The United Way of King County has published an ethnographic study of homelessness (PDF) that shatters many of the myths and generalizations about homeless people.

From the introduction:

Fundraising for the Campaign to End Chronic Homelessness is at its halfway point, and the associated resources are now beginning to be deployed in the community. To ensure that we and our partners truly understand the shape and scale of the problem, and use our resources to the best possible effect, we commissioned this Ethnographic Assessment of Homeless Street Populations. It is Washington State’s first-ever effort to take a probing, anthropological look at the people and places of King County homelessness, and capture the diversity of the homeless experience.

Not everyone who is lingering on the street is homeless, and not everyone who is homeless is on the street. Drug and alcohol use is widespread, but hardly universal, and different ages of the homeless have different preferences in substances.

For some homeless people, life will turn around if there is a dependable roof overhead. For others, the challenge is deeper, and success will hinge on supportive services, including mentorship in regaining critical social skills.

All this and more emerges from this rich, textured, and challenging report. As we move forward in United Way of King County’s work to end homelessness, the report will guide our effort to be as comprehensive and effective as possible in our approach. link

Story in the Seattle P-I

Further down, the report notes:

Now, there are evidence-based practices for serving the chronic homeless population. Positive results have been found for models that incorporate Housing First principles, recovery first models, generic outreach, employment options, day centers, harm reduction, and motivational interviewing approaches to chemical dependency. Seattle has yet to develop a coordinated effort incorporating all of these components. However, as reported earlier, MID workers noted a clear difference on the street with the opening of the 1811 Eastlake Project (DESC) for chronic alcoholics and Real Change, which provides the opportunity to earn cash by selling papers. The innovations of Housing First principles have transformed the service philosophy toward this group in recent years. Equally transformative approaches are needed for other homeless streetbased
populations.

In other words, we may need to suspend some of our assumptions about what we should do and look at the research. Many people objected when 1811 was opened, as it lets alcoholics drink in their rooms, but it does get them off the street, giving them a greater chance of achieving sobriety and employment.

The “Chronic Homeless” category used in this report is a bit broad; it’s designed to encompass groups that aren’t adequately described by the other categories “Chronic Public Alcoholic,” “Mentally Ill and Mentally Ill Offender,” “Drug Addicted Offender.” I think the simply down-and-out are a bit overlooked, though I haven’t read the report in its entirety. What about those who have chronic, untreated health issues? Getting such issues fully treated is not easy for the homeless, and such issues can quickly lead to homelessness for those without insurance.

For those of you who know our homeless friend Paul, I’m saddened to report that he passed away about two weeks ago, after spending several weeks in a coma. While he did have some drug issues in his past, most of his issues were related to chronic health problems. We saw over and over that he’d get short-term treatment for his MRSA infections and then be released, so the infections would never go away. They eventually destroyed his kidneys, forcing him to go to dialysis four times a week. A number of other complications made the kidney failure worse, and ultimately contributed to his untimely death.

These are serious issues, and United Way’s $25 million campaign to end homelessness will be a necessary start in addressing them.

If you realized that my previous post about church was written in celebration of April 1, you might be wondering what I really think.

The truth is that we’ve been going to The Ohana Project for several weeks, and plan to continue doing so. This is in spite of the fact that I don’t like worship services and am not nearly as charismatic as most OP-ers.

So why are we going? Not surprisingly, it’s about the people. We knew several OP regulars before we started attending, and found out that we knew even more people when we started going. They’ve been great to us, even though I have a reputation for being perpetually dissatisfied with church.

The nice thing is that we’ve had the opportunity to not really worry about whether everything at church is being done the way we’d do it. Unlike many churches that we could doubtless find in the city and in the suburbs, OP is not tailor-made to suit my whims and preferences. And I like that.

It’s good to, for a change, be with other believers who have a vision and a passion for what they’re doing, without my having to be involved in making the decisions. I don’t mean that I want to just show up and not get involved, but for now I’m enjoying being in a community where other people make the decisions.

I just signed up for the Mustard Seed Associates New Conspirators conference.

If you’re undecided, check out the list of speakers/participants:

Experience the creativity of Shane Claiborne, author of The Irresistible Revolution and co-author of Jesus for President, and his companions at The Simple Way as they help their Philadelphia community rebuild after a destructive fire

Join Karen Ward and her friends as they celebrate their faith at the Church of the Apostles in Seattle and the Fremont Abbey Arts Center

Learn how Sanctuary Covenant Church, a multicultural congregation led by Efrem Smith, co-author of The Hip Hop Church, is making a difference in Minneapolis

Join Mark Scandrette, author of Soul Graffiti, in re-imagining what it means to be a disciple of Jesus in San Francisco

Discover with Julie Clawson how God is raising up emerging women to re-invent the church

Celebrate with Tomas Yaccino what God is doing through a new generation of missional leaders in Latin America

Learn how to create more missional churches with Tim Morey from Life Covenant in Torrance, CA

Imagine with Mark Pierson, co-author of The Prodigal Project, how to create ancient/future forms of celebrations and worship for both traditional churches and new expressions

