"Homeless Soccer Mom"

By Colleen Sinsky

A family I’ve worked with for a while has struggled for years to maintain housing and keep steady work.  They have two beautiful, chatty daughters ages four and seven, both of whom run up to me yelling “Colleen!!” and wanting to be picked up whenever they see me in the office or recognize me driving a JOIN truck around their apartment building, doing a move for someone else.  These two little ladies are amazing, and a huge reminder to me of the many smaller victims of unstable housing and homelessness.

Recently, this family lost the apartment where they had been living for several months and the four of them are living in a minivan, parked inconspicuously at various shopping mall parking lots throughout Portland.  It’s incredibly difficult for me to think about the girls having to sleep in a van, and living with the stress the comes along with such an unstable living situation.  Fortunately, the parents are very dedicated to making life work out for their daughters and are trying hard to maintain some normalcy and get back on track in housing.  

While telling me about their minivan living situation, their mom laughed that now she’s a “homeless soccer mom!”  Tomorrow we’re going to put in applications at a few two-bedroom apartments, and hoping that they’ll be inside by next week.  I’ll post an update here soon!

Happy 20th Birthday JOIN!!

By Colleen Sinsky


Last Friday JOIN celebrated our 20th Birthday.  We threw an open-invite party at Westminster Presbyterian Church and got to spend the evening laughing, chatting, reflecting on the past twenty years and drinking delicious kombucha gifted by Townshends and Italian soda.  Cheerity Floral Design donated some beautiful flower arrangements. A huge spread of food was prepared by our graduates of the Cusina cooking class, and we honored several people who have been instrumental in JOIN’s success.  The Inspirators received the Community Engagement Award, longtime volunteer Judy Nawrocki received the Hope and Friendship Award, and Sharlene Rivers, the social worker serving Portland’s homeless community out of St Francis for decades, received the Kathleen Blake Award.

JOIN has been so fortunate to have been surrounded by such dynamic and dedicated people.  Our organization never could have had such a successful twenty years without the endless support of volunteers and community partners, a fantastic board, and “JOIN Lifers” on staff.  There was a point in the timeline presentation about JOIN’s history that I got teary-eyed, realizing that I’m capable of caring so much about an organization.  I’m inspired every day by the people we serve, and by my coworkers who have worked relentlessly for social justice on the streets of Portland.  I’m excited to see where JOIN goes in the future, and know that we’re coming from a strong foundation that will carry us through the next twenty years and beyond.  Happy Birthday JOIN!

Some photos from the archives of JOIN...

"Domicile Unknown"

By Colleen Sinsky


Last week a 2011 Multnomah County report called “Domicile Unknown” was published, bringing to light for the first time the number of deaths in the county among people experiencing homelessness.  I recommend reading the actual report, which includes methods, detailed data, and, importantly- recommendations for avoiding the number of deaths in Portland’s unhoused community that City Commissioner Nick Fish called “shameful.”  Forty-seven men and women died in 2011 who were most likely homeless.  This represents just a small portion of people who passed away without housing as the report does not capture those who were receiving any kind of medical care or were in a hospital.

Of the 47, only 11 died of natural causes.  The remainder were the victims of preventable accidents, substance overdose, homicide and suicide.  The average age was just 45.3, well below the average life expectancy of Oregonians of 81.3.  

Like JOIN, Street Roots is entrenched alongside our houseless friends, and the SR community successfully lobbied for the report that would capture the statistics of deaths more accurately to better inform future policy and honor those who died “domicile unknown.”  We are fortunate to know these folks as mothers, brothers, dog-lovers, musicians, gardeners... individuals who have been pushed or have wandered to the margins of society but should never lose their dignity as a human.

What disturbs me most is that the causes of death indicate not just a moment, but a lifetime of struggle.  Nearly half were the result of intoxication and another four were suicides.  Dying on the streets of an affluent society is the last degradation in a series of events that have left individuals alone, desperate and hopeless.  The deaths of these individuals goes unnoticed, but even more disturbing is that their lives often go unnoticed by mainstream society as well.  No report could capture the alienation and depression felt by those struggling on the margins.  

What we as service providers experience every day indicates the growing need for permanent supportive and affordable housing, access to drug and alcohol treatment and an environment that promotes the well-being of each member of the community.  No one should die alone on the streets, and it is everyone’s responsibility to ensure that the statistics from this report become a thing of the past.

Happy Friday!

By Colleen Sinsky

Just sharing a cute picture of Outreach Worker Liz, on a new family's move-in day!  Have a great weekend!

Broken Bootstraps

By Colleen Sinsky

Acknowledging generational poverty isn't popular in America, where we emphasize the ‘can-do’ independent, rugged individualism that liberated our forefathers from the British and Manifest Destiny-ed our way across the Great Plains. We love “rags to riches” stories that tell us that anyone who puts in enough effort can climb up the economic ladder.

