopleare willing to invest policy-wise-- deficitideology, grit ideology, and structural geology.I found working with organizationsthat if I could figure out what ideology is driving them,I could basically know going into it what kind of differencethey're making, if any difference at all.

PAUL GORSKI [continued]: The deficit ideology-- little typo there--again comes from this notion that povertyis caused by the moral, intellectual,and cultural deficiencies in low income communities.So it's about fixing poor people.So these are mentoring programs for low income people.These are-- again, those kind of subsistence things

PAUL GORSKI [continued]: about helping poor people, people in poverty, survive.And a lot of the work that's beingdone to address poverty and homelessnessis basically this kind of work-- Catholic Charities, the UnitedWay.This is the kind of thing that they tend to do,which obviously is no threat to poverty or homelessness at all.

PAUL GORSKI [continued]: The sort of new kid on the block around poverty ideologyis what's called the grit ideology.Grit ideology recognizes that people of povertyhave a lot to overcome in order to succeed.But grit ideology is about acknowledging that but sayingwhat we need to do rather than addressing those barriers is

PAUL GORSKI [continued]: to give people in poverty the skillsto overcome the barriers.And it's interesting, too, if anyone else heredoes work around racial justice as well that theseare the same ideologies that drive conversations about raceas well.So the idea is how do we make lower income people more

PAUL GORSKI [continued]: resilient, more gritty, rather than-- firstof all, who is more gritty and resilient than low incomepeople to begin with?That's something that I learned from my grandmother.But rather than addressing the issuesthat people have to overcome like lack of accessto healthy food, lack of access to affordable housing--

PAUL GORSKI [continued]: and what I think that is the major thing,lack of access to living wage work.You know, we're still not going to make a difference.So what I try to push organizationsand other advocates to is the structural ideology,which is about eliminate those barriers.

PAUL GORSKI [continued]: And I work with my students-- it'sreally interesting on a college campusbecause there are 10 canned food drives going on all the time.But there's very little-- how do I encourage my studentsto actually work on living wage campaigns to actually createa bigger change.And so that's basically what I dois try to push toward a structural view.

PAUL GORSKI [continued]: And what I find again is that whatwe imagine as solutions is driven by our view.If I'm really captured by the starfish story,then I'm probably going to do a lot of mitigative thingsthat ultimately are going to be no threat.It's not that they're not important,but ultimately they're going to be no threat to the underlyingissue.If I start with the structural ideology,

PAUL GORSKI [continued]: then I'm going to be much more likely to addressissues that get at the bottom.And I think my time is up, which isreally unfortunate because the rest of this stuffis fascinating.I'm just going to see if there's anything I really have to--well, this is just another way of saying the same thing.I teach in a social justice and human rights program

PAUL GORSKI [continued]: and we spend a lot of time talking about where we'rekind of socializing youth to see themselves as partof social change movement.And so often it's about charity, service, and volunteerismrather than working on-- learning about and workingon the underlying structural conditions, which againis why I was really happy to hear the two presenters who

PAUL GORSKI [continued]: went right before me who I think talked about that.So I'll leave it there.I'm just going to forward to my emailaddress in case anybody wants to connect with me about this.I'm also happy to share the PowerPointif anyone wants to see the slides I missed.So feel free to contact me.And thank you all.[APPLAUSE]

KATE DESTLER: We are at that 4:00 o'clock point.But are there any questions for the assessments?Yes?

SPEAKER 3: Is there any discussion--I know we keep hearing about reparations.Is that a concept that's not--

MARIAN MOSER JONES: Ta-Nehisi Coates writes extremely wellabout that in "The Atlantic."

SPEAKER 3: Is it developed or--

MARIAN MOSER JONES: It's an extremely well-developedhistorical perspective.

SPEAKER 3: Right.But in terms of being able to use it as a tool.

MARIAN MOSER JONES: Since the GI bill,everything that was in the historical perspectiveis analyzed in Ta-Nehisi Coates' work,and has been profiled and analyzed and dealtwith as a series in the "The Atlantic".It used to be called "The Atlantic Monthly."People might be able to remember.

