Emma Hughes

Welcome to today's episode on the corner of Homelessness and Race. I'm Emma Hughes and normally I have Joe Eder here with me, but unfortunately, he is out sick today, so it's just me and our special guest who I will introduce in just a moment. But before we jump in, wanted to give our disclaimer. We recognize that homelessness is a very complex issue. Many of us have been reminded of that through each of the conversations that we've had.

This conversation is no different, and we don't claim to explore every part of this intersection, but hope that today's conversation brings new clarity to the reality as a whole. So please keep an open, curious mindset as you listen and seek to learn, just as we are specifically for today, we do have a content warning we're going to be talking about. A lot of historical things, current things, challenging things, and this podcast today especially will include a discussion of the mistreatment of various peoples and culture. So we acknowledge that want to acknowledge that for you before we jump in.

With that said, today we are lucky to have a special guest, Claire Jefferson Glipa Claire is the executive director of Family Promise of Riverside at Down in California, Claire has over 10 years of experience in nonprofit management and loves building partnerships, collaborations and is a powerful public speaker and passionate servant leader. Claire, welcome.

Claire Jefferson Glipa

Hey, so glad I'm here. Thank you for having me.

Emma Hughes

We're so excited, so excited. Before we jump into the questions and kind of the topic we want to hear a little bit about you, what led you into your current work and why is this topic of particular interest to you?

Claire Jefferson Glipa

Well, thank you so much. You know what? It's crazy I have actually been doing this work my entire life. I was blessed to have a grandmother who was very passionate about her community and she had a beautiful garden in which she consistently fed her neighbors. And as a child, I did not appreciate the gift of empathy that she consistently gave. I believe I was about 10 when I was really annoyed that my grandmother was spending so much time with these homeless folks that were bugging us during my special time with my grandmother. And I come from a Christian tradition and she like started literally physically praying. And I was like ohh Lord here go Granny and after that prayer she said your call is to uplift homeless children and I totally dismissed her at the time. I aspired to be the President of the United States and I was like, you're crazy, granny, whatever. And I completely dismissed it.

So I went to college, you know, majored in a lot of things. Did some travel internationally worked on some campaigns, even worked in the capital, got disillusioned, worked in education and during the social justice renaissance, really felt a desire to connect historical justice issues with the work in the nonprofit sector and began to really search for a space to really right the wrongs of our history, and to do so in a way that uplifted my community and believe it or not, on LinkedIn, there was an opportunity to be executive director of Family Promise. And so I went to the interview, hadn't really thought about much, and then I had a dream that revisited the conversation with my granny, and I really do believe that this is the work of my life. I have enjoyed many of the places in which I have lended my talent, and this moment in my life really feels like a connection of every experience and every blessing that I have been gifted.

Emma Hughes

That is a really, really cool background and it's important to that when we have these important conversations, it's not just an intellectual thing. It is a full body, full life conversation and so to hear a little bit more about how you ended up here is a really great context on which the rest of this can hang.

Claire Jefferson Glipa

Well, thank you.

Emma Hughes

You I want to just start with kind of the big question. How would you say systemic injustices, historical injustices perpetuate homelessness among specific racial groups.

Claire Jefferson Glipa

Well, I think it's important for us to take a step back in how our country was founded, right. So I know oftentimes when people begin thinking about race, there is a knee jerk reaction, a desire to close up and protect what is ours. So for our listeners, I encourage you just to take a deep breath and think historically about how truly physically set aside philosophy dichotomy. Any of those you know all of those thoughts and just think about the actual physical way we built brick and mortar this country, and we did so by kidnapping individuals, whether we kidnapped them from places abroad or in the beginning kidnapped them from their tribal lands and forced them to work.

In order for people to justify making people work hard in that way without compensation, there must be an othering. And so from the beginning of this nation, the line that we drew in the sand was around skin color and those that were less melanated were afforded opportunities and those who were deeply melanated across the spectrum of melanated son were given less and less rights to justify that separation in order for us to build. And that goes across all levels of melanization.

That goes to our very first laws around who could be considered citizens, excluding those of Chinese descent who came here to build our railroads. That includes indigenous folks and taking away their humanity and the systems of which they had created to live in order to build homesteads and those of African descent that were brought here in order to build our agricultural infrastructure. And so in that history, we have created a system of winners and losers. Snowballing that overtime ,we have created a system where winners look a particular way and losers look a particular way that can't inform our experience in who is worthy of opportunity, whether we are speaking about education, employment or housing.

