Main Street
UND Prof. Newman Joins First National Nature Assessment; Homelessness
Support for Prairie Public is provided by Ted X Fargo 2024. Journey into the enigmatic terrain of the unknown, where if beckons the curious, the daring and the dreamers. July 25th at the Fargo Civic Center. Information available at TedXFargo.com. - Welcome to Main Street on this Monday, the first day after the 4th of July weekend, the official dog days of summer have begun. Today on the show, we'll hear from Chandler Esslinger, the community liaison in the Harm Reduction Division of Fargo-Cast Public Health. She'll discuss the state of homelessness in Eastern North Dakota in an interview with John Harris from the Prairie Pulse Television Show. Chuck Laura will update us on technology that enhances our enjoyment of the birds that either pass through or call North Dakota home. But first, we'll meet Dr. Bob Newman, an ecologist from the University of North Dakota. He's been selected to participate in our country's first ever National Nature Assessment. Dr. Newman, welcome to Main Street. - Well, thank you. Tell me, please, what is the National Nature Assessment? And what does it aim to achieve? - This is a new thing. This is something that we haven't as a nation done before. We see all around us changes in the world, changes in the climate, changes in, you know, what you might call nature, the world that we live in. And we've never done a comprehensive assessment of what the state of that is in this country. And so as things change and as people get more concerned about those changes, the idea was we better figure out where things are right now so we can better understand how things are changing and maybe what we can do about it. - Dr. Newman, my son's a veterinarian and he went to school at UC Davis. And I just remember constantly there, mantra was one health. And the idea there was humans are connected to animals, are connected to our environment. We are all interconnected. Is that one of the significant things that you're trying to look at? - Yes, in fact, one health and there's another framework called planetary health, which is even a little bit broader, I think. That is one of the, I think, underlying philosophies of all this and it's something that we're going to probably be making explicit. There's always been this idea, I don't know, always is the right word, but at least in United States and a lot of other developed countries that humans have sort of moved out of nature and into something other than nature. So we live in a human world, that's certainly the case, but the idea is you could separate humans from nature because we have industry and we have, you know, agricultural, basically industrial food production. And so we're separate from it now. It's not true, it's never been true. And I think we're starting to see some of the impacts of the vulnerabilities that we have because we are still inevitably connected to the world that we came from and we're still in. - Who's the sponsor or who's putting together the national nature assessment? - So the sponsoring program is called the US Global Change Research Program or USGCRP. They're also the same organization that does the national climate assessment every four years or so. It's managed out of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. But these are federal entities, I guess, that are sort of umbrellas for federal agencies that are involved in doing, you know, working on, in the case of national climate assessment, looking at climate and climate changes, in the case of the program that we're in now, there's a lot of connection to a bunch of federal agencies, but especially like Department of Interior. In any case, it's a federal umbrella that does these national reports that are supposed to be informative. They're supposed to collect and synthesize and interpret information for politicians and policy makers and agencies as they try and figure out how they should be managing their business. - Tell me how you became aware of the opportunity to participate in the assessment and why were you excited about it? - I'll answer the first one first. We all, I'm a scientist, I'm an ecologist. We get really interested in something and we spend a lot of our careers, you know, focusing on that thing and we do research on that thing and it tends to be fairly specialized and mostly fairly narrow. And I've always been aware of the connections between the things I'm interested in, the research that I do and everything else around it. We have one world, everything's connected. You can't necessarily understand things very well in isolation and so this was an opportunity to maybe focus more on those connections and the broader base of knowledge that we're working in rather than just focusing on one narrow thing. I also really love the idea of doing something that is useful. I mean, I've always been interested in doing things that make a difference. Maybe at some level, we all wanna save the world or make the world a better place or something like that. Certainly for future generations, that's something we should aspire to. And it's not always obvious when you're doing research how this information might be used or useful, if you're not doing medical research, studying cancer or something like that. And so this was an opportunity to do something that seemed like it might be able to make a difference in the world. I was just gonna say to answer the first part of your question, because I've been in this business for a long time and, you know, I'm pretty wired into opportunities like this. I'm a member of the Ecological Society of America. Just to date myself a little bit. I've been a member since 1981 when I started graduate school. And so they send out notices all the time. And if some