Homelessness Law Blog

Each year, the Law Center recognizes outstanding contributions by individuals and organizations to the movement to end homelessness at its 13^th Annual McKinney-Vento Awards. This year’s event will be held tomorrow, Wednesday, Sept. 21 at the L’Enfant Plaza Hotel in Washington, D.C.

For Rob Robinson, homelessness isn’t an abstraction; he’s lived it.  For almost three years, Robinson survived on the streets and in shelters in Miami and New York.  And since resolving his homelessness in 2007, he’s become a powerful voice for all those still suffering its indignities.  Working with Take Back the Land, Picture the Homeless, and the National Economic and Social Rights Initiative, Robinson has been a fierce advocate for the human right to housing. He has also been a leader in the Campaign to Restore National Housing Rights.  G.W. Rolle, a former honoree and Law Center board member,  will present Robinson with this year’s Personal Achievement Award.

Robinson’s work has been made possible, in part, by the U.S. Human Rights Fund (USHRF), this year’s Stewart B. McKinney Award winner.  Since its founding in 2005, USHRF has provided more than $20 million to nonprofits fighting for human rights here at home.  Making the Law Center one of its core grantees right from the start, USHRF has helped us change the way policymakers view homelessness.  In March 2011, following years of advocacy by the Law Center, Robinson, and others, the U.S. acknowledged for the first time that homelessness implicates its human rights obligations. Human Rights expert Dorothy Q. Thomas, who helped start the fund, will present the award.

Congressman Barney Frank, this year’s Bruce F. Vento Award winner, has fought time and again for legislation addressing and preventing homelessness.  In 1987, he helped pass the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act.  And in recent years, his leadership has been critical to helping enact the Homelessness Emergency Assistance and Rapid Transition to Housing (HEARTH) Act, Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-housing Program (HPRP), and Protecting Tenants at Foreclosure Act (PTFA).  He was also a primary sponsor of the Neighborhood Stabilization Program and the Dodd-Frank Act. Susan Vento, the Congressman’s widow, will present Rep. Frank with this award.

This year’s Pro Bono Counsel Award will go to DLA Piper, which has provided thousands of hours of pro bono support to the Law Center across a range of issues, most prominently access to education for homeless children.  DLA Piper is taking a national leadership role on the Law Center’s new Project LEARN (Lawyers’ Education Access Resource Network) initiative.  The firm will provide training and technical assistance on homeless children’s education rights to families and school officials across the country. Suzanne Turner, pro bono partner at Dechert LLP, who received this honor last year, will present the award.

U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, originally scheduled to provide the evening’s keynote address, is unexpectedly unable to join us. In her stead, Assistant Secretary for Policy William Spriggs will join us to honor the efforts of those working to end homelessness in America.  Laura Evans, of Washington’s Fox 5 News, will also join us as the event’s mistress of ceremonies.

Thank you to all who have helped make this event possible. We’re so excited for what is certain to be an inspirational evening.

Today’s guest post comes to us from Laurene Heybach, director of the Law Project at Chicago Coalition for the Homeless.

Each year the start of school brings smiles and excitement throughout our town. Kids love getting the new supplies and backpacks. The faces of the children reveal a readiness for the new year with hopes high.

Nowhere is this excitement more stirring or poignant than in the eyes of homeless children and youth. Often living in chaotic, dismal or unstable circumstances, frequently hungry, these children and youth look forward to the community provided by school, a caring teacher or coach, friends and fun, a regular meal or two, familiarity and routine.

Thanks to the federal McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, homeless children and youth have the right to return to their home school and receive transportation to attend and participate in school activities, receive free breakfast, lunch and assistance with other needs. But none of this start-of-the-school-year excitement is realized if the first day of school arrives and there’s no transportation to get you there and no money to buy the train or bus pass. In Chicago, the free transit passes are distributed through the school. For some of our poorest families, getting to school in the first place to claim those free passes becomes a real obstacle so children and youth miss the first day or week or even a few weeks of school. This can leave a student feeling left out of things when he or she arrives late and can result in some kids starting out the school year behind their classmates. Fortunately, the McKinney-Vento Act also requires that school districts continuously identify “barriers” such as this faced by homeless students in enrolling, attending and succeeding in school.

