Housing resources important in addressing gun violence problem in Missouri: panel

May 26—Addressing housing insecurity in Kansas City will require policies and programs that give communities the resources they need to acquire and maintain stable housing for themselves, panelists said Wednesday during a digital discussion hosted by The Kansas City Star and American Public Square at Jewell.

The event was part of Gun Violence in Missouri: Seeking Solutions, a series of virtual events hosted by The Star in conjunction with the Missouri Gun Violence Project — a two-year, statewide journalism collaboration that investigates the causes and potential solutions to gun violence.

The event was moderated by Kaitlin Washburn, a reporter on The Star's gun violence team. The project is support by nonprofits Report for America and Missouri Foundation for Health.

Wednesday's discussion centered on Star reporting that found housing problems — such as evictions, blight and homelessness — fuel the city's gun violence. Forced relocation by eviction can cause households to lose much-needed support systems and, in many cases, result in individuals and families finding themselves in high-risk situations, experts said.

Housing is one of the social determinants of health — along with income, access to food, living environments and education — that experts say can affect a person's risk of becoming a victim or a participant in gun violence.

The panel included Ozell Lincoln, a longtime Kansas City resident and founder of the community housing organization Change for Tomorrow; Alieza Durana, narrative change liaison at Princeton University's Eviction Lab; Diane Charity, leader and board secretary for KC Tenants, a Kansas City advocacy organization for tenants' rights and Dr. Marvia Jones, violence prevention and policy manager at the Kansas City Health Department.

For Charity, the connection between gun violence and housing insecurity is personal and acute.

When her son was 14-years-old he was shot in the stomach one block away from their home by another child who was playing with a gun he found, she said.

"My family was blessed he was alive, but then we were threatened with an eviction," she said.

Living in a cooperative housing community protected her family from an eviction at that time. Had she not had the support of her community, her family would have been evicted, she said.

The nation was already dealing with a housing crisis when the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated issues, Durana said. The Eviction Lab found on average, 3.7 million evictions were issued annually. And each eviction has an impact on the community, she said.

"An eviction can cause a family or community to experience decline in mental and physical well-being, job loss, death by suicide, childhood trauma, increased neighborhood violence and moves into substandard housing," Durana said.

Throughout his years of working with youth in Kansas City, Lincoln said he has also seen how housing insecurity and gun violence have impacted his community. It's undeniable the two issues are linked, he said, especially when it comes to how the financial stress of insecure housing can impact adults and children in households.

"The instability of housing, for a lot of young people, directly relates to violence and definitely to gun violence," Lincoln said. "Because one, they have to defend themselves. Two, people retaliate against them or they retaliate back. That could be greatly solved if you create some type of stability and also some type of economic energy."

Any policy solutions to gun violence in Kansas City need to address the underlying social determinants of health that communities most at risk are dealing with, Jones said. Any long term solutions that aim to be more than a "Band-Aid" should look at ways to keep people housed and stable, she said.

"We know, from a public health perspective, that that will reduce the risk that a young person who experiences eviction or houselessness at an early age — as well as their families, their caregivers — that decreases their likelihood of being engaged in violence in 5, 10, 15 years," she said.

Charity said one important solution to the city's current housing crisis is the "People's Trust Fund."

"Our people's trust fund would sustain the level of investment we need in order to bring about systemic change," she said. "We want cooperative housing, we want social housing, we want housing off the private market for us, not for their profits. That's my solution."

In addition to the trust fund to assist tenants, Lincoln said that a loan guarantee to assist individuals in buying homes is important.

"So people can achieve housing stability, because they can actually own the home that they live in, versus just renting it," he said. "You'd be amazed at how many loans you can guarantee for the million dollars that they (federal government) spend on providing temporary housing."

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