Imagine new forms of social entrepreneurship with Devin Erhardt of Pura Vida Coffee

Meet those who are fashioning emerging expressions of church with Dwight Friesen of Mars Hill Graduate School

Travel with Romanita Hairston, from World Vision, to visit urban churches that are finding a way to make a difference in tough places

Join Mark Van Steenwyk in creating a monastic community of Jesus Radicals in Minneapolis

Learn with pastor Eugene Cho about the flourishing of Quest here in Seattle

Discover with Andrew McLeod how to create economic coops in uncertain times

Explore with Lisa Domke how to make choices as we race into the 2008 US presidential election

Learn with Eileen Hansen how to grow new mustard expressions in a traditional Church

Learn how to find resources to fund creative new ventures with Tom Balke

Imagine how to be friars in the 21st century with Mike Morris from Britain

Create spiritual practices for those in emerging and traditional churches with Bruce Bishop

Imagine with Melanie and Jonathan Neufeld innovative ways churches can provide leadership in urban transformation

Join Ricci Kilmer and Eliacin Rosario-Cruz in beginning the revolution at home

Discover with Christine Sine, author of Godspace and co-author of Living On Purpose, how to create a liturgy of life

Imagine with Tom Sine, author of The New Conspirators: Creating the Future One Mustard Seed at a Time, how to create missional whole-life faith and whole-life communities for uncertain times

Early registration ends Monday, January 14, so sign up now before the price goes up.

Register here

Wow. Nickels does something right:

SEATTLE - Mayor Greg Nickels announced today the city of Seattle and other local agencies will participate in a yearlong demonstration project testing the performance of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles in an urban area. Thanks to funding and technical support from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory (INL), matched by funding from program participants, 13 existing Priuses will be converted to plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV) at a total cost of $156,000.

The project will test technology used to convert the second generation Priuses to 100 miles per gallon vehicles; test PHEV performance in an urban area; help evaluate PHEV-electric grid integration issues; and promote electricity as an alternative fuel for transportation.

Achieving up to 100 mpg, plug-in hybrid vehicles are just one more step in the city’s fight against climate change with the added benefit of ultimately reducing dependence on foreign oil. Expected greenhouse gas emissions from the PHEV Priuses in this demonstration project are 50 percent less than conventional Priuses. link

Via CalCars

This appears to be related to the mayor’s Seattle CAN (Climate Action Now) initiative, which looks like a big step in the right direction.

Those of you who have been to our home know that we don’t live in the best neighborhood in Seattle. We chose to have a bigger, nicer house in exchange for not living in such a great neighborhood.

We see a lot of people walking in the alley behind our house (which doesn’t really go anywhere, other than a less-visible area for using drugs) and going into the burned-down house next door to us to use drugs. Hopefully, the burned-down house will be turned into three townhouses by the end of the year as the owners are planning.

As regular readers know, we’ve been working on the yard a lot this summer, but have not put up a fence. I don’t like the idea of a fence, since it would reduce the amount of sunlight in our yard, and it’d increase our susceptibility to break-ins (since the fence wouldn’t physically prevent people from entering the yard, and it would reduce visibility from the street).

But a fence is starting to sound like a good idea. People keep coming into our yard, picking our roses, sitting on the planter beds, and littering. The litter comes mostly from the cars that park along our retaining wall, in an area that’s not obviously our property (it’s a wide gravel strip along the street, with no curb). But we do get people sitting on the retaining wall, coming in our yard, and generally freaking us out.

Yesterday a man who was obviously high was dancing around in the yard, where I’m putting in the patio. He left when I gestured from the window that he should leave, but it’s still disconcerting. This didn’t happen last summer.

That afternoon, a local woman we see on the street a lot came up into the yard and picked a rose from the bush by our window. These roses aren’t along the street - it’s at least 15 feet away from the sidewalk, on an elevated portion of our yard. Click the photo and look at the Flickr notes to see where I’m talking about:

Another thing we’ve gotten used to is the litter. I don’t know where it comes from, but there is a constant stream of trash either blowing in from Rainier, the main street a block away, or being tossed from the dozens of cars that park in our side yard while they wait for someone to come out of the apartments. We sometimes pay a homeless guy to pick it up, which is a solution I can live with.

Today a guy was sitting in his car on our property, waiting for someone to come out of the apartments across the street. He had put a large plastic cup under the car, containing who knows what kind of trash. I asked him to pick it up before he left, and he nodded. I watched from inside the house, and he made no move to get it. I went out to ask him again to pick it up, and he gave me a hard time and accused me of harassing him, but eventually picked it up when the woman he was waiting for came out. Is it really that much to ask that you not use our yard as your personal dump while you’re busy trespassing? Sheesh.

Then, while I was still writing this post, Amy realized that a $300 Mary Kay delivery had been stolen off our porch on Thursday while we were at work. Apparently MK doesn’t think it’s a problem to drop a huge box of cosmetics (marked as such) on your doorstep when no one’s home. Hopefully they will replace it, and ship it with signature confirmation this time. In the past, I’ve had a book from Amazon stolen off the porch, but nothing this big. You’d think Mary Kay would give you the option of requiring a signature for delivery.

