Address to the FM Unitarian Universalist Church, "Operationalizing Justice: How We End Homelessness Together" - September 28th, 2025

Good morning, and thank you for welcoming me into this space. I am grateful to be among a community that takes seriously the inherent worth and dignity of every person, and that seeks not only to ease suffering but to transform the systems that create it.

What I want to talk about today is what it looks like to operationalize justice - to take the values we share, and put them into practice in the day-to-day work of ending homelessness.

As tensions around homelessness rise in our community, the conversation about what churches and faith communities should do becomes louder. And historically, churches have been most present in the work of charity. They feed people, hand out blankets, cover a hotel room in a pinch. These acts matter deeply. They meet the immediate need, they keep people alive, they soften the harsh edges of cruel systems.

But charity alone does not change the reasons why someone needs that blanket or that hotel room in a pinch in the first place. Justice is what changes those conditions. Justice asks: why does anyone in our community lack a safe place to sleep? What policies, what systems, what priorities are failing us? Charity softens the harshness of today. Justice makes sure tomorrow looks different.

I’ve always believed that real change happens at the systems level, and that lens shaped how I approached this role from the very beginning.

When I stepped in, I was told to take a year just to learn, to watch, and to get comfortable. That might have been wise advice in another time. But our community was moving toward criminalizing homelessness, toward making it harder and more dangerous for people to exist in public. I could not wait until I was comfortable while our neighbors were being pushed further to the margins. Learning had to happen in motion, in the tension of both responding to immediate harms and working to build something different.

And I’ll be honest: some days it felt like I was learning to swim in the deep end… only the pool was on fire and the lifeguard was throwing me a megaphone.

Those moments of being thrown in the deep end stood in stark contrast to how I once thought change happened. Early in my career, I thought it might come from finding the perfect words, the argument so clear it would open everyone’s eyes. That’s the Women’s and Gender Studies major in me, believing that if we could just name injustice, people would move to correct it. And words do matter. Moral clarity matters. Saying “housing is a human right” matters. Speaking at public comment to oppose the criminalization of homelessness matters.

Those actions are vital, and they are not the whole story. Because over time I learned that while words can light the path, they don’t build the doorframe or hand someone the keys.

What creates those outcomes is different: eviction prevention funds that stop a family from losing their home, a landlord mitigation program that makes it possible to say yes to someone with barriers, a coordinated entry system that ensures no one falls through the cracks. Those are not slogans. They are the building blocks of justice in practice.

So the question becomes: how do we take those building blocks and put them to work in our own community? Let me tell you how we’ve been doing that through our United to End Homelessness initiative.

Through UTEH, we identified the 20 individuals in our community experiencing the most visible and most chronic homelessness. For years, many of these neighbors have cycled through shelters, ERs, jails, and sidewalks without stability. The instinct of our community has too often been to push them further away, to treat their visibility as the problem. But instead of punishment, we asked: what if we coordinated resources and did the patient, persistent work to house them?

And part of what we wanted to prove, and are proving, is that housing and services are not just about compassion, they are the interventions that transform communities. They are what rewrite headlines, reduce strain on emergency systems, and create a downtown where people feel safe because their neighbors are supported, not discarded.

Here is what has happened: today, more than half of those individuals enrolled in programming, we have coordinated outreach, dedicated landlord partnerships, and pooled resources to overcome barriers like past evictions, criminal records, or old utility debts. They are active in the housing process, some of them of them even have apartment keys just a few days away. Each case is a grind.

And I should say, even this progress is tempered by the reality that we are still fundraising to do more of what works. Our bold goals are possible, but only as quickly as we can raise the resources to sustain them.

That means every bit of progress requires persistence, creativity, and yes, sometimes antics that sound less like case management from my peers and more like a mix of detective work, social work, and part-time locksmithing, all rolled into one.

But it works. And when one person moves inside, the entire community feels the impact. When I see a case manager’s face light up after taking a participant to pick up the keys to a place of their own after years outside, I know, this is what justice looks like when it takes root.

That is what systems change looks like on the ground. It is not a slogan. It is people coordinating across agencies, refusing to give up, and insisting that even our most vulnerable neighbors can and should be housed.

Seeing that work unfold on the ground also shapes how I think about my own decisions as a leader, because every choice matters in whether we move closer to our mission.