SPEAKER 3: I guess I was [INAUDIBLE]

SPEAKER 4: Hi.I have a question maybe Marian and Paulmight be able to speak to.But I think something that sort of troubles me or makes mea little concerned is that we've sort of segregated outhomeless populations so that you havethe veterans and the families and the others.

SPEAKER 4 [continued]: And we had a whole panel pretty much on veteran homelessnessand obviously it's a big concern.But I fear that we're going after this low-hanging fruitand that ends up having the unintentional effect of sortof creating a paradigm that makesthe individuals with chronic homelessness sort of the less

SPEAKER 4 [continued]: sympathetic person and maybe less deserving or interventionor that is an issue to address.And I wonder if you could tell me if I'm being too cynicalor what you think about that or--

MARIAN MOSER JONES: Absolutely not.[LAUGHTER]

PAUL GORSKI: Well, I think that word undeserving is reallyimportant, because that's part of the socialization thathappens [INAUDIBLE].The whole strategy behind Reagan's welfare plan.That's what ultimately justifies that piece of neo liberalismwhich is taking resources that were once protected

PAUL GORSKI [continued]: and things that were very purposefully public things--like what's happening in public educationand in higher ed right now, which is the cessation.And part of that is justified through the evolutionof the undeserving poor.

PAUL GORSKI [continued]: But I agree with you.I think all these issues are intersectionaland I was really bothered by this--I think it was like-- about where there wasthis sort of justification for addressingthe reasons that people were responding to them.

PAUL GORSKI [continued]: I see that as strategy, but I alsosee that as a compliment with that,and the intersectionality between poverty and racism.

MARIAN MOSER JONES: I think it goes back to 120 yearsEnglish, English poor block.Deserving and under-serving poor, right?So this idea that poverty is because of peopleand because deserving poor who can't help itand then the undeserving poor who can help it.

MARIAN MOSER JONES [continued]: And that would codify and then it was broadlyinstitutionalized for a couple hundred years.And then Reagan brought it back.And he talked about the homeless by choice, you know,who were undeserving because they chose to be on the street.He specifically said that in the administration policy.

MARIAN MOSER JONES [continued]: But I don't want to disparage the campaignto end veteran homelessness.It may come out of certain cynical strategiesto say let's find the most appealing, whatever,group that people think, of coursethey deserve to get benefits.

MARIAN MOSER JONES [continued]: But if it does help that group get off the street,then that's good, because it is talking about reparations.And you're talking about a lot of Vietnam vetswho never got-- Vietnam era vets who never got anything and weretreating so poorly and have had decades with them.

MARIAN MOSER JONES [continued]: So I just think we have to-- I think the permanent supportof housing model and housing first model actuallyis interesting because it's rooted in a human rights modelthat people have a right to housing.But strategically it's been sold as a cost benefit model--that the benefits outweigh the costs

MARIAN MOSER JONES [continued]: and that it's cheaper to house people.And I just think policy people and advocateshave to play that game in our society.I don't have to play that game as an academic.I can tell what I think is the truth.[LAUGHTER]If you're in policy, you have to play a game, right?

SPEAKER 4: You've got to.

MARIAN MOSER JONES: Yeah.I mean, if you want to get things done, right?

SPEAKER 5: Can I ask-- Julia, I thinkyour comment is very valid.But from a research standpoint, thisis exactly how research goes, at least in the biomedical field.You have to break the problem downinto pieces and research each and every one of them.And then you learn from every dimensionand then put them back together to find an answerfor the bigger problems.

SPEAKER 5 [continued]: That's been true from AIDS researcherrecently to older research and so on.And so in my opinion-- and going back to what Paul didn't say,and I wish we had more time for the rest of it--is probably what we need to is weneed to change the entire-- I don't thinkit's ideals-- but the entire political discourse

SPEAKER 5 [continued]: in the country.And we need a massive low-rent or maybe something catchylike-- the whatever the queen was that--[LAUGHTER]And you know, something catchy and really re-educate,re-prioritize what do we as a community,

SPEAKER 5 [continued]: as a culture expect for ourselvesand for our fellow citizens.But that's-- that's a great idea.

