By HCH Board Member and activist, Mark Schumann
As a board member of Health Care for the Homeless and someone who’s lived without housing, it’s been an especially exciting week. Two projects (led by people with firsthand experience of homelessness and supported by HCH) are achieving new heights.
On Monday, Baltimore’s new street newspaper – Word on the Street – was featured in Yvonne Wenger’s front page story in The Baltimore Sun (click here to read the article). As editor-in-chief of Word on the Street, it’s inspiring to be part of a project that builds community in so many ways – bringing together and educating students, service providers, activists, and members of the general public, both housed and homeless. Look for a new issue to hit the streets very soon. Check out our blog and “like” us on Facebook.
This week was also a first for Baltimore’s “Faces of Homelessness” Speakers Bureau. While our members are regularly guests in others’ classes, this week we started our own intersession course in Johns Hopkins University’s public health studies program in collaboration with staff from HCH. “Health Care, Homelessness and the Housing Question” is an opportunity to open a dialog on these important issues with a younger generation – most of whom have never faced homelessness. By sharing our stories and engaging in discussion, we can learn from one another and build the awareness and solidarity necessary to help end the phenomena of homelessness that affects an inexcusably large number of fellow human beings.
I hope these projects show people the skills and value of our homeless neighbors and that – even as we admirably and importantly treat the urgent needs of those living on the streets through direct actions such as providing food, clothing and blankets – we should not be distracted from the primary goal of ending homelessness through fair wages, comprehensive health care and affordable housing.
There is no excuse for homelessness in a nation as wealthy and powerful as the US.
