Don’t settle on the system

Kayla Richards knows what homelessness looks like and feels like. When she thinks about growing up in South Dakota, she says programs assisted her family, but not as much as people.

"There were interventions that helped my family, right, like supportive housing, consistent therapeutic services, mentorship," she said. "[But] it was the people. It was the practitioners. It was having a connection to a caring adult who showed up for me really consistently and showed up for my family."

In Hennepin County in 2022, 2,191 people lived in shelters and almost 500 people lived without shelter, according to the county's latest annual count. According to the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration, people experiencing homelessness have a higher mortality rate, are more vulnerable to sickness and often struggle with several challenges, from substance usage to alcohol. Twenty years after living through homelessness, Richards now works as a juvenile behavioral health program manager for the county with a mission of connecting people to resources and lived experience. She especially wants to be that connection for "Black and brown and indigenous youth [who] are overrepresented in the juvenile justice system."

Hennepin County offers many programs to help this vulnerable population — from housing programs to mental health care. Though these programs are in place, Richards said it's easy to overlook the difficulties that someone experiencing homelessness faces in fulfilling everyday tasks, such as finding public transportation, storing and carrying water, or even using a restroom.

"I just remember the amount of effort it took to keep up on just day-to-day tasks," she said.

In order to do tasks that many people take for granted, this population requires services that exist in many places — programs for mental health, for addiction help, for housing stability and for finding shelters. But what helped Richards the most were people.

"[It was] having a connection to a caring adult who showed up for me really consistently and showed up for my family," she said. "So, relationship is such a critical intervention."

In the Twin Cities, families dealt with loss from COVID-19 and also from the George Floyd murder. Richards says that to move forward, we must "create space for healing" and slow down, and that's true for service providers, too.

"I'm noticing a lot of folks attempting to cope with a lack of healing," Richards said. "And that shows up really differently for different people: depression, anxiety, sometimes really high-risk behavior, sensation seeking, lots of stuff. And so I think as systems providers, we need to do a better job of slowing down and thinking about capacity a little differently. ... I think that often, our service delivery models really situate and center the service provider and not the client."

She fears the problem may lead to intimidation getting in the way of people getting what they need.

According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration, permanent housing and housing with services help people stay connected to social services and destigmatize mental disorders while offering a space where they can be heard and understood.

"We often sit in the assumption that folks from marginalized communities do not have voices. They do," Richards said. "We have to work on shifting systems to create space to listen."

Hennepin County Front Door

Hennepin County Mental Health Center

This story was created by ThreeSixty Journalism's summer 2023 News reporter Academy high school students under MinnPost's leadership and in partnership with the Center for Prevention at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota.

ThreeSixty Journalism empowers diverse students with valuable leadership and storytelling skills, prepares them for college and career success, and fosters more representative truth telling. Leading the way in developing multicultural storytellers in the media arts industry, ThreeSixty invites highly motivated high school students to discover and amplify their voices through immersive college success programming at the University of St. Thomas College of Arts and Sciences. Launched in 1971 as an Urban Journalism Workshop chapter, the program has been part of St. Thomas for more than 20 years.

To learn more, visit threesixty.stthomas.edu.