It’s been seven days since my last post, and eleven weeks since I lost my sense of smell.

COVID positive cases continue amongst employees and clients alike. The fatigue of COVID-mode affecting everyone, no matter your housing status. Our good fortune in receiving support, in the way of PPE and funding, over the last two years continues to be necessary. The end of COVID-mode nowhere in sight.

What we were not sure of even six months ago is now reality. The demand for services is increasing. The required point-in-time count for Federal HUD funding was conducted this past week. Early numbers in the neighborhood of the Human Services Campus show over 700 unsheltered people. The local grapevine carries conversation that increases in unsheltered homelessness have gone up all across the Valley.

This should not be surprising.

Putting global pandemic economic effects aside, the population in Phoenix and Maricopa County has been on the rise for four decades. The population increased by 20% between 2000 and 2019. These aren’t numbers I’m making up. These are numbers reported in the City of Phoenix Housing Plan.

At the same time, housing production has not kept up with the pace of population growth. Wages have not grown at the pace to keep up with housing costs. The 2019 Plan identified a need of more than 163,000 housing units to meet the gap.

We are so far behind. It really is no wonder that more and more people fall out of housing.

Many of you are probably familiar with the Starfish Story. While I have always found the story touching, as it is about a young girl saving starfish that washed up on a beach by throwing them back into the ocean. A man tells her she can’t possibly make a difference because there are so many starfish stranded on the beach. Her reply, “Well I made a difference for that one.”

True. Just like every single day people working and volunteering in the social services sector make a difference one-by-one, one person, one family at a time. We may feel good, or even feel great about this. We can say “Well, I made a difference for that one!”

This is not sustainable or scalable. It’s not humane. It’s not healthy for any community. It allows individuals to stroke their ego, while investing nothing in solutions to repair systems that lead to the needs and problems in the first place.

We must identify the causes of the storm that wash people out of their homes and on to the safety net “beach.”

While we continue to provide the battered safety net, we need to maintain it and help as many people as possible. At the same time we must examine the root causes that lead people to lose their homes. Then we must help people to keep their homes. And, because we have a Grand Canyon-sized gap (I can say that, it’s Arizona), in housing availability, we must support the creation of more housing, in all shapes and sizes.

The number of people who lose their housing is a tragedy. The societal response is a travesty – it’s a collective turning away to not see the humanity affected by the lack of will to disrupt systems.

And to ensure a musical connection, the Bee Gees sang about “tragedy,” not “travesty.” “When the feeling’s gone and you can’t go on. It’s a tragedy. When the morning cries and your heart just dies, it’s hard to bear.”

We can console each one in the morning. And we can work to understand what made them cry in the first place and resolve that.