It took six years to get to this opening, from the formation of a vision task force in 2007 to the moving in of some of the city’s most chronically homeless citizens.

It took six years to create a center that tackles the growing issue of homelessness in California’s second-largest city. Six years to garner a majority of support from city leaders to allocate initial funding, and to find a qualified homeless agency and developer willing to risk public scrutiny and leverage additional revenue to build a multimillion-dollar structure. Six years to convince a leery neighborhood that such a facility would actually reduce homelessness in the area, not attract it.

Was six years too long? In this polarized environment, where anything that even hints at politics is delayed or shot down for being too extreme, building a structure to house hundreds of chronically homeless and disabled people rarely succeeds.

But in San Diego’s case, six years later, success has been found as the first person moves off the streets.

Still, many in the community will criticize this, and any homeless housing development, as not being enough given that the region is home to nearly 10,000 homeless individuals.

How can a development that houses 223 people solve the city’s homelessness problem? Connections Housing is not the sole answer to homelessness in the region; rather, it is one part of a larger strategy to address homelessness called the Ending Homelessness in Downtown San Diego Campaign.

City leaders, along with the San Diego Housing Commission and leaders of Connections Housing, have created a new approach to addressing local homelessness that doesn’t only help a few hundred people living on the streets, but actually reduces homelessness in the neighborhood that hosts the facility.

The hope is that other neighborhoods wanting to reduce local homelessness will replicate the approach.

Traditionally, when a homeless shelter is completed and the sheets are finally tucked into the beds, the doors open and thousands of people struggling with homelessness flock to the shelter like it’s a mad game of musical chairs. But, in many cases, it’s more like “musical beds,” resulting in thousands of people stuck on the streets with many still lingering in the neighborhood around the shelter.

In Connections Housing’s approach, however, outreach to those on the streets has been strategically targeted toward people sleeping in the area around the building and those who have been stranded on the streets for years, most of whom are struggling with long-term disabilities. For months now, outreach teams have been methodically preparing people on the streets for their new housed lives.

The goal is to ensure that the neighborhood surrounding the development benefits from a reduction of homelessness.

Integrated street outreach teams – including PATH’s case workers, Downtown Partnership’s outreach and the San Diego Police Department’s Homeless Outreach Team – will continue to monitor the streets around the facility in order to prioritize people who have been homeless for years, encourage people to access Connections Housing’s services and make the streets safer by targeting criminal activity.

When people on the streets choose to access services at Connections Housing, they are literally embraced by 35 San Diego service agencies that will be based out of the PATH Depot, a multiservice center located within Connections Housing. Strategically linked to these services is a comprehensive, federally-qualified health center operated by Family Health Centers of San Diego, with a goal to reduce costs to public health systems by treating the most frequent users.

Long-term housing, rather than simply providing “three hots and a cot” (meals and a bed), is the real goal of Connections Housing, where Alpha Project and PATH will be providing intensive services geared toward moving people into permanent apartments.

Connections Housing is housing, not shelter, with an emphasis on finding permanent solutions rather than temporary ones. Although Connections Housing may look like a homeless shelter at first glance, the fact that outreach teams target neighborhood homelessness, that health care and permanent housing are priorities and that several dozen agencies are coordinating efforts on site makes this new approach a model for other communities in the region.

When outsiders think of San Diego, they envision a city filled with world-class universities, gorgeous sunsets and renowned tourist destinations. Let them also see a community that is making serious efforts to reduce its homelessness.

This article was first published in the San Diego Union Tribune on Feb. 28, 2013.

It sounded ominous, but my curiosity urged me to call. I had known “Tran” 15 years earlier when he was in high school in my hometown.

Back then, I was in college and had an idea.

I organized a tutoring program for Southeast Asian refugee youth who could not turn to their non-English-speaking parents for help with their homework. I convinced a dozen of my friends to be tutors. We became mentors to these youth who had been unfairly displaced and now found themselves in a strange country.

Tran was one of those youth. We taught him and his peers English, helped them with homework, gave them swimming lessons, and went with them to Lakers games.

After graduating from college, my friends and I went on with our lives. So did the youth we helped. We had responded to a need, and then moved on.

Fast forward 15 years. Tran heard I was in Sacramento and wanted to get together. When I arrived at his large suburban home, I walked into a room full of people who were eager to meet me.

Meet me? It was overwhelming. People came up one by one to shake my hand or give me a hug, and Tran explained their enthusiasm to me:

“Joel, I have been telling my family—my parents, my kids, my cousins, everyone—that I would never have been successful if it wasn’t for you helping me when I was a kid.”

Tran owns two homes, runs a successful retail business, and created a Southeast Asian Association to help others. He funded his cousins’ educations, and educates his children about the importance of giving back.