KIM BULLOCK: Your comment about worthinessis something that we basically see in students,because they come from a sense of privileges.And so part of service learning isto help to deconstruct that whole imageand that whole perceptions.And the students, when they do go into the community sites,

KIM BULLOCK [continued]: they are challenged by their own perception of worthinessand how did the individuals and howdid the families get to this point--something inherent to those families, something deficient.And then what they come away with after this real struggleof communicating, interacting-- what

KIM BULLOCK [continued]: we showed on the board is that they realizethere's human-ness, there's inter-relatedness,and there's community.And that they are part of that community asopposed to being distinct and people with privilege.And it's pretty powerful.Some don't get it and you still have this compartmentalizationthat you're referring to.

KIM BULLOCK [continued]: But I think on the whole, most of the studentsdo come away as the become immersedin that sense of community.That language, that discourse, does indeed have to change.

SPEAKER 6: One small step-- we tryreally hard to talk about people experiencing homelessnessso we're not labeling them as homeless familiesor homeless veterans, that they happento be-- the don't have a home.There's not affordable housing in the communityor there's not the support of services

SPEAKER 6 [continued]: that you need-- that people who aren't homelessgo to psychiatrists or go to-- but when you're homelessand you need psychiatric services,then you kind of get labeled.So describing that condition and--

SPEAKER 7: I've got a question for Paul.You laid out the inequality due to racism very, very capably.But you said something about the peoplethat are most affected end up kindof fulfilling their perception.And it triggered something in my mind--yes, we need to acknowledge the real historic inequality

SPEAKER 7 [continued]: that racism has played.But at the same time, if that's the dominate themethat someone in the inner city hears all the time,won't that re-enforce that negative perceptioninto being adverse to what we're trying to do?And I have one quick follow up.

PAUL GORSKI: I think most people of color in the inner cityare very conscious of racism already.So I don't think that being a part of the conversationis going to shock anybody into some feelings.But I don't think that's the whole conversation.That's one bit of the intersection.

PAUL GORSKI [continued]: People with disabilities.People who were kicked out of their homes because theywere gay or lesbian or children not conforming.There's a lot of different intersections there.I just think-- I think we get-- the list goes backto the previous question too.I think we get into some danger with all of these movements

PAUL GORSKI [continued]: where we add people, a bunch of different people who ultimatelyhave similar goals but who are competing overa little tiny piece of pie rather than gettingtogether and organizing with each other as people who arecommitted to racial justice and racial injustice,economic injustice, rather than those people gettingtogether and saying, hey, why are we getting

PAUL GORSKI [continued]: such a small piece of pie?So I it's just sort of a bigger--that was just one example.

SPEAKER 7: And just a follow up.It was interesting for you to put up there about the-- almostlike a dichotomy of helping marginalize people for fixingthe conditions that affect marginalized people.And I just wanted to understand--when you talk about the conditions thataffect marginalized people, or what

SPEAKER 7 [continued]: you called underlying structural conditions, thatseems to me like you're talking about capitalize.And I know it's got it's drawbacks, believe me,but you know historically, of course, the majority of peoplehave been poor with a very small upper class.And despite it's shortcomings, capitalism

SPEAKER 7 [continued]: has lifted a lot of people out of poverty.Obviously there's still drawbacks.But I'm just wondering if you're proposalis to change the fundamental nature of capitalisminto maybe something that it's notand end up destroying that source of wealth creation.[LAUGHTER]

PAUL GORSKI: How much longer do we have?[LAUGHTER]I don't prescribe any particular-- Imean, that's just a structure or a framework.And the way that capitalism works in the USis not the way that it works in other places.In other places, it's not so-- it

PAUL GORSKI [continued]: hasn't turned into what it's turned into here, whichis basically industry choosing policy that'sbest for industry.And that's not good for anyway except for the peopleat the very top of the hierarchy.But I don't think it's about capitalism or not capitalism,but I do think if we're seriouslygoing to address poverty as an issue,

PAUL GORSKI [continued]: it is going to be about redistributingaccess and opportunity.There's no other way to do it.There's no other way to create more equity and justiceif you're not willing to redistributeaccess and opportunity.That's for racism.That's for sexism.That's for everything else.So I don't know if that's kind of eliminating capitalism.

PAUL GORSKI [continued]: I think it's about eliminating that corporate strangleholdon policy in the US.I do a lot of work at schools and they largelydestroyed anything about public thatonce was creating any kind of change in that accessand opportunity structure because it's

PAUL GORSKI [continued]: profitable for them to create it in a different way.So I don't know if it's capitalism or not capitalism,but I know it's about the redistribution of accessand opportunity.