All of this has us really steamed - and disappointed - about choosing to live in this neighborhood. I’m forced to ask “What is the best way to respond to this situation?” Have the people who park in our yard towed? Call the police every time we see someone who looks suspicious? Get a security system? Build a fence? Move away?

A lot of the stuff we deal with is par for the course. We’ve had far fewer problems in this neighborhood than in our previous, more upscale neighborhood, Capitol Hill, where our car was broken into twice (while parked in a locked garage). The people we see each day are generally poor or, in some cases, homeless and/or addicted to drugs or alcohol. That doesn’t mean they’re dangerous, just undesirable to live around. Which is why our money went twice as far as it would have in Green Lake or Wedgwood, more upscale parts of town. I try not to have the attitude that says I shouldn’t have to live around poor people or people who aren’t like me.

But I’m struggling with what to do, and wondering if perhaps the best response is to do nothing. When we see people going into the burned house next door, we generally call the police, but it’s going to continue to happen, and it doesn’t affect us that much. We haven’t (with the exception of the package thefts) been the victims of any crimes. I think it’s better to have poor and drug-addicted people spread out evenly rather than concentrated in certain areas, and I’m OK with living in an area with a slightly higher concentration of people in such situations.

So what am I going to do? People coming in the yard and approaching the windows is not cool. I’m going to get a quote on a fence, a big, tall, cedar fence. It won’t keep people out, but it will at least send the message that our yard is not a public park. We’re going to have packages either kept at the delivery station or delivered to our workplaces. Other than that, I guess the best solution is to continue to try to be a good neighbor.

What do you think?

Justice for …, uploaded by justinbaeder.

Is this intentional? Ironic? A political statement? Or just lazy?

Spotted at dry cleaner on Dearborn Street in Seattle.

Via TSK comes this announcement of a major national emerging church conversation called Emergence 2007. It’s organized by Zondervan, which just released the book “Listening to the Beliefs of Emerging Churches.”

The book, edited by Robert Webber, features Mark Driscoll, John Burke, Dan Kimball, and Doug Pagitt, and is included with the $49 registration fee for the event.

The Seattle event is at Mark Driscoll’s Mars Hill Church, and is hosted by Krista Tippett of NPR’s show Speaking of Faith (previously mentioned here - Aaron says it’s a good podcast). Other speakers at the Seattle event include:

• Mark Driscoll
• Dan Kimball
• Doug Pagitt
• Karen Ward

Here’s a PDF of the brochure, uploaded by Andrew Jones (TSK). Blurb from the official non-website (which doesn’t even include a proper title for the event):

Over the past several years there has been for some a growing uneasiness and for others an unprecedented excitement about the church among emerging generations. There is a movement afoot in our world called the “emerging church” that has called into question the normal way of doing church and being the church. Many are wondering if In our post-Christian world the church has become little more than a resting place for all things religious. The emerging church movement is making waves that have caught the attention of PBS, ABC and other major media networks. The New York Times, Time magazine and Christianity Today have featured lead articles on the churches and leaders who make up this movement.

Joim us for a unique weekend conversation that will feature many of the key leaders in the emerging church movement. This event will provide you with a first-hand experience with people who are reimagining what the church can be for a post-Christian world. Come and interact with key leaders about the beliefs, practices and ways of engaging culture in the way of Jesus. They may not always agree with each other, but one thing they all agree that the church can be a place where people meet God. link

For the record, while I’m glad this is happening, I doubt I’ll go (though some strange people might convince me otherwise :)). My reticence centers around two questions:

• Is this just a way to sell books? Are we being co-opted by publishing houses?
• Is the emerging conversation - at least, the highly blogosphere-centric part - petering out?

On the first question, I think the most accurate answer is no, we’re not being co-opted. But I’m definitely less excited about this event because it’s being run by a publisher, even though the big names are going to be there.

On the second question, I think a lot of us have gotten used to the idea of doing things in new ways, and are tired of talking about it or arguing about it. I know Radical Congruency sees a lot less of this type of conversation than it once did.

It’s now mostly people from traditional churches who are talking about the emerging church, or people who are brand new to the conversation. If that’s you, welcome.

King County Executive Ron Sims wants to know. King County, which includes Seattle and surrounding suburbs, is considering banning trans fats in restaurants.

As you may recall, NYC moved to ban trans fats in restaurants a few months ago. At the time, I was under the impression that trans fats do not occur in nature, but apparently I was wrong about that. The poll says:

Eating trans fat increases the risk of coronary heart disease. Trans fats occur naturally and in small quantities in some meat and dairy products. Most trans fats are created as a side effect of partial hydrogenation of plant oils. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration requires that products containing trans fatty acids require stringent nutritional labeling starting in 2006. Learn more below and vote.

I will be interested to see how people on the west coast feel about this proposal.