In today’s turbulent times, a local group continues to have the courage to end homelessness.

Pam Marino here, reflecting on my time at the Lead Me Home Summit on Homelessness that took place yesterday, April 17, in Salinas, organized by the Coalition of Homeless Services Providers. More than 300 people were gathered inside the CSUMB Salinas City Center for a full day of speakers and workshops, all geared toward decreasing homelessness in Monterey and San Benito counties.

I thought the mood might be a little grim this year, with so much uncertainty in federal funding and a general attitude at the top of disdain for our most vulnerable populations, but I found people were resolute in their commitment to help people in our community living on the margins.

One of the highlights of the day was a speech by Alex Visotzky, senior policy fellow with the California National Alliance to End Homelessness. He was invited to talk about the progress that’s been made in housing people—a 45-percent drop in homelessness among veterans in California since 2011 is just one example—as well as the challenges ahead.

The challenges are large ones: Visotzky talked about how the housing system is broken, and in order to solve homelessness we have to fix that broken system. 

He called attacks on the concept of Housing First—which focuses on moving people rapidly into housing, often with supportive services—and recent moves to criminalize homelessness distracts from the real issue of a broken housing system and to thwart people asking the hard questions of how to fix it.

“So much feels broken now," Visotzky said. His words, meant for his fellow homelessness professionals, could apply to a much wider audience during this constitutional crisis we now face.

“Every day feels like a new deluge of headlines, executive orders and capitulations from those that we entrust to fight for our interests,” he said. “It’s enough to make you want to pull the covers up all the way.”

Visotzky reflected back on why he got into the work he does; it took him back to volunteering for several years as a teenager for a nonprofit in New York that helps people who are housing insecure or homeless with HIV/AIDS. Every week the group would recite the Serenity Prayer: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.

When he was younger he thought accepting the things he could not change gave him a pass, that he could forgive himself for his inaction and move on. He came to realize that's not the case.

Visotzky paraphrased a famous quote by the Czech poet, playwright and dissident Václav Havel, who said hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something is worth doing—regardless of how it turns out. 

Accepting things we cannot change “doesn’t mean we stop doing what we need to do when the challenges are great. It means accepting that we might not always get the result we want. It means we forgive ourselves when we don’t get the result we want.”

The work must continue, he said. Inaction will not get us where we need to go. We also must keep telling the truth, and not pretend that things like slavery and internment never happened, or that there isn’t a war on our LGBTQ+ family and friends. 

If we stop speaking the truth, we will make it easier for the powers that be to “strip away our voices,” and cut funding for programs like ending homelessness. 

“There’s a reason the Serenity Prayer isn’t the convenience to change what’s easy,” he said. “The prayer is telling us that when we have courage, when we speak up and use our voice, we can change a whole lot more than we thought possible.”

From talking to people during the summit yesterday I could tell they have the courage to keep up the work they are doing to end homelessness. It was not grim, it was hopeful.