0:00:00.5 Louie Marven: Welcome to Resource on the Go, a podcast from the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, an understanding, responding to, and preventing sexual abuse and assault. I'm Louie Marven, and I'm a project coordinator at the NSVRC. Today's episode is the final part of a series on "Housing for Prevention" that we co-created with the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence. If you've listened to the series, you know that our organizations collaborate on an initiative that supports advocates in meeting the housing needs of survivors. And in reflecting on that work together, we became eager to talk about the ways that housing is also a tool for preventing violence. If you haven't listened to the series yet, go back and check out those three episodes on "Housing for Prevention". In today's episode, you'll hear from NSVRC and NRCDV staff as we recap the "Housing for Prevention" series, and as we draw connections between the conversations in each of the three episodes. Joining me today are my colleagues and collaborators, Brittany Eltringham, manager of Safe Housing Initiatives at the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence, and Mo Lewis, Prevention Specialist here at the National Sexual Violence Resource Center.

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0:01:26.4 LM: Well, hi Mo and Brittany, I'm so glad to be talking with you both about this podcast series that we had been working on for a while and it's now out into the world. And yeah, this is just a great chance for the three of us to reflect on what that series has been and is and talk about what are some of the key themes that we saw and what did we hear from our guests and our guest hosts about addressing housing as an important piece of preventing violence from happening in the first place. So, we had some key questions in mind that I'll throw out to you to get us started, but we wanted to talk about, what is the connection between violence prevention and housing? And I think our guests made a lot of really great connections and gave a lot of examples, but Brittany, what were some of those that you noticed that you felt were most exciting to share? 

0:02:34.5 Brittany Eltringham: I think something that we heard come through in all of the podcast episodes in this series is the idea that housing is connected to so many other facets of our life. And so in order to prevent homelessness, we need to be resourced in a particular way. And in order to prevent violence, we need to be resourced in a particular way that those things can fester in certain conditions. And one of the things that I heard come through from the survivors in these episodes was that healing is central to this conversation of housing. And the way that I interpret that is that's the cycle-breaking, that's the cycle-breaking that is necessary for primary prevention. That's the cycle-breaking that's necessary to increase those protective factors and to decrease those risk factors. And I think they said those things without using that language, which I thought was really great. And you could tell that we were listening to people in community who really understand the conditions for having safer communities and having safer homes.

0:04:00.5 Mo Lewis: Yeah, that makes me think about one of the questions we gave to folks to talk about, which is that there's this idea that there's this dominant story about housing, and the story says that housing is earned and it blames people when they experience homelessness. And we really wanted to encourage bigger imaginations and more expansive thinking, because in our story, housing is a human right. And I really feel like that was something that came across in all of the podcasts. And it makes me think about some of the resources that we have in the way that we link housing and prevention into the work that we're doing to prevent sexual or domestic violence. Thinking about things like social determinants of health and risk and protective factors are things that can really help buffer against violence. And housing is a part of that. And I feel like a lot of examples came through in the conversations.

0:04:56.4 LM: That's right Mo, one of the times that I was thinking of when you were talking about social determinants of health, and I had a note to make sure to refer to the episode, the first episode in our series, when Mel specifically named Social Determinants of Health. And I think all of our guests talked about those determinants. Maybe they used the specific language or not, but Mel actually said social determinants of health and was talking about housing as a social determinant. And she was also making that point that you were, I think, referring to earlier, Brittany, where she was making that point that housing directly impacts so many other things that are connected to social determinants of health, like transportation and job opportunities and access to nutritious foods. So yeah, I like that we all were seeing those connections that Mel was making there, and I thought that was an exciting part of that episode.

0:05:57.3 BE: Yeah. I feel like I might be unnecessarily stuck on this idea of a cycle, but I can't help but think about how experiencing abuse, or witnessing abuse, that these are adverse childhood experiences that later increase your likelihood of experiencing homelessness. And so in the same way that we're talking about housing as a tool for violence prevention, I think we're also talking about safety in the home as a means for ensuring future safety in both the home, the family, the community.

