I don't like bowling. Never have! Mainly because I feel like Fred Flintstone every time I put on those funky shoes. But bowling always sticks in my head when there is an unsolvable problem that's beyond me. The beauty of bowling is anyone can bowl, and bowling creates an atmosphere of fun, excitement, competition and teamwork.
Last night I drove a two-parent family with one child from the winter shelter to a hotel and vouchered them for three days. We made arrangements to pick them up in the morning and bring them back for Homeless Connect Day. The parents started to get excited. See, for weeks they have traveled around Los Angeles County using public transportation looking for services -- more specifically, housing. During the long drive we had plenty of time to talk about their nightmare of trying to connect to services. Knowing that all these services would be in one place was very comforting to them. I can only imagine how many times they filled out paperwork, waited for hours in a lobby, sat with a case manager -- all just to be told they don't fit, or even worse yet, that they will be added to the dreadful waitlist!
In 2004, under the direction of San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, the first Project Homeless Connect Day was held in the "tenderloin district." Hundreds of volunteers and all kinds of different organizations came together to create a one-stop shop of social services that would help expedite people into the end goal of housing! Too me this is brilliant. And get this -- Mayor Gavin washed the feet of homeless people! That ROCKS! (Personally, I think it should be mandatory that every mayor washes the feet of homeless people during their cities Homeless Connect Days.)
After San Francisco's success, Project Homeless Connect Days became popular. In fact, this week is National Project Homeless Connect week. I just love how the Interagency Council on Homelessness bills it as:
Project Homeless Connect -- Not a service fair . . .Not an information and referral event . . .An innovation. A One-Day *consumer-focused* One-Stop!
In theory, Project Homeless Connect works. San Francisco holds the event every two months with amazing results (I hope to visit soon), 
and I am sure there are other communities that host successful events. But to me, and I have experienced several of these over the course of two years, it's just a big dog and pony show!
The whole reason Homeless Connect Days exists in the first place is because our system is broken. Over the years homeless support services are supposed to create a "Continuum of Care" to help get people off the streets and into housing. The idea is there will be an agency to fit any need and solve any challenge -- and there is! But support services have become so specialized and so segmented that it is not a miracle when someone gets off the streets; it's a miracle that the system worked! If those of us working in the sector cannot navigate the Continuum of Care ourselves how the heck is a homeless person living in a park with no means of communication or transportation supposed to find help!
Imagine for a moment that you are homeless without income. You panhandle for bus fare, then travel to the agency you believe is most likely to help. You fill out the paperwork and sit in the lobby all day. After hours of waiting you are told you don't qualify, or the program is full and your name will go on a waiting list. If you're lucky, you'll get a bus pass to get home. Either way, at the end of the day, you're still homeless without housing or food. And you have to repeat this process -- over and over -- until you find the help you need.
Another issue -- and it's the big secret no one will talk about -- there is no housing! The most important need a homeless person has is missing from any Connect Day I have attended. Of course, some people have a huge heart and are creative during this economic crisis. At a recent Homeless Connect Day I took a photo of a realtor who was seriously trying to help. He had several rental properties that were below market and a few would allow Section 8 rental vouchers. To me, this is awesome and I encouraged him for helping. But he was the only one offering housing and it was still out of reach for the majority of homeless people!
Please know I support Homeless Connect Days and think we need more of them. However, the true return on investment is not that people living on the streets are helped, it's that for one day all of us service providers are in a room and we talk to each other. That alone is the real miracle. But do we need to have this big event just to talk? NO! Maybe if all the homeless services providers simply went bowling once a month it would improve communication and thus fix what are called "gaps in the safety net." Point is, we desperately need to develop a system so we talk to each other every single day and not wait once a year!
A friend and colleague sent me this:
I first thought Connect Day was a joke and then I went to San Francisco and saw how beautifully they did it there. Connect Day is meant to be exactly what I think you want Invisible People to be -- a way for the general public to have genuine human contact with homeless people in a supportive way. San Francisco did have more resources so they actually would house a good number of people on that day; otherwise Connect Day can seem like a pointless endeavor. But if people are able to overcome the bureaucratic barriers they face when they go to a government or agency office, then I think Connect Day can have value.