I recently had the opportunity to interview Mr. Mitchell Gibbs, Executive Director at the Austin Resource Center for the Homeless.
Mr. Gibbs attended Angelo State University and North Texas State University, graduating with a degree in journalism before pursuing leadership certification at Harvard Business School. He has over 30 years of experience in non-profit, from hospice volunteering to working in HIV, to working with affordable-housing organization Habitat for Humanity. He became the Development and Communications Director of Habitat’s Austin branch in 1996—the experience as a whole provided his first real exposure to the homeless, and to the simple joy of directly helping specific people in circumstances of homelessness. He left his media career for good to work for the ARCH as its grant writer in 2010, eventually becoming the full-on head of the organization. Today, his work ranges from coordinating the various branches of the organization to directly interacting with homeless clients.
His experience in the field of serving the homeless, and the fact of his many interactions with them daily, gave him a pretty unique perspective. I asked him mainly about his thoughts on the issues surrounding homelessness—and how Austin is doing, how Austin can do better.
I hope you learn a bit from his insights, as I did.
What’s your advice for someone who wants to approach a homeless person and talk to them?
Know a little bit about homelessness; recognize that there is a lot of mental health, drug and alcohol issues out there. And be smart about it. Walking down the street and making eye contact can saying hello can be a very empowering thing for someone experiencing homelessness.
What some of these folks tell me is that there’s such a feeling of invisibility about homelessness. That it makes lots of folks very uncomfortable—they avert their eyes, they try not to see it, they don’t want to speak, they don’t want to acknowledge it. And part of that is fear and safety—our homeless folks get that too. Especially as our culture continues to change, there are public safety factors we all have to worry about every day. Our homeless folks get that. But they also need some validation—somewhere along the line that, “I recognize you as a human being.” Some of that can be a wave, from a block away.
And if you’re going to smile and you’re going to speak to somebody, recognize that you may get panhandled in the process. Aggressive panhandling can sometimes be an extension of a mental health problem. Think about what you’re getting whenever you make the gesture and make sure you’re in a safe place, and you’ve got your head on straight before you do it.
I don’t roll up to every stoplight and roll down my window and try to have a conversation with everybody standing there at the street corner. I recognize that there are some folks out there, where that won’t create a very safe space for me to be in. There are others that I recognize from my work here, and they’re so thrilled that somebody stopped and rolled down the window. Didn’t give them any money, just said, “How are you doing?” And, “Have a good day.” But it’s an acknowledgement that we’re all human.
I’ve heard it’s good to keep water bottles in your car to give to people. Is that something you’d recommend?
Again, I always recommend people to be careful. That they recognize there are some safety risks in doing that. Minimize the risk if you’re going to do it: you may not want to roll the window all the way down. Do it enough where you can hand the bottle over and you can wish someone a nice day, but where it doesn’t allow someone to reach into your car and grab your car keys or something like that.
And during the winter time, folks always seem to appreciate socks—dry socks. Bottles of water. Some of our groups like to make a Ziploc bag with a pair of socks and a granola bar. Just recognize where you are: I wouldn’t do it in a dark place where nobody else is around.
What do you think are some common myths and misconceptions the public has about homelessness?
I think the biggest one is that somebody wants to be homeless, or that they’ve chosen to be homeless. We’ve had some really ugly things happen around us. People drive down the street and roll down their windows and yell, “Get a job, you bum.” They’ll throw cans out the window at folks as they drive by. We’ve had people come by with paintball guns—a car full of young people out in the town, they thought it’d be funny to paintball the homeless that were lying around on the ground outside of a homeless shelter.
Those situations are really tough to see and tough to deal with.
Nobody homeless, chose specifically to be homeless. And I go back thinking about a project we’ve been getting off the ground here—which was, “Can I get a picture of you as a small child?” And let’s talk about this kid, and what this kid wanted to be when he or she grew up. I’ve never sat out and talked to somebody who said, “Yeah, when I was five, I thought that was really cool. I wanted to live on the street, and I wanted to eat out of garbage cans, and I wanted to not have a place to poop or pee, and I wanted to pull my pants down in public and have someone see me do that.” Never had somebody say, “I chose those experiences.”
Even as an adult?
I see adults saying, things for me went out of control because of some bad choices that I made. I started drinking or drugging, or I got a divorce and my wife took my kids and I was so depressed. I was in the military and I came back after getting traumatic brain injury, and I couldn’t keep a job, and my family said you’re just crazy, get out of my house and out of my life. Those people didn’t choose homelessness. That’s the path that they ended up on. Once you get on that path, how do you get out of it?