That permeates every part of this nation. Whether you ever held ownership of a slave, whether you ever exhibited, you know, at a mission whether or not you chose who came in through Ellis Island or not. It filters who each and every one of us see as worthy of opportunity as we stand on this land. And I think it's helpful to frame our understanding in that way because it takes out the the argument that well. I never held slaves, right or the argument. Well, I never gave a Native American a smallpox blanket, right, or I never forced a Chinese worker into a workhouse. Or I never stole Japanese people's land and put them in internment camps. Right? Like it doesn't matter whether you physically participated in those evils, it is still important for you to understand that your framework of who is worthy of opportunity is still colored by the way in which our ancestors are those that came before us defined opportunity.

Emma Hughes

Yeah. We talked a lot. I mean, just the conversation in our culture, especially over the last few years has really seemed to push division of "I acknowledge what you just said as reality, but what do I do with it?" Yeah, from all sides. Like, how do we move beyond like, ohh. It's my fault. And now I'm just shut down into it versus I acknowledge this reality and I'm going to move forward and through to create something different.

Claire Jefferson Glipa

Yeah, I think a really helpful way to perceive this.Is to one recognize that we have all been steeped in the same tea. If we are all steeped in chamomile tea, then there the elements of chamomile will be infused in who we are, right? We know that if we steep chamomile tea and then pour it into a cake, we would not be surprised that that cake has calming elements, right.? If we were all steeped in green tea.

Emma Hughes

I love this analogy. Keep going.

Claire Jefferson Glipa

Right. We would not be surprised if we poured that into a doughnut that there were elements of caffeine in that baked good, right? Right? Is that baked good. Now, still tea? Absolutely not. And yet because of where and how it was steeped, those elements, those fundamental elements that created that tea now exist in wherever it was infused into, if we can believe that about tea, then we can extrapolate that a system designed for some to win and others to lose still is infused in not only our system, but our thinking patterns, our processes, and how we perceive the world. And so I think one last analogy I like to use, it's called the Apple paradox. And so when you go into a grocery store, at least in the Western society, right, there's a pile of apples and they're separated by Granny Smith and Red delicious and golden loveliness.

Emma Hughes

And there always seems to be a new one.

Claire Jefferson Glipa

Right, girl. It's like a super-duper apple. Yeah, right. You got to try it. But let's say your mother sends you to get 5 red delicious apples. How do you pick those apples? Which Apple is ripe? Which Apple is sweet? Which Apple is good to eat? All of those things will be determined by what you have overheard, your parents, your grandparents, and those around you as they discussed apples. Most likely your mother never sat you down and explained an apple with striation is bright and crisp and tart and therefore the best to eat or an apple that is solidly colored is denser and grainy and a better eat is one apple, good or bad? No, they're all apples. All good to eat. How you choose that Apple is completely determined by your community, your environment, and what you have caught. As they have discussed the goodness of apples.

If you grew up in an urban setting and you have only gone to a grocery store, your determination of that Apple will be very different than if you grew up on a farm, used to being picked apples. So we can all understand that each and every one of those apples, according to the grocery store is good to eat what I choose and how I choose and determine what is on the inside of the apple. Whether its texture is good to eat or bad to eat is completely as a result of my experience.

Emma Hughes

Well, and you said it and I don't know if your analogy is going to go here, but technically the only apples that are in the store, to begin with are chosen by the grocery store system. So you're not even going to see the apples that might have been had had the best flavor, but had a worm in it? Yes, or is dented, right? You're not going to even see those as options in the grocery store if that's where you are.

Claire Jefferson Glipa

Yes, and, if we as individuals have a preference as a result of our experience to apples, how can we assume that when it comes to people that our experience does not generate a preference? The challenge is that apples are going to be eaten and it doesn't matter. But when we're talking about people and opportunity, people and communication of worthiness, who needs a hand and who is just lazy, who has potential and who has yet to show experience? If we are not understanding our own natural grasp of assumption as a result of our experience. We allow ourselves to just roll our historical assumptions down the hill. And it makes a big difference in who we choose. For what, why we choose what and where. And so in the context of homelessness, we largely see a larger proportion of black and brown individuals experiencing homelessness and we could just say, oh that's an interesting phenomenon and move on. But you and I both know being in the business of wanting to truly solve this problem, going deeper and understanding how our system affects that outcome, it is almost impossible to ignore the team in which we've been all steeped.

