4 GROUNDCOVER NEWS SOLUTIONS MARCH 21, 2025 "Beyond the Bridge: A Solution to Homelessness" comes to the Michigan Theater On Tuesday March 11, I attended a viewing of a documentary called “Beyond the Bridge: A Solution to Homelessness.” The viewing was very well attended. There was a mix of genders and races, but a large part was composed of white, middle-aged women of apparent means, so mostly homogeneous. The documentary was directed and produced by Don Sawyer and filmed by Tim Hashko who both previously created a documentary titled “Under the Bridge: The Criminalization of Homelessness,” and who both attended the screening. The new documentary is about finding solutions to the problems discovered in the first movie. Sawyer and Hashko set out on a cross-country trip to visit various large cities in the United States to ascertain how they address their homelessness issues. Of the major cities they visited, two stood out as having the best approach to a solution: Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Houston, Texas. The two cities boast a significant reduction in homelessness from the street to permanent housing. These cities embraced the Housing First model. Housing First seeks to provide a person with an immediate and permanent place to live before addressing any other barriers such as criminal record, mental health or behavioral issues. Housing First has no mandatory programs or conditions a person must meet before being housed. Among the first few steps taken by these cities to reduce homelessness and institute Housing First, one was a change in the way law enforcement interacts with those experiencing homelessness and another was the creation of a low-barrier rental network. Amazingly, there are a number of landlords that charge truly affordable rents (comparable to a room in Ypsilanti for $500 a month) and do not charge application fees or conduct background and credit checks. Changes in police work involve officers behaving more like social workers and less like cops. This is especially significant when it comes to warrants. Their police officers who are practicing homelessness “harm reduction” tend to work more closely with county mental health workers, act as points of contact for housing agencies, and can delay or avoid acting on arrest warrants. To the Housing First model they added elements of Permanent Supportive Housing by offering services to help the recently-housed succeed, specifically, the element of supportive services. Additionally, it was clear that the JIM CLARK Groundcover vendor No. 139 success of the programs depends on seeing the homeless as people who deserve compassion, kindness and respect. A very disturbing trend was emphasized by the film. There have always been stigmas about the homeless — mostly the idea that people experiencing homelessness are lazy and are living this way on purpose in order to milk the system. This sentiment is generally only expressed by people who have never been housing or food insecure, do not have debilitating health issues or simply the bad luck of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. They have never had any real tragedy in their lives. These fortunate people have begun to feel okay with things like letting their children jeer and make fun of homeless people, throwing rocks and garbage at them, or the opposite — ghosting them entirely. Worst of all, there have been incidents where homeless people have been murdered; the movie even reported there was a serial killer targeting the homeless at one point. This is decidedly the opposite of compassion, kindness and respect. Overall, the documentary does a good job pointing out successful efforts by cities that have created movement in solving the homelessness epidemic through lower barriers to housing and services, acknowledging the homeless as people and neighbors deserving of dignity and respect, and most importantly, asking the homeless themselves what they need to exit their situation. A panel presented after the documentary was moderated by Beth Angell, Dean of the U-M School of Social Work and Ann Arbor Mayor Christopher Taylor. Panelists were Roshanak Mehdipanah, U-M Associate Professor of Public Health; Molly Smith, Director of Services at Avalon Housing; Jennifer Hall, Executive Director of the Ann Arbor Housing Commission; and film director Don Sawyer. While the Ann Arbor area has taken a number of steps to address the homelessness crisis through its housing Panelists L to R: Beth Angell, Don Sawyer, Roshanak Mehdipanah, Molly Smith, Jennifer Hall, Mayor Christopher Taylor. commission and organizations like Avalon Housing that provide Permanent Supportive Housing, Sawyer said deeper collaboration is needed between agencies and advocates in order to make a significant impact. To move from transactional interaction to transformative change, Sawyer said, “The first thing that needs to happen is everyone involved has to sit back and they first have to admit failure. The system is not set up to have success. "Changing that system to a housing and support orientation is key to that transformation," Sawyer said. In my local experience, cities, townships and county agencies do not communicate. One specific example in Washtenaw County is that Community Mental Health’s PATH program places unhoused people in encampments without notifying other units of government. This has resulted in PATH clients being swept by city or township police. Many other inefficiencies like this stand in the way of transformative cooperation locally. Jim’s takeaway: Housing First or radical love? During the entire event, the question “what causes homelessness in the first place?” was not explored in any depth. There were mentions of a “system that is broken” throughout the film, but that system was treated like a tertiary character in a soap opera. The wolf in sheep’s clothing of Housing First is that the “housing” being discussed is usually apartment complexes that often aren’t already built. Which means developers are part of the Housing First solution. Why is this a problem? Because developments, like any other capitalist venture, must make a profit. They must also conform to the desires of the municipalities, both of which add up to higher costs and higher rents. After the paychecks have been signed and the bonuses dispersed, affordable housing all of a sudden isn’t affordable anymore. Further, it’s not hard to imagine landlords in bed with developers. The relationship possibly looks like this: the developer builds the apartments and the previously homeless tenants move in with a year-long lease. In subsequent years, the landlords raise the rents beyond what the tenants can pay, the tenants become homeless, the social services systems cry out for “affordable Housing First” units and move all the evicted tenants into them once they are built. Everybody wins but the tenants, right? Moral of the story: you can provide all the rapid rehousing and wraparound support you want, but if the privileged want to raise the cost of your housing and drive you to the street again, they can and they will and there is nothing you can do about it. Something the documentary misses but shows society is getting close to understanding is that “support services” must go beyond municipal, clinical, “professional” programs. What needs to be explored is how the breakdown of communal bonds such as extended families and identifiable organized supportive communities not only cause homelessness, but keep it intact. At the end of the day what humans need in order to feel connected is the kind of familial love that cannot be provided by governments or institutions. What is missing is seen in the behavior of parents who let their kids be cruel to random human beings. What’s missing is seeing all of humanity as worthy of compassion and love. This is where the real solution lies: radical love. We must do more than change our social services policies — we must change the way we see one another and accept that we have a responsibility to our community. That responsibility goes beyond what support services and professional programs can provide. The responsibility is to establish and nurture a real connection between one another as best as our chemistry and vibe can allow.
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