Latest / Our Community, Our Mission / Ep #230 – The Supreme Court's Impact on Homelessness: Navigating Compassion, Law, and Community Solutions

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Ep #230 – The Supreme Court's Impact on Homelessness: Navigating Compassion, Law, and Community Solutions · Our Community, Our Mission

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Father, you're good to us.
• 0:00
  Speaker 1: God, we're just so thankful for the things that you're revealing, for the things you've revealed, god.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: We're thankful for this time.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: God, we pray that you just lead your people and lead the people of the country to do your will, god, that at the end of the day, you would be glorified, no matter what it's.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: In Jesus' name, we pray.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: Amen.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: Hello everybody.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: You're listening to Our Community, our Mission, a podcast of the Topeka Rescue Mission.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: My name is Barry Feeker.
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: This is episode 230.
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: I love that.
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: I know July 12th of 2024.
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: This is a special episode.
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: Today we have Lamanda Burroughs, executive Director, here.
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: Good morning, lamanda.
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: Good morning.
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: Maren Crable, deputy Director, good morning.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: Good morning, we're excited that we have a host today other than me.
• 0:45
  Speaker 3: I know, yeah, we're really excited, so I get to give my opinions today.
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: You don't get poked at, but we have a very serious topic to talk about today in regards to a recent decision of the United States Supreme Court in regards to outdoor camping, and we just thought that we would get a strategist here today, a friend of the community, a friend of ours personally, as well as Topeka Rescue Mission, and also a great leader in our community.
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: So we have the vice president of Community Impact, brett Martin, of Caw Valley of the United Way.
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: Good morning, brett.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: Good morning.
• 1:18
  Speaker 5: Thanks for having me.
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: Thank you for doing this, and so this is a pretty big decision that the Supreme Court made.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: That's been in the works for a very, very long time, and we know you have your thoughts about what has happened here, but a lot of people are asking what does it mean and what should we be thinking now, and what is going to be the impact in regards to people experiencing homelessness across the whole country?
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: So, with that said, brett, thank you again for doing this, and so the floor is yours.
• 1:48
  Speaker 5: Yeah, fantastic.
• 1:49
  Speaker 5: Thanks for the opportunity to share today.
• 1:52
  Speaker 5: It's interesting that we're talking about this today because we're talking about a national decision with implications from Maine to California, but we know in our local context that homelessness and housing is something that people have been talking about for months, years, and we also know that people are talking about it with various levels of information and understanding, and we can probably also say that folks are talking about it with a lot of passion, very much, and there is interspersed with the different levels of understanding and passion.
• 2:44
  Speaker 5: There's also a lot of understanding and passion.
• 2:46
  Speaker 5: There's also, um, a lot of fear and misunderstanding.
• 2:49
  Speaker 5: Uh, and so, uh, I'm excited, to excited to talk with you about this today and, uh, kind of hear, uh, to hear what uh to hear what you all have to say about this and hopefully, hopefully be able to level set in terms of understanding for folks across the community.
• 3:06
  Speaker 5: So, for folks who may not be as familiar with the Grants Pass versus Johnson decision, let's just unpack that for a little bit.
• 3:14
  Speaker 5: Let's talk a little bit about what that case is.
• 3:17
  Speaker 5: You mentioned that it's been in the works for a long time and that this is a reversal of a Ninth Circuit court decision.
• 3:31
  Speaker 5: So let's talk just a little bit about Grants Pass v Johnson what that is for folks who may not sort of fully understand it.
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: Sure.
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: Well, I can kind of touch on it because it's more complicated than I think we would ever realize.
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: But really the case that was brought before the Supreme Court was really trying to ask the Supreme Court to determine if outlawing camping outdoors was cruel and unusual punishment.
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: That was kind of the base of it.
• 3:55
  Speaker 3: You know, if, if, and there was conversation then.
• 3:58
  Speaker 3: Well, is it cruel and unusual if there are opportunities for them to shelter other places, like at a rescue mission or any kind of homeless shelter, or is it only cruel and unusual if there are opportunities for them to shelter other places, like at a rescue mission or any kind of homeless shelter, or is it only cruel and unusual if there are no other opportunities for them to not live outside that are suitable and safe to them?
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: So it was a very deep kind of conversation and I thought that the Supreme Court did a good job of trying to kind of consider all of the complexities that go along with people being unsheltered or homeless in general.
• 4:30
  Speaker 3: So this case really was trying to then make a decision.
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: Should the Supreme Court make a call on this?
• 4:38
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: Is this their role to make?
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: Is this a constitutional?
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: Issue Sure.
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: And that's what they were really trying to make the determination on, and the determination came back to no, this is not their decision, that this really needs to be happening at local government levels, and that states local governments whatever entities can make their own decisions for themselves.
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: That's my simplified understanding.
• 5:03
  Speaker 5: Yeah, and with any legal case, it's also about defining terms, right, right.
• 5:19
  Speaker 5: So what is status?
• 5:20
  Speaker 5: Someone who is unsheltered and someone who is camping for?
• 5:28
  Speaker 5: Recreation right and trying to sort of sort that out as well, and there's some nuance in the case with pieces like that.
• 5:38
  Speaker 5: Um, what's interesting about this case?
• 5:41
  Speaker 5: When you hear the mayor from Grants Pass talk about this, she says that this originated out of the use of public spaces in Grants Pass.
• 5:55
  Speaker 5: No-transcript.
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: On my end of it.
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: It is complicated.
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: One of the complications is we haven't dealt with it well for a very long time and so when you put the pause button on an issue then a lot of times the unintended consequences of that pause button occur.
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: So Grants Pass is a little tiny town in Oregon West Coast type situations, and I think many people understand about how things have escalated in regards to people sleeping in public places and they've put it on pause a lot because of fear of litigation, fear of being sued, those kind of things, and so the numbers of people have grown and grown and grown.
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: I have a child that lives, an adult child that lives on the West Coast in a very small town in the Olympic National Park area, and they've had times where they had to close the whole park down because of human waste in the park, because it area, and they've had times where they had to close the whole park down because of human waste in the park, because it became a biological hazard.
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: So that does dramatically affect other uses for those properties that were intended to be used for recreation and enjoyment and those kind of things and safety issues.
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: So it's a problem for both people and so even in Topeka, kansas, bringing it over here, we've had this issue that has been on pause for a long time.
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: And then I can remember when we had a very large encampment east of the Topeka rescue mission years ago.
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: Actually, on Google Maps it was called Tent City, so it was that well-known At one time maybe 130 people.