Emma Hughes

Well, and it does more harm at this point to just deny we were steeped in tea at all. Right. Like, let's just get past that and say we were steeped in it instead of. Letting it continue to roll down the hill, let's actually get curious. Let's get curious and say, hey, why? Help me understand. I'm going to choose humility and learning from other perspectives to better understand this so that we can stop, redirect, push back up the hill, whatever the next steps are.

It's almost like in a very practical sense denial around if this exists is just not helpful. Like if you truly are passionate about ending homelessness, seeing people of all kinds have access to equal opportunity, then we just need to move past the does it exist like we're already past that? Yeah. Now what?

Claire Jefferson Glipa

Well, and I think in the conversation it is helpful to take out judgment. Right? And I think it's helpful in utilizing the the tea analogy because I as an African American woman am equally steeped in the tea as someone of Caucasian descent or Asian descent, or someone from the Latina community, we are all equally steeped in this tea. And so if we can take out, am I a good person? Am I a bad person? And we can just understand that there's work that we need to do, every single one of us, then we can really get down to how do we actually address the challenges that are a result of our history. Which I think is a better place, a more empowering place for all of us to be versus sitting in a guilt cycle, right? Or a denial cycle for us to just pull up our sleeves and get to work, yeah. I think it's really helpful.

Emma Hughes

Helpful. Needed, needed now. Yeah, needed years and years ago, but here we are. So we're going to do it.

Tell me a little bit about one of the things we've talked about on our podcast in the past is redlining is to your point of how this access to opportunity was literally baked into the brick and mortar of a community. How have; have you seen in your community redlining play a part? What is that? How have you seen that?

Claire Jefferson Glipa

So redlining is a system to which the federal government and banking institutions colluded to decide who was eligible to own homes, basically. And largely African Americans, where they lived, a literal red line, it's not a creative term at all. Someone literally took a red pen and drew, you know, a circumference or, you know, a border around spaces and places where African Americans lived and deemed those spaces blighted, which meant they had less access to capital. And I know a lot of people think, ohh gosh, this is definitely Deep South issues. I'm here to tell you I am from Southern California and there was redlining strategically in my county, in Riverside County, in the Inland Empire, to disenfranchise African Americans and those at that time of Mexicans descent.

Emma Hughes

And we have it here in Spokane. Or had it here in Spokane, you can find maps. We've posted the map of Spokane that was created. It’s everywhere.

Claire Jefferson Glipa

It really is, in fact, the home in which I currently live our historical document. The very first deed says in writing, “no colors allowed.” The home in which I currently own. At Family Promise, we all have a saying: People become homeless not because they run out of money, but because they run out of people.

When I, as an individual look to the security of my community, my ability to extend support to those in my Community that are struggling, that access to wealth through refinancing a home or proving that I am eligible for addition credit is very much in the United States tied to home ownership. Whether or not that is access to student loans, whether that is access to capital for building a business, whether that is access to standard consumer credit and so two generations ago of people of color not having access to home ownership or the home ownership to which they had access to being considerably devalued quite directly affects that Community's ability to support its extended community.

Emma Hughes

We saw that actually, I remember to your point, even having a conversation with a realtor friend here in Spokane during COVID, and we offered quite a bit of rental assistance to supplement people that were struggling. And one of the things that I went to my realtor friend and said was “ so ,what happens if when we start to see homeowners who are defaulting on their mortgages?” And she was like, “well?” OK and I'm… I might butcher this, but she was like, “well, honestly they have an additional level of safety net because they can always refinance their homes, cash out the equity.” Which, I mean twenty thousand, thirty thousand, eighty thousand depending on how long they've had it in the family and how long they've been paying on it and they can use that money to pay their own mortgage so. Having a home, even in 2021, was an additional safety net because you could use your own asset to protect yourself against losing your own asset, which is not the case in a rental situation.

Claire Jefferson Glipa

Completely in addition to just the legal protections to move for foreclosure are far more protective than moving toward eviction.

Emma Hughes

Yeah. I didn't even think about that, but that makes total sense.

Claire Jefferson Glipa

Like you cannot move toward eviction with forward foreclosure within 30 days, you can move toward eviction after a single missed rental payment that is legally impossible when it comes to foreclosing on a mortgage. So just the level of where someone lives and having access to ownership is inherent protection from homelessness.

