Paul Shoemaker - Taking Charge of Change: How Rebuilders Solve Hard Problems

Rosanne Haggerty

In 1990, she started an organization, Common Ground, to demonstrate solutions to homelessness at scale. In the following twenty years, they created nearly three thousand new homes in creatively financed buildings in and around New York City, which assisted 4,500 lower-income and homeless individuals. She also knew that homelessness was continuing to rise.

Homelessness does not discriminate by geography. It occurs from urban centers to suburbs to rural regions. Homelessness in rural settings is often hidden, unlike the more visible street homeless in urban areas. The homelessness challenge directly affects nonprofit, public, and private sectors because of its impact on quality of life, public safety, and economic development, not to mention public health and personal endangerment.

Given that Common Ground (now named Breaking Ground) hadnt stopped homelessness from increasing, in 2011, Haggerty founded Community Solutions to help communities across the United States end homelessness. Just four years later, their 100,000 Homes Campaign exceeded its goal by housing more than 105,000 Americans, a phenomenal accomplishment. Yet at the conclusion of that effort, she could not escape the stark fact that none of the communities involved had ended homelessness. She was trying to climb a mountain that kept getting steeper with a summit that kept getting higher.

If you dont know Rosanne Haggerty, at this point you might assume that because she gave it an incredibly admirable effort, doing more than just about anyone else ever had, she would feel disheartened or disgruntled. If she felt any of those feelings, it didnt stop her. In her very humble way, Rosanne Haggerty is pretty steely-eyed.

In 2015, she and Community Solutions launched Built for Zero, a movement that has finally proven that, when the right conditions are met, communities can measurably end chronic and veteran homelessness (what they call functional zero). So, what is one of the hardscrabble, on-the-street, bare-knuckles keys to finally making progress on one of Americas most visible, gritty, and seemingly intractable problems? In her own words, a Generosity Mindset.

How do you end chronic homelessness in eleven communities across America, like Arlington, Virginia; Riverside, California; and Chattanooga, Tennessee? And how do you end veteran homelessness in Bergen County, New Jersey; Lancaster, Pennsylvania; and Rockford, Illinois?

Apparently by

• creating a commitment to unity and looking for what you can commonly share while respecting one anothers differences;
• leaving room for multiple points of view; and
• finding your edge of discomfort as a leader, just as a rock climber does, pushing beyond your percieved boundaries in order to lead diverse people.

And by doing all these things, a city will be in relationship around a shared, nonpartisan community goal and you will create a powerful shared truth, like knowing the names and identities of each homeless person, so its personal to everyone. Thats what a Generosity Mindset looks like, and thats how to fight one of the most complex, perplexing civic challenges in America. Haggerty can hold that generosity even in the midst of such complexity.

Ive hung out in quite a few meetings and conversations with her over the last few years. I dont know that I would have understood what a Generosity Mindset meant when I first met her. Over time, it became more and more clear. She believes in and is looking for others who believe with her. She keeps an even keel at all times; thats her makeup. She leads by bringing everyone in and making sure the work moves at the speed of trust. And she leads through a strategically and intentionally generous mindset.

Haggerty has accrued just about every award and fellowship you possibly could in the social sector. She is also an exemplar of a new kind of leader America will need more and more of in our future, starting right now. Shes a Rebuilder.

When I was in first and second grade, growing up in Fort Dodge, Iowa, Snell-Crawford Park was just a few hundred feet from our backyard. In the hot, humid summers, Id take off into the woods, try to avoid the poison ivy, and walk along Soldier Creek. Somewhere along the trail was a small, simple arch bridge with a road running over the creek. Id sit underneath that bridge and wait for cars to go rumbling over. Even with a bridge that simple, I was sort of fascinated by how a structure could hold up a whole concrete street with cars speeding across.

Bridges across the United States in 2020 are deteriorating. A recent report estimates that it will take more than eighty years to fix all of them. There are more than 600,000 bridges in America, and 235,000 of them need some sort of repair. Thats almost 40 percent. Nearly 8 percent, 46,000 are structurally deficient and in need of urgent rebuilding.

The state of our deteriorating, structurally deficient bridges in 2020 is an evocative metaphor for the nation we are living in right now. The social, economic, and health structures underlying American civil society are in a more critical condition than they have been in decades.