And that “Get a job, you bum.” If you haven’t had a job in a long time because of your mental health situation, even if you’re able to resolve the symptoms of your mental health situation, you had a gap in your employment. And they ask you what that’s about, and it keeps you from getting a job.
We see that being homeless is really easy to criminalize. There’s no place where you can legally get a drink of water. In our Austin community, there are five public water fountains. If you’re homeless, and you don’t have a place where you can legally get a drink of water, you’re going to trespass into somebody’s front yard and get their hose and have a drink of water, and get arrested for it. You’re going to hang out at Waller Creek or Lady Bird Lake, and you’re going to try to drink the water, but by virtue of even going to those places, you’re committing a crime. Or, where can you go the bathroom? Or, I found somebody in my life, where can I have sex with that person? Even, where can I sit down? You can’t sit here, you can’t sit here, if you’re sitting here it’s illegal. All of those things are leading that person to commit crime, and all of those crimes stack up on your record, and then when they go apply for a job: oh no, you jaywalked, you got 12 tickets for jaywalking. And it keeps you from being able to get housing, it keeps you from being able to get a job.
So all of those things are interrelated. I certainly don’t know many folks every day who would say, “Yeah, I choose every day to remain homeless.” I do know some folks that say, “I chose not to live indoors”—particularly among the veteran population that served in active combat. If you were inside a building, it was just a bigger target. So a lot of our veterans feel like they’re safest and most secure in areas that aren’t densely populated and where there aren’t concrete walls around them. Some of our veteran make a choice to camp in tents. There is a project called Mobile Loaves and Fishes, the Community First! Village. There are a lot of folks that are in tents are choosing not to be indoors. But they found a home.
So, what would you say is the most common cause of homelessness?
It’s just so varied. I just met a young man downstairs who’s now in his late 20s. He was a foster child, grew up in the foster care system. Had eight sets of foster parents from the time he was about five to the time that he aged out of foster care. You hit a particular age, and you’re out of the system: they consider you an adult. So he went from a system, not having particular attachments to anybody—to all of a sudden, he can’t stay here anymore. And so for the last 10 years he’s been living on the street. And he’s created relationships: I’d struggle to call it a family, but he calls it a family. And those characters in his family come and go and change—that’s been his reality for 10 years.
And we’ve got some people that are in their 70s and 80s, who’ve had 30 years and 40 years of that experience. You’ve got folks coming in out of jails, or prisons, who’ve been in prison for 20 years and now they’re out—they need a place to stay, they can’t get a job, and if somebody somewhere isn’t able to step in and do something to block that cycle, to help them spin out of that into a job or housing or something… then they continue to function in whatever that limited circumstance is. So I think chronic homelessness has its roots in a lot of things. Including aging out of foster care, drug and alcohol abuse, and substance addiction, mental illness, some physical health circumstances, and poverty.
So what’s the overall homelessness situation in Austin right now? Has it been improving, or getting worse?
It’s tough to call. I can tell you that right now, there’s a ‘Point-In-Time’ count. Every community that is receiving federal housing and urban development dollars is required to do a point-in-time count. Austin’s had been going down for a number of years. Then we changed the way we go about doing it: for a long time, we had maybe 100 or 200 volunteers doing the count, and all of a sudden, we had 400 volunteers—and the numbers of homeless go up. I think those are probably related. So in 2010, we counted the homelessness in Austin at a peak. From 2010 to 2015 we saw those numbers going down. 2015 spiked a little. 2016 we spent a lot of community effort dealing with veteran homelessness, so because we threw a lot of time and energy at it, at least that population went down. So there are surges and spikes depending on the community’s response, whether it’s the volunteers to count them, or the assistants, or maybe we found a way to do housing differently—all of these things will have impacts on the numbers.
For this facility specifically, we were mirroring what we were seeing in the Point-In-Time. We peaked in 2010. In 2010, we saw 10,000 different people, but in 2015 it was almost half as much. Some of our programs and social services have helped people get housing and move into new apartments, which was a part of that decrease. But I think also, with the struggles we’ve had with the street drugs—the K2 business has been a big deal—if that’s being traded outside our building and people who want to be sober feel like they have to walk through a non-sober environment to get their services, maybe they don’t come. I’ve heard from younger people on the drag, “I don’t go down there cause that’s where the old guys are”—so it’s also an age thing. There’s a lot of factors about why people don’t come. And as a community, I think we’re doing some things that are helping folks not have to come here. We have some new outreach programs, so some of the services we would offer here are going out to the streets. And we’re also seeing some of these services being offered further away. Caritas opened a North location, we opened a South location. Community Care opened up in a new place. So that’s allowing people not to have to come downtown.
