Elective Credits

So on top of regular classes, clinics and jobs in the hospital/community, the School of Nursing and School of Public Health offer a TON of electives.  Well I guess the PUBH classes are for all their students, but we are able to take classes without any additional charge which is AMAZING.  As if life was not busy enough I decided to pick up a class called Health and Homelessness.  The up side to the class is that it meets for two entire Saturdays, two half days and a 12 hour practicum a.k.a. totally doable with an already packed schedule.

Today was class two of four and the speakers spoke on a range of topics which included harm reduction, the housing first model, advocacy, mental health and veterans affairs.  You all know how much I love infographics, and it just so happens that three presenters used the same one in their presentation; it was just that good.

Basically the take away message it is much cheaper for the taxpayer to place people who are homeless in a house than it is to put them in a shelter, jail, etc.  A lot of old school organizations and people in the field have a hard time wrapping their head around the concept of housing first because it says that we should give everyone, including those who have serious drug and alcohol abuse problems, a house and maybe put them into housing before those who can afford to scrape together enough money for substandard housing.  While many see this as not being fair (and really it is not on many levels), it has been shown to save money which can be used by organizations to then help with vouchers, rent payments and security deposits for those who can scrape together some money for housing.  More on housing first in the weeks to come. 

Another thing that stuck with me was the concept of self-sufficiency.  For years and years our field has been telling people who are homeless that they need to be self sufficient before we can give them a house and/or ask for them to be successful.  The guy who came to speak about advocacy started off this topic by saying that he was not completely self-sufficient.  If he was he would have to be able to make his own clothes, grow his own food, etc. which would probably leave him very little if any time for work.  In fact, even the small communities who are isolated in the Appalachian Mountains rely on other community members/the outside world in order to survive.  Instead, it will be important to create a supportive community for an individual so they can get help when they get stuck.  While they will need to do many things for themselves, they should not be completely alone in the process of getting and/or maintaining stable, affordable housing.