0:06:44.5 ML: Yeah, it's such a good point. This tie into homelessness is really huge. And I'm thinking about the episode where Melissa brings them, was talking about the sweeps that happen to folks who are homeless and how people get all their stuff taken away so they lose any sort of stability that they had. They have to start fresh. It lends this feeling of always having to be on edge. You don't really have that cohesive community because things are in flux. And one of the things that they offer at some of the tribal offices, these resources are so great, they have financial help to get your car fixed or financial help with your first and last month's rent. And I just feel like those were such great examples of not only things that are very helpful for people, but things that can help bridge that gap between having everything be up in the air and having that little bit of stability so people can get back to that stable housing. That's so important.

0:07:51.6 LM: Mo you were talking about some of those basic needs and the tribal office that Melissa was talking about in that second episode. And that makes me think of in the third episode when Gabby and then also Ashley in sort of summarizing something that Gabby had said was talking about... Both of them were talking about supporting grassroots organizing efforts. And so Gabby's story was so great about being part of the sexual violence prevention work group and knowing, from a needs assessment, that housing was something really important to the community, but not really being able to attach some specific work to that until COVID when there was so much upheaval around housing in their community. And so, this is a little bit later down the line, but Gabby was talking about using that RPE funding to bolster grassroots organizing efforts.

0:08:52.5 LM: And so, I think some of what Melissa was talking about that that was some grassroots organizing and meeting those basic needs in that community, in South Minneapolis with the native communities in South Minneapolis, might be a different example in Gabby's community, what that looked like for them was supporting the tenants-organizing members in getting some community-organizing training. And then Ashley was hearing what Gabby was saying and saying, "Maybe the best use of our time is not necessarily going out and educating as many people as we can about sexual violence in that case, but maybe the best use of our time is to support grassroots organizing efforts that are already happening." And so I thought that was a really exciting thing to take away in terms of some kind of big prevention themes, doing community-level prevention and building some of those cross-cutting relationships that we like to see in prevention.

0:09:54.5 ML: Yeah. I was thinking when listening to all of these podcasts that the work is so innovative and important, and of course it's tied to prevention, but I can also see people listening to the episodes and really being like, "How is this prevention? How is this really related?" And I think that each of the podcast episodes gives us so many things to think about and really flex our own ability to incorporate these important things into the world of prevention and figure out creative ways to really uplift the work that other folks are doing and maybe change the way that we view the world of prevention as well.

0:10:35.4 BE: To reiterate what I said earlier about healing coming through so strongly in what we heard from both Rebecca and Mel in their conversation as well as Melissa, brings them with Caroline and Gwen from STTARS Indigenous Safe Housing Center. I think that what I heard was the wisdom that folks have in their communities to house each other and keep each other safe. And again, I think, there's, perhaps, words that we use as advocates participating within these systems and these institutions, but I heard folks talking about prevention. When I heard Rebecca and Mel, one of my key takeaways from their episode was I heard them talking about the need to expand the definition of violence. And a big takeaway that I had was actually something that Mel, not Mel, Rebecca said, she was referencing Paulo Freire's 'Pedagogy of the Oppressed', and she was paraphrasing, so this isn't a direct quote from him, but she said, "Anything that says a person can't imagine the world and recreate the world to meet their needs in community is an act of violence."

0:12:05.6 BE: And I was thinking about that in relationship to what Melissa was talking about with these camps. I think we know that camps, that some of these temporary housing solutions, that there are safety issues, that there are issues, and that there are ways in which they don't keep people safe. But I think what we heard from Melissa is how they leverage community in those camps to keep each other safe. And what I heard from Melissa is how living in community is how people keep each other safe. That's where they feel safe in their neighborhood. She says that a couple of times that people stay in their neighborhood because that's where they know each other, that's where they grew up, and we know, again, per the CDC, that those are the protective factors. That some of those things are what we can consider traditional prevention.