This school year, finally, Chicago Public Schools listened to the long-time plea of the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless (“CCH”) see http://www.chicagonewscoop.org/advocates-claim-back-to-school-push-missing-key-piece/. Through a collaborative effort involving the Mayor’s office, too, the Chicago Transit Authority provided free rides to school-age kids –homeless or not– and for an accompanying adult to ensure attendance on the first day of school. Chicago Public Schools is reporting the highest first day attendance in four years! CCH had proposed that the CTA service involve widespread and early publicity casting the effort as “Catch A Ride to Your Future.” Though publicity was last minute and our suggested slogan was not adopted, the free first day rides mark an important step in removing one barrier faced by our young people in accessing school. We look forward to making this a tradition in Chicago just as the free transit rides on New Year’s Eve have become.

Chicago has the third largest school system in the nation with over 600 school sites. Among its almost 400,000 students –most of whom meet federal poverty guidelines– are more than 15,000 students without stable housing. A round trip transit ride (without the student pass) is $5.00.

As national LGBT Pride Month draws to a close, advocates for gay and lesbian individuals have unprecedented cause for hope and celebration.  In 2011 alone, a remarkable succession of legal and legislative victories has already promised to reshape the civil rights landscape for this population, in matters ranging from employment to parenting to immigration.  From the Obama administration’s disavowal of the Defense of Marriage Act and suspension of same-sex spousal deportation proceedings to the passage of historic legislation granting lesbian and gay couples the freedom to marry in New York State, LGBT rights continue to advance at a rate once unimaginable.

Depsite these victories, however, discrimination against LGBT individuals can hardly be dismissed as the remnant of a less enlightened era.  Perhaps nowhere is this reality more entrenched than in the experiences of gay and lesbian youth, particularly with respect to housing and economic support.  According to the National Network of Runaway and Youth services, anywhere between 20 and 40 percent of homeless youth are gay.  Not only are LGBT youth more likely than their heterosexual peers to enter the child welfare system, they are also far more likely to age out of foster care without finding an adoptive family.

Like their heterosexual peers, homeless LGBT youth regularly encounter barriers to free and appropriate education.  Not only must these students contend with harassment and discrimination due to their sexual orientation or gender identity, they also experience heightened obstacles to stable education once they leave their parents’ homes. Despite the existence of federal laws to protect their right to public education, homeless youth are routinely stymied by residency requirements, guardianship requirements, lack of transportation, and access to health and other records.  Such added factors as frequent school transfers, lack of quiet, safe places to study, and hunger can further hamper academic achievement.

As a result, gay and transgender homeless youth, and homeless youth on the whole, drop out of school at staggering rates, with one 2008 New York study finding a full half of respondents to be high school dropouts. Similarly, a service provider for gay and transgender homeless youth in Detroit reports that over 60 percent of its clientele has dropped out of school due to bullying or discrimination.

As LGBT pride parades assemble and disband throughout the country, it’s easy to overlook the challenges faced by homeless youth amid the celebrations of their elders. While the federal government has begun to take account of these struggles, issuing an agency memo on the crisis facing gay teens in the child welfare system and introducing the Reconnecting Youth to Prevent Homelessness Act to strengthen family support for state wards, local school personnel remain an essential conduit to safety and stability.  Armed with an understanding of the law and appropriate resources, they can make the difference between pride and prejudice for LGBT youth.

- Rachel Natelson, Staff Attorney

Photo Credit: MKtp

On Tuesday night, FOX TV hit Glee presented its nearly 9 million viewers with a second lesson on homelessness – offering a realistic picture of what family homelessness often looks like in the current housing crisis.