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: It wasn't on city property, it was on railroad property, and so the city said we have nothing to do with it, and so they backed away from that and the railroads finally came along Burlington, northern and Union Pacific and they said we need to do something to clean up safety-wise on our property.
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: So they came in and they did a pretty good job of helping people, give adequate amount of time for things to be put in place.
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: There was information being shared with the campers and the community for probably pretty close to a year before they actually came and did the cleanup, and so that was something that's grown and grown and grown, and so that was something that's grown and grown and grown, but eventually they did something and most all of those 130 people were put into better situations.
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: So how does it relate to here?
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: I think that outside of that we did not much from a governmental end of things in Topeka until recently.
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: And so then comes the question how do you go about doing that?
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: And now that Topeka, because of the Supreme Court decision, and all communities have really more leverage and freedom to do what they think is best, and so the question is really what is best here?
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: So I think that what it did is it answered some questions what can we do and what can we not do in regards to concern of litigation.
• 9:33
  Speaker 5: But it did not answer the how.
• 9:34
  Speaker 5: Yeah, that's great.
• 9:35
  Speaker 5: So I'm curious on this idea of the complexity of this issue.
• 9:42
  Speaker 5: The complexity of this issue, uh, do you do?
• 9:50
  Speaker 5: Do you feel like the inaction locally has to do with the complexity of it and the difficulty of people understanding or trying to get to root causes?
• 9:57
  Speaker 5: Or do you think it the inaction has to do with the fact that it's that these are people and and and you're, and you're trying to, you're trying to deal gently with people, or do you feel like nobody wants to be on the hook for it?
• 10:16
  Speaker 5: Or is it kind of a combination of all of those things?
• 10:19
  Speaker 5: Like, what do you all think?
• 10:21
  Speaker 6: I think it's a combination, and I think there's this history part and then there's what we're currently facing, and so I love how Barry has unpacked some things that we need to be talking about.
• 10:34
  Speaker 6: When you first mentioned this, brett, you were talking about just this emphasis in the past several months, right Locally talking about this.
• 10:41
  Speaker 6: But what's important about that is there have been some people or agencies that have been talking about this, but what's important about that is there have been some people or agencies that have been talking about this for years and it hasn't gotten attention like it has now, and so to me it's so valuable to kind of hear Barry give that backstory of some stuff that maybe we missed, and that's part of the reason why we're here.
• 11:00
  Speaker 6: What I want to add to that is kind of the current thing when you were talking about locally.
• 11:05
  Speaker 6: How does that compare to maybe this idea of public places not being able to be used for the purposes of it needing to be?
• 11:13
  Speaker 6: And so then it gained some attention Locally.
• 11:15
  Speaker 6: I think what happened is, when you talk about and look at the inaction that Barry's kind of just mentioned right, and I do think a lot of that was the complexities when do you start.
• 11:27
  Speaker 6: Then you start talking about funding issues.
• 11:29
  Speaker 6: Then you start talking about well, is it really government's role?
• 11:32
  Speaker 6: Is it social sectors?
• 11:33
  Speaker 6: Is it all of these things?
• 11:34
  Speaker 6: So I think that it started off with inaction being because I'm not sure leaders knew what to do and I'm not sure government was ready to step into that.
• 11:46
  Speaker 6: You fast forward and now what I think we've done is I think we have forced action, and we forced the wrong action, and that was done out of these public places.
• 11:58
  Speaker 6: Now, different people that never saw homelessness or never saw concerns about it right, started seeing it.
• 12:06
  Speaker 6: So when you look locally, I think we started having concerns on Shunga.
• 12:11
  Speaker 6: So you had runners, you had bikers, people that were walking.
• 12:15
  Speaker 6: Certain times of the year, whether it be spring or summer, when you have more people out, they're noticing whether it is the trash, whether it was the mattresses, whether it was the dogs, cats, animals, different things like that.
• 12:30
  Speaker 6: And so when the people start going, whoa, this is now in my area, or I'm now seeing something that is different to me, different to me, oh, that dog chased me while I was biking, or whatever the case may be Then people need stuff done.
• 12:52
  Speaker 6: Well, the rescue mission agrees with that too, we do.
• 12:54
  Speaker 6: I don't want a biker or a runner to be concerned about any safety issue, whether it's tied to homelessness or not.
• 12:59
  Speaker 6: So then what ends up happening is when you have pockets of downtown now having one or two people that are daily in mental crisis, fighting the air, screaming, coming into businesses.
• 13:13
  Speaker 6: It's not multitudes like some cities are facing, but it's specific areas that one or two.
• 13:20
  Speaker 6: Then there's the issues.
• 13:21
  Speaker 6: So then when you compile that with inaction, now you've got some people calling for action, whether it's because they care about the individual experiencing homelessness, whether it's out of fear, whether it's out of anger, because they're misinformed about homelessness.
• 13:38
  Speaker 6: All of that matters.
• 13:39
  Speaker 6: It matters to our community.
• 13:40
  Speaker 6: Everybody should be able to have a voice.
• 13:42
  Speaker 6: But then what ends up happening is when concerns turn into complaints and complaints are driven out of fear, whether that's due to not the right education and understanding or maybe the not the right heart.
• 13:56
  Speaker 6: Then we had leaders say, okay, this is now a crisis, this is major, we're going to do this, we're going to put an ordinance, we're going to do all of these things.
• 14:04
  Speaker 6: Well, those things can be good, but not when we're doing them reactively and not when we're doing them out of fear or trying to make some people happy, those kinds of things.
• 14:16
  Speaker 6: And so locally we've got homelessness on every corner.
• 14:21
  Speaker 6: It doesn't matter if we're talking Wanamaker, if we're talking 37th and Adams if we're talking Southwest, southeast.
• 14:28
  Speaker 6: But the problem has come in that decisions started being made quickly and somewhat irrationally at times, instead of with the understanding that Barry has this history of it and then really being methodical of what do we want to put in place first, and then second and then third.
• 14:46
  Speaker 6: And there's a balance in that where we are doing it compassionately but logically, and I'm not sure our community has done that in the last 12 months.
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, there's some analogies between the stages of grief and how a community experiences the issue of homelessness.
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: Without unpacking all the stages of grief how a community experiences the issue of homelessness Without unpacking all the stages of grief.
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: First of all, when a loss occurs or tragedy occurs, there's shock.
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: So in this case, people are seeing trash, they're seeing homeless camps, they're seeing more people around, and so they're a little bit in shock.
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: And then they go into this kind of mixed bag of sadness and they go into, possibly, an emphasis on compassion.
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: We need to do something about this.
