Rabbi David Gruber on solving homelessness

Rabbi David Gruber of Metro Dallas Homeless Alliance has a transformative policy to end homelessness, and it begins with a home.

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George Mason:
Welcome to Good God, conversations that matter about faith and public life. I'm George Mason, your host, and I'm pleased to welcome back to the program Rabbi David Gruber. David, we're glad to have you again for this conversation.

David Gruber:
Thank you. Glad to be here.

George Mason:
David, in the first episode, our time together, he talked a good bit about his own spiritual journey from conservative to Orthodox, to more of an independent, progressive Jewish spirit in terms of his rabbinical life and his spiritual life. And we've talked about the interfaith weddings that he specializes in and that we have shared, in fact, together. But David, I'd really like to talk in this episode about a subject that is deeply important, both personally to you, but also socially important to all of us. And that is homelessness. You are the director of development and communications for the Metro Dallas Homeless Alliance. And so this is work that you do, and I've been involved with you a bit in that, in our community. But I'd like you to talk a little bit about what is the Metro Dallas homeless Alliance to begin with.

David Gruber:
What is Metro Dallas Homeless Alliance? So the Metro Dallas Homeless Alliance, our mission is as follows. We [inaudible 00:01:44] the development of the homeless response system that will make the experience of homelessness in Dallas and Collin Counties rare, brief and non-recurring. And why is such a body needed? Because we understand when we look at the social science research, that if you just have a bunch of organizations working in the same area, be it homelessness or any other social problem, but just kind of each doing their own thing and in an uncoordinated environment, that it's very, very difficult to move the dial on solving the specific social problems you're trying to solve.

David Gruber:
And so there's this a fairly new concept of what we call collective impact. It was first discussed in 2010. And collective impact basically means all of the organizations in that same area, working together, kind of all rowing in the same direction, not in an uncoordinated environment, but as a system. And one of the principles, there are five principles to collective impact. And one of them is that there be a strong, what's called the backbone organization. And so we are the backbone organization for the homeless response system. It is our responsibility to make sure that all of these organizations actually work together to try to end homelessness. And in fact, every single American community. And when I say community, could be an entire state, like Delaware, which is small, or it could be Dallas and Collin County. Every community has to have such a system, and has to have such a backbone organization that fulfills this function.

George Mason:
So let's talk about this non-duplication idea. I think it's helpful probably for people to understand that while we have numerous organizations in Dallas that are addressing the problem of homelessness, that we try to have as little overlap as possible among these organizations. So for example, if a single mother with two children experiences homelessness as a result of domestic violence or something of that nature, there is a place to go for that. And if she ends up at some other place, then they will take her to the right place.

David Gruber:
Yes, exactly. Exactly.

George Mason:
And so there's a processing and coordination process. So typically, how would that work? Would someone go first, say to The Bridge, and then processing from there? Or would it happen in any of these places where you move from one place to the next?

David Gruber:
So the answer is yes, yes, and yes.

George Mason:
Okay. All right.

David Gruber:
There's this concept that we call a coordinated assessment. Sometimes called coordinated access or centralized entry. There're niceties between them, but they essentially mean the same thing. And the idea of coordinated access is A, there's no wrong doors. So wherever you show up in our system, you're not going to be told, "Well, what are you doing here? You're [inaudible 00:05:16] with kids. Why are you here at The Bridge?" You're not going to be told that. The Bridge is going to say, "Well, guess what? We're going to take care of you. And we're going to get you over to the right place, which probably is Family Gateway." If you come to family gateway and you happen to be a single male adult, they're not going to say, "Well, what are you doing here?" They'll take you to The Bridge.

David Gruber:
So part of that idea of coordinated assessment is that there's no wrong doors. Another part of it is that we close what are called the back doors and the side doors. So there should be only one entrance into the system. That entrance can be virtual. That entrance can be in lots of different places. But the idea of having that one entrance is that, in the bad old days, it's all about first come, first serve, which usually means the able-bodied and the people with the least amount of problems make it to the head of the line. And so we take that from, not a first come, first serve, but basically more equitable system where we serve every single person, and we prioritize them based on their level of vulnerability and their specific needs.

