Street roots., July 19, 2013, Page 9, Image 9

Street roots
9
July 19, 2013
Tweets
from tiie
streets
Media guru Mark
Horvath lost his home
and lived on the streets.
professional background in marketing and
film production, Horvath decided to take his
Now he encourages
skills on the road. His goal was to help
homeless people to use
educate society about the realities of
homelessness by “making the invisible
social media to share
visible.” So, with $45, his video camera and
laptop, he began recording homeless
their stories
peoples’ stories and posting them on Twitter.
Then he made a website. As more bloggers
shared the videos and as he gained more
Twitter followers, his work spread and the
BY A LEX BECKER
C O N T R IB U T IN G W R IT E R
stories began reaching a broader audience.
Communities mobilized to help their
ark Horvath’s energy is contagious.
homeless neighbors. Horvath says he started
The fast-talking social media expert
with the simple goal of educating the public.
and founder of InvisiblePeople.tv
As he said in an interview, he wants to end
recently captivated a venue full of mostly
marketing professionals in Seattle at an event homelessness and has become a leading
voice on the issue.
sponsored by Social Media Club. Popularly
known by his Twitter handle @hardlynormal,
Alex Becker: What is “Invisible People?”
Horvath travels the world creating videos of
Mark Horvath: “Invisible People” is a
homeless people as they tell their stories,
storytelling organization that empowers
and he shares the videos online to raise
awareness about homelessness. You can even homeless people to tell their own story.
watch a video of Street Roots vendor John
Alex Becker: How did it start?
Michael on the site.
His work has achieved widespread acclaim
Mark Horvath: Years ago I had a great
job in the television industry. Then I ended
and has been featured by the Los Angeles
up homeless on Hollywood Boulevard.
Times, CNN, CBS, Mashable and NPR. The
[Before becoming homeless] I had a new
Huffington Post named him one of “11
house, a new car and a job. Then the
Twitter Activists You Should Be Following,”
economy tanked. I lost the job, lost another
and YouTube gave him its home page for a
job, lost another job and lost the house to
day. He has even received sponsorships from
Ford Motor Company, Hanes and Hertz Rent- foreclosure. [Then I experienced] 19 months
of unemployment. So I grabbed a video
a-Car to continue his work.
camera, went out and started empowering
There’s no doubt that Horvath knows a
homeless people to tell their own stories. We
thing or two about media marketing. He also
don’t need to hear from another executive
knows something about homelessness. He
director or another politician or some
lost a six-figure salary at a television
research doctorate at some university talk
syndication distribution company 18 years
about homelessness. We need to hear from
ago, while struggling with a drug addiction.
the people experiencing it themselves.
He ended up homeless on Hollywood
That’s where the power of Invisible People
Boulevard. Eventually he was able to get
lies.
help. He got off the street, kicked heroin,
found religion and began working for a
A.B.: You’ve talked about the bureaucracy
televangelist. Then in 2008, he lost his job
that homeless people navigate just to receive
and his house went into foreclosure.
services. You said, “The system is broken. ”
Unemployment ran out. This time his
Please explain.
downturn wasn’t drug related but simply
M.H.: Twenty years ago they came up with
economic, collateral damage from the
this idea called the continuum of care. It
financial crisis. Homelessness, again, was on
makes great sense to have an individualized
the horizon.
agency to handle a person’s problems, (for
Not sure what to do, but armed with a
M
HEALTH CARE from page 8
spoke with numerous tenants who are
“co-morbid,” a term used to describe people
suffering from more than one physical or
mental health problem. Depression, anxiety,
asthma and a history of smoking were some
of the most common conditions tenants
reported to her.
Discovering the relationship between
those various health problems and how to
best treat them will be the key to Health
Share’s success with low-income and
co-morbid patients. But exactly what type of
services Health Share will be willing to
create and fund is not yet clear.
All CCOs are required by legislation to use
community health workers — essentially,
outreach workers who develop close
relationships with their patients, conduct
home visits, and help people learn how to
become healthier—and there is interest in
having workers come to buildings operated
by Central City Concern and other agencies
to visit with tenants at their homes.
Another suggestion is having staff from
hospitals and other health providers come to
places such as the Bud Clark Commons to
give classes and workshops on various
topics, such as healthy eating, or having a
specialist come and do free skin care to
prevent abscesses.
“That care could help prevent infections
that lead people to the emergency room,”
Clark says. “There are a lot of things that we
can do that don’t cost money.”
Blackburn and others mention funding
various support services connected with
housing, such as addictions treatment,
mental health counseling and case
management as a likely recommendation the
workgroup will make to the Health Share
board.
Manning even goes so far to say that
temporarily paying for a homeless
individual’s rent until they’re stably housed
would reap benefits as far as a person’s
health.