Sam, a new transfer student spending his first year with the Glee Club, is forced to reveal that his family has been living in a hotel room in order to quash rumors of indiscretions. He does so with shame, fearing that his fellow students will treat him differently when they find out. In the episode, he reveals a small room where he, his two siblings, and two parents have been living. They’ve sold most of their possessions – even his prized guitar – just to have the money they need to survive.

As the story goes, Sam moved to the area when his father found a great job opportunity. When that fell through, the family lost the house and as he notes, “When the bank takes your home… they just take it.”

Unfortunately, this is not an uncommon story for the American family these days. Family homelessness is on the rise across the country as a result of the foreclosure and economic crises and this story, though fictional, illustrates well both how it can happen, and how families cope.

There are hundreds of thousands of families joining the ranks of the “invisible” homeless population. A recent study by First Focus showed a 41% increase in the number of homeless students across the country in just the last two years, and a March 60 Minutes piece noted that, “so many kids have lost their homes that school buses now stop at dozens of cheap motels where families crowd into rooms, living week to week.”

I applaud Glee for again dealing with the hard issues facing American students today. The first step in advocacy is awareness, and Glee is doing its part to help viewers understand how homelessness impacts a family. At the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty, we’re working to build on this awareness to ensure that all students like Sam get to keep attending school and receive the help they need to obtain affordable housing for their families.  Together, we can prevent and end homelessness in our country.

-Whitney Gent, Development & Communications Director

I woke up at 5:15 Wednesday morning in a downtown Seattle hotel.  As I struggled to get out of bed at such an early hour, I remembered why I was there – for an 8 a.m. meeting in Tacoma, with school personnel, government officials, and housing providers from across Pierce County, to talk about collaborating to provide housing and access to education for homeless children and youth and their families.  Early as it was, it was hard to justify even sleep as more important than this, so I got up and headed to the event.

When I got there I learned about lots of great things already going on in Pierce County, Washington, but I also learned that there was much work to be done.  Many people were meeting for the first time, even people who should already have been working together.  We heard about the challenges that everyone is facing right now – cuts to housing and school budgets, and school superintendents angry at rising homeless transportation costs, costs becoming more and more unpredictable as more families lose their homes and gas prices rise.

But there is a solution, and everyone’s starting to get it – it’s housing.  Kids in housing do better in school, and school districts don’t have to pay to put them on buses for hours a day.  One official noted yesterday that last year his district transported kids from four particular families at a cost of $4,000 a month.  He told the group that he could have housed all four families in apartments for less than that, except that “it just doesn’t work that way.”

It’s our job to make sure it does work that way going forward, and we will!  We’ll start by releasing a paper in the next few weeks, demonstrating that housing can cost less than school transportation, and we won’t stop until school districts, housing providers, and other key government policymakers are talking, across the country, about how to provide housing and education for all of this country’s homeless children and youth.

-Jeremy Rosen, Policy Director

I recently had the privilege of taking what might be the longest domestic trip ever undertaken by a Law Center staff member – a pilgrimage to Anchorage, Alaska to participate in the annual conference of the Alaska Coalition on Housing & Homelessness.  I was warmly welcomed by the dynamic and hard-working conference organizers, Kris Duncan with the State of Alaska and Suzi Pearson who runs a nonprofit focusing on domestic violence, and by their colleagues – really in all ways, except by the zero degree temperatures.

Why did I accept the invitation?   I wanted to find out what homelessness was like in Alaska.  Would it be different than down here in the “lower 48?”  What were the challenges of addressing homelessness in a state where weather conditions can be brutal all year round?  I learned the answers to these questions and others.

