How to solve homelessness!

1. Sydney
April 2009
‘CHANGE’
Rokus Loopik

2. Misunderstandings 2007

3. Everything coming from New York and the Netherlands is OK.
•
I never exaggerate
•
Cell phones have to be turned off
•
You are not allowed to interrupt
•
Nurses posts and restrooms for personal are OK
•
I am cynical
•
I have the best job in the Netherlands
•
You are off better being in a psychiatric hospital than being in prison
•

4. Misunderstandings 2009

5. not OK.
• Everything coming from the USA is

6. Getting to know Housing First
and Pathways to Housing.
means Change!
for Joanne and Rokus

7. IT MEANS..................
• being picked up by a ‘messenger’ and....
• making a house call and......
• de-learning.........., no more stepped care.....
• applying for a job is easy, the actual job starts when..................
• after interviewing 20 stable consumers, learning that.........

8. BEING PICKED UP BY A
MESSENGER AND........
Getting your first lesson in what working for Pathways to Housing
means. In the year 2004 Sam Tsemberis generously offered me to
come work for Pathways for three months. On my first working day
I was picked up by Mitchell, formerly homeless, but now working as
a payed messenger for the Brooklyn team. He did not speak very
much during our subway ride from 125th street to the Brooklyn
office. I felt a bit uneasy by that and decided to break the ice by
asking him from which country he originally was coming.
“Rokus, understand one thing! At Pathways we don’t talk this racist
shit. We all belong to one family, which is the Pathways Family. From
today on you belong to that family too. I consider you my brother.
What difference does it make where I am from. I have never heard
from Holland and today something made us come together.”

9. MAKING A HOUSE CALL
AND.......
Realizing that I had a strange urge to start cleaning the home that I
had just entered. I shared that feeling with my (Pathways) co-
worker. He asked me one question.
-Is this your home?
-No
-So start ‘killing’ your convictions about what is right or wrong. It is
not your home. Everybody has the right to make the wrong
choices. Whatever decision people make, it will always lead to
success. Sometimes it just takes some more time.
It took me another month to get rid of my Dutch ‘cleaning
standard’. It was until I was able to let go that I became a believer of
Housing First.

10. DE-LEARNING, NO MORE
STEPPED CARE........
Working according to the Housing First Method means that you
have to de-learn. ‘Forget’ everything that you have learned at
school, park it in the back of your mind and start listening to what
consumers have to tell and really want. Consumers are more
capable to live an independent life than health care workers tend to
think. It means that you are in the back of the bus, while the
consumer is at the stirring wheel. People will surprise you if you give
them the trust that they can live a full life in their new community.
It is the consumer who makes the choice of doing the right thing
out of their own free will and not because of the fact that the
worker says it has to be done in a certain and preconceived way.
Let go. Start giving away love and trust. People will eventually make
the right choice, even if it takes 3 more times to rapid re-house
them. Success will follow. Trust on that.

11. After interviewing 20 stable and
unstable consumers, learning that.........
‘loneliness’ is something that is hard to solve. At the end of the day,
when the offices close, consumers go home, alone. Pathways to
Housing provides consumers with the possibility of 24/7 access to
their services. It means that workers have to reach out whenever
necessary. During working hours all the teams provide consumers
with programs. People have the possibility of attending Harm
Reduction-, Photo-, Art-, Psycho Education- and Cooking Groups.
All the offices of Pathways are open to the consumers. There are no
locked doors. People can walk in and out where and whenever they
want. They are addressed in a more than friendly manor. I learned
that so called ‘professional distance’ prevents health care workers
from listening to what really matters to consumers. I learned that
consumers are very capable on deciding how close workers can
get. Love and respect never killed a consumer.

12. the childhood of
Rokus, his fear of
catastrophe and
what housing
first means for a
homeless
individual.