Emma Hughes

We just know people of color really, of any non-white background are statistically more represented in homelessness than what is represented in the general population. Like there are tons of statistics and studies about that disproportionate reality. So, to then hear, to layer that on top of this, well, maybe why? Well, one of them. One of the potential reasons is less access to higher equity real estate. Period like they just there's just no safety net available to the level that it has historically been available to white people.

Claire Jefferson Glipa

Not to go deeper down historical context, but right after reconstruction there were booms of African American communities post slavery that built their own societies. Right? They built banking institutions. Wall Street itself is built on top of the historically African American thriving community, and those communities were destroyed and those folks who created their own system in order to thrive were dispersed with little to no compensation for the homes, businesses, or communities that they built That was a systematic upending of wealth that was never compensated for and quite honestly blamed on those individuals during the time.

So if you go back, I mean the beauty of Google is that you can look at these things in true time. Central Park, like there are swaths of places that larger communities benefited from as a result of destruction of African American wealth. So oftentimes in my space, I hear some people say, why can't homeless people just pull themselves up by their bootstraps? Right? Like, how come they just can't dig in, work hard and achieve. And I will say, yeah, I would love it if there were some magical boot that people could put on that pulled itself up, but the truth is that we as a society have decided that certain people get opportunity and certain people are not worthy of stewarding opportunity.

Emma Hughes

It seems to me like in light of that historical context, even when people of color built wealth, pulled themselves up, were walking in the boots of a pulled up, I don't know person. It was then removed and taken away strategically for the advancement of a different agenda.

Claire Jefferson Glipa

For any agenda, I mean and again, I think people want to make this a Deep South issue, we are talking about New York. We are talking about California. We are talking about Chicago. I mean the state of California just had to give an African American family back a beach that they literally stole from that family. As a result, I mean, can you imagine owning quite literally, owning beachfront property and the government utilizing eminent domain and racist threats to take that property and being so bold as to write it down so that generations later, a city looking at their record, feels compelled to give that family back a beach. When we think about why we see the populations that are represented in our homeless shelters it just makes logical sense why there are disparities.

And in order to arm into those disparities, I would challenge us to go back to another analogy is think about why we choose the apples we choose and in my work often times we have a shelter of diverse people and we have volunteers that interact with those shelter individuals. People with largely the same background right? Something hard really bad happened. Maybe some folks with generational poverty challenges. Sometimes some substance abuse, but largely just hard happened. A whole heap of hard landed in their lap and they did not have the capacity or the community to support them through that hard.

I'll give you some examples of the heart. We had a Mama during COVID. She had been a stay at home mom for 12 years. They moved from their community to California to get away from some generational ugliness, right? Some abuse and substance, and that Papa Bear worked exceptionally hard to provide for their six kids, and he died of COVID. This is a woman who has not worked in 12 years and has six children. She cannot go back to her family because they left that family escaping abuse and substance. What community is she supposed to connect with, right?

Another example of hard is a single Mama whose oldest kid died of cancer. What Mama should have to go to work and focus on rent when she has experienced the worst year of her life? We are not talking about people who are not hard workers. We are not talking about people who do not love their children. We are talking about individuals that had a heck of a lot of hard. Each of these people happened to be of African American descent and when volunteers engage with those individuals, the questions that I received about why aren't they working? Why aren't they grateful? Why aren't they happy? They are in mourning.

Most of us in our community, if we had a death in our family, wouldn't have to cook for three to four months. The Casserole brigade would be at our front door and just our food needs would be cared for, let alone all of the other Go fund me and you know, gift cards and all the ways in which our community would surround us. The assumption that we make about individuals experiencing homelessness and the thought that the only natural result of laziness is homelessness is honestly as a direct result of who we believe is worthy of opportunity, who we believe is allowed to grieve, who we believe deserves more hard. And that's something that each and every one of us can sit down and check our assumptions about what we think about that person in the homeless shelter, what is our natural assumption about that individual standing on the corner with a sign?

Emma Hughes

One of the realities that we've talked about in previous episodes is this idea of abundance mindset. What if we just believed, and this applies to a lot of different areas, but what if we just believed there was enough? And what I love about what you're sharing, I think it's really easy to fall with the part of the tea that we were steeped in is this idea that we have a limited amount of opportunity and we are competing for that. Yeah, but in reality, what if we all like there's just an unlimited amount of opportunity. We don't need to fight for it over it. Take it from one another to have it for ourselves. What if I just believe there's enough? There's enough for me. There's enough for you. There's enough for that mom. There's enough for those kids. There's enough opportunity.