0:13:10.5 BE: The other thing that I really wanted to mention about what I heard from Melissa is she talks about grief groups in their community. She talks about how they support folks struggling in their addictions. She talks about outfit-making and how during that outfit-making they joke, they talk, they eat, they feast, they snack, I think those are the ways that folks are spreading awareness in community. And so to connect to the points that you and Louie were making earlier, I think how do we know what our role is in the landscape? Maybe some of us working at the state level or the national level, we gotta pull back a bit, like you said, maybe redistribute some of those resources to the folks who are going out into the camps who are providing community health services like Mel talks about.

0:14:16.4 BE: So yeah, I don't wanna ramble, but I feel really excited about everything that the folks in these conversations talked about because we don't call it innovation, for me, I think we call that... That's the traditional part of... That's the part of being human and that we wanna hold onto. Whereas maybe there's some other things that we need to let go of in order to move forward and in order to actually safely house all of our community members and relatives.

0:14:48.5 ML: Yeah, I love that. I really agree. There's so much for us to learn from hearing about all of this work, and it just makes me think of how siloed a lot of us are now with our prevention work and all of these opportunities to really expand those silos and really bring in things that maybe weren't normally in this world of RPE or federal funding. [laughter]

0:15:17.5 BE: I was looking at this fact sheet from the National Healthcare for the Homeless Council, and they were talking about homelessness and adverse childhood experiences. And something that I really appreciated that they said in this fact sheet is that some interventions focused on primary prevention require larger societal shifts that providers may not have the capacity to implement but could work for at local, state, and federal levels. And I got really excited when I was reading about that because it was this very real acknowledgement. I think that the things that some of the folks that were in conversation in these episodes who were doing the community-based work, that they can absolutely continue to do the vital and life-saving work that they do, but that there also needs to be this political response on the local, state and national level where we are working for towards those larger societal shifts.

0:16:23.6 BE: And I think that is where those of us who work, perhaps, in those spaces who aren't perhaps directly interfacing in direct service work, that's something that I think we need to keep in mind. We talked about how do we build a political will for housing to be this front and center issue? I think we have some narrative work that we have to do on housing as a human right. I think there's a lot of unfortunate, as much as people are talking about it, there's still some really entrenched stuff about people deserving what they get when they're homeless, about people deserving what they get when they experience violence, and that it's an individual responsibility as opposed to a collective responsibility. And that's where, at least from where I'm sitting as a TA provider, I see so much of our work at the national level is to really take on that struggle.

0:17:28.4 LM: Yeah. I really like how you said that Brittany, and I was thinking again, how that really reminds me of some of the work that Gabby was doing in their local communities in terms of, you were using language like building the political will. And something that Gabby was talking about that I was really excited to hear was, using all of this data that they were collecting and then bringing that to the community at large, but bringing it to specific policy makers. And Gabby said a sentence that was something like, "This is a problem that we can actually create a solution for." And so I think in terms of the shifting how we think about these topics and building political will, I think that's a really important message too, that this is a problem and it's a problem that we can address.

0:18:18.6 LM: We can create solutions to this problem. And maybe someone who isn't doing some of the more, maybe, direct work with community members might be in a good position to work together with people who are and take that message to the people who need to hear it. And I think in Gabby's case, that was local policymakers, and I think that was really cool to hear because I think that might the kind of thing that some people listening perhaps might be intimidated by. But Gabby gave a really good example of just getting in there and doing it, and Janae summarized really effectively that Gabby was using skills that we already have as people who were doing work in our communities who have skills in doing prevention work specifically. Sometimes it might feel like, "Oh, I don't know enough about this other topic," but you can actually bring those skills in doing, in Gabby's case, sexual violence prevention and add to and bolster existing community work with people who do know about those systems maybe more directly. And so that was an exciting plug for people who have those prevention skills that they can apply them in a lot of really exciting ways, and you don't have to be the expert on every topic related to where you're focusing that work.

