Our mission is to end homelessness. We focus our work in the following 4 areas: housing justice, economic justice, health care justice, and civil rights. Our approaches are: grassroots organizing, public education, policy advocacy, technical assistance, and partnerships.

Two trends are largely responsible for the rise in homelessness over the past 15-20 years: a growing shortage of affordable rental housing and a simultaneous increase in poverty.

Homelessness and poverty are inextricably linked. Poor people are frequently unable to pay for housing, food, child care, health care, and education. Difficult choices must be made when limited resources cover only some of these necessities. Often it is housing, which absorbs a high proportion of income, that must be dropped. Being poor means being an illness, an accident, or a paycheck away from living on the streets.

In 1997, 13.3% of the U.S. population, or 35.6 million people, lived in poverty (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1998a). While the number of poor people remains has not changed much in recent years, the number of people living in extreme poverty has increased. In 1997, 14.6 million people -- 41% of all poor persons -- had incomes of less than half the poverty level. This represents an increase of over 500,000 from 1995. Forty percent of persons living in poverty are children; in fact, the 1997 poverty rate of 19.9% for children is almost twice as high as the poverty rate for any other age group.

The lack of affordable housing has lead to high rent burdens (rents which absorb a high proportion of income), overcrowding, and substandard housing. These phenomena, in turn, have not only forced many people to become homeless; they have put a large and growing number of people at risk of becoming homeless. A recent Housing and Urban Development (HUD) study found that 5.3 million unassisted, very low-income households had "worst case needs" for housing assistance in 1995 (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, 1998).3 This figure is an all-time high and represents an 8% increase over the 1989 figure.

While the causes and solutions to homelessness are complex, there is much that an individual or community group can do to help. No matter what your skills, interests, age, or resources, there are ways you can make a difference for some of the men, women, and children who are homeless. Volunteer work, advocacy efforts, financial or material contributions, and continued self-education are all important and needed as we work our way to a solution.

Here are some ways you might help:

• Work at a shelter. Take an evening or overnight shift. Help with clerical work such as answering phones, typing, filing, or sorting mail. Serve food, wash dishes, or sort and distribute clothes.

• Help build or fix up houses or shelters. Check with your local public housing authority, or find the nearest chapter of Habitat for Humanity by calling (800) 422-4828 or visiting (http://www.habitat.org).

• Offer professional skills directly or assist in job training. Direct service providers may be able to use many services and skills, including secretarial, catering, plumbing, accounting, management, carpentry, public relations, fundraising, legal, medical, dentistry, writing, child care, counseling, tutoring, or mentoring.

• Share hobbies. Teach your hobbies to a group of people staying at a homeless shelter. Ask them about their hobbies and have them teach you.

• Invite people experiencing homelessness to a community event. Invite people who are experiencing homelessness to a worship service, public concert or picnic, city council meeting, etc.

• Organize an event at a shelter. Plan an evening program such as a board game or chess night, an open mike poetry reading, a guest storytelling or musical performance, or a holiday party.

• Work with children. Assist program directors who are coordinating events such as field trips, picnics or art workshops for children staying in homeless shelters. Find out if there are children who could benefit from tutors or mentors.

• Involve others! Convince your classmates, co-workers, church/synagogue members, or civic club to join or support your efforts.

HOW TO CONTRIBUTE

While the concern and support demonstrated by volunteer work and advocacy are essential, material assistance is also a necessity. Escaping and ending homelessness is a long process. In the meantime, people experiencing homelessness and the programs that serve them need help every day.

Needed items and services might include:

• Clothing. The lack of clean, well-fitting clothes and shoes causes great hardship beyond exposure to the elements...it hurts one's self-image and one's chance to get ahead. People experiencing homelessness must travel light, with few opportunities to safely store or adequately clean what they can't carry. On job interviews, a poorly dressed person has little chance for success. Give your clean clothes to those who could use them. Before you give your own clothes or start a clothing drive, talk to your local shelter and find out what items they really need. Most have limited storage space, and can't use winter clothes in summer or vice versa. Some serve only a certain group of people. Please clean the clothes before you donate them.

• In-kind services and materials. Service providers may be able to use copying, printing, food, transportation, marketing assistance, computer equipment and assistance, electrical work, building materials, plumbing, etc.

• Household goods or other items. Service providers may need items such as kitchen utensils, furniture, books, toys, games, stuffed animals, dolls, diapers, etc.

• Books. People experiencing homelessness may have limited access to a library and find that there is little for them to do when spending a night at a shelter. Find out if your local shelter would appreciate donations of books. Consider organizing a book drive to create a small library at the shelter if there is not already one there.

• Computers. Many non-profit organizations have a difficult time purchasing expensive but essential equipment such as computers. If you have a machine you no longer need, a local shelter or service provider might greatly appreciate the donation. Shelter guests might also appreciate the donation of machines for their use, although you should check if a shelter would have space to set up public computers.

• Homeless "survival kits." Create and distribute kits that include items such as cups, pots, pans, soap, shampoo, toothpaste, toothbrushes, and cosmetics. (Try coordinating this through a group that gives out meals from a van, for example.) During cold weather, organize drives for blankets, coats, hats, scarves, mittens, socks, and the like.

• Phone calls. Help people experiencing homelessness contact loved ones by offering the opportunity to make free, long distance calls on holidays.

• Job opportunities. Encourage your company, school, or place of worship to hire people experiencing homelessness (if they are not already working). Most unemployed homeless adults desperately want to work, but need an employer to give them a chance.

• Support for a homeless person or family. As people move out of a shelter or transitional housing program, consider raising money to contribute for a security deposit, or assist by contributing household goods, babysitting, or moral support. See if your local shelter has a partnering program.

Other things you might do to contribute include:

• Raise funds for a program. Ask your group to abstain from one meal and donate the proceeds to a shelter or soup kitchen. Sponsor a benefit concert or coffee house featuring local musicians and poets (Don't forget to include homeless and formerly homeless performers!). Organize a walk-a-thon or a yard sale and donate the proceeds.

• Consider giving directly to people experiencing homelessness. Deciding whether or not to give to panhandlers is a personal decision. Some may not give money out of fear that it may be spent supporting an addiction. Although this is occasionally true, the money also may help someone buy a meal, afford housing, buy clothes, purchase an ID to stay in a shelter, pay for transportation to a job, childcare, healthcare, support a family member...the possibilities are numerous. In some cases, instead of giving money, people carry gift certificates to restaurants or granola bars, peanut butter crackers, sandwiches, or fruit to give to homeless people.

• Smile. Whether or not you choose to give change, please don't look away from homeless people as if they do not exist. Making eye contact, saying a few words, or smiling (provided that it is a situation in which you feel comfortable doing so) can reaffirm the humanity of a person at a time when homelessness seems to have stripped it away. Most people will be glad simply to be acknowledged. For more insight into panhandling and homelessness, read "Panhandling: A Little Understanding," at http://www.nationalhomeless.org/panhandle.html.

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