Our Philosophy of Care
If you’re around homeless services for very long, you quickly realize that the homeless need more than services. Those impacted by homelessness need acknowledgement, friendship, dignity, and a voice in their own paths. They need a trauma-informed environment that can absorb, alleviate and accompany over the long haul.
They need a community that’s not just merciful, but restorative.
With our many friends and partners, we’ve come to understand some groundwork principles:
Poverty is far more than a lack of material resources, or a lack of access to services. It is a lack of agency for oneself, in all the physical, economic, emotional, social and spiritual dimensions of that.
Deficiency-oriented social services models have a hole in them. When we focus solely on poverty as material lack, we can unintentionally reinforce a cycle of habitual need without ever effectively addressing the absence of personal agency.
A holistic social services model must be assets-oriented. It meets urgent material needs, but it also intentionally values the skills, knowledge and experiences of each individual and creates avenues to leverage those assets into agency.
Holistic poverty reversal takes time. Cycles of impoverishment become deeply ingrained, and only sustained, long-term support of trusted friends and environments can provide the encouragement and constant resilience needed. This is doubly true for heavily traumatized populations like those experiencing homelessness.