Hope the Mission visits Amarillo during trek across US for homelessness crisis

Ken Craft and Rowan Vansleve, the founders and president of Hope the Mission, made a stop in Amarillo on Monday as part of their 3,500-mile, cross-country trek from Santa Monica, California, to Washington, D.C., to spotlight the issue of homelessness in the United States.

City officials, including Jason Riddlespurger, the director of community development for the city of Amarillo, met with them to discuss the city’s approach to its homeless problem and its Transformation Park project, which should be open by the beginning of the year.

Leadership from Amarillo worked with Hope the Mission before to help it implement its best practices for forming Transformation Park.

Vansleve said they met with the city over a year and a half ago about its plan to address homelessness and was impressed with the plan.

“Coming from LA, which we can all agree is the epicenter of homelessness across the country, we arrived here very excited to see the plan coming to fruition,” Vansleve said. "Honestly, I am blown away. What is happening here in Amarillo is innovative and is a genuine solution to homelessness, which includes a crisis shelter to get people straight off (the streets) and interim housing to stabilize them. All the services are in one place, and then a plan is made to step people into permanent housing.”

He said that this plan is one of the solutions that he and Craft plan to present to leaders in Washington, D.C.

“I would like to take some the innovations being done here for solutions,” Vansleve said.

Craft emphasizes that one of the things that this trip hopes to accomplish is to examine small towns and big towns alike, looking for causes and solutions to homelessness in those areas.

"What is working and what is not?" Craft said, “We have been discovering some innovative ways in which communities address the homeless crisis, and Amarillo is one of them. We want to be able to compile these industry best practices. Instead of these communities doing these things in their own private silo, we want to be able to say these are some things that are working great that other communities and cities can implement as well.”

According to Craft and Vansleve, producing scalable and financially feasible solutions is paramount to combatting the homeless issue.

“The innovation here is striking and is a genuine solution to homelessness,” Vansleve said. "I think it's replicable while looking different in every city.”

The pair was impressed with the work being done in Alburquerque to create a public safety response, in which social workers are sent to situations involving people in mental health crises, food insecurity, or housing crises.

“It was unbelievable,” Vansleve said. "One thing that I know is that somewhere in America, we have the solution for all these things wrong in this country, and we can find that solution to bring that to our whole country. We can bring everyone inside, because nobody should be languishing on our streets. We are better than that.”

Regarding the reasons for the rise in homelessness, Craft stressed that a nationwide drug epidemic is a significant factor.

“Instead of automatically criminalizing, we need treatment; we need to get people into drug and alcohol recovery programs to help them break free from these addictions,” Craft added.

He stated that personal trauma and the breakup of families have also led to the rise in homelessness.

“We need a safety net and compassionate care,” he said. "We need loving individuals who help them in their time of need and do not discard or judge them.”

Vansleve feels that over the last half century, a reduction in mental health care has had profound effects on the rise of homelessness.

“Homelessness is incredibly complex; we are seeing a drug epidemic and a breakdown in our mental health services,” Vansleve said. "We have reduced our mental health care services while our population continues to increase. We have a housing shortage, and we are reducing funding for HUD (Housing and Urban Development), and that needs to increase. We need to address mental health at school age, all the way through people’s lives, so they can be a part of society and thrive. We cannot allow our neighbors to languish in the streets."

Speaking about misconceptions about the homeless population, Craft says that normalizing homelessness and ignoring it is a mistake.

“We have to realize that these are people just like you and me,” Craft said. "The stereotype is that people on the streets are all drug addicts, lazy, and do not want to change their situation. I would say that nothing is further from the truth. When we can offer the right solution to someone's problem, their life starts to transform. We must overcome these stereotypes, which often do more harm than good."

Looking at this crisis with the same priority that the country looks at natural disasters, Vansleve said, would go a long way in producing a solution.

“We need to realize this is truly a crisis,” Vansleve said. “If an earthquake or a tornado hit a city, we would have FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) on the ground to help people. Unfortunately, when people have become unhoused for some other reason, whether it is addiction or a mental health break, it is not treated as an emergency or crisis. It is a crisis, because it is our neighbors dying on the street.”

On veterans' homelessness, Craft said more needs to be done to ensure veterans are aware of the services available.

Asked if immigration was having a significant impact on the number of homeless in the country, Craft said that it is a small number of the people who are seen in homeless services.

“The big drivers are a drug epidemic, rising housing costs, stagnating wages and a social service system that is not built to handle this many people,” Vansleve said. “As our population grows, our social safety net needs to grow as well, and we have missed the mark on that.”

To follow their journey across the nation, find out more information or donate, go to https://hopethemission.org/about-us/  .

This article originally appeared on Amarillo Globe-News: Hope the Mission visits Amarillo on cross-country trek for homeless