13. Diagram of an Incident.
It takes courage to walk the line of life. I have a certain fear of flying.
Whenever I leave home to travel by plane, the delusion that the
roof of the world is going to fall on the heads of my beloved ones,
pops up in my brain. It makes me want to stay in my comfort zone
and stay at home (resistance). That is what happens when you are
brought up in an unsafe environment. You want to keep everything
as it is. Eventually you become a social psychiatric nurse. I only
change when I step out of that zone and therefor I take every
opportunity to fly and to step into things I am really afraid of. I have
to provoke myself in order to learn new behavior. To ‘kill‘ my
convictions. And build new convictions. Homelessness is Mayor
Trauma. People have lived in a vacuum for decades, being nobody,
having no identity, being neglected having no responsibility, love and
respect. I met a formerly homeless man in Philadelphia. He told me
he was offered a home by Pathways. In the first two years in his
home he kept everything in his moving boxes and in original
packaging.

14. ‘Rock the consumer’s system’!
For instance, whenever he used his cooker or iron, he would put it
back into the original packaging, always afraid that one day
somebody would come by to tell him that he had to leave his new
home and become homeless again. It was only after two years that
he would let the conviction come in that it was his home and that
people were serious and trustworthy. That is what homelessness
does with your key values. With all due respect to workers within
the shelter system, but providing people with food, clothes, drop
inns and a few or more nights in a boarding house, keeps people
hostage in homelessness. They will never be able to leave the stage
of being a victim. We have to rock our and the consumer’s system.
A system that, before they were offered a new home, tells them
that nobody is to trust. Providing people with a home and thus
giving them our love, respect and trust that we truly believe they
can be successful, is one way to give people the opportunity to
change, to rock their system.

15. ‘Rock the professional’s system’!
To offer them Mastership, Responsibility and Growth. To provoke a
crisis in their believe that they are not worthy of being a part of our
society/community. Working with Housing First, I have experienced
that most consumers very quickly adapt to the new situation of
having a new home. To stop, observe, correct and act.
I provoked a crisis in my system of convictions by joining Pathways
for a period of three months and leaving my comfort zone. I came
to know visionary people, both workers and consumers. Since the
year 2004 I travelled to New York City every year as a guide for
large groups from within the Mental Health Care System in the
Netherlands. Every visit people were curious to know why Housing
First does not work for 15% of the homeless population. And we
would ask them why they travelled 6000 miles to neglect why it
works for 85% of the homeless population. Listening to Joanne and
others consumers tells me that in order to make Housing First
work, it is the mental health care worker who has to change.

16. What are your key
value’s?

17. ask yourself the wonder question!
• Think about what you would want for your
homeless son, daughter, brother, sister,
mother and father?!

18. • What do people do after
years of homelessness?
• When they enter their new
home.............?

19. Everything you and I do.....
Watch TV, lie flat on the couch.
•
Sleep oneself out.
•
Drink a beer.
•
Use drugs.
•
Invite a friend.
•
Have sex.
•
Take a very long shower/bath.
•

20. What do people who have stable housing want......?

21. Respect
•
Love
•
Contact/connection
•
Responsibility
•
Something to do during the day
•
Job
•
A life that is similar to yours and mine.
•

22. Homelessness
The Clinician’s
Perspective
Homeless Person
Mentally Illness
Substance Use
Other Problems

23. Consumer’s
Experience
Safety
Security
Poverty
Homelessness
Health &
Person
Mental
Health

24. rehabilitation and
recovery is....
• Hearing your phone ring on the first night in
your new home and realizing that you are
not living in a homeless vacuum anymore.
You actually regained your identity.You are
not ‘nobody’ anymore and someone is calling
because he/she is truly interested in how
you are coping on the first night in your new
life, in your new home!

25. consumer’s experience after
being housed!

26. This year I aged up
to...............
• 51 and................
• I am not going to aim for less then a life for
consumers that looks like yours and mine!
• Seen from the moon, and Americans where
there first, everybody is equal, so why not
strive for that. Give away homes.You will not
be disappointed!

27. I am not John F. Kennedy.
I am not from Berlin.
I have a dream.
Ich bin ein
konsument.

28. I am a
consumer.