I heard of a project going on with the Austin Police Department to reach the homeless too.
Actually, they were here this morning. It’s called HOST, for Homeless Outreach Street Team. It’s got a couple of APD cops, an EMS person, two to four mental health staff, and someone with the downtown Austin community court. It’s a small program—we began piloting it last year. We did it with no money. We don’t know what difference it’s going to make, but we’re trying something.
What they’ll tell you is, up until now, homeless people have viewed the police as an authoritarian entity. There wasn’t an entity within the police department telling them, “We’re not here to arrest you, we’re not even here to talk to you about illegal activity. We’re here to talk to you about what’s doing on with you today, and how can we help you?” And all of a sudden, this contingent is able to have conversations they haven’t been able to have before. We’ve seen some great success with other cities as well. It’s helping the homeless to see the police not as enemies, but as people who genuinely care about them and can help connect them with the services they need.
So what’s the best way an average Austinite can get involved in helping the homeless?
Every homeless service provider in town has a volunteer program. Some of those programs are, “This is what we do, this is what we offer, and this is how you plug in.” Other programs are like, “I dunno! What is it that you do in your world, that you love doing, that you could share with somebody?” We’ve had folks come in like, “Well, I’ve been taking yoga classes for the last 10 years, maybe I could teach a yoga class.” And we’ll do a 4-week yoga class: clients can come in and participate in that, learn some of those skills. A photography class. A writing class. A lot of what we’re doing is based on the skills that come from our volunteers. But yes, we also have some set volunteer activities—since we serve a meal every night, our staff prepares the meal and our volunteers actually do the serving. And our volunteers love interacting with our client population that way. The hygiene desk that we walked past, it’s not open right because we don’t have a volunteer to run it. We have volunteers who sort and distribute 10,000 letters per month.
And ECHO. Get involved with that. Sometimes your churches will host cold-weather shelter; when we don’t have enough room in shelter on cold winter nights, we depend on our churches to open their doors and be able to take folks in. Schools have come to us and said, “We want to do an underwear drive. How can we get involved in that?”
So lots of different ways to plug in. Look at what your interests are and what kind of involvement you might have.
Is it more challenging to be homeless in Austin compared to other cities? Or, what are the unique challenges to being homeless here?
Austin does have a lot of resources. But I’m often asked, “Do people come here because Austin has more resources to offer?” No. The information that we gather as a community on the homeless people we’re seeing and serving, indicates that about 70% of the folks that come to us for services were Central Texans to begin with. So they didn’t get word in, say, Southern California that Austin had a whole lot of stuff to give away, so I’m gonna go to Austin.
At the same time, some small towns aren’t gonna have much in the way at all of resources. And we look very resource rich to somebody living in, say, Buddha. And all of a sudden, they’ve lost everything: are they going to try to find resources in a community that is not yet in a position of dealing with homelessness?
Austin struggles right now the most with not having affordable housing. We have struggled with that with this population for a very long time. We have been at 98% to 102% rental occupied: every apartment complex in town, at any given moment there might be 2% of the total number available for rent, and if those units are available are you gonna rent them to a homeless person, or are you going to rent it to someone in college with mom and dad’s financial backing? And so we need more affordable housing in our community to be able to address homelessness and the challenges of the living.
So is that the most effective big-picture plan to start reducing homelessness: trying to get more affordable housing?
I’ve been beating that drum for a while. And I do believe that that’s the longer-term solution. There have been people talking to me asking, do you think we need more shelters? There are so many people living on the streets, and if it’s gonna take 10, 15 years to build housing, don’t you think we need shelters on the ground to help us get there? I do, but I also know how expensive that’s going to be, and I’d have a tough time being the one to decide to fund housing or fund shelter. If I had a choice, the longer-term solution is more housing.
Lastly, what’s one thing you wish the public knew about homelessness?
I just wish the public knew that the people we see every day want to be humanized. They want to be recognized as people. They are okay with being recognized as people that are struggling. But recognize me. Don’t ignore me.