David Gruber:
So everybody goes through a uniform, evidence-based assessment. Everybody is then prioritized. So if it's like, I don't know, like me on a bad day, I would be all the way on the bottom of the priority list. Whereas if it's the proverbial guy sleeping under the bridge, he probably would be what we call like a P-1 or a P-2, meaning, "Boy, we got to get this guy help as soon as possible." And from there they go on a unified housing priority list, and all of the housing programs, rather than just taking folks from other places, I'll take them from that one list.

George Mason:
And one of the things that impressed me most when I did something with you, and MDHA, kind of a tour that we took of different facilities, every time we went from one place to the next, and talked to the people who were there, and watched the way they interact with our homeless neighbors, there was an extraordinary personal dignity that they tried to communicate to homeless persons that I found to be so ennobling. That just because someone is dirty, someone is homeless, someone is maybe dealing with a mental illness or addictions or any of those sorts of things, and may be even a victim of one's own choices. Nonetheless, they are treated with an extraordinary humanity. A kind of call me by name sort of thing that is all across the city in this work. Has that always been so, or has that been a growing change in the social services sector, in your mind?

David Gruber:
That's an excellent question. I think it's not a black and white thing. I think it is definitely an issue of gradations. In terms of treating people with respect and honor, and treating them as we would want to be treated, I think that probably has always been there. At the same time, we have evolved as a field, where I'm going to say back in the bad old days, but there are still places that operate this way unfortunately, that the idea was that, if you're homeless, it means that there's something wrong with you, and that we need to fix you. You brought the soft on yourself, and we need to fix you. And then once we fix you, then you will be worthy of getting back into housing.

David Gruber:
That never really made sense. There never really was a whole lot of research or any research at all to back that up. However, that fits very much with the American cultural outlook. It totally fits. But then when, through a lot of trial and error and research, we figured out that, well, really the modern homelessness crisis is brought upon us by huge societal shifts. And that though obviously choices figure into it. And I've yet to meet a homeless person that does not feel sometimes too much responsibility for where they ended up. Much more so than people who are not homeless, I believe. But we've kind of figured out, as a field, that, A, as an issue of philosophical outlook, housing is a human right. We should not say, "Well, you are not worthy of housing."

David Gruber:
And that beyond that, if we do assume that every single person is what we call housing-ready. Because it used to be they had to fix you and then make you housing-ready. That every single person, by virtue of just being a human being with inherent dignity, is housing-ready, that just seems to work better in terms of outcomes. And so it's very interesting because you have places, that a lot of us when we hear about homelessness and success and ending homelessness, we invoke Salt Lake City where they drastically lowered homelessness.

David Gruber:
One of the fascinating things about Salt Lake City is that there's a very conservative people there who bought into this idea that we call housing first, that essentially just house a person without any preconditions. And that in and of itself, once you throw in some services, will work wonders for them. That those are people that were fairly philosophically conservative, and what really convinced them, a lot of times, just the outcomes. Just, we house these people. And 12 months later, 85% of them are still housed.

George Mason:
Okay. Let's just stop there for a moment.

David Gruber:
Sure. We're going too quickly. Sorry.

George Mason:
That's Salt Lake City. And yes, they're conservative. It's largely Mormon influenced. But Dallas is not a bastion of liberalism. Even if we are like most urban areas, politically blue, generally, we have still an ethos of personal responsibility, and of earning your way, and of being fiscally prudent, and all those sorts of things. So that's part of our Dallas culture. And so when you use language of housing first, let's be clear to people what that means and why it's so difficult.

George Mason:
It means, as you said, that the solutions to homelessness begin with a home. Not with how to go through a long process of earning the right to be able to live in a safe, secure place, but to begin with a home. But here we are, all the rest of taxpayers out there, thinking to themselves, "We have done all the right things, and had to save, and earn, and make our way in order to pay for our apartment or our home. And here you are giving something to someone for nothing, just because they, you say, have a right to it or need it. But isn't that irresponsible, and isn't it...?" It goes on like that.

