Decisions about the homeless have, for years in Forsyth County, been made mostly by well-meaning people who have never spent a night on the street.
Today, a group of homeless and formerly homeless people will try to change that.
The Homeless Caucus, a group formed by the community-organizing group CHANGE, called a public meeting tonight to ask for two voting seats on the executive board of the Homeless Council of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County.
The council is a coalition of nonprofit and government representatives who do an annual count of homeless people in Forsyth and help distribute federal grant money to agencies that deal with the homeless.
David Harold, executive director of the Homeless Council, could not be reached Monday.
The caucus wants the homeless representatives to be paid, said Ryan Eller, lead organizer of CHANGE.
"Everyone else on the executive council is being paid by their respective employer to be at those meetings," Eller said. "The caucus, it was really humbling. They said, 'We don't care about the amount. We don't really care if it's five bucks. We just want to not be treated differently from everyone else.'"
The caucus also will ask Mayor Allen Joines to commit to having homeless or formerly homeless people serve on boards and committees that deal with the issue.
Joines said he will listen to what the caucus has to say. "I can certainly see the merits of having someone with those experiences on the council," Joines said Monday.
Richard Cassidy, a Davidson County native who spent several years homeless in California, said those who have lived without a home have a perspective that others don't.
"If there is not someone at the table who understands or who has that wisdom to have gone through that, then all sorts of things can fall through the cracks," Cassidy said.
Cassidy, who now lives in Winston-Salem, is one of six homeless or formerly homeless people who will speak at the meeting tonight.
Cassidy said he was an honors student in high school but turned to alcohol in adulthood as he dealt with memories of childhood abuse by someone outside his family. He moved to California for his job and was living in an apartment with friends when he started to struggle.
"I turned to drinking and stuff to escape," Cassidy said.
His roommates asked him to stop, he said, "but the issues were so deep, and I really didn't know how to deal with them. And there came a point to where they said: 'You need to leave.'"
At first, Cassidy said, he was homeless because he had no choice. He worked his way into a new job and apartment but eventually thought life was easier on the street.
"I was like, you know, people gave me stuff when I was homeless, and things were easier and so I left a great job and I left an apartment and I moved to the streets of San Francisco," he said.
Cassidy floated around California for several years before becoming fed up with life on the streets. He called family in North Carolina and came home.
"I can come at it, not in a condemning way, and say, 'I've been there, too,' and we can pay for this one thing for you, but if it's not addressing the core — whatever the core is — we're assisting you, but we're not helping you grow," he said.
Eller said organizers hope that advocates will be willing to work with the homeless to help solve the root problems of homelessness.
"The Homeless Caucus wants to have homeless people — to give them a seat at the table in the decision-making processes that affect their lives," Eller said.
CHANGE, or Communities Helping All Neighbors Gain Empowerment, is a community organizing group that counts more than 50 congregations from a number of religious faiths as its members.
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