The Joy-Full

Consider how many chronically cheerful people you know.

I mean really, how many? Three? Eight? Sixty-two? I want a number.

I'm not talking about the temporarily cheerful. A chronically cheerful person is one who has been cheerful continuously for a period of one year, or who has had at least four episodes of cheerfulness in the past 3 years. A person has an episode of cheerfulness if the following holds for at least 30 consecutive days: 1) they are able to get up each morning, AND 2) they smile outwardly at least once each day (inward smiles do not count) without simultaneously expressing contempt or Schadenfreude. (Chronic amused contempt and chronic Schadenfreude are separate categories.)

Of course, you can't always be there to see the smile. So we need to adopt a "methodology" to assess the definition's satisfaction, absent direct evidence.

[Right: Schadenfreude is excluded.]

You could ask each person you know, "Are you chronically cheerful?" If they say yes, add one to your count. If they say no, add zero, and continue to the next candidate. Of course this should ideally be done with all your friends on the same day.

The problem with that approach is, you don't know if the persons you ask understand the question. A better methodology would be to read the definition of chronic cheerfulness first, and then ask.

In a still more accurate methodology, candidates would report smiling behavior daily and you would keep a record and make your determinations accordingly, rather than relying on the subjects' memories and limited self-awareness. You could computerize the process and call it a CIMS (Cheerful Information Management System.)

Can you see how the different methodologies could give different totals? The Bush Administration could and has seen that. That's how they lied to you last week.

Here's the scam that just went down.

February of just last year, 2007, HUD instituted an Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR) to the Congress. The AHAR presents, among other things, an assessment of the number of chronically homeless people in the country at a given time, namely one day in January of two years previous (for the first report, Jan. 2005). Since HUD doesn't have the manpower to do its own counting, the actual counting is done by many service agencies that have signed on to this enterprise.

The methodology used to determine who was chronically homeless, in 2005-2006, for the 2007 AHAR, was generally speaking, nonexistent. Some communities didn't do a count in January 2005 because national one-day counts weren't established yet, so they reported previous numbers and estimates. The 2005 numbers were in turn not based on a consistent national methodology. Every agency did it their own way.

No problem, thinks HUD. That was just the first AHAR. Each year they should get better.

The second AHAR came out just one month late, in March 2008, based on the count in January 2006. The numbers of chronically homeless were down. Hooray!

That report did say that the lower numbers could be entirely due to changing methodologies of counting. Specifically the HMIS, the Homeless Management Information Systems promoted by HUD, were just beginning to be used in some areas. Other areas continued to use the method of reading the definition to people of chronic homelessness and asking people if they were such. The report admitted that just those changes in methodology could account for the entire drop in numbers.

Evidently, when the Bush Administration saw the numbers dropping because of changes in methods, they saw a chance to lie big.

I know that because the third "Annual" Homeless Assessment Report came out last month! Seven months ahead of schedule!

Look at the even bigger drop, they said! It's because we're ending homelessness, not because the methods of counting are changing, trust us on that, they said!

They couldn't wait to take advantage of the confusion. If they'd waited until the report was due out, Bush wouldn't even be president any more.

That will have to be our consolation.

The Good, The Bad, The Chronic

Here at Real Change, we’ve told everyone for years that homeless people don’t all fit the stereotypes. Now it’s the government line. The stereotype is officially referred to as The chronically homeless, and the whole point of the government line is that The chronically homeless isn’t typical. So we have made progress.

Speaking of what’s typical, did I mention that I am a mathematician? We mathematicians love that people use “typical” and “average” interchangeably. We would like you all to also use the words “typical” and “median” interchangeably, the words “typical” and “mode” interchangeably, and the words “typical” and “kangaroo or, alternately, [insert optional crude expression]” interchangeably, so we can hear you call everything a kangaroo or, alternately, [optional crude expression.] Just for the fun of it.

Also I like to hear the word The whenever possible, even if it doesn’t belong somewhere, and even if its use is deceitful, misleading, or shovels policy goals under the rug. Because the word just makes everything it touches sound so Special.

