Approaches to Homelessness in the United States

Dr. Louis Frayser Posted September 7, 2009

I. Introduction

One need spend only a few days in cities of almost any size to see the dehumanization of the homelessness, which sleep on our streets and use our streets as toilets. Faces scarred and bloodied from fights the night before; infants and children, many nearly naked in the midst of this terror, faces blank; some huddled in boxes, some drinking from soda cans, a mother sitting on the sidewalk, back against a building wall nursing her young.

Try a ride at 7 a.m. along Los Angeles streets and see destroyed humanity; the young, the old, and the innocent soon, soon to be ensnarled by the all consuming rot that surrounds them. A world of seemingly never ending darkness, emptiness, violence; a world spawned by our fear of the problem, our unwillingness to forcefully, boldly, and creatively engage it and our ready acceptance of what seems to be the futility of any effort.

Yet out of this seeming human decay came one who was found sitting on a Los Angeles sidewalk playing a Mendelssohn concerto on a two-string violin - his residence? - under a bridge. (I suggest you see the movie "The Soloist" and go online and read the series of articles by Steve Lopez, LA Times journalist, about this person.) Just how much more genius is buried deep in this population of the damned? How many more human treasures are there hidden in the world of the homeless?

How many more great gifts are there that the homeless might give us if we, the larger world of "the successful", surrounding them, but dare to look and mine our findings. And what about the infants and children of the homeless? What unknown treasures do they possess - what gifts to give?

What follows are thoughts as to how we might bring light to the dark noonday of the lost.

Thank you for reading this. Thank you for your time.

Louis C. Frayser, MD
September 5, 2009

II. Objectives

1. To design a program to creatively and effectively address the issue of homelessness and the problems inherent in it.

2. To bring together the cluster of services in an environment that allows for the reasonable expectation of recovery and rehabilitation of homeless individuals and families.

3. To design this program so that it engages the issue of homelessness and does not require or request federal monies (taxpayer dollars) for its creation or continuing support.

4. To offer to our nation's educational institutions unprecedented opportunities to expand their education and training offerings and to become major pathways to public service and to expanding public policy.

5. To involve the private sector, including Chambers of Commerce, in the task of enhancing optimal outcomes from the recovery and rehabilitation effort.

6. To offer to state and local communities the opportunity to maintain and enhance their human resources pool for both public and private sector employment.

7. To include in the program offerings a strong counseling component that seeks to enable each enrollee to maximize his/her personal growth and development and to place enrollees in active employment in all program offerings, such placement to be consistent with enrollee evaluation findings and interests.

III. Methodology

1. To lease an abandoned military base from the federal government for one dollar per year. The abandoned military base would become the physical setting for the recovery and rehabilitation program.

2. To redesign existing structures for family and individual occupancy for the teaching and classroom facilities. Medical facilities and open space design would be under the supervision of the schools of architecture and engineering of the participating collegesa and universities. The construction skills and technical skills required to redo the buildings and grounds would be contributed by the joint efforts of the trade unions.

3. A consortium of the U.S. educational institutions (e.g. Harvard, Yale, Howard University, Atlanta University, Emory University, Duke University, Baylor University, MIT, and representatives of community colleges, trade, and technical schools chosen regionally) would be formed to accomplish the following:

To design a program to perform aptitude and skills assessment evaluation for each enrollee and the tailor educational and training programs for enrollees based on enroller assessment findings.
To set instructional goals and outcome measures that will determine both the end points of instruction/training and post program placement and opportunities.
Participating educational institutions with medical schools attached would design and staff a healthcare delivery system and facility for the recovery of rehabilitation site. Over and above the reward of providing high quality health care to those so long without it, participating institutions would acquire expanded opportunities for training medical students, interns, and residents, especially in the areas of primary care, mental health, and addiction disorders. It must also be noted that educational institutions engaged in any area of instruction would have the opportunity to offer their students, undergraduate and graduate, to engage in work-study programs related to their interests.
A strong program of preschool and early childhood education and development is to be designed, put in place, and operational from day one.
To solicit the National Chamber of Commerce to mobilize its affiliates, nationwide in the effort to develop housing, employment, and entrepreneurial opportunities for enrollees as they leave the recovery and rehabilitation site.
Food supply for the recovery and rehabilitation and recovery site would be obtained through a consortium of large producers of agricultural, meat, poultry, and dairy products. Representatives of these groups would be given the opportunity to develop and direct a strong agricultural program at the recovery and rehabilitation.

4. Redesign of this facility will be consistent with the needs of the various program requirements and will be accomplished by the coordinated efforts of the schools of architecture of the participating colleges and universities. The redesign effort will also be coordinated with trade union groups in order to assure the highest standards of construction.

5. The redesign and construction project should seize every opportunity to secure the employment of the enrollees in the implementation and accomplishment of this project.

6. Security arrangements for the project facility are to be accomplished by the Board of Directors.

V. Administration

Day-today operations of the recovery and rehabilitation project will be performed by the coordinated effort of three leading schools of business. Student management teams formed from their best and brightest will ensure efficiency and effective coordination of program offerings. These teams will be responsive to their respective teaching institutions and to the program Board of Directors composed of members of the participating education institutions, the business community, and private individuals committed to the recovery and rehabilitation program and dedicated to achieving its success. The Board of Directors would also devise mechanisms for achieving and ensuring enrollee representation on the Board. Participating management students will gain the opportunity to apply their talents and skills in a unique environment and to quite possibly play a significant role in shaping public policy.

IV. Enrollee Recruitment

Given the immediate relief to afforded municipalities by this program and the long range benefit from expansion of their human resources pool, it would be the responsibility of urban centers to design and implement outreach programs to the homeless and enable and achieve their enrollment.

V. Summary

This document is intended to be a concept outline only! It is understood that there are many blank spaces and questions that required detailed discussion. We know so very little about the homeless. As a class, they are often written off as mentally ill, drug addicted and/or criminal. Indeed, the homeless population does contain the mentally ill, the drug addicted, and yes, criminal elements. But is it a benefit to our society to leave the homeless to destroy themselves and their innocent infants and children who live on the streets with them. Is it better for us to enable their destruction by indifference and condemnation? A problem ignored and condemned is, nonetheless, a problem alive and festering. Homelessness is a major problem, which, when ignored, mirrors the impotence of our public policy and calls our morality into question. Ours is the opportunity to enrich ourselves in the effort to remove the iron curtain of futility that surrounds our homeless. Ours is a simple choice: become a beacon of hope and possibility to those without hope or by our indifference, sentence the homeless and the children who live and cry with them to the nothingness that confronts them day and night and perhaps forever. Do you think that the approaches to the problem of homelessness described here are worth a shot?

I would be honored by your responses - pro or con.

Abbreviated Medical Biography
1. M.D. degree, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland OH
2. 27 years, private practice, Internal Medicine, Los Angeles, CA
3. Medical Director, Saint Johns Well Child and Family Centers, a Community Clinic, LA, CA
4. Director, Chronic Disease Management, Saint John's Well Child and Family Centers, Community Clinic, LA, CA

Detailed personal resume available upon request.

My contact information:
Email address: lcfraysermd@comcast.net
Telephone# - 770-731-0004
Fax# - 770-731-0005
Cell# - 770-820-8000

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