Editor's Note

By Tim Covi

A couple of months back the International Network of Street Papers (INSP) held its annual conference in Melbourne, Australia. The theme of the conference was “Global Collaboration, Real Solutions.” Although the conference largely focused on how street papers could collaborate more, the theme made me think about an initiative that the INSP has been working on for some time—getting world governments, large and small, to fully embrace street papers.

“All of our 108 members are social enterprises,” says Serge Lareault, chairperson of the INSP, “providing employment and consequently transforming the lives of many thousands of disadvantaged people across the globe. Simultaneously we engage millions of readers in issues that are too important to be ignored.” The nature of street papers makes them a great asset to any community.

Reflecting on it, I’m amazed that in the U.S. street papers haven’t been included as an element of 10-year-plans to end homelessness, if not embraced by local governments. These plans, which have been created with varying degrees of success in more than 300 communities in the U.S., outline methods to dramatically reduce homelessness and alleviate its impact on the entire community.

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Opinion: The Vulnerability Index

Published November 2009 Vol. 13 Issue 10

by columnist: Chris Conner

Chris Conner is an outreach worker in Denver and a column writer for the Denver VOICE.

For most of us the idea of being woken from the depth of sleep by strangers directs our imagination to very foreboding scenarios: hospital calls regarding loved ones, criminal attacks, panic calls from friends in trouble, and other apprehensive bumps in the night.  At 4:30 a.m. on October 14, I was that kind of creep, rousing a homeless man from a pitch-black church stairwell and encouraging him to complete a survey that will establish a “Vulnerability Index” of the street-homeless individuals who are most at risk of dying next year. My hood was black and in retrospect I must have appeared like Death descending the staircase before I offered him a $5 fast food gift card for participating in the study.

The VI is designed to prevent mortality among people in his very situation through rapid housing. It is a strange and benevolent intrusion that even the ACLU would not know how to buck against.
The information I get from the Vulnerability Index, which will ultimately be completed in Denver over three pre-dawn mornings in January, is supposed to make my job as a street outreach case manager more direct.  It should yield me a triaged catalogue, including pictures, of those on the streets most in need of housing according to likelihood of death.  From there my job is pretty clear: get these people into housing before they die on the street.

But not quite.  The Vulnerability Index may belie the fact that housing options are often scarce for those most in need, as well as the rest.  Common Ground, an organization facilitating Vulnerability Index studies in 50 cities, will respond to the Indexes’ deep, dark, truthful mirrors by launching a campaign this month for 100,000 housing placements nationwide. 

Katie Symons, outreach coordinator for Denver’s Road Home, is excited to use the index to bring the campaign to Colorado, while creating outreach services that are “a lot more intentional about whom we are identifying and for whom we are setting aside housing resources.”  Symons hopes that the survey will be a versatile tool that can be used in different environments, such as shelters and day programs, to help service providers and the general public better understand the relationship between street-level homelessness and death. It’s a grim relationship that, if anything, gives all of us the grounds for thinking about and articulating our own responsibilities and hopes to end homelessness.

At 4:30 in the morning it is not exceptionally hard to find that hope.  I find it in the ghostly darkness of a church stairwell—one of 49 sites in a 30-block territory where outreach workers collected data on October 14th—as a man’s cold hand moves in and out of a cell phone screen’s glow to sign a consent form before I proceed to ask him about his health.  

For more information about the Vulnerability Index and the 100,000 Homes Initiative visit :
www.commonground.org. 

To reply to this story with comments or questions, Chris Conner can be reached at chris@denvervoice.org