In this case we are speaking of The chronically homeless as opposed to speaking of some people being more chronically homeless than others, or so-and-so is 7.5 chronic while his brother is only 3.8 chronic, etc.

It’s like talking about The up. Once you’ve decided that there is a The up, you don’t have to say how up is this or that up. Some up isn’t more up than other up. Everything is either up or not-up. The fact that all up is the same simplifies thinking about it, which is useful for people who don’t like thinking or don’t know how. “Which way to the ceiling?” “Up.” “How high is the moon?” “Up.” “How screwed are we?” “Up.”

In reality, though, there IS such a thing as how chronic is chronic, but it’s buried in policy papers if it’s been decided at all. The distinction between being chronic enough to be called chronically homeless, and not chronic enough, is not however made by looking at the homeless people themselves. It’s made by looking at budgets and figuring out how much money is available to house and serve people.

In other words, the distinction between the chronically homeless and the non-chronically homeless isn’t a discernible fissure running across the landscape. The chronically homeless don’t have “tells,” like nervous ticks or unusual fashion choices that give them away. They’re separated from the crowd by the fact that they have a history of costing more, by an amount to be determined.

It’s that “to be determined” that makes the use of the word The a lie. There should be a different class of chronically homeless for every different budget. But the policy makers want to shovel that part of the discussion under the rug. First you have to agree with everything they say about The chronically homeless. Then when the budget numbers are crunched they’ll tell exactly you who they’ve been making you talk about. Or they make an arbitrary definition of chronically homeless up front and don’t tell you that the definition was selected with an eye on future available funds.

The biggest problem politicians seem to have is figuring out that everything they have government do to fix a problem changes the problem.

If you spend all the money you have housing and serving The chronically homeless, denying funds to short-term fixes already in place, like shelters and public free meals, then the whole system will turn into an engine that creates more chronically homeless people by whatever definition you end up choosing.

Meanwhile, in real estate news, the word is that prices for homes will be heading up for the foreseeable future. This is called good news by our major local daily newspapers, as if there were an absolute or objective good in inflation, so long as it enriches the right people.

And politicians read about it in the Sunday paper, and think all is going well.

Homeless Czar Piddle

Lately I’ve been reading about the mental stress of being homeless and how it affects people in the long run. Naturally I take everything I read about that subject as I do any other, namely deeply personally. It’s the habit of a lifetime. No matter what the subject, it’s really about me. I know it.

I’m not paranoid! It’s just that everything is always about me, because the being-about-me-ness is an inescapable fundamental part of the nature of all things in Nature. For example, french fries are about me. They’re telling me I’m fat. They scream it, actually.

Boneless buffalo wings are about me. They're telling me that the makers of boneless buffalo wings think that I, Dr. Wes Browning, am so stupid that I'm going to believe they de-boned the wing of a buffalo and fried it for me, instead of just pounding some chicken breast to a pulp, frying it, and calling it a boneless buffalo wing. Whereas, in fact I know that A) buffalos don’t fly and don’t have wings and B) if they did the wings would taste like cow, not chicken.

Even when I’m specifically not being talked about, it’s about me. "I’m not talking about you, Wes! I’m talking about Christian self-flagellators among the 14th century Flemish," you’ll say, and I’ll say, "What are you saying, I couldn’t flagellate myself? Are you saying I’m not a bit Flemish? I could too be Flemish. And don’t even think of telling me I don’t have any 14th century in my blood. I’ll get 14th century on you right now and see how you like it."

Studies about the long-term mental stress of being homeless are about me. They tell me what a mistake it was for me to have been homeless all those years. They tell me I should have belonged to a different economic class. They tell me I should have lived 150 years ago, and built me a log cabin. They tell me that when insurance companies start offering insurance for mental health care I won’t be eligible to get any.