George Mason:
And so what happens to us, of course, is we know that just the data say that if you do the housing first approach, the recidivism rate is just ridiculously small. People change because they have the security and strength, and they stay on their meds more, and they remain in community with people, and they begin to rebuild their lives, starting with that. But where are you going to put these houses? Where are you going to put these apartments? And the truth of the matter is, we need, I don't know how many we need, permanent supportive housing units, but it's thousands more than we have. And every time someone proposes this, the nimbyism starts. The not-in-my-backyard. And property values are going to go down, people fear. And, "Put them somewhere, but not near me." So how do we change this mentality, David? What strategies do you all have that would convince people in Dallas that this is worth becoming neighbors to people like this in order to change this problem once and for all?

David Gruber:
Right. So you've thrown a lot in there.

George Mason:
Yes, I have.

David Gruber:
So let me try to tackle a part, at least. I think it really depends on who you're talking to, like with everything else. And I think that, like a lot of things in life, having this conversation today is going to be slightly different than having it about two or three months ago. Because we've seen a lot of people that played by the rules and made all the right choices. And we see that there are systemic forces through which they ended up with the short end of the stick, or hardly any piece of the stick. Because I think it's a little easier, I think, a little easier to make that argument today that somebody ending up homeless is not primarily having to do with their choices. These are much larger systemic issues.

David Gruber:
Now, once you realize that, or even if you don't realize that, really what you need to say is, "Okay, but here we are." We have, on any given night, about 4,500 folks who are homeless. And there's a binary choice here. Because what people sometimes think is, "Well, I don't want to pay for housing, and I don't want the housing to be in my backyard. I don't want all of that. You're asking me to choose that, and I don't want that." Okay. Then what you have to realize is that you're making a choice, but you're trying to say, "I don't want to make a choice." You're making a choice. And the choice is, continue to perpetuate homelessness, continue to walk under a bridge and have somebody homeless, sleeping on the ground. Continue to walk through downtown and have folks that are walking around, and they're homeless. They have really nowhere to go. Continue-

George Mason:
And they will ask you for money.

David Gruber:
They will ask you for money.

George Mason:
And they will loiter in front of your businesses.

David Gruber:
And they will loiter in front of your business.

George Mason:
And they will relieve themselves in public places.

David Gruber:
Because we don't have any bathrooms downtown. Right?

George Mason:
Right.

David Gruber:
So you're essentially saying, "I'm okay with that." You're also saying, "I'm okay with my tax dollars paying for that." And people might be, "Well, what do you mean?" I say, "Here's the deal." And I said this once to Robert Wilonsky, and I was happy that he quoted me in the Dallas Morning News. One of my proudest moments. I said, "You're spending the money. You either spend it the stupid way or you spend it the smart way. What's a better thing to do?" And so it's a binary choice. Now, you're right, that a huge problem that we run into, and to quote, I do this a lot, to quote Mark Clayton, who is the former district nine council member. He said this on all-

George Mason:
My wonderful council member, yes.

David Gruber:
There you go. August 1st, 2018, at a meeting of the city council. He was one of the last ones to speak. And turning to the staff, he said, "I want to summarize what my colleagues up till now told you. We all want to help the homeless, except in our neighborhoods." Because you have a system in Dallas where, informally, a city council member essentially gets to have veto power on what happens in his district. What ends up happening is that nobody helps the homeless in any district. And again, that is a choice. And so what we need to get through to people is that they need to be [inaudible 00:19:30]. Now, if you choose you want to perpetuate homelessness, I don't think that's a great idea. But here's what you can't do. You can't complain about homelessness, and complain about the waste of money and human potential that goes along with it, and say at the same time, "But I don't want to solve the problem in my neighborhood."

David Gruber:
Something's got to give, one of the two. And smart policy would be to house them in each and every neighborhood. Now this is what other cities have done. There's cities like Austin, other cities like Washington DC. So mayor Bowser in Washington DC said, "We're all going to hold hands and jump together." Now there, they had a much more severe problem. They had a huge shelter and an old hospital housing 1500 people every night. And it was untenable. And so she said, "We're going to build a shelter in each ward, each district. And it means that everybody needs to hang together and say, 'we're doing this.'" And that's really what is needed in the city of Dallas, too.