I was floored. I hadn’t heard from him for 15 years and, frankly, just thought of my college idea as a simple way to help kids who needed it. It had never seemed like something particularly cutting edge or unique to me.

And yet, that one act of kindness changed Tran’s world, his family’s world, and his community.

The power of kindness is awe-inspiring.

When I returned home from Sacramento, I shared my experience with my staff at PATH.

“You never know when what you say or do might dramatically change someone’s life,” I said. Every year, our agencies help 1,500 adults and families who used to live on the streets move into permanent housing. Talk about dramatically changing lives!

A few years ago, I hosted a large community party in my loft, and had a simple poster for PATH. There were more than 200 guests eating, drinking, and enjoying the fellowship of their community.

In the middle of the party, a guy came up to me who was there with a well-to-do neighbor. He had tears in his eyes. Fervently, I hoped there wasn’t something wrong with the food.

While trying to control his emotions, he said, “Joel, I came to this party to have fun, but I didn’t realize that you run PATH. Years ago, I lived in your Hollywood shelter program. PATH saved my life. I think I would have died if it wasn’t for your kindness.”

Once again, the incredible power of kindness.

These personal encounters always remind me of how the simplest seeds of kindness can dramatically change a person’s world. A community’s world. Your world.

Got a new idea of how to help people in need? Pursue it. That act of kindness just might change someone’s life.

So when I see people standing at the freeway off-ramp holding a ragged piece of cardboard asking for spare change, I cringe. Not because I feel that person is imposing on my personal values, but because I empathize with people who are so desperate for help they must resort to begging on the streets.

Standing on a street corner with a plea for help scrawled on a scrap of cardboard announces to the world that you are so poor you need a handout. Who wants to broadcast their desperation and open themselves up to the scorn of their neighbors? Who wants to advertise the fact that they can’t afford rent, or even their next meal?

It’s embarrassing. Other people driving by with their late-model German sedans glare like the people on the corner are asking to move into their spare bedroom for free.  All they really want is some change to purchase their next meal.

So they stand on the corner, ashamed and vulnerable. Holding onto a sign that broadcasts the hard times onto which they have fallen, knowing that passersby think they’re alcoholics, criminals, or just lazy.

But, when you think about it, the organizations working to help those people who are forced to beg on our streets really aren’t that different.

We, the benevolent caretakers of people hurting on the streets, do our own form of panhandling. We send out letters asking for money. We tweet and post our stories on Facebook, hoping they will inspire people to give a few dollars. We talk about the people we serve with generous philanthropists, with the goal of receiving a big check.

We, the service providers, do an awful lot of begging ourselves. The only difference is that we don’t do it on the streets, or from a place of vulnerability or weakness.

But perhaps we should. Perhaps those of us who are working to end homelessness should walk in the shoes of the people we want to empower. Maybe we should hold ragged cardboard signs on street corners, so those who are truly hurting don’t have to.

Maybe those of us who are housed should hold a sign that states: “I feel safe; I feel loved; I’m collecting for someone who doesn’t.”

Those who are living a life of homelessness have enough to worry about, like finding their next meal, or figuring out where they will sleep tonight.

If we, who are housed, really want to protect those who are un-housed, perhaps we should walk in their shoes and protect their dignity by standing on the street corner for them.

Of course, panhandling is not the ultimate solution. The best way to protect a person who is homeless is to house them.

Photo by Dean Terry.

You donate canned goods to the local food bank so that a hungry family can eat well tonight, or volunteer at the rescue mission spooning corn onto the plate of a woman who lost her home.

Some people call this “God’s work.”

Sometimes, however, you may wonder if these acts of charity really make a difference. Will the man by the freeway use your coins to buy food, or a can of beer? Will that poor orphan on the other side of the world really get the help she needs?

Charity has been an integral part of humanity for thousands of years. But does it really make a difference?

Last month, I took part in a gathering of social entrepreneurs called the !deation Conference. Most participants were in their 20s and 30s, what CBS News called the Lost Generation, who countered any accusation of being “lost” by starting the next generation of charities and social-good business endeavors.

Instead, I would call them the Generation of Change.

These innovators provide clean water to children in orphanages (A Child’s Right), build schools in impoverished slums (The Supply), and protect the feet of people in the developing world (TOMS Shoes). This new generation of change-makers is redefining today’s acts of charity.

When we look back 30 years from now, will we feel that they succeeded?

If my own story is any indication, these new acts of charity can change people’s lives forever. I have experienced it first hand.

I asked the !deation community to hit “fast forward” and picture the future. Could they see where that orphaned child, hungry and barefoot, would be in 30 years?

I can. Because I am that child.