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: And when something's not done, then it gets more into the anger and so they deal with it and I think we're kind of in a stage of between compassion and anger as a community in regards to this.
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: Somebody needs to do something.
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: These people need to clean up their own camps, or the city needs to house them, or we need to lock them all up and put them in jail.
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: I mean it's going back and forth.
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: And so when we're in that turmoil policymakers, elected official governing body leaders they are the blunt, a lot of times, of that particular mixed emotion that's going on when you look at some of our bigger metropolitan areas, that they've gone through the stages of grief and now we just kind of put it down.
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: We've become numb, we don't do anything about it.
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: But now, because of the escalation of it, the West Coast is taking a whole other look at it.
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: Places like San Francisco that went into that like major overload on compassion.
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: You know, if there's a, if there's a meth addict and he's needing meth, give him meth, give him needles, those kind of things.
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: We found out that didn't work very well and so it went back into an anger phase and now we either put it down and we say we're going to turn and look the other way, which I think historically we've kind of done but now we're back to that grief and the question is are we going to do something proactively to overcome the experience of grief and loss as a community, so that we just don't stay in the anger mode, we don't stay in the sadness mode, we don't stay in the inaction mode but the pro-action mode?
• 17:04
  Speaker 3: And you know, brett, I think, utilizing Kansas Leadership Center language, we are coming at this all over the nation from a very technical perspective.
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: We're going to fix this problem and not understand.
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: This is really an adaptive situation, because the folks that are experiencing homelessness it's not like there's just one kind of person that is experiencing homelessness, it's complicated.
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: There's families, there's people who are aging and now have found themselves for the first time in homelessness.
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: There's people that have issues with fleeing, domestic violence, all of these things, mental illness.
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: Then there's addictions that come into play, whether it's before they become homeless or because they're now homeless.
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: There's all of these things and this has to be approached from a very adaptive perspective versus these technical fixes which seem to be a one size fits all, which is not realistic or understandable.
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: Right, because all of these folks are different, they're all individuals, they're all our neighbors.
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: Right, and we're doing things that are putting them into situations that cause chaos in their lives and it's having an effect on how folks experiencing homelessness interact with each other and the level of aggression that's increasing.
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: I mean all of these things.
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: We have disrupted people's lives without having an opportunity or giving them the opportunity for different kinds of outcomes.
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: We've just said this is going to happen to you and, frankly, none of us like being told this is what's going to happen to you and you figure it out from there.
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: And that's what, in my mind, has happened here in Topeka this is what's going to happen, you figure out where you're going.
• 18:50
  Speaker 6: We're not going to really help with that and the other side of that, too is there's also been homeowners, business owners, people accessing the parks, all of that that, I think also have felt muted.
• 19:02
  Speaker 6: Right, because everything that we just said about someone experiencing homelessness, especially here at the Rescue Mission, we want to hear the other side of that when businesses are disrupted and recreational areas are.
• 19:16
  Speaker 6: And I think one of the things that we've missed the buck on and I think we're in a much better place and I'm excited about that is we have not had the right communicative platforms for anyone.
• 19:27
  Speaker 6: It has been extremes, and so there has been this misconception of like we'll just use the rescue mission.
• 19:34
  Speaker 6: We've been muted at times because people automatically assume well, they don't have any rules, they don't have any restrictions, they want to do everything out of love.
• 19:43
  Speaker 6: They're trying to make me not feel like a Christian because of this compassionate thing and that's not the case.
• 19:49
  Speaker 6: And then sometimes there's misconceptions of someone who wants to bring up a concern about their business or whatever, and then the perception is they don't care, they're being mean, they're extreme with it, and what has happened is, unfortunately, some people that had some leadership and some power created platforms for people to be heard, but it wasn't accurate and it was driven in real negativity or ugliness, or making business owners out to be something that they're not, or us as social services out to be what we're not.
• 20:21
  Speaker 6: And I'm excited because I think that there's just some different roles and positions right now happening where you can have someone from the rescue mission sit down and talk from this very humanistic role.
• 20:33
  Speaker 6: You can also have that person sitting right next to a business owner who just had somebody defecate on their doorsteps.
• 20:40
  Speaker 6: And we've got people now that now know the rescue mission wants to hear those stories because we don't think that's okay.
• 20:47
  Speaker 6: But now we've got business owners hearing oh, the rescue mission doesn't cancel us out, they do want to hear about what we're facing as a business owner or Shawnee Parks and Rec and how they have to go out and enforce.
• 21:00
  Speaker 6: So there's starting to be a different narrative and a different level of trust.
• 21:06
  Speaker 6: That is oh, if we all do listen to each other, none of us really are extremes and we really want a thriving community for all.
• 21:16
  Speaker 6: And what does that look like?
• 21:17
  Speaker 6: The way that that gets damaged is when it becomes fear-based, when there is inaccuracies, whether it's intentional and malicious or if it's accidental due to lack of education.
• 21:29
  Speaker 6: But there are just some incredible people in our community now that have said, nope, we're going to persevere on, we're going to give the rescue mission a chance to trust them, or the rescue mission saying nope, we're going to go downtown because we want to hear what it's feeling like there.
• 21:42
  Speaker 6: Or we're going to go into that NIA meeting, regardless of how upset people are, so that we can gain an understanding and then we can bring that back and change policies or procedures or realize, oh, we're misinformed, change policies or procedures or realize, oh, we're misinformed.
• 21:58
  Speaker 6: So I think we've done a poor job on having the right professional platform for all people to be able to express and advocate for needs of our community.
• 22:05
  Speaker 6: But now I'm hopeful that that's a shift where people are going to still be able to be honest and have crucial conversations, but without the personal attacks, without the negativity, and with solutions and approaches in mind.
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think part of that's kind of natural for this community, though For a very, very long time people didn't see the unsheltered like we do today, and part of that was because they were to some degree hidden at a place called Topeka Rescue Mission.
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: It was the place that could handle the lion's share of this.
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: Now that has changed over the years, especially post-pandemic, and so we didn't really have to have those kind of conversations that Amanda's talking about.
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: And so when you it would be like if Shawnee County Jail ran out of space and they started putting prisoners out on the streets, people would be very upset at the Shawnee County Jail.
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: You need to stop that streets.
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: People would be very upset at the Shawnee County Jail.
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: You need to stop that.
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: You need to put them in there.
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: We don't care, just get them away.
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: But that wouldn't necessarily be possible if they didn't have space.
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: And so that's what's happened with the Topeka Rescue Mission and was conveyed to community and governing body leaders a number of years ago that this is a trend that we're seeing, but we didn't have an experience on how to deal with this at the community level.
