Thread by @dianeyentel

🚨The Trump administration has selected their replacement for Director of the US Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH)- Robert Marbut.🚨

Here’s a background piece on him (from 2015) via @ArthurDelaneyHP huffpost.com/entry/robert-m…

1/

Here’s Marbut’s 7 guiding principles to “Homeless Transformation”.

It’s paternalistic, patronizing, filled with poverty blaming/shaming. Very much how @SecretaryCarson also talks about people experiencing homelessness. 2/

Robert Murbuk’s approach goes against 2 decades of research and best practice - he opposes Housing First (says he believes in “Housing Fourth).

3/

Marbut has also pressured local gov’ts to outlaw “street feeding” programs. 4/

He believes that being homeless is too cushy (remember when Carson said the same?), and uses an approach that he coined “the velvet hammer.”

He advises communities to “cut out the goodies” that are making it so enticing to be homeless.

5/

He believes that people are homeless because they are in some way deficient and need fixing - and he proposes warehousing them with mandatory services until they can prove they are “ready” for housing. 6/

More on Marbut’s opposition to giving people who are homeless food without compulsory “programming.”

(He knows it’s the right approach because “we’ve done a lot of research.”) npr.org/2014/11/09/362…

7/

Trump’s pick to lead the only federal agency with the sole responsibility of ending homelessness says, “having a home is not the problem for the homeless.” 😬

nextcity.org/daily/entry/ho…

When shelter residents “misbehave”, Marbut has them sleep on a mat in the courtyard until they can prove they deserve to be inside. Then they have a chance to be rewarded with “bunk beds” and “learning opportunities.”

Yes, really. tinyurl.com/unc7356

📢 To be clear:

Shelters don’t end homelessness, they manage it.

And Marbut uses shelters to hide homelessness, infantilizing and patronizing people experiencing homelessness in the process.

#HomesEndHomelessness