What I love about Williamsburg is that we are a community of stories. We embody the stories we tell through dramatization and performance every day. We tell these stories because they explain the legacies we inherit, just or unjust, and define our sense of truth and self-understanding.

Stories are how we make sense of the things that happen to us. Stories are our way of describing our lives. When we know the story, we can discover where we've been and where we are going. We understand the logic behind why we see the world the way we do. Stories help us make sense of ourselves and our place in society. We are the stories we tell ourselves.

In over two decades of working with neighbors living through houselessness, I have heard the story of homelessness told many different ways.

I've heard about it through the story of what is called the "Housing Ready" approach. It says to the neighbor that once they secure a job, address their substance use or locate their own housing possibilities, they can get the funds needed for housing. I was told it was the most sustainable approach to housing because only when neighbors have a job and are sober can they sustain the rent long-term. It is how we foster responsibility and accountability and better use taxes. I used to believe this story.

Then I heard the story of "Housing First." It tells the neighbor that they'll get housed immediately -- first -- especially if they are particularly vulnerable, and after that, they can get a job and address their substance use. But I had heard this story told in a way that seemed expensive to the taxpayer and lacked accountability for the neighbor. But then I realized that housing first wasn't housing only.

But then, on my journey to becoming a trauma professional, I learned the story of how traumatic stress works in brains, bodies, nervous systems and stories. I learned that when traumatic stress is at work in the brain, body and nervous system, the ability to make integrated decisions becomes disintegrated as parts of the brain (pre-frontal cortex) go "offline" until the traumatic stress is processed or resolved.

I learned that trauma, which means "wound," twists the story we tell about ourselves. Traumatic stress can be understood as lacking any means of effective power when one's well-being feels vulnerable, destabilized or threatened. In shorthand, it is when my ability to cope is overwhelmed because something has come at me too fast, too soon, for too long, and feels like too much. Traumatic stress will negatively impact our sense of self-worth (identity, purpose and belonging), our ability to govern our emotions and decisions thoughtfully and slowly (self-regulation), and disconnect how we relate to ourselves and others. Left unprocessed, it can eventually provoke cycles of harm and prevent sustainable rebuilding.

Side note: you cannot think your way out of trauma any more than you can think your way out of stress headaches. You can only treat it or practice your way through it. Second side note: let the concept of stress producing headaches, muscle tension, stomach issues, etc., remind you that stress has a physiological impact and appears in our bodies. Now imagine if that stress is associated with trauma.

So, what is more stressful, vulnerable, destabilizing or threatening than not having a consistent place to wake up to and come home to or to run to when everything feels too much? What is more stressful and disempowering than not knowing if or where you'll take your next shower, wash your clothes, or clean your uniform if you get that job? Where will you keep your food or store your possessions?

Traumatic stress happens in houselessness because it is a form of social displacement. Not only does a neighbor lose a place to sleep safely, they feel out of place in society. There is a sense of abandonment and despair that comes together in a loss of worth, identity and belonging. Social displacement is a state of being without any sense of place or effective means of orientation and is an all-consuming displacement and traumagenic experience. When we understand houselessness as social displacement we know they need a house, but they also need a home.

By home, I mean something more than a house. A house is a building; a home is a dwelling place. A house is made of wood or brick; a home is made of stories, relationships and memories. Houses can be bought and sold, but a home is never up for sale. Home is a place of inhabitation where life is oriented toward a life-giving narrative and where restoration from the wounds of traumatic stress is made possible in every human dimension -- socially, emotionally, cognitively, spiritually and physically.

Housing First is more than providing a house. It is a form of advocacy that, along with stable housing, coordinates a system of care and services that align with an individual's self-determined goals. Rightly practiced, Housing First is based on the belief that individuals possess inherent dignity and should be empowered to facilitate agency, meaning their capacity and power to make decisions and take action toward recovery. It also recognizes that all humans have bodies, brains, nervous systems and a need for healthy relationships, and needs time to process and resolve the wounds arising from traumatic stress.

Yet, some legislators would like to see Housing First end despite two solid decades of evidence. For example, in 2020, the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, a collective of 19 different federal agencies working to address homelessness, published a critique of the Housing First approach the federal government has used as a "one-size-fits-all approach." They claim Housing First "has not worked to reduce homelessness for all populations and communities". Instead, the plan calls for addressing the root causes of homelessness with an emphasis on trauma-informed care.

Ironic.

Because although I believe the piece offers fair critiques, it (oddly) denies the evidence and (oddly) demonstrates a lack of understanding of how trauma works (after all, a clinical psychologist named Dr. Sam Tsemberis was the first in our nation to articulate Housing First as a model clearly in the 1990s).

When Housing First is tethered to a coordinated system of care that includes the option of a network of relational support where resilience is promoted, a sense of physical and emotional security is provided, support is felt, and where they are empowered to use their voice and exercise the power of choice, neighbors can move away from survive as they stabilize and eventually thrive.

I believe Housing First is the only (actual) trauma-responsive approach to houselessness, because it helps neighbors living through houselessness find a home.

Home is where a new story can be written.