Clean Streets
By Albert B. Kelly
Travel around our county roads for any length of time, some 540
miles worth, and you can’t help but see them, mostly men and occasionally a few
women, wandering the streets or maybe working the streets; some homeless, often
semi-employed or unemployed; some with substance abuse issues, others in poorer
health- all with some type of past.
What’s to be done? There are no easy answers and certainly
no magic bullets because whatever combination of things pushed them to the margins
(read streets), and to be clear it’s always a combination of things- there is
simply no substitute for a person’s will and desire to reach for more and
lacking these, programs only do so much.
Often, it comes down to trying to make the best of a
situation which translates into trying to extract whatever good can come from
these circumstances for the benefit of all involved. That’s why I’ve been
impressed with the Cumberland County Improvement Authority’s new “Clean Streets
Program”.
Consider that Cumberland County has these 540 miles of roads
running through densely populated urban neighborhoods and barely-populated
rural stretches and everything in between. On these roads you will find a fair
amount of loose trash and litter and when matched with the people in the
program, an opportunity.
The CCIA’s new Clean Streets Program is beautiful in its
simplicity by helping those on the margins- providing them with a little instruction;
some basic equipment and safety gear, giving them work picking up and bagging
trash and litter on our roadways. In exchange for which, each participant
receives a Walmart gift card at end of the work week.
But there’s more. Because those participating in the program
come via a referral/approval process that involves the Housing First initiative,
the Department of Community Affairs and Gateway Community Action Partnership;
it means that these men and women are connected with a service team covering critical
areas including health care, housing, substance abuse, and more. These are
generally called “wrap-around services”.
Someone might ask why these services are important or even
necessary for a program that’s structured on picking up trash and litter. But
that’s just the point; the program is not only about trash and litter, but about
people and communities, and the well-being of both.
As I said, it’s a combination of things that bring folks to
the margins and building in wrap-around services seeks to acknowledge and
address this fact. The team delivering services includes a housing engagement person,
social work case manager, peer support, health care case manager, a certified
alcohol/drug abuse counselor, and a community mentor.
I don’t know if you’ve ever had your life unravel or known
someone who has, but getting back to “functional” or achieving some degree of
stability is time consuming and hard. For one thing, it involves a lot of bureaucracy
that has to be navigated and it comes with a mountain of paperwork that has to
be understood and completed.
Before you ever get to engage that bureaucracy, you need
transportation because the chances are good that you will need to visit offices
spread throughout the area. That’s why schedules and services are coordinated
around the County’s free LAX transit service as life on the margins doesn’t
generally involve owning a car.
This program, beyond providing gift cards, connects folks to
vital resources and provides a little traction toward greater stability. Whether
a person can go further will, in no small way, be determined by that person’s
will and desire to reach for a little more- for now the program provides a
starting place.
I like this program model because there is also the idea
that with work, even this simple work, comes some small sense of dignity and if
you’ve ever spent any time near the margins, dignity is hard to come by. But people
still need to feel useful in some way.
And while picking up trash and litter along our 540 miles of
roads may not seem like much, it helps keep our roadways and streets looking
clean and neat; it also prevents goodness knows how many tons of trash and
litter from clogging up our storm drains and sewer lines.
To date, in the weeks it has been operating, the program has
covered over 40 miles of roads throughout the county pulling over 6,000 pounds
of loose trash and litter off the streets and sidewalks while helping vulnerable
people in need- that’s no small thing.