KIM BULLOCK: And I think one of the parts of that is noteliminating capitalism, but appropriately regulatingthose forces.And a lot of times students will say that.You mean you're a communist or youwant to get rid of capitalism.No.And Charles Lindblom talks about that.He says, just because capitalism-- many of us

KIM BULLOCK [continued]: agree that capitalism is the best system that we've hit uponso far for some of the reasons you mentioned--doesn't mean that it doesn't create egregious outcomes thatneed to be addressed.And without some form of policy or governancethat mitigates those factors and controls those forces,

KIM BULLOCK [continued]: they'll stand astride the globe and dis-empowerall these people.And so that's the idea of sort of bringing that into-- but notmaking it an all or nothing.Well, now we're all become Marxists or something.Some people see that, but not necessarily the case.It's dealing with that, I would say,

KIM BULLOCK [continued]: regulation policy or some mechanisms.

MARIAN MOSER JONES: I just want to say one quick thing--that all the things, all the big policies I showedthere were not pure capitalism.They were actually social engineeringby liberal democratic administrations,which I hate to admit.But GI bill, urban renewal, deinstitutionalization,

MARIAN MOSER JONES [continued]: and the change to Medicaid.And even the tax abatements for changing, creating, morehigher income housing under a democratic mayor in New York.So he may have been a neo liberal mayor.

MARIAN MOSER JONES [continued]: But I think it's also about not creating federal, state,and local policy that makes things worse for people.So a libertarian might look at the caulkand say that some of the harm wascreated by right intended but wrong-- right intended policy.

MARIAN MOSER JONES [continued]: And look at the Vietnam war.The liberal democratic president promotedthat because he thought he could createthe Great Society in Vietnam.And we're still dealing with the consequences of thatwith the homeless veterans.

KIM BULLOCK: I find it kind of ironicthat we're talking about this the day after the electionand we're trying to disband the purple care package.And so strategy-- one of the-- how do you create that change?

PAUL GORSKI: I think that's such a good examplebecause again in the US there's a socialization that anything--my students have some into a social justice and human rightsprogram with the socialization, many of them,that capitalism is the most socially just systemand that anything that looks like socialism-- I'm like,

PAUL GORSKI [continued]: well, what are you doing at a public universityif that's what you believe.This is socialism.It's becoming more capitalism.It's neo liberalism.So I don't know.I think eliminating capitalism ought to be on the table.[LAUGHTER]I think everything ought to be on it.

PAUL GORSKI [continued]: It doesn't mean that's the solution.

KATE DESTLER: Thank you very much for everyone.Well, regretfully we have to end.But this is an ongoing conversationand I do plan to have this conference again next year.And I would like to expand the conversation to more of someof the topics that our final panel brought up.And perhaps we can dig further into those.Because looking at those structural issues--

KATE DESTLER [continued]: and interestingly so, Otmar Kloiber,who's the president of the World Medical Associationis on the board of our journal, which sponsors this event.And the World Medical Associationis very much concerned with addressingthe social determinants of health.And the new Secretary General of the World Medical Association--his name is escaping me at this moment--has made that the primary agenda of his term

KATE DESTLER [continued]: is to address social determinants of health.And this talks about looking at the structural consequencesof poverty, not just sort of like you say,putting the Band-Aid on, but dealingwith the structural issues.And there's a lot of push-back against that kind of model.And I think the way that you've characterized itas individual responsibility versus structural--and I always have to sort of tenderly say to my students,

KATE DESTLER [continued]: well, of course-- there's always some agencyand individual responsibility.But you have to look-- it's never all or nothing.And just sometimes, I find that you can onlybegin to introduce the idea about structural change.But I think it's hopeful that the president of the WorldMedical Association and the new Secretary Generalhave this agenda.And I think no matter what, we haveto deal with any and all prescriptions that

KATE DESTLER [continued]: can potentially mitigate these problems that we see before usand that will require the rest of usto work very hard for the rest of our lives to continue.So anyway, thank you all very much for being hereand being a part of this.Thanks.[APPLAUSE]