Scotty Franzyshen
Housing, employment, community, and life in Butte County
About
Navigating America from the Bottom Up
My name is Scotty Franzyshen.
For more than a decade, I have lived in and around Chico, California, navigating life from a perspective that is rarely represented in policy discussions — from the bottom up.
I have experienced homelessness, worked, volunteered, built things, fixed things, lived simply, dealt with government systems, nonprofit organizations, housing programs, employment requirements, public assistance, and many of the other systems that people encounter when they are trying to get back on their feet.
I am now working part-time and moving toward stable housing, but my experiences have left me with a lot of questions.
And those questions are what this blog is about.
Why I’m Writing This
I don’t consider myself an expert on homelessness, housing, employment, government, or social services.
I am something else:
I am a person who has had to navigate these systems firsthand.
That gives me a different perspective.
When you are looking at a system from the outside, it can be easy to see programs, budgets, buildings, organizations, statistics, and success stories.
When you are the person trying to navigate that system, you experience something different.
You experience waiting lists.
Eligibility requirements.
Applications.
Referrals.
Shelters.
Case managers.
Job requirements.
Transportation problems.
Housing prices.
Income limits.
Credit requirements.
Rules.
Dead ends.
And sometimes, you experience programs that appear to have a pathway forward but don’t necessarily provide a clear path to where you actually want to go:
a place to live and a way to remain housed.
My Perspective
I am not interested in simply criticizing the people and organizations working on these problems.
There are many people doing difficult and important work, often under difficult circumstances.
Instead, I want to understand the systems themselves.
What are we trying to accomplish?
What are we actually accomplishing?
Where does the money go?
What services are being provided?
How many people ultimately become housed?
How many remain housed?
What happens to the people who don’t fit neatly into an existing program?
And perhaps most importantly:
Are we actually reducing homelessness, or are we becoming increasingly effective at managing it?
I don’t know all of the answers.
That’s why I’m asking the questions.
From the Bottom Up
The name of this blog comes from the direction I’m looking.
Most systems are designed from the top down.
Policies are created.
Programs are funded.
Organizations are established.
Services are delivered.
People are expected to navigate the system.
I want to look at things from the other direction.
What does the system look like from the perspective of the person who has to navigate it?
What happens when the person doesn’t fit the standard assumptions?
What happens when someone needs a room instead of a shelter?
What happens when someone can work, but only part-time?
What happens when someone has no car?
What happens when someone has no family support?
What happens when someone doesn’t need intensive services but simply cannot afford the available housing?
What happens when someone needs treatment?
What happens when someone needs housing first?
What happens when someone needs something completely different?
These aren’t hypothetical questions.
They are questions I have encountered personally, and questions I believe are worth examining more broadly.
Housing Is Only Part of the Problem
One of the things I have learned is that the word homelessness can make a very complicated problem sound like a simple one.
Two people can both be homeless while having completely different circumstances.
One may need addiction treatment.
Another may need psychiatric care.
Another may be leaving prison.
Another may be an older person who lost a home after losing a job.
Another may have a disability.
Another may simply be working but unable to afford the local rent.
Treating all of these situations as the same problem can lead to a system where everyone is offered roughly the same solution.
I believe we need to ask a different question:
What does this particular person need to become safely and sustainably housed?
Sometimes that may be a shelter.
Sometimes treatment.
Sometimes supportive housing.
Sometimes transitional housing.
Sometimes a tiny home or micro-unit.
Sometimes a shared house.
And sometimes it may simply be an affordable room and enough income to pay the rent.
Services and Outcomes
I also want to look carefully at the difference between providing services and solving problems.
Helping a homeless person is not necessarily the same thing as helping a homeless person become housed.
And helping someone become housed is not necessarily the same thing as helping them remain housed.
A shelter bed can be important.
A meal can be important.
A shower can be important.
A case-management appointment can be important.
Treatment can be important.
Employment assistance can be important.
But ultimately, I want to understand how all of those things connect to the outcome.
Where is the pathway to housing?
And how do we know whether that pathway is working?
What I Hope to Learn
This blog isn’t intended to prove that my ideas are correct.
In fact, I expect some of them to change.
I want to look at different approaches to housing and homelessness — including approaches that I may initially disagree with.
I want to learn from communities that have tried different models.
I want to examine what appears to work, what doesn’t, who each model is designed for, what it costs, and what happens to the people who go through it.
I want to compare those ideas with what is happening here in Butte County and Chico.
And I want to do that as fairly as I can.
That means asking difficult questions without assuming the answers.
The Bottom-Up View
I believe some of the most useful information about a system comes from the people who have actually had to use it.
Not just administrators.
Not just politicians.
Not just researchers.
Not just service providers.
But the people standing in line.
The people filling out the applications.
The people sleeping in the shelters.
The people trying to find a job.
The people trying to pay the rent.
The people trying to navigate the system while already exhausted from trying to survive.
That is the perspective I bring to this blog.
I’m not claiming to have all the answers.
I’m simply trying to understand the questions.
And maybe, by looking at the problems from the bottom up, we can find some better answers.
Scotty Franzyshen
Building • Fixing • Serving