Finding a refuge for the unhoused

In early August, Madison Assistant City Attorney Jennifer Zilavy warned the Social Justice Center (SJC) that it could be designated a “nuisance property” due to complaints from neighbors about unhoused people camping near the SJC. Wisconsin Veterans’ Museum did not respond to questions about why its building manager, Executive Management Inc., started blasting a John Philip Sousa march at odd hours, but it was presumably to drive away the unhoused people camped outside. During the last week of August, the Madison Police Department (MPD) told unhoused people camping near the Wisconsin Veterans’ Museum, State Street, and on Capitol Square that they all needed to move. (MPD cited complaints from neighboring businesses, but took action ahead of Taste of Madison. Coincidentally, I’m sure.)

Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway told Isthmus in a September 4 article that Madison is “‘not universally, but generally’ empathetic toward the struggles homeless residents go through, but at the same time, ‘generally doesn’t want to see homelessness.'” (Tone Madison reached out to the City for comment but did not receive a response in time for publication.) It seems many Madisonians have lost patience with having to see people live on the street, and are sending a message to Madison’s unhoused population: “You can’t be here.” 

Where they are supposed to go has never been clarified. And as anyone who’s developed object permanence knows, they will have to go somewhere. Brenda Konkel, executive director of Madison Street Medicine, points out that not having a plan for where unhoused people should go makes it that much harder for those who provide services to unhoused people to not only build relationships, but firstly, to find them.

“People are getting less and less willing to tell us where they’re going, because they feel like if the outreach workers know where they are, then the cops will find out where they are, and then they’ll just get kicked out of the next place,” Konkel says. “That puts the outreach workers in an extremely difficult place, because a lot of what we do is relationship-based. And if we’re part of the people who are kicking them out, how do you also build a relationship with somebody, right?” Konkel adds. “Like, I mean, you can and it’s nuanced, and you can do it, but it makes it a lot harder, right? And it does take time, and it’s frustrating, because we work hard to build relationships with people who don’t have a lot of trust in any of the systems, because all the systems let them down.”

In Enjoyiana Nururdin’s Cap Times article from September 3, Madison Police Department’s Central District Capt. Kipp Hartman is quoted, “We know housing is limited, and we know some people are choosing to live on the street.” If the use of the word “choosing” doesn’t make your blood boil, then you are just as divorced from the reality of homelessness. If living on the street is someone’s best option, that signals a profound failure from the top all the way down. The federal government, especially the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), continues to divest from affordable housing, and the Wisconsin Landlord-Legislature has skewed landlord-tenant laws heavily in favor of landlords and handcuffed municipalities from regulating housing to make sure it was safe, affordable, and accessible. Plus, landlords are to blame for their greed as well as employers for paying poverty wages while raking in record profits. Anyone who’s endorsed cutting our social safety net to shreds has made all our lives more precarious. 

None of this lets Dane County, the City, or the police off the hook for their actions (or inaction), but it’s worth acknowledging that the neglect of federal and state institutions and the private sector results in the responsibility falling on those who have the fewest resources but are closest in proximity. That is our reality for the foreseeable future. The City and County can respond by either doing more of the same with the same results, or being more flexible and willing to adapt.

One adaptation was the encampment at Reindahl Park, which Konkel says was “not the safest place, and it wasn’t the greatest place to be, but it was a place to be.” 

“You could be with people who had your back and people could watch each others’ stuff. Someone could leave for a few hours and come back and their stuff would still be there,” Konkel says. “We fought really hard to get Porta-Potties and dumpsters there, and we did get them eventually. But we did never get lights, which was a huge part of the safety problem.”

What if the City had invested in lights, Porta-Potties, and other amenities to make it more livable? Did the decision that it would be temporary sabotage a potential solution? One of the unhoused people interviewed by Isthmus for the SJC story asked why the City couldn’t have another designated camping spot for unhoused people—she had been assaulted at a shelter and never wanted to return. It felt safer to be outside. 

The response Rhodes-Conway gave Isthmus was: “People do not take care of the shared space, and it becomes very expensive to deal with that in one way or another.” Rather than write off encampments entirely, couldn’t we re-tool the idea to make it safer? McPike Park is down the street from the Social Justice Center and is equipped with bathrooms. What if the City had a handful of parks, also close to resources, with restrooms, lights, and designated camping spots where people could camp at night? There would be fewer people per park, police could keep eyes on those locations for any issues, and service providers could find and work with those people during the day. It’s an inelegant solution, and requires ordinary people to confront the City’s homelessness problem, but maybe that’s what’s needed.

As for the money, it’s going to be spent one way or another. Either we spend it at the front end to establish safe, stable places for unhoused people to go and hopefully regain housing; or, we spend it on the back end, with police moving people around, and service providers driving all over the city trying to find people. In the latter’s case, unhoused people’s physical and mental health would continue to deteriorate, along with their chances of acquiring housing. And the rest of us will have to live with the knowledge that, with the right combination of bad luck, any of us could be out on the street with nowhere to go. 

Which brings me to the Dairy Drive campground. The temporary housing shelter was built using American Rescue Plan funds after the encampment at Reindahl Park was closed down. It was only expected to remain open for two years, and now that initial temporality is being cited by city officials as one reason to tear it down. But Dairy Drive provides a unique service to unhoused people in Madison—actual safety and stability. That may be one factor in its successful track record of getting people re-homed. According to Konkel, 77% of Dairy Drive residents went on to “positive exit destinations” as defined by HUD, which means that the housing is considered a step towards stability and away from homelessness. Yet, the City and County do not appear to be on the same page on whether the site will continue to operate. 

The Dane County Health and Human Needs Committee voted on August 28 against a demolition contract for the site, and Health and Human Needs Chair Heidi Wegleitner proposed the county put $100,000 towards the project. But the City’s Community Development Block Grant (CDBG, which are federal grants allocated by municipalities) proposal did not include funding for “Dairy Drive 2.0.” (It did include plenty of funding for Porchlight, Inc., though.) Madison Alder Davy Mayer of the 6th District introduced legislation that would extend Madison Street Medicine’s contract to maintain Dairy Drive into spring 2026 at no expense to the City. This past Monday, September 8, the City’s Finance Committee voted against the proposal with the exception of Alder Mike Verveer. This puts the entire project in limbo, and makes it nearly impossible to raise public or private funds for operations or to upgrade the facilities.

The City’s Finance Committee did express some valid concerns about how the project would be financed and run if it were to continue. But, by declining to extend Madison Street Medicine’s contract, they’re throwing away the good for the perfect. Instead of making a temporary solution potentially permanent, they’re only making it more likely to fail. And then where will people go? Odds are that the men’s shelter the City is opening will be more of the same—a shelter for those who can get in, but not a foundation for rebuilding lives and enduring stability. Regardless of what happens to Dairy Drive, the County and City should be seriously looking at replicating that housing-first model. And it certainly shouldn’t consider closing it right before winter hits.

Homelessness can’t be addressed if the City and County aren’t on the same page and mutually committed to making good solutions even better.