How Mutual Aid Fights the Homelessness Crisis

 

"Mutual aid" is a term described by author Dean Spade as collective coordination to meet each other’s needs, usually stemming from an awareness that the systems we have in place are not going to meet them. In case of those experiencing homelessness, people in their communities have relied upon acts of mutual aid to supply tents, food, DIY heaters, sleeping bags, medicine, or small cash funds in order to have temporary housing in a motel for a limited amount of time.     

There is a long history of people doing mutual aid acting as an effective means of mending a crisis at hand.  It is often spontaneous and fills in the gap of where typical government social services would be.  Whether it’s community members distributing masks, handing out clean drinking water, or helping feed local camps around your neighborhood, it is an act of solidarity that aids both the housed and the houseless.

After checking the food and essential items that were delivered to her, Sevonna Brown of Black Women's Blueprint looks at her son on May 11, 2020, in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in the Brooklyn borough in New York City.

Stephanie Keith / Getty Images

For example, in the 1960s and 70s, chapters of the Black Panther Party organized “survival programs”, which were forms of well-organized mutual aid, by providing free breakfast, ambulance rides, opening free medical clinics, and even offering rides for the elderly to run essential errands.  

It was a way of breaking the stigmata that isolated many people living in poverty or surviving without stable housing and broke the sense of shame people felt when they needed help.  
One of the chapters here in Portland, started by Ken Ford, had created such survival programs as well.    

Source: Sisters of the Road Cafe / Google Images

Currently, local non-profits are able to fill some of these gaps in addition to other community members doing mutual aid around Portland.  The Sisters of the Road are one such non-profit that provides not only low-cost (or free) meals to the houseless community, but also acts as a public space for those without housing, whether it be sleeping, eating, or just simply somewhere to sit down without being threatened by police.

Tents line the sidewalk in front of Union Station on NW 6th Ave in Portland, Nov. 9, 2021.

Source: Kristyna Wentz-Graff / OPB

Providing mutual aid stems from acting out of a sense of solidarity for all people while folks try to survive waiting for stable housing.  It will exist and continue to be a part of our human nature to care for one another, housed, or unhoused.  

-- Kevin Shoptaw

References:
https://sistersoftheroad.org/about-us/systemic-change/

https://www.opb.org/article/2022/06/17/new-play-celebrates-kent-ford-co-founder-of-portlands-black-panther-party/

https://truthout.org/articles/mutual-aid-is-essential-to-our-survival-regardless-of-who-is-in-the-white-house/

Additional reading:
https://www.opb.org/article/2023/02/15/tent-ban-rene-gonzalez-portland-street-response/