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THE LONELY DEATH ON MY DOORSTEP
YETTA ADAMS' STORY AND THE NEW WAR ON
HOMELESSNESS
Henry G. Cisneros
December 5,
1993; Page c1
ON THE LAST Sunday in November, as the temperature plummeted
into the low 30s, a woman lay down on a bus bench in the nation's
capital covered only by an old blanket and the cloak of night. She
was alone. She was homeless. When she lay down to sleep that cold
night, she was anonymous.
We know her name today -- Yetta Adams. She
was 43, the mother of three adult children. We know these things
about her because, sometime in the night, as she lay on that
bench, she died.
Yetta Adams was not the first person to
succumb to death on a cold street in a big city, and as this
winter advances, she will not be the last.
But her death has marked us more than others, because she
died across the street from the U.S. Department of Housing and
Urban Development. She died across the street from my office, just
weeks after I said that relieving homelessness would be HUD's top
priority.
The temptation is strong to see Yetta Adams'
death as an indictment of a callous, uncaring people, or as a sign
that the problem has become so intractable that efforts to help
the homeless are doomed to failure. But indicting each other is
too easy. And viewing homelessness as intractable is simply wrong.
While Yetta Adams' death jarred me and all of my
colleagues at HUD, reminding us that our society is becoming an
increasingly hostile environment for the homeless, I know there
are success stories -- model programs that have lifted people out
of homelessness, programs from which we can learn.
But the successes aren't visible enough, and we have
hardened ourselves to the pain of the homeless; we defensively
brush by them in the streets and brush off their entreaties for
help. We are resigned to the homeless as fixtures of the urban
landscape, and we wish we did not have to see them among us. The
simple fact that we now call these men, women and children "the
homeless" labels them as a new, permanent statistical category.
It is not surprising that Americans feel this way about
homeless people today. But this fatigue in the battle against
homelessness means that the nation's leadership -- in Washington,
in our state capitals and in our local communities -- has to
ensure that in their weariness, Americans do not turn this fight
into a war on the homeless themselves.
It is important to understand the source of this weariness.
For more than 12 years, Americans have watched in dismay as the
number of homeless people on street corners, in doorways, in
vestibules, in parks, in libraries and in every other conceivable
public place and space has grown.
We know why the ranks of the homeless have swollen: Mental
institutions have shut down and thrown people into the streets;
drug and alcohol addiction have sent others to join them there.
Recession and unemployment have added still others to the homeless
population.
Meanwhile, Americans who have traditionally been considered
"better off" have wrestled with their own economic demons:
stagnant or falling real wages, the growing threat of
unemployment, the soaring costs of sending their kids to college
or caring for their aging parents. And during this time, they have
watched as public agencies and private groups have fallen steadily
behind the ever-growing need for emergency shelter -- often
despite increased public outlays and exertions in behalf of
thehomeless. Overwhelmed by the seeming enormity of the homeless
issue, increasingly preoccupied with their own problems and even
fearful that they are themselves only one or two paychecks removed
from the streets, Americans have become more skeptical of
government's ability to deal with this problem.
We have witnessed this evolution in the District of
Columbia, and the District's experience has been mirrored in other
major American cities.
In 1975, the District was able to keep up with the needs of
homeless people with two city-run emergency shelters and the help
of several private service providers. At that time, there were
virtually no people living on the streets of the nation's capital.
Six years later, the District had 15 shelters, including
four operated by the city government, housing 600 people a night.
Another 200 families received temporary vouchers for hotel and
motel rooms. That winter, despite the increased assistance, nine
homeless people died of exposure on the District's streets.
The problem continued to worsen, and in 1984 District
voters demonstrated their desire to do something about it by
giving their overwhelming approval to a ballot initiative
guaranteeing the "right to adequate overnight shelter." The law
significantly expanded the District's emergency shelter effort.
Five years later, the District was sheltering more than
11,000 single adults and 2,400 families, at an annual cost of $40
million. But despite this enormous public investment, the number
of homeless people on the city's streets continued to increase.
In 1990, the voters' attitude changed. As expenditures
mounted to no visible effect, District voters repealed the
right-to-shelter initiative by a 51-to-49-percent vote.
This brings us to the night of Nov. 28, 1993, when
Yetta Adams died on a bus bench opposite HUD
headquarters.