“Short term rent assistance could be
really effective for the same reason the
Recuperative Care Program is effective,”
Manning says. “There’s a good (segment) of
the homelessness population where a short
term intervention can be effective.”
example), a homeless veteran or a single
mom. Or somebody that’s HIV positive. But
we have become so segmented, and we are
horrible at communicating. There are people
that fall through the gaps. If there are gaps
in the safety net, fix them! One of the biggest
issues is communication: Agencies don’t
communicate with each other. And we’re all
fighting for the same funding, the same
scraps. The single mom living in her van is at
the library looking for services online, but
the majority of homeless services websites
are donor-centric. They’re not servicing the
people online. I can rent a hotel room
anywhere in the world in real time (online),
but a homeless person has to physically go to
an agency. You sit in an office for four, five,
six hours, and then you see a case manager.
Then you fill out all this paperwork, and
you’re really lucky if you get put on a waiting
list. If you’re really, really lucky, you get some
bus tokens to go back. Then you do it again
and again and again, and pretty soon you give
up.
A.B.: How do you use social media to share
people’s stories?
M.H.: (Social media) is an amazing
advocacy tool. The more of us that are
explaining (our experiences) and sharing our
challenges about living on the streets, the
more we’ll see change. Social media gives
power to the consumer. I know a mom living
in her van in Kent. I gave her a camera, and
one of the first things she did was start
videoing system failures. People would say to
her, “You just want to be homeless!” So she
videoed herself trying to call to get into a
shelter (that was full). The more that we use
our collective voice as homeless people,
whether we blog, whether we tweet, or
whether we use Facebook, the more we’re
going to see change. Also, when you’re out
on the streets, it’s extremely lonely, and
(using social media) helps alleviate isolation.
So it’s not how I use social media, it’s how
(homeless people) need to use social media.
A.B.: What have been some of your major
social media accomplishments?
M.H.: YouTube gave me their home page
for a day. I’m the first “cause” to speak at
Twitter headquarters. The LA Times, Ricki
Lake and MTV have all written about or
featured “Invisible People” in some way. I
could go on. But to me, the most important
(accomplishments) were the 50 kids in Baton
Rouge that didn’t have shoes and within an
hour had brand new shoes (after Twitter
followers heard their story and donated). The
individuals who have been housed. Or when
the Canadian government [commissioned] us
to go to 24 cities in Canada to help create an
organization that’s going to save thousands of
lives and lots of money. We have been able to
reach a new stakeholder that’s not the typical
nonprofit community, people that didn’t know
about the realities of homelessness. That’s
the power of social media.
A.B.: How has homelessness become
normalized in our society?
M.H.: I have two big fears. One is that
society has become anesthetized to
homelessness. I see that in some
communities like Seattle and Portland. It’s
almost like it’s meant to be, and that’s scary
because it shouldn’t be meant to be. The
other (fear) is criminalization of
homelessness. That is really scary. It’s
growing because it’s a quick fix. We want to
get them out of the park. Well, let’s pass laws
and boom! They’re out of the park. But
whenever we pass those laws, well, you might
as well just open your wallet because the
most expensive solution to ending
homelessness is incarceration.
There are other solutions, like the
“housing first” model for the chronic
homeless, but we need shelters, too. Shelters
provide a valuable service, especially for
people that are just hitting homelessness
temporarily. And that’s about 60 percent of
homelessness, especially now because of the
economic crisis. You have a family, they lost
their job, they lose their place to stay: The
housing first model doesn’t work for them,
but a shelter model does. We need to start
really focusing on the people on the streets.
A.B.: What motivates you to do this work?
M.H.: When I first started, it was pretty
easy math. If I traveled and helped empower
homeless people to tell their own stories,
somehow I survived. Somebody would help
me with rent or somebody would buy me a
meal, and it was pretty easy. Then I ended up
working in homeless services in Los Angeles
for four years, because people don’t fund
(educational projects to build) awareness.
Now, because of my social media and
notoriety, I could walk back into a six-figure
marketing job. But I don’t see myself sitting
behind a desk making other people money.
Once you get the taste of helping people,
once it gets into your blood and into your
spirit, it’s there. You can’t remove it.
A.B.: You say there are three things we need
to end homelessness: housing, jobs and health
services. What can ordinary people do?
M.H.: First, find out which organizations
in your community are providing housing,
jobs and health services. Second, contact
them and ask, “How can I help?” Some
places aren’t good at managing volunteers,
but don’t give up. Find some place to be.
Maybe you’re an accountant. Maybe you
work in media. Maybe you work in marketing.
Maybe you’re unemployed. Take your skills to
someplace that’s going to use them. And
here’s the magic: Whatever’s going on in
your life - maybe you lost your job or you got
a flat tire, or your girlfriend left you — you get
outta yourself, and go help somebody else.
All of a sudden your day gets better, then
your week and then your month. It gives you
perspective.
Reprinted from Real Change News, Seattle
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