organization is looking for ecologists to be involved in something a lot of times, they will distribute that information through a variety of channels, but including a professional society like the Ecological Society of America. That may be how I first saw it. Last year at the National Conference for ESA, the director of the program, the National Nature Assessment, came to the conference and gave a presentation that was co-moderated by collaborator of mine. And so we all intended that. And he talked about what they were doing. And it sounded like a really interesting thing. And so I applied for it. - Do you have an idea, Dr. Newman, of the specific contributions you want to make to the National Nature Assessment? And are there like chapters you might be co-authoring? - Yes, so I believe, I don't think the chapters are currently numbered, but I think there's something like 11 chapters. And when you get selected as an author, a chapter, a co-author, the way it works is the people running the program. And there's a bunch of federal scientists or federal people who sift through all the applications of people that might want to be contributors to this. And they identify people that they think would be good chapter leads. So they have a lead scientist author. That's the chapter lead author. And they also have a federal liaison co-author. And then they get assigned a chapter and then they pick which chapter they think they'd be most interested in. And they look through all the other applications and think who would be a good contributor to this. So I actually got selected for the chapter because I've worked with the chapter lead in the past. And when she, I guess when she saw my application, she thought, yeah, he wasn't a bad person to work with. And he was kind of useful. So maybe I'll ask him if he wants to do it. - I'm sure too. - So I'm on a specific chapter. - I'm sure you'll be very useful, Dr. Niven. Is it your Northern Prairie ecosystem experience, do you think, that excited folks that wanted you to be part of this project? - That's part of it, I think. They did say they wanted to get good geographic representation. And I always want to be, I want to see on any of these major reports, somebody from the Northern Plains, because a lot of times, honestly, we get overlooked. If you're doing some kind of project on ducks or waterfowl, then we don't get overlooked because North Dakota is one of the hotspots in the nation and in the world in waterfowl production. But for a lot of other things, when people think about nature, this is gonna be part of the answer to a different question that you've already asked. But when people think about nature, they don't really think about North Dakota. If they know anything about North Dakota at all, besides it's cold here, they might think about agriculture and food production and that sort of thing. And we've got research universities in the state. We've got a state agency that does really important work. Several state agencies connected to, say, ecosystems. And there are scientists here and I don't want somebody from, and no offense or anything like that. I don't want somebody from North Carolina writing about North Dakota, not because they're not smart people and reasonably well-informed and stuff like that. But why would you not ask people that actually live and work in an area? So I think they saw the things the same way that the people put in the group together, because they did say they wanted a good geographic representation. And I might have been the only one from North Dakota that applied, or maybe from the Dakotas, I don't know. - We are enjoying our conversation with Dr. Robert Newman from the University of North Dakota. He is an ecologist and is part of a team of experts selected to take stock of America's wildlife and ecosystems in what will become the first national nature assessment. - Dr. Newman, give me a specific example or two if you could about how changes in our natural ecosystems impact our human health. What are some examples of this interconnection? - Oh, there are so many. And we'd need an hour to do just that probably. But I think when I was, a lot of times when I get this question, I try and think of what are some really obvious examples. When there are forest fires in British Columbia, or in Canada or the west coast of the United States, we get the smoke. And so something is disrupting forest ecosystems and some other part of the continent. And there are health impacts of that for humans here, health among other things. So everybody probably remembers when we get smoke and there's no reason to think that smoke is coming from a fire in North Dakota. Although sometimes it happens, we get grassland fires. So that and smoke in the air, particulate matter in the air is definitely a health problem. So that's a good example. I think you could think about a lot of more local things as well. So there's a lot of concern or an agricultural state. Some crops require insect pollinators. And if something's happening in the world that is messing up the lives of pollinators, either honeybees or native bees, then maybe crops don't get pollinated as well. And so there's always a concern about anything that's related to food production. Like I said, there's so many things. If you're into fishing, one of the major industries in the state of North Dakota is outdoor recreation. And one of the major pieces of that is recreational fishing. So if something is messing up your ability to go fishing, that won't make people very happy. And if something is messing up the fish themselves and you're eating that fish, I think the really familiar example is mercury contamination, you know, way back when it still happens, but you'll see mercury advisories for like pregnant women don't eat this