Yetta Adams' death is not an indictment of
her fellow Americans; it is an indictment of a system that evolved
haphazardly to treat the symptom of homelessness and failed to
address its underlying causes. This broad indictment should not be
taken to mean that all of our efforts to help the homeless have
been failures. There have been successes: Miami has a new tax on
restaurants and hotels to create more emergency and transitional
beds for homeless people. In Minnesota, a transitionalhousing
facility is creating jobs for residents through a painting and
decorating business it owns. In Yonkers, N.Y., a family inn
provides transitional housing for residents and jobs in a bakery
and other businesses it owns. In Los Angeles, a nonprofit group is
rehabilitating dilapidated, single-room occupancy hotels to house
elderly people, people who are chronically and mentally ill,
substance abusers and people with active tuberculosis that is no
longer contagious. These success storiesgive us cause for hope and
strong reason to believe that we can come to grips with this
problem, provided we truly understand it.
Homelessness is not a condition; it is an outcome of mental
illness, drug abuse, alcoholism, disability, chronic illness and
just plain hard times. The problems that drive the Yetta Adamses
of this nation into its streets are profound, complex and
persistent. They cannot be solved by a hot shower, a warm meal and
a bed. Yetta Adams, as we now know, suffered from
disabling mental depression, compounded by a serious health
problem: diabetes. She had been in and out of shelters over the
last decade. According to press accounts, a network of shelter
operators, caseworkers and doctors tried repeatedly to help her.
She had $300 in cash with her when she died. Nevertheless,
Yetta Adams dropped off the system's radar scope
Tens of thousands of homeless Americans -- no one knows the
exact number for sure -- disappear from the system's cluttered
screens every day. If we are to truly help these people, we must
address the problems that have rendered them homeless in the first
place -- and that means we need to encourage and enable homeless
people, as much as possible, to take responsibility for their own
destinies.
The approach that HUD has developed with the strong support
of President Clinton addresses a broad range of needs: psychiatric
care; substance abuse counseling; training; housing, be it
temporary, transitional or permanent; and, of course, jobs. While
it is HUD's responsibility to provide leadership and resources, it
is up to our local partners to translate our support into locally
designed actions and services.
The tragic irony of Yetta Adams' death in the
shadow of HUD is that it comes at a time when we are ready to
begin testing this approach in the District of Columbia.
HUD's assistant secretary of community planning and
development, Andrew Cuomo, has worked for six months with other
federal agencies, the District government and with community
homeless advocates on this effort, which we call the "D.C.
Initiative." Cuomo has secured the support of Congress and engaged
the White House and all of the concerned domestic departments and
agencies of the federal government in this initiative for which
HUD has earmarked $20 million in federal funds.
The D.C. Initiative will: Shift the focus of homeless
assistance from simply getting people off the streets for the
night to solving the problems that drive them into the streets. It
will enable them to make a transition from the streets, to
shelter, to permanent housing. Require the homeless to take
responsibility for themselves. It will offer them help in exchange
for their commitment to make the most of that help. The homeless
must agree to accept the services and housing offered to
themunits,
The D.C. Initiative will be coordinated and implemented by
a new, public-private entity that will bring together government
agencies, community-based, nonprofit service providers and the
business and foundation communities. Mayor Sharon Pratt Kelly has
promised to send legislation establishing this group to the City
Council by Dec. 15.
All of this would be happening even if Yetta
Adams had not died last week. But her death has underscored
-- for all of us involved in the D.C. Initiative -- the urgent
need to move forward. District Council Chairman David Clark has
asked Mayor Kelly to expedite the D.C. Initiative's enabling
legislation. The D.C. Initiative's success is critical to the
entire country. We want to expand this approach to more cities. In
the face of unrelenting pressure to cut the federal budget, I have
askedPresident Clinton to double federal support for homeless
assistance to $1.55 billion next fiscal year to finance expansion
of this new approach to homelessness nationwide. But before we can
ask Congress for money to expand this program, we must demonstrate
there is a will to carry it out. We must show that the federal
government, local government and community groups can work
together.
Many people have told me that HUD is making a mistake in
committing such substantial resources to the District. But as
someone who drives through the District's streets every day, as
the administration official most directly responsible for
confronting homelessness in America, I cannot turn my back on
homeless people sleeping in doorways and on benches and steam
grates at the center of the nation's government. If we cannot deal
with homelessness on our very doorsteps in Washington, where can
we deal with it? And if we cannot deal with it now, when can we
deal with it?
With this in mind, we asked the Congress to give us the
resources this year, rather than waiting until next year. Congress
has joined us in demonstrating its faith in the District. We're
counting on the District to prove that faith is warranted. The
whole nation is watching what happens here.
Henry Cisneros is secretary of Housing and Urban
Development
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