Ever wonder why some victims of human trafficking struggle to escape their situation, even when help is available? Tune into our Emancipation Nation episode 201 and allow us to shed light on two fundamental barriers that often impede victims from receiving the assistance they desperately need: transportation and housing. In this episode we unravel the significance of these basic needs and how their inadequacy can hinder victims' journey towards healing and freedom.
In this enlightening discussion, we navigate the different types of housing solutions for victims, ranging from temporary shelters to transitional housing, and how each serves a unique purpose in the survivor's journey. Dr. Williamson, drawing from Maslow's hierarchy of needs, underscores the impossibility of focusing on higher-level needs without first catering to the basic physiological ones. Join us as we delve into these pressing issues, and gain invaluable insights into how we, as advocates, can more effectively address these barriers and equip survivors with the resources they need to begin their journey towards healing and independence.
Ever wonder why some victims of human trafficking struggle to escape their situation, even when help is available? Tune into our Emancipation Nation episode 201 and allow us to shed light on two fundamental barriers that often impede victims from receiving the assistance they desperately need: transportation and housing. In this episode we unravel the significance of these basic needs and how their inadequacy can hinder victims' journey towards healing and freedom.
In this enlightening discussion, we navigate the different types of housing solutions for victims, ranging from temporary shelters to transitional housing, and how each serves a unique purpose in the survivor's journey. Dr. Williamson, drawing from Maslow's hierarchy of needs, underscores the impossibility of focusing on higher-level needs without first catering to the basic physiological ones. Join us as we delve into these pressing issues, and gain invaluable insights into how we, as advocates, can more effectively address these barriers and equip survivors with the resources they need to begin their journey towards healing and independence.
You know the why human trafficking work is needed To fight for the freedom of modern day slaves. But love, passion, commitment isn't all you need to be an effective and successful anti-trafficking advocate. Learn the how. I'm Dr Celia Williamson, director of the Human Trafficking and Social Justice Institute at the University of Toledo. Welcome to the Emancipation Nation podcast, where I'll provide you with the latest and best methods, policy and practice discussed by experienced experts in the field, so that you can cut through the noise, save time and be about the work of saving lives.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the Emancipation Nation episode 201. I'm Dr Celia Williamson and today I want to talk about two of the most prominent barriers to victims receiving assistance. Last week, I talked about the 10 area of needs that are common for victims. This week, I really want to come back and emphasize two very basic needs that I neglected to talk about last week. But these are critical needs and in fact, you can't really heal or move forward without addressing these barriers, these consistent, pervasive barriers. This is an important episode. If we can get these two struggles addressed, we would have moved our issue forward in a major way. What are those barriers? One, transportation. Two, housing. So let's talk about housing first, because I think that's the one that most people do understand is a major barrier to helping survivors heal.
Speaker 1:So a lot of us are familiar with Maslow's hierarchy of needs. He says that we must all people, no matter who you are we have physiological needs food, clothing, water, shelter those things we can't really focus ourselves on love needs or our self-esteem, or our need to belong or any goals or dreams that we have if we haven't taken care of our physiological needs. So if we don't have a safe place, a place let's not even a place to lay our head, we really can't focus on the second level of need that Maslow talks about, which is safety needs, safety and security. If we achieve our physiological needs on a regular basis and we feel safe and secure, we can move on to concern ourselves with love and belonging and meeting those needs. If those are met, we can focus on our self-esteem needs and if those are met we can focus on self-actualizing ourselves. But if we don't have the physiological needs met, we can't even concern ourselves with safety and security. And that explains a lot. It explains why some victims, some survivors, are living in conditions where they don't feel safe because they can't at this time afford to be concerned as much about safety. They have to attend to their physiological needs, which is at least a place. So we, as advocates, have to concern ourselves with ensuring that our clients, our survivors, as we walk alongside them, that they have somewhere, some type of housing, where they also feel safe and secure.
Speaker 1:Housing, of course, is a major barrier around the world and, of course, in the US. So now let's talk about the different types of housing, because we think that, you know, any kind of housing will fit any kind of situation, not true? So typically, if there's a crisis, if there's absolutely no housing, we can at least try to connect our survivors with shelters, and shelters are very temporary. It's something that you might stay in for three days to three weeks, something like that. It's not meant to be a long-term solution. Shelter is meant to provide you a roof over your head, bed, meals, safety, and so it's a temporary fix while you're working on a more permanent plan. So those are shelters.
Speaker 1:Next is transitional housing. Transitional housing, again, it's not a permanent solution. It's not meant to be a permanent solution. People in temporary housing I'm sorry, people in transitional housing might stay six months, up to two years. There's programming, typically that goes on with transitional housing. There's a lot of transitional housing, for instance, in sober living and stuff like that. So if we were to equate it to substance abuse, we'd say like a shelter is sort of equivalent to somebody who's going into detox, a detox program. It's just really brief, really temporary Transitional housing six months, up to two years might be equated to somebody who's in a sober living program. It's there's some programming going on.
Speaker 1:If you're a victim, a survivor, in a transitional housing program, they're likely preparing you for employment, for independence, empowering you with the plan that you move on to permanent housing. So permanent housing what is that that's? Those are things that are like tenant based, where you are working and you're paying rent or you're receiving some type of rental assistance. Or there's some government funded section 8 housing where you're paying a percentage of your income in rent so that you have some investment there, some sort of skin in the game, but the government is paying the majority of your rent. These are the housing programs currently in the US and those type of permanent housing situations. People stay in those for years. Sometimes there are lots of rules to follow and those types of things and provided you don't violate the rules, you can stay in that type of permanent housing forever if you want to. So it kind of goes along.
