On June 28, the People for Fairness Coalition (PFC) held a celebration to commemorate its eight year of action. According to Executive Director Robert Warren, PFC works to help unhoused people through advocacy, peer mentoring and outreach. “We do these three things to end people’s ‘housing instability,’” he said at the anniversary celebration. “We like the term housing instability. In order to end homelessness, we must start with the word.”
PFFC has advocated for years to create a process for people to obtain sustainable affordable and accessible housing. “Our core belief is that housing is a human right and that every person—man woman and child—should have the ability to shelter themselves,” Warren said. “When a person is without monetary funding, we should fund tax dollars to assist with housing. Building infrastructure to raise people out of housing instability and poverty should be a goal we strive for just as we strive to build up the middle class.”
The celebration was about eight years of working in the community and thinking about some of milestones and challenges the organization has overcome.
PFFC has advocated for many approaches to solving homelessness that are now accepted best practices. Warren includes Permanent Supportive Housing, Housing First, Day Centers and peer mentoring groups in this list, all solutions that are now called for in the city’s five-year plan to end homelessness. “Doing effective outreach is something we began doing when we were homeless,” Warren said. “And it was placed upon us to go out in the night and walk among our people experiencing housing instability to make sure they would not fall through the cracks.”
It was a wonderful time-paced celebration! We were conscious of the power of the development of leadership. Albert Townsend says that behind every movement that produces there are strong leaders. Accolades to PFC! What a wonderful celebration.
“We have a lot of work still to do. I sometimes feel a little uncomfortable celebrating something that is not completely done,” Warren said. “It is like building a skyscraper and you come to celebrate a portion of the skyscraper that is completed.”