I was that impoverished orphan with a bleak future. My early years were spent in an orphanage funded, in part, by a charitable organization that was known as the Christian Children’s Fund, now called Child Fund.

An American family saved me from that hopeless life by adopting me. That was the first day of the rest of my dramatically changed life.

Today, I am paying forward this simple act of charity in my own life by leading an effort to house people living on the streets of America. This is my way of continuing the charitable legacy.

Now, when I encounter a person holding a cardboard sign of hopelessness or when I write my own checks to charitable organizations, my reason for giving is not because of some sense of “luck.”

No, it’s because I imagine the future. I see my act of charity as the first step of a person’s new life.

When you toss those coins into a can or click the donate button on an organization’s website, you may not realize what a world of difference your contribution could make.

I do.

Los Angeles even approved a resolution to support the protesters, and major unions and organizing groups are supporting them too.

To be sure, the protestors have a point. Wealth is increasingly concentrated in the hands of the top 1%. And while those few individuals are making more and more money, an increasing amount of people are losing their incomes , losing their homes , and losing their services. Times are indeed tough people.

The Occupy movement is a big opportunity to raise awareness about the economic divide in this country, but more importantly, it is an opportunity to create new ideas for re-building a strong economy, create new jobs and re-invest in our neighborhoods.

New challenges require new thinking.

Pitching tents and yelling at corporations will only do so much. (yes, I said it) The emerging agenda of the movement should not only have good policy recommendations that facilitate a healthy economy, but it should also outline pathways to create new systems.

We know what we have doesn’t work, so why are we working on changing the same systems?

When your cellphone gets outdated, you can only keep upgrading software for so long. You’ll eventually need to get yourself brand spanking new hardware.

Apple teaches us that every year. It’s engineered obsolescence and we have to ask ourselves if some of our economic systems are obsolete and failing us too.

What we may need is new economic hardware that will create wealth for the people and by the people.

We need to pool our collective buying power and our collective minds to think about real solutions for economic prosperity. We have to create. We have to build.

If we don’t think about solutions, and continue to romanticize revolution and free speech, we’ll fail the millions of people who are not participating in the Occupy movement. They deserve new solutions and they can’t afford a revolution that takes them nowhere.

The great thing is we have a lot of amazing ingredients to create awesome systems. My two favorites are:

1. Collective buying power – In neighborhoods, like Boyle Heights in East Los Angeles, the purchasing power boasts over $325,000 per acre. Now that neighborhood is very low-income, but the density of the area makes it a force.

What if we organized that economic power? What if we did something with all that and invested in our banks and in our own companies?

If the Occupy movement was able to spur a large disinvestment from the Big Banks, they’ll certainly do more than raise an eyebrow at what’s happening. We have to vote with our wallets people.

2. Our talent –Harvard MBA’s usually don’t scramble for the nonprofit jobs that do socially responsible work. But make no mistake, there are smart and progressive entrepreneurs out there.

We need to engage them, and recruit them to create new businesses, new banks, and even new cooperatives. These new institutions need to be profitable, responsible and sustainable. I’m confident we can make it happen.

Imagine financial institutions that supported their customers? Businesses that invested locally and hired local workers? If they don’t exist, we have to create them.

So, while we pitch our tents out on the street, let’s think about what’s in our wallets, the companies we’re supporting, and the companies that are yet to be created. Then we won’t have to see our protests met with debit card fees. (It’s only going to get worse)

This is an exciting time people. Let’s not miss the boat. If we’re going to Occupy, let’s also create. Let’s BUILD.

Photo credit: Stephen R Mingle

Steve Jobs

As you likely heard, Steve Jobs, founder of Apple computer, passed away last night. Many call him the greatest innovator of our time.

My Twitter stream is inundated with accolades for both his genius and contributions to humanity.

While I have certainly benefited from his great works (I love my iPad), this blog is focused on poverty, which doesn’t exactly fit Apple’s core demographic of people with disposable income.

That observation of course is not to undermine the life works of probably the best CEO of a publicly traded company any of us will ever witness.

In fact some have argued that Steve Jobs, despite scant involvement in charity, should be considered a great philanthropist on account of his world changing products.

I’m not sure I’d go that far, but he certainly was a gifted visionary. Some consider him a modern day Picasso. Technology was his canvas.

For you and me, attacking poverty is our canvas. The genius of Jobs was his innovation. He chose to apply his talents to technology, and the world is grateful.

But his unending desire to constantly improve, to iterate on top of past successes, is an excellent example of how we should all approach our work. Steve jobs was the Picasso of technology. You and I should aim to be the Steve Jobs of ending poverty.