0:19:43.4 ML: Yeah, I really liked that example and how Gabby explained how they winnowed down the focus into someplace that, like you were saying, Brittany, that we might not be able to change these huge societal problems, but we can do something. And so they found a place where they were able to fit in and get their skills in and help make change. And we talk a lot about partnerships and cross-cutting partnerships, and this seems like such a good example of that where the work that we do together can be so much bigger than if we wanted to just try and take this on ourselves and build something new and do our own thing. So yeah, I really liked that.

0:20:28.3 LM: Brittany and Mo, it has been great recapping this series with you both and working with you to envision it and to work with all of the guest hosts and guests to then create it and get it out into the world. And I have really enjoyed hearing what you have picked out as very important about these episodes and most importantly, how they speak to each other and how they connect and this chance to elevate some particular themes. Is there anything that you wanted to address in this recap that you didn't get a chance to talk about yet? Or do you have any closing thoughts for our listeners as we wrap up this series? Brittany? 

0:21:17.2 BE: Yeah, the last thing that I... The reflection that I'm sitting with, we talked to folks who are working in communities experiencing sexual violence. We talked to folks who are experiencing human trafficking and having crises with missing and murdered indigenous relatives. Something that is also really present in my community as a native Hawaiian is domestic violence and all of these forms of violence undercutting across the lifetime. And something that I really took away from listening to these conversations is, and that I'm sitting with as we think about what is the story that we tell about housing as prevention through all of our work and even through our collaboration together? What I'm really sitting with is that we are all part of an ecosystem and that includes our dwellings, that includes our homes and our non-human relatives.

0:22:25.4 BE: And I hope that that is the story that we can lean into. I hope that is a story that helps us build that political will that moves people from punishing, which I think we see with criminalization. And we see with a lot of the mainstream responses or reactions, I wanna say actually reactions, to housing and for us to think of housing as this responsibility that we have to each other and this way that we can love each other and prevent violence in our communities. This was so great. I'm so grateful for the opportunity to have worked on this project with you folks and to be able to have this closing conversation with you both. Thank you so, so much. What about you guys? 

0:23:06.5 ML: Well, [chuckle], I really love the way that you talk about this stuff. I don't think that I am able to gather my thoughts and say them in the great way that you are able to. And so it's always fun when we get to work together and then you talk about these things and you're just spinning them all together into this really nice web that is easy to understand and also makes me feel so hopeful. So I wanna say thanks for working on this with us altogether. And it's so funny because the thing that I was gonna say is such the opposite of what you were gonna say because I just wanted to say to read the show notes because we're gonna have notes in there and links [laughter] So yeah, that's my different take on what to check out is show notes.

0:23:55.4 LM: I love that.

0:23:56.5 BE: Equally important. [laughter]

0:23:58.5 LM: Yeah, I love that. There's a logistical element, check out those show notes. We're gonna have links to the things that we talked about, and then there's that sentiment, Brittany, that... And when you were talking, I was thinking, "These are some of the conversations that we had in the very beginning of this process of talking through this series." So here you are on the other end of it, putting into words so wonderfully the spirit of what we were hoping to do when we set out to create the series. And we had been in spaces where we talk a lot about housing as a response to violence, how can we get people housing after violence? Obviously so important. And so I think some of this stuff about how can we reenvision housing altogether to think about stable and safe housing as something that we need to have in place that can be how we think of doing that work of preventing violence for it has the chance to happen? 

0:25:00.6 LM: I don't know. It's all been so exciting to see it come together and to hear these themes come through in our conversations before and after we've heard these episodes. So thank you both for your work on this and your partnership and for offering those closing thoughts. And if you have been listening to this series and you have interesting examples that you'd like to share about how you think of housing as a way to prevent violence, we would love for you to get in touch with us and tell us what you're working on.

0:25:39.5 LM: Thanks for listening to this episode of Resource on the Go. And special thanks to the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence and to all of our guests for their partnership on this "Housing for Prevention" series. For more resources and information about preventing sexual assault, visit our website at nsvrc.org. You can also get in touch with us by emailing resources@nsvrc-respecttogether.org.

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