This is the board from a Housing Survival class conducted some months ago.
On the left side is a list of conditions usually associated with living on the street. First among these talking points is the fact that many of the conflicts that happen on the street are resolved with either physical confrontations or intimidation. This undercurrent of violence makes street life unsafe on a fundamental level.
The next talking point is the unsafe relationships this context of violence leads to. This isn’t to say that all relationships within the experience of homelessness are unsafe, just that many of them are. Asking clients if they have ever been betrayed by others on the street is key to this discussion for two reasons:
a. Admitting that they have been betrayed opens up a discussion that can help them to identify their self-worth.
b. This in turn helps to facilitate a discussion about keeping healthy personal boundaries with others, which is crucial to keeping your housing.
The third talking point is crises, of which our clients are often already in the midst of financial and/or health-related crisis when they enter homelessness. When an undercurrent of violence, theft, and exile are added to these, the trauma profiles of our clients can be devastating to their ability to live the life they desire for themselves.
What many outsiders may not recognize is that the only passage out of these conditions is via safety. Clients cannot cross the gulf into healing and thriving without first finding safe space, so the decision to be safe is the most critical step to keeping housing once it is obtained.
This is why the insistence that human beings should “find work” first is often antithetical to rebuilding their lives. Finding a job while in crisis is possible for some few individuals who merely dip briefly into homelessness, but far more often the activities and resources required to find and maintain employment are the domain of those who are ensconced in the healing and thriving stages of life.
People must build up to those stages. Both the body and the mind take their cues to begin healing after 1) a person has chosen to be safe, and 2) has a front door with a lock to reinforce that decision.
So not only do I always draw a person in an apartment, I also draw a front door and underline it while I am discussing its importance. The decision to be safe means that not just anything or anyone is allowed to cross that threshold. The front door is integral to the decision to live in a safe space that can accommodate the stages of healing and thriving.
Just as unsafe space inexorably leads to crises, safe space leads to healing, and spaces associated with healing are intuitively understood as sacred space. The latter is the context where a human being is most likely to thrive.