In some ways, Alaska has it tough.  Many people have a frontier mentality – a belief that everyone should get by on their own.  This causes some people in need to not seek assistance, and it results in many citizens not being supportive of government investment to help end homelessness.  And as a state with many low population cities, Alaska sometimes struggles to provide even temporary shelter to homeless people. Due to lack of volunteer staff resources, the cold weather shelter in Nome only opens when the temperature dips lower than ten below zero – in a community where anyone sleeping outside in the winter risks death.  Plus there are transportation concerns – one Alaska school district transports homeless children four hours a day.  That’s a lot of time for anyone to spend on a bus, and it’s logistically challenging for the school district.

But Alaska’s also got a lot of advantages – it’s got wonderful and caring people who work on this issue, like Kris and Suzi, and like Dave Mayo-Kiely and Barb Dexter in the Anchorage public schools.  And as a low population state, where “everyone knows everyone,” collaboration can be easier.  Plus, thanks to high oil prices and a good amount of federal government largesse (Alaska gets back nearly two dollars for every tax dollar it sends to Washington), Alaska is one of the few states that currently has a budget surplus.  Unfortunately, so far the state hasn’t expressed interest in devoting significant new resources to this issue – but with hard work from the Coalition, maybe that will change.

I did go to visit one Alaskan with a big huge house, and a great deal of money – former governor Sarah Palin.  I even took a picture (above)!  It was cloudy when I drove to Wasilla, so I couldn’t see Russia.  And I didn’t see the former governor either.  But if I had I would have challenged her – Alaska’s got a lot of money and a lot of land – couldn’t she help put those things together and make sure that all Alaskans have a safe place to live?  My answer?  You betcha!

-Jeremy Rosen, Policy Director

Last night on the Christmas edition of the television show, “Glee,” the Glee Club decided to go caroling to raise money for presents for homeless students who participate in the McKinney-Vento Homeless Education Program.  The episode revolves around the conflict between the Grinchy Sue Sylvester, who stole the presents, and the Glee Club, who went on to sing and sing again to ensure they could make the season brighter for the homeless students.

While no child would turn down a wrapped present, the biggest gift many schools can give to homeless children is the gift of education.  The McKinney-Vento Act requires schools to designate a homeless liaison to reach out and identify homeless students, many of whom are too embarrassed to seek help for themselves.  The law enables homeless students to stay enrolled at the school they last attended before becoming homeless, or immediately enroll at the new school wherever they move, even if they don’t have all the regular residency documentation.

While many schools do a great job of implementing the law, many others turn a Grinchy blind eye to the struggles of homeless students in their districts.  Just earlier in the day, I was on the phone with parents crying because they had lost their home to foreclosure.  The parents hadn’t identified themselves to the school as homeless, and the school had failed in its duty to pro-actively identify them. The school had instead kicked their kids out and removed their children’s belongings from their desks in front of all the other students.  Despite the fact that they printed out and highlighted a copy of the law from our website, the school refused to re-enroll the children, and they missed two days of school.  With our assistance, they were able to get the children re-enrolled by the end of the day -  but this never should have happened in the first place.

As we go into the holiday season, we can each do a little something to ensure the gift of public education is shared with homeless students who need it most.  Download a fact sheet from our website, make a few copies, and distribute them at local schools, libraries, laundromats, shelters, or budget motels, so parents and children know their rights.  Please also consider donating to support our work to protect homeless students’ educational access. Even if you can’t sing like the Glee Club, you can still spread holiday cheer to homeless families by sharing the gift of empowerment and knowledge of their right to education.

-Eric Tars, Human Rights Program Director/Children & Youth Staff Attorney

A couple of weeks ago, several members of the Law Center’s staff attended a film screening of Alexandra Pelosi’s new documentary, “Homeless: The Motel Kids of Orange County.” The screening was followed by an engaging panel discussion on child  homelessness in the U.S.

I was unable to attend this event, but recently watched the film for myself. I thought it did a tremendous job of highlighting just how tough it is to grow up with 5 people crammed into a motel room, with bedbugs and lice, and without a safe place to play or enough food to eat.  And I appreciated the film’s focus on how these challenges outside of school make it extremely difficult for homeless kids to focus on learning when they’re in school.  All in all – this was a job well done.