fish. So there's lots of ways that changes in the world around us can directly harm us. Let me mention one other one because it's gotten a lot of press recently. And that is the connection between nature and mental health. This isn't something that people probably gave much thought to, but there's actually been quite a bit of research that's been done on the connection between somebody's mental health and just being able to get outdoors, be in nature. People during COVID, you couldn't go to work, you couldn't congregate, you couldn't go to concerts and things like that. So the national parks just got, or places where people could go anyway, where they were allowed to go, there was a great big increase in outdoor recreation. That's not accidental that people like those things. So people really like getting out in nature and hiking or just going for walks or bird watching or looking for wildflowers or whatever it is that they want to do, that reduces stress, it improves mental health. And like I said, there's been a lot of research on this. Even in cities, urban areas that have more green spaces, people tend to have better health outcomes than in places where there are no trees. And that could be mental health. It could also just be trees provide shade and that makes a huge difference when you have an extreme heat event. - I can share a test of that personally. Dr. Newman in Wyoming during COVID, trailheads in the Wind River range, for example, that might have one or two cars or no cars or three cars were bumper to bumper, dozens of cars deep from people from all over the country, trying to get out and enjoy nature during COVID. Let me ask you this question about climate change. I guess there are two parts to the question really. It's my feeling that still not everyone today agrees that climate change impacts our planet. I think that there's a lot of science that says it does. What are some of the key challenges posed by climate change that this report might address? And what do you think about our still disagreement about climate change? - That's a really great question. And it's one of those things that just leaves us scratching our heads sometimes what to do about it. First, let me just say there's incontrovertible evidence that climate change is real. It's happening and it's being caused by humans. I mean, people would point out that climate has always fluctuated in the past and changed 12,000 years ago. We were under ice right here, you know, 15,000 years ago. So we know that things change, but change that we're seeing now is rapid and fairly dramatic and it's all being driven by the burning of fossil fuels. Now, we happen to be in a fossil fuel state. Energy development is really important here. That shouldn't change the conversation about the reality of it though. So we know it's happening and we've known for 30 years that it's been happening, but because scientists are somewhat conservative and they don't want to commit to something when there's alternative possibilities, they want to test those things and they want to accumulate evidence. We've been spending a lot of time where climate scientists have been spending a lot of time collecting that evidence over the past few decades. The latest national climate assessment came out last year in 2023 and it pretty much said we have essentially complete confidence that climate is changing. It's changing in these ways. It's being driven by the burning of fossil fuels and the impacts of that are going to start to become increasingly hard to navigate as we go forward. So we've known this and there's a huge amount of evidence for it. You just are sometimes baffled why people don't accept that. And the only conclusion that you can come to is that the information itself isn't the limiting factor. We have plenty of information and so there are various reasons political and economic and cultural or whatever that people might question that idea. And one of the challenges is not everybody is affected in the same way. So if you live in a coastal area right now in the United States and you're having trouble getting a flood insurance or storm insurance, you have an immediate impact of climate change that you are experiencing. It's messing up your life. And this is a real problem because insurance companies are pulling out of markets like California and Florida and the Southeast Coast and places like that. 'Cause insurance companies are smart. They don't want to go out of business. And so they don't want to take on risks that they don't think that they can handle. So why doesn't everybody else believe it? Well, here in North Dakota turns out that North Dakota is probably one of the safest places in the continent in terms of the impacts of climate change. Everybody knows it can get hot here, but at least this summer and you can't ever go by just one year, but we haven't experienced the extreme heat events that they've been experiencing farther south. We're not in deep drought right now as everybody around here understands 'cause it's been raining so much lately, although that could change too. And if you didn't like winter before, then maybe winter isn't as bad anymore. So it just doesn't seem like, you know, an imminent threat the way it might someplace else. So a lot of times it depends on your personal experience of it. And, you know, we could talk about the politics of it and all of that, the business perspective on it. But I don't know if we want to go down that rabbit hole. Perhaps we'll leave that to another day. And another part I would ask you about in a future conversation maybe is, what do students think at the University of North Dakota about climate change, but we'll tease that maybe for another interview, Dr. Newman. - That's a fun one. - Dr. Newman, this is a