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: And so now, because of how we've misstepped in some areas and communications and coming together and this anger and misunderstanding and misinformation.
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: It's starting to be recognized that doesn't work and so now we're beginning to have those kind of face-to-face communications in a unique and different way.
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: We've got a long way to go, but I think that it's very hopeful that we can look at this as a community issue, not just that agency's issue or whatever, yeah, so much to talk about here.
• 23:48
  Speaker 5: Part of what seems to me to be a cultural issue, a larger cultural issue across the United States, is the idea that we simply don't want to invest our time in prevention right.
• 24:03
  Speaker 5: So that there are people who have been talking about this for a very long time, and an analogy to this is child care.
• 24:11
  Speaker 5: Folks have been talking about the child care crisis for a very long time and yet now all of a sudden it's become an issue because it's a workforce development and it's an economic development issue and, particularly in Kansas, if it's not eco-devo, it often doesn't get the attention that it deserves.
• 24:29
  Speaker 5: But a couple of themes came up in what you mentioned that I kind of want to drill down with just a little bit more.
• 24:37
  Speaker 5: It's this idea of fear.
• 24:40
  Speaker 5: So Topeka Rescue Mission is shaped by a tradition that really talks about the dangers of acting out of fear, right, I mean, there are specific teachings within the tradition that talk about do not be afraid, and it's not about, as you think about situations like this.
• 25:03
  Speaker 5: It's not damage that you can do to yourself or Amanda, when you're talking about people who are using a trail and all of a sudden they may not see a person but they see a site, right?
• 25:48
  Speaker 5: Because I know during that conversation, topeka Rescue Mission went out and did a census along the trail and found significantly low numbers of people but found camps and most of them were abandoned, sort of brought it to this level of community consciousness that now people wanted to talk about.
• 26:18
  Speaker 5: But that was driven by fear and not by this idea of, hey, we've been talking about this for years, let's do something to prevent, or let's do something to be proactive to use.
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: That fear will create a story in a vacuum and that story may have some accuracy when it most likely doesn't.
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: And so we began to run out of a new story that was birthed in fear and unfortunately, some people capitalize on that for their own whatever purposes, to say look our direction and we will alleviate your fears when the story is not even accurate to start with.
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: So that research that was done.
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: I think it was about a 13 mile stretch of the trails over a period of two or three weeks of going camp to camp to camp.
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: I did five miles of those and then I got tired and that was in one day and I said I'm done.
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: But the team did a great job and they found X number of camps that were totally abandoned, some that had been recently abandoned, but I think that in total of the 13 miles there were under 20 people that actually were really camping along those 13-mile stretch.
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: But if you were riding a bike or taking a walk and you saw all of these different areas, the story came out.
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: There's probably about 200 homeless people there.
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: Because we didn't understand it, a fear started and it went from there to a new story.
• 27:38
  Speaker 5: Well, and what was interesting is that when the conversation started and people were talking about the people who've been talking for years about homelessness, there was data behind that.
• 27:52
  Speaker 5: But it took a story with bad data driven by fear to sort of spark the larger community conversation.
• 28:01
  Speaker 5: It's just interesting.
• 28:02
  Speaker 5: That sort of that's how this came about, because I watched that both on social media, I watched that in city council meetings, I watched that in our larger community collaborations come about and it was really unfortunate because it wasn't really good data-driven decision-making or intent.
• 28:25
  Speaker 5: It was more again, it was fear, it was assumption, it was bad data and of course, we all know when we act on bad data we don't often get the best outcome.
• 28:37
  Speaker 3: No, we almost always get a bad outcome right or a less than positive outcome.
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we spend time and resources going a direction that we shouldn't go, and that's really what sometimes.
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: That fear will then spur us to either go the wrong direction or the right direction.
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: And so we have a choice in this community.
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: And now the Supreme Court's decision is added on to that, because it does lift the concerns of the municipalities from being sued in regards to the cruel and unusual punishment piece of this.
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: Maybe some other litigation can come up, but right now they have a sense of freedom and now they need to know good data.
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: They need to know really what's going on to be able to make the best next decision, but not in a vacuum, because just cleaning camps does not solve anything.
• 29:28
  Speaker 5: Yeah, so let's talk about that a little bit.
• 29:30
  Speaker 5: For the grants pass decision for the city of Topeka and for Shawnee County.
• 29:36
  Speaker 5: Prior to the decision, both the county and the city made decisions that affected the unsheltered.
• 29:49
  Speaker 5: Let's talk just a little bit about that, those decisions that were made and then what the implications are of the decision.
• 29:58
  Speaker 6: Yeah, so I'll dive into that.
• 30:00
  Speaker 6: I do want to say one thing about, you know, when we're looking at kind of this misunderstanding right, and when it's driven by fear one of the things that I am thankful for just the housing department with the city, some of the other departments there are people within government that are wanting to look past the fear right, and sometimes that is overlooked, because those people do things every day, right, and they're in the trenches, and so, whether it's government people doing things in the trenches social services, nonprofits, business owners but one of the things that we wanted to do last fall, when we started hearing there are I mean, really, what was being told, whether it was constituents going to government, government coming to us there's hundreds along the Shunga.
• 30:55
  Speaker 6: You know, shunga is anywhere between five and 10 miles, depending on how far down you go.
• 30:59
  Speaker 6: So my team took it a step further.
• 31:01
  Speaker 6: We partnered with city of Topeka, tpd us and Vallejo, and we actually did almost 25 miles, and so that included Shunga, landon Trail, and we also did Oakland, because we were hearing a lot of concerns about that.
• 31:16
  Speaker 6: So, within 25 miles, there were less than 30 people.
• 31:21
  Speaker 6: The thing, though, that I want to mention that for is then the fear.
• 31:26
  Speaker 6: One misrepresented numbers.
• 31:31
  Speaker 6: Because when we have fear and we're seeing, okay, we see this, this and this, and there's got to be hundreds of people out here, our numbers were wrong.
• 31:38
  Speaker 6: So in 25 miles you have less than 30 people.
• 31:41
  Speaker 6: Then you take it a step further and I don't have the data because the city keeps up with that but then when you look at those 30 people, the majority of those 30 individual spread were on the EAS wait list.
• 31:54
  Speaker 6: So when you are just a and I hate to hone in on the Shunga, but that's kind of what we're talking about I could do that on NAA meetings and other parts of town, but for the sake of this, to be specific locally, so then we've got fear going.
• 32:08
  Speaker 6: Okay, we've got hundreds of people on this five to 10 miles of Shunga.
