It’s the Truth: Pass It On
Dear Leading Ladies,
Remember the chain letters of the 1980s and 1990s that promised money or recipes galore? All you had to do was forward letters, sometimes with cash or a recipe included, to a list of recipients and you would be significantly rewarded. The recipe chains often worked; the cash chains always seemed to break down somewhere along the line. What was appealing about both was the opportunity to get something with little effort and to connect with other people from near and far.
Force Multiplier, a Massachusetts-based organization devoted to getting Democrats elected to the US Senate and House of Representatives, is successfully using a chain letter approach called relational networking, to encourage their friends and contacts to encourage their friends and contacts – and on and on – to become donors, thus raising money exponentially for their chosen candidates. In their first year of operation in 2017, their goal was to raise $100,000. Instead, they raised $800,000. To date, they have raised $18 million in a relatively short amount of time. A full 75% of the toss-up candidates Force Multiplier has supported have won their elections.
Leading Ladies, as you know, does not support any specific party or candidate. We do support issues and we are dedicated to spreading information that we believe is not well known. We know our newsletters and events help spread that information, but we want to reach ever broadening audiences.
Spreading the word
Building on the lessons of chain letters and emulating Force Multiplier, we are asking our readers to engage in some relational marketing with us. If 200 of our readers share with two of their friends and contacts some new information about a social justice issue they have learned about from our newsletter, and those two share with two of their friends and contacts, the chain only has to go on to 14 branches to reach more than a million people. Wow! That could potentially change the minds and expand the understanding of a whole boatload of people.
We’d like to suggest that “if you learn something, tell someone.” We are not naive. We know that many people have entrenched ideas about some issues that facts will never budge. But we know from our experience over the past five years, that knowledge does change some people’s understanding of problems and the solutions needed to ameliorate them. We can all be agents of change by passing the word along.
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Some truths about life on the streets
For example, recently we had a conversation with a friend about homeless people and why they are not required to work in order to receive housing or benefits. That made us want to find out more about who is homeless and why. Here are some truths we discovered.
In December of 2023, HUD released its annual report based on a detailed homelessness count conducted earlier in the year. This Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR) revealed that 653,104 people nationwide were homeless, defined by the agency as lacking a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence.
“[T]here are many reasons people can become homeless: a traumatic event, loss of a job, the inability to pay for needed health-care, or a criminal background got in the way of finding a job.” Streetstream.org
“An estimated 20–25% of the homeless population in the United States suffers from serious mental health issues, compared to only 4–6% of the general population.” SMI Adviser
“[A]s many as 80% of homeless persons tested have marked deficits in cognitive functioning, which would only serve to make mental health issues more severe or impairing.” SMI Adviser
“Lack of treatment for the most seriously mentally ill causes the kind of delusions and bizarre behavior that makes living alone or at home with families untenable. As a result, many people with untreated serious mental illness become homeless and communities are forced to bear the cost of that.” Mental Illness Policy Org.
“The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SMAHA) estimates that roughly 38% of the homeless population suffer from an alcohol dependency while 26% abused drugs. Additionally, they found that 68% of cities reported that substance abuse was the largest cause of homelessness among single adults.”
“Studies have shown veterans are overrepresented in the nation’s homeless population. They may experience personal challenges, such as post-traumatic stress disorders or other mental health issues as disabilities related to their military service.” calmatters.org
“About one-third of the adult homeless population are veterans. America's homeless veterans have served in World War II, the Korean War, Cold War, Vietnam War, Grenada, Panama, Lebanon, Afghanistan and Iraq (OEF/OIF), the military’s anti-drug cultivation efforts in South America, and elsewhere.” Pinestreetinn.org
Clearly, many chronic homeless people are not able to work or function in today’s society. They are not ready to live among others or alone in an apartment. What “social skills” they may once have had are lost to mental illness, trauma, and too many years of life on the streets. To expect them to be able to keep to schedules or hold jobs is unrealistic.
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Other types of homelessness
It is important to recognize that the most common type of homelessness is transitional, not chronic. Transitional homelessness results from a major life change or catastrophic event “such as job loss, a health condition, divorce, domestic abuse, a substance use disorder, or personal or family crisis, among many others, resulting in people being in unhoused situations for less than a year,” according to Comic Relief, a nonprofit that uses entertainment to raise money to fight poverty. “People who experience transitional homelessness may enter a transitional housing program for a limited time. They may also sleep in their cars or outside. Oftentimes people experiencing transitional homelessness still have jobs, but cannot afford housing and other expenses.” Young people and those in the LGBTQ+ community are often among the transitionally homeless and often invisible because they stay with friends.
Another group of homeless, also often young, according to Comic Relief, are those who experience “episodic homelessness,” defined as currently unhoused or having experienced at least three periods of homelessness within the last 12 months. “Like transitional homelessness, many of those facing episodic homelessness are younger or dealing with a disabling condition. These conditions could be substance use disorder, mental illness, and other mental and/or physical health conditions.”
Last are the invisible homeless, mentioned above, “[p]eople who experience hidden homelessness, often turn to friends, family, and neighbors for a shelter or a place of refuge.” In many cases, these people cannot afford to pay rent or afford other living expenses. Statistics are unavailable for them since they don’t access services. “The first sign of homelessness for them may be couch surfing or sleeping over with friends, which is considered to be less serious — and obvious — than sleeping on the street.”
Understanding the many different faces of homelessness and, thus, the different kinds of interventions that are needed, was eye-opening to us. LGBTQ+ kids, rejected by their families, clearly need support, services, and lodging of a different sort than young families facing eviction because of a lost job. And all forms of temporary homelessness are different from chronic homelessness, and thus require different kinds of prevention as well as remediation.
What they all need is our understanding of the complexities and varieties of the issues. And for us to pass on the information.
We hope you will join our goal of reaching one million with these important truths about the social justice issue of homelessness as well as other societal problems we write about in the future.
Best,
Therese (she/her/hers)
Judy (she/her/hers)
Didi (she/her/hers)
Leading Ladies Executive Team