>> I'm very lucky to be joined on the show today
by the National Housing Crisis Reporter for the Economic Hardship reporting project.
Lori Yearwood, welcome to the Damage Report. >> Nice to meet you, nice to be here, thank you.
>> Good to have you here as well, so, I read your work on Mother Jones titled I
escaped the Trump Of Homelessness only to face your white savior complex.
And it was fascinating, in how you go back and question some of what I think
I have to admit. I personally have not really questioned some of the historic
context surrounding what came to be known as the Homelessness Problem. Or the way that
a lot of people think and talk certainly the media think and talk about homelessness.
So, I know there's a lot of ground that we can cover, but tell me a little bit
about the origins of your work and what you were hoping to accomplish with it.
>> Well, I've been writing about my own collapse into homelessness for quite some time and I was
trying to in the years of my work get the point across that many of the assumptions
and projections that people have about the homeless are erroneous.
And it wasn't sticking very well, I felt I was really going against the grain.
And my editor at Mother Jones reached out to me and he's listened to my story and he said, a lot
of what you are experiencing is like the perfect, experimental, scientific as a model for what was
created to happen based on history.
This is what we are set up, that's the construct. And so, he did some research, I did some research
and we found these amazing papers back in the early 80s when homelessness began to
gain a lot of national attention. And we learned from sociologists and researchers
that they were actually in a quandary about the creation of quote unquote homelessness.
And it was a political reaction and to Reagan cuts to conservative cuts. But it also in that reaction
created a lot of erroneous assumptions and projections about the homeless. It was as
if a new class of people was created. And so, I wrote about the creation of that new class.
>> Okay, there's already three things I wanna ask about. But before we get
to the creation that you're talking about there,
you alluded to this came about as a result of realizing that your previous attempts to get
people to understand things weren't really working. What are some of those things that
you had tried to educate people about that hadn't been able to stick prior to the more recent work.
>> Well, the assumption with homeless people is that the reason they are homeless
is because they've done something wrong. And they generally those wrongdoings fall into
the category of either being a drug addict or, and I say wrongdoings and quotes, right? So,
either they're a drug addict or they're crazy and that's a quote or they are lazy.
And in my own story of collapse, I was trying to show how I didn't fit into any of those
categories. And that we needed to look at why those assumptions about me were being made.
And it turns out that although in some ways, I'm an anomaly cuz I was a reporter before
I fell into homelessness and I'm a reporter again, that makes me unique in my perspective.
But in many ways my story is shared by hundreds of thousands of people. And when I would try
to say it in an anecdotal way or and it wasn't being heard because the assumptions
and projections are so strong, you know? >> So, I wanna ask you something about this,
but it might have some overlap with what you said about the creation of this construct.
I'm trying to get an idea of how much of the
I guess the causality for this is there a psychological predisposition to want
to believe that those causes that you identified are the reason. Because if
we accept those things are true, then there's less reason to believe that this is something
that should be fixed after all these people are bad in some way I've defined them into being bad.
Or is this a product of the way that the media has covered it and thus the way that
people have consumed information about this for a long time. How do you think
this construct you talked about was created? >> So, I think it's a confluence of many things.
It's about classism, it's about this idea in our society that we've had forever,
that we've carried over from always Elizabethan times that to give benefits, the giver, and puts
the giver in a higher construct than the receiver. So in the receiving, the receiver is necessarily
because of that paradigm that they're supposedly have to accept in order to get basic needs met.
They're inherently, not as good as the person who is doing the giving and they must be
meek to receive and they must not be angry, right? And they must be passive,
so if you don't accept that construct, then you're less likely to receive.
And the reason this is when all those government cuts went through in the 80s.
And that was a slow build up in terms of
lack of housing wages, not going up racial barriers for many with redlining. And when all
of that came together and people couldn't get what they needed just to have a roof over their head.
And the construct went to private charities giving and people were needing to decide okay,
who's worthy of receiving and who is not, then it's very ubiquitous.