• 32:11
  Speaker 6: Well, no, that's not accurate, because we added then Landon Trail, we added in Oakland, and we have less than 30 people.
• 32:18
  Speaker 6: Then when you look at that, and it's less than 30 people and the majority of them were on the EAS waitlist the normal walker or the biker or the runner, they don't know that.
• 32:29
  Speaker 6: So then when they are, whether even encountering a person or not, like you mentioned earlier, even if they're just seeing the things like you were talking about in their mind.
• 32:39
  Speaker 6: Numbers are now misrepresented, stories are now misrepresented and there's no true narrative being shared.
• 32:47
  Speaker 6: With that and the controversy comes in on.
• 32:50
  Speaker 6: The rescue mission really takes a role, along with some other agencies, to try to bring some truthfulness with that.
• 32:57
  Speaker 6: And it's not to discount feelings of others who are fearful.
• 33:02
  Speaker 6: It's just to say no, let's really be looking at this.
• 33:05
  Speaker 6: And so now the individual that you're seeing the encampment of, or the stuff the trash, that person has done everything that we've asked them to do.
• 33:14
  Speaker 6: That person, has done everything that we've asked them to do.
• 33:15
  Speaker 6: So we've got teams working with them on getting their IDs, their birth certificates, helping pay off eviction fines.
• 33:20
  Speaker 6: Whatever the case may be right, Because every story is different, but now they're on a wait list.
• 33:25
  Speaker 6: Well, at that time, when we surveyed and went out and we saw less than 30 people in a 25 mile radius that wait list was 1300.
• 33:40
  Speaker 6: But that's not the part of the story that's being shared, sure, and so then it's Nope, we've got to do some demands.
• 33:44
  Speaker 6: And some of the demands that birthed out of that, along with other areas that were hot pockets, were well, we're going to do an ordinance.
• 33:51
  Speaker 6: And the county was first to step up and say you know what we're going to do, some stricter enforcing of so many feet off of sidewalks, off of trails.
• 34:03
  Speaker 6: We're going to start enforcing that and cleaning it up.
• 34:05
  Speaker 6: The difficulty we had, along with some other social services, is we were trying to professionally and respectfully at that time, talk to county but also talking to city, because we knew that was coming to, and saying but wait a minute, one, there's not multitudes of people like you're saying that there are.
• 34:26
  Speaker 6: And the other side of this is where are you going to move them to?
• 34:30
  Speaker 6: Because they're waiting on housing.
• 34:33
  Speaker 6: And we really tried to start doing.
• 34:34
  Speaker 6: Barry and I were doing community meetings with our incredible team here.
• 34:37
  Speaker 6: Other partners were coming, asking great questions but trying to have a full narrative so that, whether it was the ordinance or whatever the case may be, that we were making informed decisions and we had data to show that.
• 34:51
  Speaker 6: But unfortunately, that wasn't really what was being heard, and so then the county did, and then the city was basically the main one.
• 35:00
  Speaker 6: So then what I was trying to piece together, right with all of these moving parts, as we were meeting on leaderships, we were having community meetings, is okay.
• 35:26
  Speaker 6: None of us have ever said we don't need order.
• 35:30
  Speaker 6: None of us have ever said no, we don't need an ordinance.
• 35:32
  Speaker 6: But what we were trying to do is bring this full narrative of look at the people, though the people, the numbers, are not what we're saying.
• 35:40
  Speaker 6: They are, first of all and second of all, when you look at the stories, it is not the majority quote unquote.
• 35:46
  Speaker 6: Choosing the majority is quote unquote not bums.
• 35:49
  Speaker 6: Did people have mental illness?
• 35:52
  Speaker 6: Yes, did people have addiction?
• 35:53
  Speaker 6: Yes.
• 35:54
  Speaker 6: Are there people with income that have worked their entire lives on the streets or on those trails waiting?
• 36:01
  Speaker 6: Yes, because it's a housing issue.
• 36:05
  Speaker 6: Simultaneously, the thing that I'm not sure that we've talked about, because we go straight to poverty and low income, and then I'll finish with this is when you pile whether it's things happening like ordinances or community complaints fear.
• 36:20
  Speaker 6: What we weren't talking about is inflation.
• 36:23
  Speaker 6: We weren't talking about our concerns as a community for lack of eco development, and the other part is our higher and middle class were being hit too, but no one was talking about that.
• 36:38
  Speaker 6: So when you have people who their grocery bills have doubled, property values have increased, so taxes have increased, insurance rates, all of that you now had some of those people selling.
• 36:51
  Speaker 6: They were saying, hey, it's time to downsize, or oh, I don't need this, or whatever.
• 36:55
  Speaker 6: Selling they were saying, hey, it's time to downsize, or oh, I don't need this, or whatever.
• 36:57
  Speaker 6: So then some of these 100 to $200,000 homes that could be seen at one time middle class, now they're being taken up, some by upper class, which then limited, and so my hope and my heart is that that is that people understand when the rescue mission starts talking about this full picture, right, and this housing crisis and all of this.
• 37:20
  Speaker 6: It's not just driven out of cliche things of we're doing it for the Lord or we're doing it.
• 37:25
  Speaker 6: Is that why we do it?
• 37:27
  Speaker 6: Hands down, yes, but we're talking about these things because homelessness is not just a black and white poverty, addiction, mental illness, whatever.
• 37:36
  Speaker 6: There's a lot of things that are happening in our community and have been that we're not talking about.
• 37:42
  Speaker 6: Inflation is one of them.
• 37:43
  Speaker 6: The housing crisis is one of them, and then you pair that with we already know we don't have enough low affordable housing and now some of that that's at the top of low affordable or low of middle class, it's being used by other types of socioeconomic.
• 37:58
  Speaker 6: We've got an issue, and that issue is far beyond mental illness or addiction, which is our crutch that we go to when we're talking about it.
• 38:07
  Speaker 5: Absolutely.
• 38:09
  Speaker 3: And that was noted in that opinion from the Supreme Court too that housing availability is a major issue that has to be dealt with within this issue.
• 38:18
  Speaker 5: Absolutely Just for the listeners.
• 38:20
  Speaker 5: Eas Equity Access Shelter is the sort of one-stop shop for, or a single point of entry for, folks.
• 38:29
  Speaker 5: It's run by the city for folks to get housing assistance.
• 38:34
  Speaker 5: And so when LaManda is talking about folks doing everything they could at the time, they were on a wait list that, as you mentioned, 1,300 households at the time were on that list waiting to get that type of assistance.
• 38:50
  Speaker 5: And that's for another day to talk about EAS and sort of how that came about.