multidisciplinary approach. Who are you most excited about? Or what discipline are you most excited about working with in this endeavor? - That's an awesome question. So I've always been interdisciplinary myself. I know that whatever I'm learning in the science, you know, I have, science is a fairly multidisciplinary thing all by itself. We have a biology and even in biology, we've got cell biology and molecular biology and how many colleges, then there's all sorts of other flavors of biology. And you know that the problem that you're working on requires expertise that you don't have, even within a single discipline like biology. Now expand that out to trying to understand how the information, the scientific research that you're producing is going to be used by people or how is going to be interpreted by people and how it's going to affect or not affect decision making. Now you're talking about something that we have zero training in. Even in knowing how to talk to the public about it, we have very little training in it for most of us in our formal education. So now you're talking about communication and marketing and you're talking about sociology and economics and maybe psychology and you know, the list could go on. And so it's talking to humanities scholars about how they see a problem because humanities are the disciplines, set of disciplines that most relate to how humans think and behave and respond to things. As from a scientific perspective, from the perspective of a scientist, I am most interested in learning from people that know how to relate to the human side of things that we don't have the expertise in because we want our science to be used and we want it to do good in the world. The human component of it is probably the most important piece of that. - Dr. Newman, I've read where you've wanted to be an ecologist since you were four years old. Tell me what has shaped your academic career. - I'm going to guess that most little kids are fascinated by the things that are at eye level for them and crawling around on the ground or whatever. I remember when my little sister used to follow my dad around in the garden and try and rescue all the earthworms. And by the time that she hit teenage years, she had totally lost interest in that for some reason. So I think that when you're a little kid and you're really fascinated by all the animals and plants and for me, it was animals and their behavior and what they were doing. It almost didn't matter what kind of animal it was. They were all interesting. Nobody told me that I wouldn't be able to make a living doing that. What that came as a surprise to me, actually, when I got to college was I might be able to make a living doing it. But nobody told me I couldn't. Fishing wildlife, biology friends, grow up hunting and fishing, and then they might find out when they get over that they can be wildlife biologists, just fisheries biologists. And so it was the same for me. - As we wrap up our conversation today, Dr. Newman, relative to the assessment, you've mentioned, and I quote, "wicked problems" that there are no easy solutions. - Yeah, so wicked problems in a nutshell are problems that don't have easy solutions. There might not be a single solution that would meet all of the objectives that you might have for solving a problem. You have to decide what's the most important things and what you can live with, what you can't live with in terms of changing nature or changing climate and that sort of thing. If you're in a situation where you have to make a decision between, there's lots of great examples in conservation biology where there's some endangered species or something like that. And how do you make sure that this species can continue to make a living in the world, even though not everybody wants it to, or doing that would make it harder for somebody else to make a living? Wolves are sort of the poster child. For can we get along with non-humans in this world? And some people like them and some people don't like them and would be totally happy if wolves went extinct. They're listed under the Endangered Species Act, which is a really important piece of legislation to make sure that we don't make rash decisions that would kind of not allow us to change our mind in the future because once a species is gone, it's gone. So how do you accommodate those competing interests and needs? I think the best way to do that is to get everybody in a room. This isn't necessarily an easy thing to do as anybody's ever tried it before knows. You have people that disagree about things. Find something you can agree on. Make a decision about what's the most important things and what you can live with and what you can't live with in terms of outcomes. And then try and walk that narrow path to finding the solution that will do the least harm, give you the greatest resilience and the greatest opportunity to maybe find a better solution in the future. When will we be able to read the First National Nature Assessment? I think they're talking about it being done in 2026. We are now at a point where we've done our-- what they call a zero-order draft. These federal projects tend to be very rigidly structured. And so I'm looking at the web page that we're supposed to be doing our drafts on and it goes from zero order to eight order. Every point along the way gets federal review. It's the most reviewed document I've ever worked on probably. So it's going to take a while to develop. And we're at a point right now where we've just basically put together a fully fleshed-out outline. And we're waiting for the reviews on that. Dr. Robert Newman, he teaches at the University of North Dakota where he is an ecologist. And he's part of a team of experts who have been selected to take stock of America's wildlife