So I was reading about a study done on the mental stress of homelessness that talked about some ways long term stresses of homelessness screw you up. That’s not exactly what it said but I’m simplifying it so that I, Dr. Wes Browning, won’t have to write down a lot of technical garbage that doesn’t have anything to do with the point I am planning to make.

That point will emerge after I tell you that, in this study as well as in others that I’ve seen, a distinction is implied between the general class of the chronically homeless and the subclass of the now housed chronically homeless. The study found that the housed chronically homeless had much better prognoses than did the other chronically homeless.

And I ask myself, who are the other chronically homeless, who are not the housed chronically homeless? They’re the homeless chronically homeless, that’s who! And realizing that, now I know everybody in the world wants my brain to spontaneously liquefy and pour out my nose! Is there no stupidity people won’t force on my poor overtaxed neurons? Talk about your long-term mental damage!

I distinctly recall warning the world that something like this was going to happen, right after Philip F. Mangano (Bush administration hotshot on homelessness) started promoting the hell out of the concept of the chronically homeless. I said then that it was an idiotic concept that lacked any precision and fooled people into thinking they were saying something when they were saying precisely piddle.

Well, it’s getting piddlier. Much piddlier.

And while we're at it, sticking the word "the" in front of a nebulous concept does not make it less nebulous. Of course those who use the phrase "the chronically homeless," in particular Philip F. Mangano himself, know that. He just does it to annoy me, ” Dr. Wes Browning.

No One Likes A Pus-Filled Wonk

Writing for Real Change puts me in the hub of the whirlwind of the big swirly thing that is homeless people's services on this planet. OK, not really in the hub, but at one of places where the spokes stick in the rim.

I try to ignore it. If I were to reflect upon every little policy paper, service squabble, action plan, or the little controversies surrounding them, I would turn into one giant pus-filled wonk. No one likes a pus-filled wonk. Still, one cannot help but notice that there is a big push on to separate "chronic" homeless people from "temporary" homeless people, in order to tailor interventions in their chronic-hood-ness.

The theory is that "chronic" equates with "wants to be homeless". So if someone is homeless too long, they must be asking for it. That proves that they are sickos who need help to see the error of their ways.

You see why I try to stay out of stuff like this? Right from the start I am tempted to have a big wonky fit about the abuse of the word "chronic". But if I do, I just get sucked into their level. I become the same kind of loser as the clowns who come up with these warped theories in the first place.

OK, suppose your Safe Oven or Brave New Haven or whatever you call it works like a charm, and you find out who all the chronic homeless people are, the nasty ones that cause all the trouble. You have a list.

And, suppose that these nasty chronic homeless buggers are to homelessness what anorexia is to starvation, in that they do it on purpose to themselves because there is something wrong with them.

Now you want to make them stop, so that they cease behaviors that negatively impact on society (eewww, I can't believe I just wrote that.) Since these are people who like being homeless, you can't help them until they recognize that they have a problem. In other words, you have to intervene.

What is that going to look like? Remember that while this intervention is going on, the 90% of non-chronic homeless are still going to be around and proof against any absurdity.

A man tries to sleep in a park after closing time of 11:30 PM. The police, recognizing a known chronic homeless man, send for a crack team of Chronic Homelessness Busters. The team leader, Jennifer, breaks the ice:

"Hey there, homeless man, what's your name?"

"They call me Bulldog, ma'am. Because once I bite you, I never let go."

"Well, that's a nice name, Bulldog. Now let me tell you why we're here. We're here because you should be in a shelter right now. Since you aren't in a shelter, it looks like you like sleeping in parks."

"I'm tired. When I'm tired, I like sleeping. Park seemed a good place."

"Well, that's wrong of you to think that way. Society doesn't want you to sleep in the park."

"So? Society's not here. The park is closed. So it's just me."

"Right, but the REASON the park is closed is because society doesn't want you sleeping here. Even though society isn't here to see it."

"OK. Where does society want me to sleep?"

"In a shelter."

"Take me to it."

See what I'm getting at? Point for Bulldog.