So now, all of a sudden, choosing to believe that changes. Then the way that I stop protecting myself or hoarding resources or trying to reach a congruence in my mindset versus my actions like we all of a sudden with this belief of, like, there's just enough you are worthy of it. I'm worthy of it. We're all worthy of opportunity. So instead of gatekeeping it, I would like to help you stabilize underneath you, give you what everyone deserves. Community, casserole brigade, whatever, you know, like, hey. Yeah. Let me help. If I have the position right now to help, let me receive help when I'm in a position to receive like, let's just.

Claire Jefferson Glipa

Well, and I think I would even push that even further to say securing my own safety health and abundance is quite literally dependent on my neighbors ability to do the same.

Emma Hughes

Expand. Please go there. I want to.

Claire Jefferson Glipa

Here, so for me, I think when I interact with people that are really concerned about the homeless population, largely most folks are really concerned about that singular individual because that's the homeless that we see on the street. And it's always in the context of public safety. Right? They are defecating on the streets. They're preventing people from getting to my storefront. They are having a mental health breakdown within my view. We need to deal with this homeless situation, issue the issue, yes.

Emma Hughes

“Issue, the issue.”

Claire Jefferson Glipa

Right you. Yeah. If we were to shift our paradigm as to again work to not other and to look at what is that person experiencing through the lens of what we were all steeped in? And instead of saying that person over there far away needs to be dealt with. I understood that I'm uncomfortable not because of their behavior, but because of the fear that I might very well not have enough safety, not have enough cleanliness, not have enough of whatever because they are exhibiting their need out loud in front of me.

If I were to think about the context of my entire community as my safety, then I might be more generous with opportunity. I might be more generous with my things and I'll give you an example. So we are blessed at family promise of Riverside to have where we serve our families largely during the day in a neighborhood that neighborhood some days is very supportive and other days very fearful about how their neighborhood will be perceived, knowing that individuals experiencing homelessness are being served in their community. And we have been blessed to begin a dialogue with that community on a regular basis about the opportunity that we present them to create a safe environment for themselves.

We have, you know, gone back and forth with them a lot around this paradigm shift of instead of pushing people to the nether regions of our community, hoping that this issue of homelessness gets solved. Having a homeless Services Agency focused on families in your neighborhood allows you an actual, true vantage point of ensuring that this part of your community is cared for. That discussion became far more poignant. The neighbors recognized that two of our residents were the best friends of kiddos in that neighborhood. The paradigm shifted completely because now it was about my baby's best friend is being served in your community.

How is that possible? That kid is so bright. That kid is so encouraging. That kid is so sweet. How is it possible that that child that actually happens to be on—in student government on the campus is being served by a homeless services community. Well, it happens cause that baby's homeless happens, right? But the idea now of protecting our community, ensuring our safety has to do a shift from othering to a “we” and the ability to bring our community and redefining our community as everyone. Right? And that makes takes a really distinctive shift in our paradigm of community. And it makes me internally have to think about other people that have different experiences than I do and look differently than I do and have cultures differently than I do far more deeply. Yeah, right. I have to personally say gosh, that person is different. How important is it for me to understand that difference so that I can better care for this person that I perceive as part of my community? Right?

So as an extrapolation of that same experience that family happened to be African American, the neighbors happened to be of majority culture, identifying as Caucasian. Now the donations, the support the books the resources that that community now felt compelled to bring to our homeless services agency shifted dynamically, because now they saw a part of my homeless issue problem as a part of their community, versus othering.

Emma Hughes

Wow, what an incredible conversation. And that's just part one of our conversation with Claire. I wanted to take a pause and thank Spokane Public Library for letting us record in this beautiful studio in downtown Spokane. We are also, as always, incredibly grateful for you the listener for being curious for caring about a greater community and for keeping these conversations going, if you want to support this podcast and the work we do at family promise of Spokane, please visit us on our website, www.familypromiseofspokane.org and learn how you can get involved or donate.

Part 2 is currently available, so please make sure to download that and delve deeper into our conversation. Until next time, I'm Emma Hughes and this is on the corner of homelessness and.