It's like the air we breathe, right, and I think people do this without even
realizing it. And there's in addition to all of that, the fact that people who are
unhoused and who are so marginalized are not given a voice in any of this. They
are put in the position of having to fit a certain construct in order to receive.
>> Okay. >> Yeah.
>> I see what you're saying and I can definitely see at the individual level
that manifesting but you're also pointing out how that has over time
infected sort of the societal response, the actual what programs we still have remaining.
Do you have, I mean, either advice or sort of a road map to how we can rethink some of this?
How in terms of the government response as individuals and even I have a show. So,
how can I help to be a part of rethinking this or casting this in a different
way that might be more beneficial. >> You versus a government program.
>> Sure, I'm interested if you think how both could change potentially.
>> So, government programs are very about
pathologizing the person in need and going through certain criteria
about their need and then personalizing that. And then monitoring the giving of whatever
is needed. And I think that we need to take a step back and become less personal in our giving,
which occurred when the government stepped back in the Reagan years, it became very personal.
So we need to dip personalize it, that's one of the biggest things that we can do
so that people don't have to fit any kind of construct that's demeaning
and actually then works to keep them oppressed. And personally, I think it's about trauma
awareness and realizing that people who are in these situations are extremely traumatized.
And so, in our interactions in trying to help, we need to take that into account.
And that takes away a lot of the blame and the judgment about the situation they're in.
So, instead of seeing somebody for example,
on the street huddled up on a cardboard box and blaming them for not having a job.
A trauma aware perspective would ask, what happened to that person
and how can we empower them slowly or quickly out of that situation?
It not takes a commitment. >> Okay,
and I'm assuming as you've alluded to and it is in the writing that I think some people might think,
well then the goal is get a person a job interview or get them housing and then that's good.
They're done with that condition, but you're implying that that is not actually
where it ends, that the trauma, the oppression can continue even after
these sort of artificial finish lines. >> Yeah, so in terms of specifically
about homelessness, what happens is you are pushed to the edge of society
and you no longer exist as a full human being, you are othered and you are dehumanized.
So, that's a very traumatizing experience and it causes people to actually disassociate from
themselves in their own lives. And so, in trying to help someone become whole again,
it's not just a house, it's not just a job, it's inclusion on many levels. And so, it crosses over,
personally and governmentally, right, because there has to be inclusion and empowerment
and not just I'm deciding that this is what you need, but rather what do you need?
And inclusion is a huge part of that, and that occurs on every level.
>> Yeah, and I can imagine it's probably difficult to get them to see that would be a good thing
when it is occurring in a system where they have implicitly put themselves at a superior position.
The person giving the aid, why would they think
they would need to be involved in the decision. >> Yeah, so, for me, the greatest frustration that
I face as a journalist in writing trauma aware stories about unhoused people or people in housing
crisis is that people want to look at it as that is them and this is about them.
It's not about me, where I'm trying to turn the lens and say, but what is it about you
that allows you to walk over someone in the street or not think about the need for affordable housing
or think that it's okay that someone spends 70% of their income on housing.
>> Yeah. >> We need
to look at ourselves and what we are perpetuating,
not turn it on them and say, what happened, what's wrong with you, why did you make that decision?
And now you need to redeem yourself. >> Yeah.
>> In an impossible construct where that's not, it's never gonna happen.
How can someone become whole again when they're paying 70% of their income on rent and have
nothing left to save? How does that even just on that level, how does that happen, how did they
pull themselves out of housing insecurity? >>
Well, Laurie, you've raised a lot of good points that I very much enjoyed the conversation,
but if you're watching this and you wanna find out way more, because there's
so much that we just buy the bounds of this conversation haven't been able to get into.
You should definitely go to Mother Jones check out I escaped the trauma of homelessness only
to face your white savior complex. Lori very much enjoyed your work and the talk that we had,
thank you so much. >> Thank you.