Speaker 1:When we talk about victim survivor, thriver, you know it might be shelter for emergency, shelter for a victim. Maybe you know transitional housing for a survivor and maybe permanent housing for a thriver. Different types of housing situations may be called for, different types of situations, right. So if you want to know more about how to, how do I connect to this housing that you know maybe you have a client that needs housing or you just want to be prepared in case you do have a client that needs housing, you can always look back at episode 129, I think, that I posted on January 11th. It talks all about the National Trafficking Sheltered Alliance and you can Google them, you can look them up, you can talk to them and and find out from them who are the experts on providing housing for victims of human trafficking, where housing might be in your area. You can also call the Playlist Project, right, the hotline number, 888-37-37-888, and they can give you information on housing.
Speaker 1:But really, when you're talking about trauma work and coming to groups and going to counseling, it's a there's, there's a rank in order to these things. I mean, those aren't going to be very helpful if there's no foundation built, if there's no housing, if there's no safe place to return to after you've done all the case management and all the services that someone might provide. So housing, that's the foundation upon which we build all the other services. The second biggest barrier basic services that are needed transportation. This is a little more difficult one. People have varying feelings about transportation, but I can tell you, statistically, there are excellent programs out there that are just out of reach of the neediest people. So let me say that again great programs out of reach and not accessible to people who need them the most.
Speaker 1:If we could solve the transportation issue, we can help a lot of people. Some of us believe that we just have to give you bus tokens or a bus card, excuse me and you can get to where you need to get to. Easily said, not so easily done, Because if someone has kids, they have to arrange for a sitter, or they have to take the bus and take the kid to the daycare and then get over to the appointment that they have to make, and they have often a 15-minute window if you have an appointment. If you're over 15 minutes late. Well, we ought to reschedule you. It might take somebody a few hours to take the bus system.
Speaker 1:If you're in a community like mine, we have a public transportation system. It's not very convenient. It doesn't show up to every spot every 15 minutes so somebody can get you know. In big cities, sure, you're standing out there 15 minutes before the subway comes or the railway comes or the bus comes. But in rural areas there may not even be a bus system that comes to where you live and takes you to the places you need to be. And in moderate-sized cities there is a bus system, but it may take 30 minutes, it may take 40 minutes for you to stand outside waiting for the bus, and then the bus is going to go all the way downtown first and then you're going to have to get on a second bus. It's going to take you way out to wherever you are going to be. This will take may take hours, and there's a lot of stress and there can't be one mistake made If you miss a bus and you got to wait another 30, 40 minutes.
Speaker 1:Transportation is a major barrier to people who need to get the services so they can heal. So and then sometimes our perspective is well, if you really wanted it, you would get there While we leave and go. Get in our nice warm car, turn it on, turn the heat on and drive ourselves in our nice warm coat by the way across town to our appointments. So we have no real concept about what it is to stand outside in the cold and even in the warmth and waste half a day trying to do one thing. So we have to have some empathy right. We have to be able to put ourselves in someone else's shoes so that we can feel what it might be like and still will never actually know.
Speaker 1:Some of us we think that giving bus cards or bus tokens or bus fare is a treat, is a benefit. Somebody has to work in some programs toward that goal. Giving bus fare and tokens, that's not a treat, that's not a reward. Oftentimes that's a basic requirement If you want the people to get the services you have to enable. You can't pretend transportation is not an issue, and providing bus tokens and bus fare, that's really the basic minimum level. I wouldn't recommend that because that causes stress and barriers in and of itself.
Speaker 1:If we had programs in some cities too where we can help repair people's cars, where we can provide gas cars for people to be able to travel to the appointments that they need to travel to and don't worry about if so-and-so is going across town to see their friend or whatever. Not using it for healthcare appointments or what have you Seeing your friend is probably a good way to build those informal support systems that you need so that you don't need peer advocates and social workers and helpers in your life in the long run. So those programs that offer transportation because they have a van, those are more of the gold standard. Those programs that allow workers to transport in their own cars and, by the way, pay for the added commercial car insurance so that that worker is covered and protected, those programs understand that not only are you providing transportation to ensure that those survivors get to your group, get to your services and other services, but they also understand something else that's critically important that when you're in the car, when you're in the van, those are therapeutic moments as well. You're having a conversation, this person is disarming, it's disarming, you're disarming, and so relationships can build, conversations can be meaningful.
Speaker 1:Therapy doesn't just happen in an office where somebody's sitting behind a desk or whatever. You're laying on a couch or whatever, the old, traditional way that we saw therapy. Therapy happens while you're sitting on the front porch talking to a survivor. It happens while you're transporting them to their court appointment or wherever it is, to buy groceries so that they can go home and cook for the week for themselves. Whatever it is, transportation, again, is not a reward, it's a requirement, it's not a privilege, it's an almost a right If you want this person to indeed partake of your services, partake of other services.
Speaker 1:But a lot of times we attach people's character to transportation. Well, if I wanted it, I would get it. Okay, but from what vantage point are you looking at? You mean, when you go home to your warm house that has heat all year round and lights that come on and you have the internet, and when you leave the house you put your warm boots on and your warm coat on and warm up your nice car driver. I mean, you have to see your vantage point. Are you biased in some way? Get the people to the service and don't wait for them to thank you, thank you, thank you, as if it is a reward. This is something that they need to do in order to heal and remember.
Speaker 1:I think 32% of rural areas don't even have public transportation, so that becomes a significant barrier. So that's all I wanted to talk about today was housing and transportation. Make sure that you are attending to both of those things, along with last week's episode, if you didn't listen to it. Listen to that because we talk about the 10 common areas of need for survivors that you could be working on with them, and these two are not rewards. Again, they are very fundamentally basic needs. So until next time the fight continues, let's not just do something, let's do the best thing. If you like this episode of Emancipation Nation, please subscribe and I'll send you the weekly podcast. Until then, the fight continues.