Recent amendments to the Code Blue law in New Jersey provided more specific stipulations as to what emergency warming shelters must provide to the homeless community. More significantly, the amendment changed the temperature and weather condition threshold to trigger a Code Blue Alert. Instead of below 25 degrees without precipitation and below 32 degrees with precipitation, the amendment to the law now requires all counties to call Code Blue when temperatures fall below 32 degrees, regardless of precipitation. However, the amendments provided no funding to account for the increased frequency of shelters being opened.
The lack of funding to support the changes in the law demonstrate some of the limitations of a legal approach to social justice for the homeless. Homelessness is less so an issue of recognition under the law and more so a problem of distribution. In addition, these amendments fail to get to the underlying irrationality and dehumanization that guides emergency shelter policy in states like New Jersey. Laws like Code Blue demonstrate the unjust reality in which homeless people’s ability to find shelter and basic life necessities is ultimately determined by the arbitrary amount of mercury in a thermometer. And while politicians can continue to pat themselves on the back for realizing on paper what homeless activists and organizers have been saying for decades--that this is an exploding crisis demanding action--these people in power have done little to fundamentally restructure how government institutions approach the homeless community.
Back in December, Newark filed a federal lawsuit against New York City for the city’s Special One-Time Assistance program, also known as SOTA, which had case workers pressure eligible people in shelters to move outside of New York City, primarily across the Hudson River in places like Newark and Jersey City. While the Newark government maintained that it was not concerned about the influx of low-income people themselves, but rather the living conditions they were placed in, the legal battle between the two cities illuminates the ways in which governments would rather fight with each other over who claims the responsibility to take care of the homeless than actually address the problem of homelessness itself.
So, how do we ensure that legal reforms are actually materially supported? How can we provide the vital resources to the homeless community while also working against the systems and structures that render those same resources inaccessible for so many people? And can we move beyond the paternalistic or outright denialist frameworks that so many governments use in approaching homelessness and create meaningful mechanisms for redistribution and permanent supportive housing?
We are joined by Walter Herres, founder and executive director of Supporting the Homeless Innovatively Loving Others (SHILO), a grassroots homeless organization based in New Brunswick. A formerly homeless person himself, Herres has built an organization that utilizes a unique organizing model, blending human rights advocacy, public and mental health support, interfaith engagement, person-centered case management, and direct, on-the-ground outreach and intake. SHILO has struck an effective balance between addressing the precarity and direct social needs of the homeless community, while also confronting the systems and structures that produce homelessness. In many ways, SHILO has filled the gaps in the legal and social support systems, working in the shadows. 70 percent of the homeless referrals in New Brunswick have come from SHILO. They are both strengthening the continuum of care and holding faith organizations, nonprofits, and government institutions to do their job within this continuum.