• 38:59
  Speaker 5: But yeah, absolutely, when we're talking about this, I hope the listeners picked up on all of the nuance and all of the complexity, because it's not about one group of people.
• 39:14
  Speaker 5: Because it's not about one group of people, it's about a county of more than 170,000 people of all walks of life and really how delicate a balance it is for a community to be positioned to thrive right, to be positioned to thrive right and how keeping that balance of making sure that this group has what they need and this group has what they need and these folks have access to this and these folks have access to that.
• 39:47
  Speaker 5: It really affects't matter where you are in the community.
• 39:56
  Speaker 5: You're affected in some type of way when one group in particular now when we're talking about the unsheltered and those numbers continuing to grow.
• 40:08
  Speaker 5: When you have one group that has such significant barriers to access, it may be 5, 6, 7, 800 people, but that has a significant effect on the 177,000 plus in the larger county.
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: You know we are blessed and we're handicapped by instant information and instant results.
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: Most of us carry around a little device in our pocket or in our hand and we can get almost anything instantly informationally, which means that we're predispositioned to quick fix.
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: This is not a quick fix, and so when we can't find a quick fix, we want to blame somebody that they should fix this for us, because we're used to getting quick fixes no-transcript, and so there is an opportunity that we have in this community to look at this for what it really is and know that we're not going to go to our device and we're going to get it fixed.
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: We're going to get some good information quickly, but we're going to have to make some very conscious decisions how to look at the complexities of the issue, have the correct story and be able to take the next logical steps to take care of what it is.
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: And it won't be easy in any stretch.
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: I mean when we talk about, well, if we had, for those 30 people that discovered along all those trails, we had 30 homes for them to go Fixed Okay, Not quite, Because there's some brokenness here and there's mental illness and drug addiction and those kinds of things that have to be part of that whole equation.
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: But at least we have an opportunity now and I think there's a synergy now of coming together.
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: Well, the blame doesn't work, the quick fix doesn't work.
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: It still needs to be handled.
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: So how are we going to do it?
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: So I think we're at that good kind of uncomfortable but great opportunity to move forward.
• 41:58
  Speaker 5: Yeah, so let's talk just a little bit about that, because one of the things that we focused on here is that when we're in these crisis situations where things have reached a critical mass, that people want to talk and they want to be heard, but we don't oftentimes ask questions.
• 42:19
  Speaker 5: Uh, our tendency is to talk, talk, talk, our, our natural response is not to listen and ask questions.
• 42:28
  Speaker 5: That said, in the midst of all of this, we had a unique opportunity in Topeka and in Shawnee County with the housing innovation team, where there was an opportunity for a core group of folks, with the help of a consultant, to ask a lot of questions.
• 42:58
  Speaker 5: Talk to us a little bit about that process and, in this larger context, to sort of give folks a sense, because right now, if I'm listening to this, I'm thinking this is just awful, this is just.
• 43:18
  Speaker 5: It feels very heavy.
• 43:19
  Speaker 5: It's awful, people are angry, there's frustration, there's fear, but in the midst of that, there was something really beautiful happening across the community.
• 43:31
  Speaker 5: Talk to us a little bit about that.
• 43:33
  Speaker 6: Yeah, I can talk just briefly about it and then I'm sure they'll want to chime in too.
• 43:38
  Speaker 6: What I think was beautiful, brett, is that it was ugly first, and sometimes I think we myself included right, let's be vulnerable Not all of us wake up and go.
• 43:52
  Speaker 6: I can't wait to have some of the hardest conversations.
• 43:55
  Speaker 6: I can't wait for my opinion to be challenged.
• 43:58
  Speaker 6: I can't wait to make five people mad at me before it gets good again.
• 44:02
  Speaker 6: Right, that's common.
• 44:05
  Speaker 6: I mean, we don't want to do that.
• 44:06
  Speaker 6: We have those nervousness.
• 44:07
  Speaker 6: But what I could say specifically about the core team is when I say that there was ugliness, there wasn't like disrespect, there wasn't meanness or anything like that for the majority of the core team, but there was this Well, this is what I think, this is what I see, this is what I do Perspectives coming from the mental health arena, government, business owners, community members, landlords, landlords, those kinds of things, right, a lot of different perspectives that are even very different than what the rescue mission sees it as.
• 44:45
  Speaker 6: But what was incredible is exactly what you just mentioned.
• 44:49
  Speaker 6: We all came in with opinions.
• 44:52
  Speaker 6: We all came in with opinions.
• 44:53
  Speaker 6: We all came in with passions.
• 44:54
  Speaker 6: We all came in with thoughts.
• 44:57
  Speaker 6: But we also all came in with ears.
• 45:00
  Speaker 6: We wanted to hear, and so, even if I had to cringe internally when I heard someone on there talk about, well, I'm struggling because the majority of people are choosing this and so I'm mad that this area of town is not going to thrive because people are choosing to live in their filth, the inside of me was like, oh right, sure.
• 45:21
  Speaker 6: The other side of me is I am so glad he said that I now know what it feels like as much as possible to be him.
• 45:30
  Speaker 6: And then there was this respect that I knew I could say, okay, but can I give you some street reach data?
• 45:36
  Speaker 6: Because in which you just said that at that time we had surveyed 75 people on the streets and one of the questions we asked was if we had this type of housing option, this type of housing option, this type of housing.
• 45:49
  Speaker 6: We gave them three options.
• 45:50
  Speaker 6: Would you take it All?
• 45:52
  Speaker 6: 75 except for 11 said yes.
• 45:54
  Speaker 6: So when I was able to then thank the person on that court team, thank you for sharing that your opinion is that we're in a mess community-wise, because the majority of these people are just wanting a handout and not working, not help, all those kinds of things, I was able to say, no, that's not accurate.
• 46:11
  Speaker 6: Look at all of these people.
• 46:12
  Speaker 6: So to me, there were times where I and I'm not saying anything secret, people know there were times where I was like, peace out, I'm quitting this team.
• 46:22
  Speaker 6: There were times where I would wake up and go.
• 46:24
  Speaker 6: This team is so empowering.
• 46:26
  Speaker 6: There was time where I was like I love everyone on this team.
• 46:29
  Speaker 6: Then there was times where I was like I don't want to talk to another person on this team and everybody felt that way.
• 46:37
  Speaker 6: But to me there's that's where the beauty came, because we all came from different opinions and guess what else?
• 46:40
  Speaker 6: There were times where we agreed to disagree and we realized that those small disagreements were not going to change the course of our approach, that we didn't have to leave every meeting with everyone's mind changed.
• 46:55
  Speaker 6: You don't have to manipulate things.