David Gruber:
Former Mayor Rawlings said that there's a project called St. Jude, where they took an old hotel. They turned it into permanent supportive housing. It's a beautiful thing. I don't think the neighborhood even knows it's there. And he said there needs to be one of these in every district. And that's the thing, is once you have that, the worries and the yelling and the screaming, and the lowering of the property rates and the increase of crime doesn't happen. It's all a myth.

George Mason:
Right. So I think going back to the financial aspect of, you're going to pay one way or the other, it's not even just an equal amount is it? Because the cost of permanent supportive housing is what percentage of the annual cost for a chronically homeless person? Something like a half?

David Gruber:
It really depends, and it depends on the type of homelessness that we're talking about. With chronically homeless folks, it's going to cost a lot more. With folks who just hit a speed bump, and are homeless, and need to get into some rapid rehousing program, it's going to be a lot cheaper. Because it's just [inaudible 00:22:01] subsidies.

David Gruber:
But there's a wonderful essay by Malcolm Gladwell who kind of made this idea of permanent supportive housing burst into the consciousness. You can look it up online. It's called Million Dollar Murray. There was this one guy who cost his county and his city a million dollars. We don't have any Million Dollar Murray's, but I think we've got like $350,000 Murray's, a couple of those.

George Mason:
Right.

David Gruber:
So what's your choice?

George Mason:
People don't realize , "What money are you talking about?" Well, it costs a great deal to put someone in the county jail. And to feed them and to house them in the jail. And when they have medical problems, they go to the emergency room at Parkland, and they don't have insurance, and so we pay through our taxes for Medicaid, which then takes care of all of that. There's police and there's paramedics. And there's all sorts of services that go into taking care of people who are homeless. And if you housed them, all of that begins to change significantly. So you it's a cost-effective way, but it's an emotionally challenging way for most citizens.

David Gruber:
What I always want to go back to though is, listen, development is a fancy way of saying sales. I'm not selling widgets, I'm selling ending homelessness. I'll get you into this car, regardless of what your needs are. [crosstalk 00:23:53] be the car for your family. If the cost-effective measure is the one that works, great. Let's use that argument. I always want to make sure that we understand, Dallas holds itself up as a great city, a world-class city. But really, I mean, walking around you see all these churches. You see this as a conservative city, it's a city with a lot of faith in it. And I always want to make sure that we go back to those first principles.

David Gruber:
So to connect this to our first discussion in the last episode, I wrote a column a few years ago for Dallas Morning News. And I talked about the image of God. Once a year, as you know, once a year, we have to recruit about 1500 people to go out, one night, and count the homeless. Literally count them, find people, interview them. Because without data, you're flying blind. And what I've said to people is, "When you go out there, what you should be saying to yourself is, you're looking for images of God." You see this person, like you said, they don't look like you. They don't smell like you. They're not dressed like you. They're not clean like you are. I suggest even verbalizing what you're seeing. There is an image of God over there, [inaudible 00:25:36], that person, that's an image of God.

David Gruber:
And I think that's what we need to get back to is, when you are talking to your kids, or in front of your kids, not talking. You're talking in front of your kids about other human beings, what example do you want to set for your kids in terms of how they treat other human beings? That's really important to go back to that.

George Mason:
In the few minutes we have remaining, David, I want to talk about what COVID-19 has meant to the homeless community. What have been the impacts of this on homelessness and the homeless population?

David Gruber:
Wow. In just a few minutes, huh? The impacts have been huge. And I always am keeping my eye on what's happening nationally, not just in Dallas. And I think the impacts are kind of two-fold. Number one, how did we ever think, going back to what we've discussed up until now, how did we ever think that having people living in congregate living, almost literally on top of each other, essentially warehousing people, was a sustainable idea? Was it good idea? Forget COVID. Why do the folks in Highland Park not choose to live that way? You're an image of God, too. But COVID, to me, COVID has kind of like sharpened that.