When I face a decision on whether to speak out, I run it through two questions. First: does it move us closer to making homelessness rare, brief, and one-time? Second: does it materially improve life for people experiencing homelessness? If the answer is yes, we act. Sometimes loudly and publicly, other times quietly through coordination and persistence. What may look like silence from the outside is often strategy on the inside. Our goal is not to win an argument; it is to win progress for our neighbors.

That discipline doesn’t always make me popular, but it helps me sleep at night knowing our choices are anchored in impact, not just optics.

There is a push and pull to this work. There are moments when our role is to stand publicly and say “no” to bad policy or “yes” to a proven solution. And there are moments when our role is to do the invisible work of aligning systems through data, building a new workflow, or helping two agencies coordinate so someone gets served instead of falling through the cracks. From the outside, that may look like we are quiet. From the inside, it is strategy.

And let me be clear: there are times when visible protest and loud advocacy are necessary. They shine a light on injustice in ways that systems alone cannot. The Coalition’s role is to complement that work, to build the infrastructure that makes those demands real.

That infrastructure is not glamorous. It looks like workflows and intake scripts - not exactly headline material. Imagine trying to chant slogans about “Standardized Intake Procedures Now!” I know, it’s not the stuff of Sunday sermons. But those are the boring miracles that quietly change lives.

And stacked together, those boring miracles add up. They remind me that justice is not abstract, it is logistics and persistence. Which brings me to where you come in.

• Practice proximity as justice. Greet people experiencing homelessness as neighbors, not strangers. Get familiar with the resources available in the neighborhood you frequent. Recognition is not just kindness; it’s the first step toward dismantling systems of invisibility and exclusion.

• Prevent homelessness upstream. A few hundred dollars for a car repair, a utility reconnection, or a shortfall on rent can keep someone from losing housing. That’s not just charity; it’s justice in practice, because it interrupts the pipeline into homelessness.

• Support low-barrier spaces. Move-in kits, hygiene packs, or weather gear are important acts of mercy. But advocating for well-funded, low-barrier spaces is justice, because these are the places where people connect to healthcare, housing navigation, and real exits from homelessness.

• Open housing doors. Landlords and neighbors have enormous power. Saying yes to someone with barriers, or to housing in your neighborhood, is not charity. It is justice; it changes who gets access to stability and who is excluded.

• Use your civic voice. When you speak to elected leaders, instead of asking "what are you doing to address homelessness?" ask: "how are you making homelessness rare, brief, and one-time?" That question turns moral clarity into public accountability. That is justice at work in democracy.

• Invest in systems change. Supporting the FM Coalition to End Homelessness sustains the backbone work of convening partners, aligning data, and fixing gaps that no single organization can do alone. Giving here is not just relief; it’s fuel for justice. And it is what allows us to scale what we already know works: housing people who’ve been outside for years, preventing families from losing their homes, and making our bold goals real.

The work ahead is not about choosing between compassion and justice. It is about linking them, so that immediate mercy points us toward lasting change.

Let me close with this. Ending homelessness is not magic. It is logistics and persistence guided by vision. It is the daily grind of coordination, the visible moments of advocacy, and the quiet work that no one applauds.

Charity will always matter. It eases suffering in the moment. But charity alone will never end homelessness. If we stop there, we resign ourselves to managing misery rather than transforming it. Justice is what takes us further. Justice is when compassion organizes itself into systems, policies, and practices that make homelessness rare, brief, and one-time.

And we are making progress. People who have lived outside for years are now in housing. Families who would have been evicted have kept their homes. Agencies that once worked in silos are now moving in rhythm. These are not acts of charity. They are acts of justice in practice.

And I’ll admit, on the hardest days, I hold on to those small wins like oxygen. They remind me this isn’t just possible, it’s already happening.

If you remember nothing else today, remember this: charity softens the edges of cruelty, but justice removes the cruelty itself. Justice is not abstract. It looks like eviction prevention funds, housing navigation, landlord partnerships, and a community that refuses to give up until every neighbor has a place to call home.

And wherever you enter this work - through charity, advocacy, service, or systems - there is a place for you. What matters most is that we stay connected, and that we keep moving toward a community where homelessness is rare, brief, and one-time.

That is what it means to operationalize justice. And it is work we can only do together.

Thank you for being the kind of community that believes in both compassion and justice, and for walking with us as we build a future where homelessness is rare, brief, and one-time.

You can listen to this address and the following Q&A with the congregation HERE.