• 46:58
  Speaker 6: You don't have to.
• 46:58
  Speaker 6: We can still disagree on something and still work together for the greater cause.
• 47:03
  Speaker 6: And so to me, what came out of that was different understandings for myself included, not just at TRM, but as a person, when I heard the concerns in such a different way.
• 47:14
  Speaker 6: But I also respected all the individuals on that core team and auxiliary team that would also hear our team side of it.
• 47:22
  Speaker 6: And then we were able to accomplish a lot of data driven understanding of our community strengths and opportunities in such a respectful way, and I think there's a lot of excitement to continue that past the mess.
• 47:38
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 47:40
  Speaker 3: You know, brett, one of the things as I listen to LaManda talk about that, to me success of that group there's the obvious stuff that they set forth, some goals that I do hope can be achieved right Low barrier, shelter, all those kinds of things.
• 47:55
  Speaker 3: I think success for that team would be if the whole community can grasp what LaManda just said and carry that kind of approach on that.
• 48:08
  Speaker 3: We're all understanding that we don't have to agree a hundred percent to be able to still achieve a goal because we have a common goal.
• 48:15
  Speaker 3: So to me that will be the success of that group is if it can change community culture in how we communicate with each other.
• 48:26
  Speaker 3: Ping ponging off of what you said to listen and recognize I'm going to hear you.
• 48:32
  Speaker 3: To listen and recognize, I'm going to hear you.
• 48:37
  Speaker 3: I may not agree with you, but I'm going to work to find the common ground that can lead us forward together for the good of the community.
• 48:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, even if we don't agree completely, yeah, you know, we can still like each other.
• 48:46
  Speaker 3: Look at me and Barry, we can still like each other and not agree.
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: There's hopefully.
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: Well, at least it goes one way.
• 48:51
  Speaker 3: I can still like each other and not agree to there's.
• 48:53
  Speaker 3: Hopefully that goes one way.
• 48:53
  Speaker 3: I can still like him anyway.
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: She's really a great friend, but she's kind of another brat.
• 48:59
  Speaker 5: Well, there's certainly.
• 49:00
  Speaker 5: There's certainly power in the journey and in the process, right, and and certainly that group had a destination and had goals to get to.
• 49:09
  Speaker 5: But I think the transformation of individuals in that process I think is key.
• 49:15
  Speaker 5: And so I think you've hit on something in terms of that group being a microcosm of the larger community.
• 49:23
  Speaker 5: When you were talking, I was thinking of the word consensus and this idea that in my work I use of consensus, which is the working definition I have, is not everybody gets what they want, but the group came to the best decision right.
• 49:37
  Speaker 5: And so in this context, if you can get to a point where in our community we can say I didn't get everything I wanted, I was heard I didn't get everything I wanted, but we as a community came to the best decision to move forward on.
• 49:54
  Speaker 5: So you talked about the recommendations, so a low barrier, shelter, a one-stop shop and then a housing option, something like tiny home, village or something like that, for the community to be able to embrace that in a consensus type of way, to be able to say, okay, let's sort of move forward, I think will be a way for us to measure whether or not we've been successful.
• 50:29
  Speaker 3: And I think it's important too.
• 50:30
  Speaker 3: I heard somebody who I respect a great deal say one of the important things about looking at the SCOTUS decision here is that there wasn't winners and losers.
• 50:40
  Speaker 3: Nobody won and nobody lost in this, and I think that it would be really great to hear some more about that.
• 50:48
  Speaker 3: In terms of this, what is winning?
• 50:50
  Speaker 3: You know, winning wasn't about the cities now, now get to do stuff right, that they don't have to be worried about X, y or Z.
• 50:57
  Speaker 3: That's not the win here, because we still have hundreds of thousands of people, if I'm not mistaken, homeless across the United States.
• 51:06
  Speaker 3: That is so nobody won.
• 51:10
  Speaker 3: Nobody did something that said, okay, now we have 50 percent less, right.
• 51:15
  Speaker 3: So I think it's going to be important that we not have that kind of conversation that anybody won or lost with that decision.
• 51:23
  Speaker 3: But now we have the opportunity as communities to really move forward to serve the people that are our neighbors for the betterment of our community and their lives.
• 51:34
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 51:35
  Speaker 3: So I think that's important that there was not a winner in this.
• 51:41
  Speaker 5: Yeah, that it's not zero sum in that type of way and that, while there's direction that came from the federal level to local communities, that the decision doesn't have to be divisive, right, right, that, that, that that it can provide direction and then an opportunity to move forward.
• 52:02
  Speaker 5: So, that said, when we talk about the where we are as a community right now and the recommendations of the homeless innovation team, there are things there that have been talked about before in the community.
• 52:17
  Speaker 5: I sat in a city council meeting and heard a presentation from somebody at this table About three years ago this month, yeah.
• 52:25
  Speaker 5: It's an anniversary of one of those presentations.
• 52:27
  Speaker 5: They're in the midst of all of this stuff that was happening.
• 52:34
  Speaker 5: There's also a coalition that has been sort of building and kind of um, ready to move forward.
• 52:45
  Speaker 5: Um, and I'll just have to say I think that's also another beautiful thing that happened during this process that, as hard as it is, I think sometimes for us in our community to collaborate and to work together, there was a real sense of collaboration and not competition in the last few months to be able to say, okay, so this group is doing this, let's see where they go, we are going to do our preparatory work and we are going to be poised and ready.
• 53:23
  Speaker 5: But we also don't want to compete.
• 53:26
  Speaker 5: And I saw that across the board from my 10,000-foot view in Shawnee County and it made me really proud, because when you can get to the level of collaboration and not competition that puts the community at the center, which I just think is huge.
• 53:55
  Speaker 5: So, barry, you want to talk just a little bit about kind of that kind of work.
• 54:01
  Speaker 2: You know, I think Topeka just needs to step back and look at itself, for all the really good that it's about Topeka, shawnee County.
• 54:08
  Speaker 2: In regards to collaboration, there are people who have, in various ways, kind of set the bar.
• 54:16
  Speaker 2: We don't even know it.
• 54:17
  Speaker 2: Pandemic times and something called Operation Food Secure was a clear example.
• 54:24
  Speaker 2: That actually was heard in Washington DC and the USDA and other organizations said hey, we've heard, you guys really know how to work together.
• 54:33
  Speaker 2: And so they said here's some food, go feed some people.
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: And it worked together really well, collaboratively.
• 54:39
  Speaker 2: And so when we run into an issue that is complex, like it was during pandemic, we have hope.