As the founder of a technology social enterprise myself, focused on developing database technologies that aid agencies in better helping lift people out of poverty, I could not agree with Joel’s point more.

However, the social sector is a very different industry than the consumer electronics world.

Joel writes that in the consumer electronics industry, “the most creative products typically rise to the top.” While this might be true for consumer electronics, it sure as heck is not the case in the social sector.

The problem with comparing the consumer market with the social sector is that in the consumer market people buy goods and services for themselves. In contrast, governments and nonprofits act as purchasing intermediaries on behalf of the poor in much of the social sector.

Therefore, agencies in aid of the poor effectively make purchasing decisions on behalf of the end users of many social innovations.

Dirty, Sexy, Politics

The problem with this model is that the purchasing decisions of organizations are easily manipulated by political factors, especially considering the importance of government money in social services.

The pull of political manipulation is further exasperated by our sector’s dangerous tendency to gloss over outcomes analysis. Without a steadfast focus on social impact, agencies are left to make decisions largely with an eye toward perpetuating the longevity of the agencies themselves, rather than investing in social innovations that lift their clients out of poverty.

As a result, innovative solutions that actually do work often have an unnecessarily difficult time penetrating the bureaucratic entropy of social ineffectiveness.

And let me be clear, the problem I am talking about is not a lack of money. There is a lot of money flowing through the veins of the poverty business. Instead, the problem is that social welfare policies, private and government, are decided in a politicized environment that is based on anything and everything other than what actually works.

The hard truth is that there are some powerful interests behind maintaining crappy solutions. So long as our sector continues to be driven by political dealings and organizational self preservation, rather than a real commitment to social solutions, we can kiss ending poverty and homelessness good-bye.

Photo credit: kalidoskopika

The bells and whistles, and flashing lights, almost sound like the Vegas casino next door, but instead they are the signs of the world’s largest gadget convention—the Consumer Electronics Show, or CES for short.

I still don’t know how I was invited to be part of this select group of more than 100,000 electronics enthusiasts, who are clamoring for a slight peak into the future of the world of high-tech toys. I am just happy I get to feed my technology addiction.

But my passion for a just society always trumps personal indulgences.

Wouldn’t it be amazing if there was a similar convention for those people and groups who are committed to addressing poverty and homelessness? I could see a packed convention hall filled with a hundred thousand enthusiasts all networking together to create innovative products that reduce poverty.

The consumer electronics industry has a lot to contribute toward helping America address its social ills. And I am not just talking about a few iPad apps that link users to charities.

I could see the CES folks creating a homelessness convention called “iCare” that uses the same marketing tools in hawking tiny computer toys to promote solutions to battle poverty; innovation, imitation, image, and infatuation.

Innovation is King

The most creative products typically rise to the top.

Mailing DVDs to your home made more sense than making you go to a store to rent them. A self-sticking little post-it note was much better than marking up a document. And a tiny little piece of metal twisted into a paperclip brought order to our lives.

Creative solutions to resolve homelessness are just as important.

Putting people directly into housing made more sense than warehousing people in shelters. Prioritizing the most hurting people on the streets is better than first come, first serve.

If creative entrepreneurs can innovate on traditional homeless programs, we have a chance of ending homelessness.

Imitation is the Sincerest Form of Flattery

I see today’s CES as a celebration of the latest, and most popular, electronic product on the market—the iPad tablet.

There are tablets everywhere—large and small, thick and thin, silver and black. Don’t fix something that is not broken, people always say.

The same principle holds true in the homeless service world. If there are innovative solutions that are housing homeless people effectively, then copy it!

Image is Everything

The Apple iPod took a standard MP3 music player and turned it into a must-have, trend-setting electronic gadget that is more popular than Justin Bieber standing in the middle of a mob of teenage girls.

Why can’t the marketing team of Apple or Samsung turn the work of ending homelessness into a trendy cause in today’s society?

Infatuation is Obsession

I see it in the eyes of the lookie-loos pushing and shoving to see the latest gadget here at CES. There is a combination of lust, envy, and joy.

There is pure obsession for a small piece of metal and glass surrounding a tiny computer circuit board. That mania turns into millions of dollars of profit for vendors.

Wouldn’t it be amazing if hundreds of thousands of Americans would be so obsessed in ending homelessness that they would invest billions of dollars into a solution?

That people would promote the cause on every Facebook, Twitter, and blog, literally swarming the offices of policy leaders, forcing them to house hurting people living on our streets?

Inspiration

This Vegas convention worshipping future electronic toys is all about inspiration. The convention inspires designers to create even better products, and inspires consumers to give up their hard-earned dollars to buy them.

I wish the same inspiration I see on the show floor of CES could be instilled in the work of ending homelessness.

Photo credit: TechCocktail