David Gruber:
So one of the first things, and you remember, which is like, "Oh, well, what do we need? Oh, we need to stay home." Kind of difficult when you don't have a home. Right?

George Mason:
Right.

David Gruber:
So what they had to do at Austin Street and The Bridge, just for example, is they had to lose capacity, because essentially what they had to do was, Bridge was sleeping 300 people a night. Okay. Well, we need six feet between people, and all this stuff. Forget all the cleaning and everything. Well, The Bridge had to lose 100 people a night. Austin Street had to lose more. And so immediately capacity is reduced. And so the city had to figure out what to do, had to scramble, and essentially opened the convention center, and have people living at the convention center.

David Gruber:
I'm not an economist, and I'm not an accountant, but keeping the convention center open one night is essentially like taking dollar bills, tearing them up into little pieces and flushing them down the toilet. That costs a lot of money. There have been specific studies, now this is short term, that we just know already. It's not that we didn't know that homeless folks are more medically fragile. But in terms of COVID, oh my God. They're way more fragile in terms of COVID. And so it's been a huge deal. And take into account, if you're homeless, you're going around during, you're going to the library, going here, going there, they can't go anywhere. It's just been a huge downsides there just in terms of the day-to-day living.

David Gruber:
What I hope, I'm seeing this already, and I hope this is true, and my boss, Carl Falconer talked about this in his state of homelessness address, is that I think COVID is teaching us some very hard lessons. And I don't think it's teaching us anything we didn't know already. It's just making things more clear. It's making clear that a home is not just a home. It's not just four walls, but a home, as he put it, is community. It's health, it's safety. It's making it clearer than ever that having folks in crowded shelters, and having folks on the street, affects us. Beforehand, it would have been, "Well, okay, this costs you money." And you're like, "Well, how does it cost me money?" "Okay. Let me explain to you how." "Oh, but I still didn't want them in my neighborhood." I hate to be stark about it, but here's my argument. "Okay. Well, let's say that it increases crime and lowers your property rates, which is not true, but let's concede that supposedly that myth is true. Do you prefer that your property would be less valuable or that you die?"

George Mason:
Wow.

David Gruber:
[inaudible 00:30:36] we're talking about here.

George Mason:
Yeah, yeah.

David Gruber:
And again, I hate to bring it to that, because I think you should do the right thing for the sake of doing the right thing. But what you need to understand is that perpetuating homelessness now affects your health and safety.

George Mason:
Right. Well, this has been so illuminating, David. Thank you for all that you do.

David Gruber:
Thank you.

George Mason:
I like to think that there are probably three things that we can all do in response to this. The first is donate. And so go to Metro Dallas Homeless Alliance page, and hit the donate.

David Gruber:
MDHAdallas.org.

George Mason:
Very good. MDHAdallas.org.

David Gruber:
Yes.

George Mason:
Very good. Donate. Second, you can volunteer for any of these organizations that are part of this collective, but also the annual count, point-in-time count.

David Gruber:
Yes, please.

George Mason:
And there are different places across the city, including our church that hosts that for that purpose. And third, advocate. Right?

David Gruber:
Yes.

George Mason:
So that is to say, talk with your friends, talk with your council person, and be willing to speak on behalf of a transformative policy for homelessness in the city. Thank you, David, for all that you do to educate us and to serve us. And we're grateful for who you are and what you do, and thanks for being my friend.

David Gruber:
Such an honor, George. Such an honor, thank you.

George Mason:
You're welcome. Thanks for being on Good God, take care.

David Gruber:
Thanks.

George Mason:
Thank you for tuning into Good God. We're grateful that we get to be able to offer these conversations to you free of charge. And especially now, during this time of COVID-19, that is disturbing the peace for all of us, we know that there are a lot of people in organizations that need your funding. And so we're grateful to have the funding necessary to be able to present this to you without asking you to support us at this time. Please give generously to your faith communities and also to those nonprofits that are serving to encourage us during these days.

Speaker 3:
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