• 54:46
  Speaker 2: Here we have something that's been tested now for three years called Mobile Access Partnership, which is groups coming together.
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: Another thing called Impact Avenues around this issue of homelessness, of agencies coming together, no logos, no egos, matter of fact, the Impact Avenue model to work with families who have school-age children who are homeless, to help them.
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: Don't come to the table unless you have a yes.
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: Don't come here and say we can't do something.
• 55:12
  Speaker 2: Come here with yes, we can do something, otherwise stay home.
• 55:15
  Speaker 2: And when you set the bar at that level and you have people yeah, we like that.
• 55:19
  Speaker 2: Then they come in with okay, what is a win?
• 55:22
  Speaker 2: And that's where we are right now.
• 55:25
  Speaker 2: What is a win?
• 55:25
  Speaker 2: And I think we have an opportunity to take and build upon what we already have in regards to really good relationships and expand those.
• 55:35
  Speaker 2: The innovation team was part of that expanding of those good relationships.
• 55:39
  Speaker 2: Almost kind of look at it as a sequestered jury that got called into a pretty serious crime and the judge says you ain't going home until we come up with a decision and we have no hung jury here.
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: So they didn't come out hung.
• 55:53
  Speaker 2: They came out with a lot of debate over a period of about 12 plus months, but they came out with OK, we have got some decisions here that we want to present to the judge to be able then to take to the next level of what we might call sentencing, in this point of getting something done Right.
• 56:09
  Speaker 2: And so in that the relationships were even expanded more because we were kind of forced into that space.
• 56:14
  Speaker 2: Now we're not forced into a space, we are given some options to go to the next level and it will take a community-wide involvement.
• 56:22
  Speaker 2: It won't be Topeka Rescue Mission or Breakthrough House or Vallejo or United Way, it will be all of us figuring out what our perspective roles are, and the business and the faith community and the medical folks, and on and on and on to be able to come together and I think that we have, fortunately, some pretty good people in spaces that are willing to take that next risk to come together to involve the larger community as well through the many sectors that we have in our community.
• 56:52
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I heard something in our homeless task force meeting this week that I had not heard in my many years on that body and what I heard was, hey, the presentation was made to city council and the county commission several weeks ago and this group, the homeless task force, the continuum of care, the COC has a role to play in moving this forward and we collectively need to act and to advocate and to move forward.
• 57:24
  Speaker 5: That group has not historically been that type of group it has been a presentation and report out group and let's put together an what, in a religious context, would be called a kairos moment, an opportunity, a very unique opportunity to be able to move forward in a way that maybe the community wasn't positioned for before but is now.
• 58:09
  Speaker 5: I am someone who is hopeful.
• 58:12
  Speaker 5: I'm not optimistic.
• 58:15
  Speaker 5: Optimistic for me is you believe it's going to happen because it's happened before, and so I'm not an optimistic person.
• 58:23
  Speaker 5: I am a hopeful person because, for me, hope and optimism are different.
• 58:26
  Speaker 5: Hope says it's going to happen before or it's going to happen now and it hasn't happened before, right?
• 58:34
  Speaker 5: Optimism says, yeah, it's going to happen because, oh, things have worked out for me in the past, we haven't done this before, and so this has to be driven not by optimism but by hope, and so I have hope that all of these things that we have talked about today, whether it's a Supreme Court decision, whether it's all of the collaborative work and relationships that were built during the pandemic, whether it was the journey of the sequestered jury, of the homeless innovation team, whether it was the anger, frustration and fear of community members, elected officials, folks in neighborhoods, that brought this to a community consciousness in a way it hadn't been before.
• 59:27
  Speaker 5: All of those things together position us to move forward, maybe in a way that we haven't before.
• 59:36
  Speaker 5: That to me seems exciting.
• 59:39
  Speaker 5: That to me seems like an opportunity that to me, is something I can get behind, and I think that's something that our community can get behind.
• 59:46
  Speaker 5: I certainly hope so.
• 59:47
  Speaker 5: Agreed.
• 59:49
  Speaker 2: Agreed.
• 59:49
  Speaker 2: Well, brett, thank you for hosting or emceeing this today, to be able to give us all a space to talk a little differently than we normally do, and probably ought to have you back because you did a great job.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 5: I love this I appreciate it Thanks.
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 2: That was Brett Martin with United Way of Call Valley who today was emceeing this and we want to thank him for that.
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 2: Lamanda, Miriam, anything else Go, and we want to thank him for that.
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 6: Lamanda, merriam, anything else, go ahead, you know.
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 6: I just would want to echo real quick what Brett said about being hopeful.
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 6: You know, from a faith perspective, I think I too am hopeful because hope and faith come in things that aren't seen but knowing that it can be done.
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 6: And so from my perspective, or TRM's perspective, our team's perspective, with our faith being in Christ and knowing the commands he gave, those were not commands just as he walked the earth, it was commands to love him and to love people.
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 6: And despite sometimes things being miscued, the rescue mission loves the person experiencing homelessness.
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 6: The rescue mission loves the person who might be living a different lifestyle, whether that is choices, whether that is addiction, whether that's, whatever the case may be.
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 6: But two, we also love that business owner who's struggling.
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 6: We love the person that wants to have a picnic and is maybe nervous to at the park.
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 6: We also try hard to love the people who are in opposition to our mission, and we're people.
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 6: We fail, we mess up too.
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 6: We're not oblivious to that just because we're a faith organization.
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 6: But I would just like to say we at the Rescue Mission we are hopeful too, and we're hopeful for how you explained it, brett but also hopeful, because if our Creator commanded us to do it, he's not going to leave us or let us not do it, and so we will continue the good fight of trying to be a bridge between multi sectors.
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 6: We're going to try to be a bridge of being good listeners and hearing, but also bringing truth when it's not popular, truth when it's not popular, and I, too, am extremely hopeful for what can happen in our community, whether it's based on the humanity piece of what some people relate to or our belief in Christ.
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 6: I think it's going to be a beautiful thing.
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 2: Well, well said, lamanda.
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 2: Thankfully, our creator is patient with us and encourages us to be patient with each other.
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 2: So thank you for listening to this special podcast of Our Community Our Mission kind of unpacking about the most recent United States Supreme Court decision that has spurred us on to some clarity, but also a whole lot more questions and what we can do to help our neighbors the best way that we can.
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 2: This was Friday, july 12th, episode 230, 2024 of Our Community, our Mission.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 2: If you'd like more information about Topeka Rescue Mission, you can go to trmonlineorg.
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 2: That's trmonlineorg.
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 2: Thank you for listening to Our Community Our Mission.