Bramson: Setting the table

Last month, Destination: Home and the National Coalition for the Homeless co-hosted a lived experience leadership conference in San Jose.

It was the first of its kind on the West Coast, welcoming over 350 participants from 40 states and two provinces in Canada. The three-day event was designed by people who had faced homelessness or some form of housing instability, and the majority of attendees had never even been to a conference before.

People engaged with each other on diverse panels on topics ranging from organizing to inclusion, listened to stellar speakers give keynote addresses, talked with local leaders about the importance of policies and programs, attended an art show of their peers and even found time to go out and explore downtown San Jose. Throughout the conference, there was a palpable feeling of optimism at the opportunity to learn from each other and build community in a meaningful way. For people who sometimes feel invisible, this was a chance to take center stage and be seen as valuable contributors to something bigger.

I left the event with only one question: why don’t we do this more? Creating space for those who have dealt with the trauma of being unhoused to try and figure out better solutions makes plenty of sense. Here in Silicon Valley, where companies spend countless millions of dollars to figure out consumer preferences and predilections, you’d think we’d be uniquely attuned to the old adage of the customer knows best.

In fairness, this movement has been gaining traction for some time. In 2018, members of our community founded LEABsv, a leadership development body created to build a working partnership between consumers and providers to inform policy development and improve the quality and types of services provided. Since its creation, LEABsv has collaborated with San Jose on shelter designs, participated on review panels for federal funding and contributed to new quality standards to govern the operations of the local supportive housing system. Members meet regularly to assess opportunities to evaluate and shift power from traditional systems of care to those with lived experience.

There are many other groups and organizations working to increase the power of lived experience, too. But we need to do more of it and invest accordingly. With the constant barrage of images and news segments every day that demean, stigmatize and degrade those living on the streets, it’s more important than ever to create platforms to not only tell the other side of the story, but also learn how we as a collective whole can be doing the work better.

This takes intentionality. And it requires a willingness to give up power. But, as we’ve already seen, there’s plenty of benefit in listening to the voices of those who have experienced these struggles firsthand. So perhaps this holiday season, we can stop trying to always have the answer and really take time to think about what more we can do together to let people in.

San José Spotlight columnist Ray Bramson is the chief operating officer at Destination: Home, a nonprofit that works to end homelessness in Silicon Valley. His columns appear every second Monday of the month. Contact Ray at [email protected] or follow @rbramson on X, formerly known as Twitter.