Reflections from the front lines serving people who are experiencing homelessness, at the start of a new fiscal year, a three-day extreme heat warning, and holding a long breath over litigation against HUD.
Last week the Keys to Change Street Outreach Team counted 240 unsheltered individuals around the Key Campus. At the same time approximately 900 people were sleeping in three indoor spaces on the Campus. These numbers are staying relatively flat week to week, with a swing of about +/-9% in the unsheltered number over the last four weeks.
And no surprise to anyone, it is July in Phoenix, and there is an extreme heat warning for Tuesday through Thursday. The Weather Channel app says for today: “Sunny today. High of 112 degrees. Full sun and extreme heat. Gorgeous sky, unforgiving temperature. Limit your time outside if you can.”
112 today doesn’t meet the level of “extreme heat.” Maybe because the winds are expected to be 10 mph? Regardless, if you are unsheltered, it is dangerous to be outside all day and overnight.
Summer is nasty for all of us, and more life-threatening for those without a home or shelter. The checking on people outdoors becomes a constant vigilance. The extended hours for allowing people to be on the Campus appears to be helping. And we are hiring temporary/ seasonal workers to be able to expand access to the Campus to 11:30 pm at least through September. Ultimately if we could be open 24/7, we would consider making that a permanent feature.
As we start our new Fiscal Year, building budgets for these dream scenarios is a feature of our regular staff and board meetings. There is no shortage of ideas to expand services, add programming, do more early intervention and rapid resolution, and I am very much looking forward to mapping out details to a five-year strategic vision and plan approved by the Board at their June meeting. Stay tuned for our roll out and sharing in the next several months. The Leadership team is eager to take hold of the broad strategies and put tactics and timelines to them.
And underpinning the Strategic Plan is a refresh and reset of organization values. Our values: human-centered, solutions-focused, collaborative, data-driven, equity become the framework for how we make decisions, serve our clients and employees, and partner and collaborate in community.
Building and strengthening our foundation is requisite for long-term success, five years or ten years and beyond. We are solidifying the mission, vision and values to continue working on short-term and systems changes to end homelessness. We don’t take that lightly.
We also don’t take lightly the rule of law. I am grateful that national organizations, like the National Alliance to End Homelessness (NAEH), continue to hold the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) accountable. The U.S. District Court ruled that actions taken by HUD in 2025 to overhaul funding priorities violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). HUD is an administrative agency with the duty to implement legislative directives. Such agencies must keep the public informed of their procedures and rules. And they must provide for public participation in the rule making process, for instance through a public notice and comment process. In its recent attempts at changing funding priorities, HUD was making changes against congressionally authorized programs, laws, and the very system that HUD itself designed. [for the full Court order: 99-SJ-Decision.pdf ]
The Court did not rule to apply this judgment nor issue a permanent injunction to include the recent June 2026 HUD NOFO (Notice of Funding Opportunity). NAEH and others filed a new complaint on July 3rd, to address the unlawful changes all of our communities are struggling to process and prepare for, know that in Arizona alone 1,799 people would likely lose their housing. People who were once upon a time chronically homeless, meaning they documented a disability and will not be able to work, afford rent, live, would be ‘exited’ from housing with supportive services. Unconscionable.
Regardless of anyone’s opinion on permanent supportive housing, Housing First, rapid rehousing, etc., HUD is not upholding its duty. The Court seems to be the only route to protect the process. I hold my breath, it’s a long breath, waiting for the Court’s response.
The impact of these types of policies and processes is real. Slam the door in my face, real. I am finally whittling my way through a last pile of paperwork that was Mike McQuaid’s, I found a printed copy of the July 17, 2019, Human Services Campus e-newsletter. This was a monthly version, before the regular Reflections blog became a thing. I wrote at the time that on July 1st I watched an EMT unsuccessfully provide CPR to a 57-year-old woman. I never knew her whole story. I knew data points from a case file. I know that she didn’t choose to be “homeless,” because a person does not choose to have mental illness, or choose to be preyed upon and victimized. It was hot outside. The Arizona State Legislature that session chose to proclaim pornography a public health crisis, rather than proclaiming that Arizona had a housing crisis and that homelessness is a public health issue.
Marci. That was her name. The woman who expired outside, unsheltered on July 1, 2019.
The consequences of regulation, policy, and funding are real. Life-threatening real.
We must remain focused to solutions, using data and an equity frame to collaboratively ensure all humans have access to a home.
Cheers to Fiscal Year 27, may we save more Marcis together.