The sad reality is that 20% of children in Oregon live in families that earn below the federal poverty line, and of these families, over half have at least one working parent, according to a study by the National Center for Children in Poverty. And, ironically for a nation that so strongly believes in an individual’s ability to be upwardly mobile, the US has the second-highest correlation between parent-child income levels across generations. For a more detailed look at intergenerational mobility in the US, check out this 2006 paper for the Center for American Progress.

Today I talked on the phone to one of our families who just gave birth the other day to a baby who was immediately put on detoxification for the methadone treatment his mother is on. I should let the reader know that multiple agencies and a hospital social worker are involved, and the baby is healthy, the parents are loving and they will all be out of the hospital soon. But what a way to start life. The parents have pretty limited resources and are staying in a temporary hotel situation. We’re working on them getting into a more stable apartment. It’s hard for me not to project forward the life this child statistically may end up living. Yes, it’s possible to pull oneself up by the bootstraps, but sometimes the odds seem depressingly weighted against people.

Funding Woes

By Colleen Sinsky

This will not be a political post. But I need to express somewhere how much I wish that more people in our community could be involved in the implementation of how public money is allocated. It’s often easy to report statistics of success, and talk about the number of clients served. What’s more difficult to track and therefore often overlooked is the number of times our House staff has to tell people that we aren’t able to help them. I want more people to experience having to sit at my desk in the center of downstairs JOIN and become an unwitting fly on the wall, hearing conversations between Outreach workers and our folks-our friends sleeping outside every night who don’t make it into the data reports because we don’t have the funding to bother filling out an intake form. I want those people who walk into JOIN with hope and are turned away empty-handed to be acknowledged. I want to apologize to each of them, on behalf of the funding limitations above both of us, and send them off with more than just a vague recommendation to try another local agency that I know doesn’t have resources either.

It’s easier to write a blog post on something like moving a family off the streets, but I think it’s also important to paint a realistic picture of our limitations as a social service agency. It’s not just JOIN obviously- organizations across the board are strapped for funding. We’re kept afloat, and are able to stay in the fight because of the motivated individuals who run organizations focused on social or ecological justice. I’m amazed every day by the resiliency of people who have dedicated their careers, and often lives, to working an underpaid niche job, knowing that the funding of their program is often arbitrary and beyond their control. I hate that these difficult budget conversations have to happen every day in our office. And that the end result of budget cuts is having to tell someone with zero income that we can no longer support their Honored Citizen bus pass check- often their only link to resources and their community.

José, one of our Retention Workers supports the Portland Safety Net.

Bedbugs!

By Colleen Sinsky

JOIN is unique in many glamorous and exciting ways. We do outreach in Forest Park and Thousand Acres, and areas where other social service agencies wouldn't go. We're flexible and put relationships first. I wear jeans every day. We always have kombucha on tap in the break room, and a beautiful community garden reclaimed from what was a parking lot. It's all very wonderful.

We're also unique in a far less fun way- doing the dirty work. It doesn't make for a very good blog post or touching story to share at a fundraiser, but many of my daily experiences that have the most impact are just that: the unglamorous dirty work. It's often takes more than vouchers or utility assistance for some to maintain housing. Moving furniture, dealing with bed bugs and hoarding, moves to a new apartment, muck outs, dump runs, storage units and preparing for building inspections are some of those common tasks that were probably not mentioned on anyone's job description. We do really really unpleasant chores sometimes! And everyone just takes it in stride, jokes about bed bugs and terrible smells, and still wakes up early to do some job that requires protective booties, gloves, and a sense of humor. I'm still constantly amazed by and proud of my coworkers who have been doing this for so long.

This post has (obviously) been inspired by my day today- which consisted of cleaning out an apartment with a severe bed bug infestation, and an afternoon of moving furniture. Bill and I knew the infestation would be bad, but I really couldn't have prepared myself for the volume of creepy crawlies in this place. The poor resident is a wonderfully kind guy who's been living with these for too long and is finally getting his room treated so he can pass inspection and avoid eviction. We had to bag up or throw away all of his possessions; there were bed bugs crawling in DVD cases, on the walls, nested in shoes, and completely overrunning the furniture- all of which we condemned to the dump. Knowing how easily these spread, we took what precautions we could, but it was still a mental challenge for me to deal with having so many bugs around me. I'm still pretty overwhelmed and almost jittery thinking about it. The clothes I was wearing are now sealed in a plastic bag under my desk- on their way to a very hot cycle in the washer and dryer. And hopefully our friend will be able to sleep without bed bugs soon!

(This image should inspire fear.)

I'm a bit relieved that tomorrow is our monthly staff meeting. The staff spends so much time out of the office doing chores like this that it's nice to sit down at a potluck of yummy food and connect and share work news. I'm also going to advocate that JOIN invests in some HAZ-MAT suits :)