In the livestream from USC’s MSW program COBI (Community, Organization, Business, and Innovation) on “The Wicked Problem of Homelessness” guest speaker Mollie Lowery speaks on the systemic issues of homelessness. She discusses the transitions between groups, organizations, and systems and how each has tried to change the course of homelessness, but ultimately, failed. What I found to be most interesting from her speech is the emphasis on the empty promises of HUD to produce more affordable housing, as well as the governments claim to build more mental health clinics, while shutting down shelter systems. She touched on how social workers have spent years building the proof, hard facts, data to statistically show how/why homelessness is an issue and the fact mentioned that shocked me is that those who are homeless die thirty years younger than those who have homes. She speaks on the international right for every human to have housing.

One thing about this speech that can help us advocates of ending homelessness is the idea Lowery brings of ending the epidemic called “homelessness crisis” and calling this new issue “ending the housing scarcity” which will bring more empathy, and more efforts from outside forces besides HUD. Lowery explains the essence of what we have been learning in our course for quite some time now: we need to shift from pathologizing individuals for being homeless, and work on the systemic issues at hand. It is not their fault, yet we place blame on the individual all too much. If we can shift to focusing on ending the housing scarcity, we can eliminate homelessness at its core.