The stories couldn’t be more poignant, and even the toughest politician might not be able to hold back tears.  However, despite the reality documented by this film and others, Congress last year determined that these motel kids aren’t homeless.  That’s right – policymakers concluded that the very kids profiled in this documentary have a roof over their heads, so they’re only “at risk” of homelessness.

Why does this happen?  Why can’t we make the connection between media coverage and changed policies?  It happens in other areas – the Washington Post wrote about problems at Walter Reed, and made recommendations for improvements, and soon thereafter a ton of new money was thrown at the problem.  You see, where these stories fall short is in their treatment of solutions. 

We know what would pull each family profiled by Pelosi out of that motel – housing subsidies, some food assistance, and maybe some childcare help as well.  And in the interim, we could really help by ensuring that they get transportation to the same full day schools that their housed peers attend – rather than sitting in a separate and inherently unequal school where second and fourth graders are forced to share a classroom.  But when the media doesn’t talk about solutions, government never takes effective steps to follow up.

Alexandra Pelosi is of course the daughter of Nancy Pelosi – Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.  Speaker Pelosi attended the premiere of her daughter’s film, so we know she understands the suffering that these motel children and their families are experiencing.  So to the Speaker, and her House and Senate colleagues – let’s move beyond feeling bad for these children and their families, and set to work providing the resources to get them out of motels and into stable housing and public schools.

-Jeremy Rosen, Policy Director

Amid the hand wringing attending most conversations about the soaring national deficit, one word tends to surface with particular urgency: transformation.  At a moment of dwindling federal resources, many argue, nothing short of a dramatic overhaul of traditional government services is necessary in order to replenish public coffers.  As often as not, moreover, the private market has been identified as the necessary catalyst to trigger such alchemy.

The concept of galvanizing an established approach to social service delivery certainly underlies the Preservation, Enhancement, and Transformation of Rental Assistance (PETRA) Act, which the Department of Housing and Urban Development recently proposed as a means of channeling additional funding into the country’s cash-starved public housing system.  By inviting private investment—and, some would add, the potential for private ownership—into the domain of public rental housing, HUD has prompted a conversation about the relative merits of security and experimentation in social policy.

A similar debate has emerged with respect to public education, long a breeding ground for market-driven reform proposals. In addition to promoting the expansion of privately administered charter schools, the U.S. Department of Education continues to condition federal funding on such quantifiable measures as standardized test data, an approach that all but ignores the social and economic factors behind educational achievement.  As one analyst has noted, the U.S. has shifted “from a focus on providing equality in the ‘inputs’ of education—family environment, community conditions, and so on… to a focus on providing equality in the ‘outputs.’” (more…)

Wins and losses? It’s about way more than that.

We’ve just had two big wins for homeless children.

We won a great settlement in our lawsuit against a suburban Pittsburgh school district and the state of Pennsylvania, working in partnership with Education Law Center, a Pennsylvania group. The school district had tried to remove the children from school, claiming that they did not live in the district because they slept overnight in a different school district than the one they received services from during the day. Under our settlement, the state issued new guidelines making clear that homeless children with any substantial connection to a school district are legally entitled to immediate enrollment.

In a second Pennsylvania victory, again working with the Education Law Center, we won a preliminary injunction from a federal district court ordering a suburban school outside of Harrisburg to re-enroll a homeless youth.

But we also had a big disappointment in a federal court suit we filed in St. Petersburg, Florida, together with Southern Legal Counsel, challenging that city’s efforts to criminalize its homeless residents. We voluntarily dismissed two claims in our case following a prior unfavorable ruling by the judge. While we’re still considering an appeal on the claims previously dismissed, we’re obviously disappointed.

Still, it’s not just about the legal battles. (more…)