and ecosystems and create our nation's first national nature assessment. Dr. Newman, it's been a pleasure visiting with you on Main Street. Thank you. Yeah, happy to do that. Thank you for your interest. Coming up after the break, technology and burning and homelessness in North Dakota. That's after this. Capital Shakespeare of Bismarck presents Hamlet, July 17th through the 21st of the Prairie Amphitheater located on the lawn, just south of the main entrance to the North Dakota Heritage Center. Follow the grieving Hamlet as he seeks to avenge his father's death and plummets the kingdom and madness. Performance is starred at 6.30 PM and are free and open to the public with free will donations accepted. Limited concessions available, lawn chairs or blankets are encouraged. Capital Shakespeare's Hamlet, July 17th through the 21st in Bismarck. Welcome back to Main Street on Prairie Public. I'm Craig Blumenshine. Chandler Esslinger is the Community Liaison in the Harm Reduction Division of Fargo Cast Public Health. She discusses the state of homelessness in eastern North Dakota with John Harris from the Prairie Pulse television show. Chandler, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for the opportunity to be here. Well, you're the Fargo Cast Public Health Community Liaison. And we'll get to that in a moment. But first, tell the folks a little bit about yourself and where you're originally from, Maggie. So I grew up mostly in Sioux Falls and moved up to Fargo about 13 years ago. My background is in anti-poverty programming via community action in the region. And then I also managed a homeless program that supports homeless veterans and their families across the state of North Dakota, as well as implementing or developing and implementing community-wide initiatives that help improve overall health and well-being. And I've been in my role at Public Health since March of 2023. Well, you're here today to talk about the homeless in our region and especially in Fargo. Let's start with maybe talking about maybe a definition of homeless and then how that issue has changed over the last few years. People who are homeless just don't have a permanent residence. They don't have a place to sleep at night. We know that homelessness has been increasing across the nation. Recent reports to show that over the last year, we had a 12% increase in homeless destination-wide. And of course, we're seeing some of those same trends here in Fargo. So what percentage increase have you seen in the homeless population in Fargo? Then has it been since COVID or is it just happening? So actually, that's a great point. COVID, certainly the economic incentives or programs that were available during COVID have now pretty much all gone away. And so that really buffered kind of the cliff into homelessness that was coming kind of regardless. And so now, yes, we do continue to see an increase in homelessness. You know, the percentage kind of varies depending on what types of data we're analyzing. But what I tend to look at when I'm trying to understand the population that I primarily serve is the number of people who are living unsheltered. And so in our most recent wait-in-time count in the downtown area, we had about 50 people who were experiencing homelessness and were unsheltered. And that's more than we've seen in previous years. So where are these folks coming from? Are they from North Dakota? Are they from other regions? Or where they're coming here for services? So most people become homeless in the county that they were residing in. But we do also know that sometimes people will travel back to a community that they have ties to. Maybe they have family, maybe they lived here once, and they will return to a community that they're familiar with. Maybe where they know they have access to services. And so it's a little bit of both. - Well, you said a little bit about it, but talk more about your role as community liaison. What is it you really do and how does it play into the situation in Fargo? - So I work out of the downtown center every day. And I do a variety of different things. One of my responsibilities at the engagement center is helping to bring in programming for our guests, make sure that we have outreach workers on site every day who are available to provide case management or care coordination to the people we serve. And in addition to that, I work really closely with other city departments to kind of coordinate our homelessness response as well as our community-based organizations that make up the homelessness response system. And so my goal with that work is really to help align the community around best practices for ending homelessness. - How is Fargo cast public health? How are they actually involved with the day-to-day part of this issue? - We have a number of programs that serve our community who is unsheltered or experiencing homelessness. So we have the Downtown Engagement Center, which is open every day from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. right now. And that's a drop-in center where people who may not have a place to live, maybe were recently housed or who are at risk of homelessness, can come access resources, get connected to services. And we also provide showers, lockers, and laundry as kind of some of those basic needs. Often we'll have some food available for people and really just serve as a place for people to be outside of the elements throughout the day. We also run the Gladys Ray Shelter. And that is the only low-barrier shelter in our region, meaning that there are very few preconditions to entry. Absnights is not required. So we really try to capture the population of people who aren't being served by the traditional shelter system. And so that program runs from 5 p.m. to 8 a.m. every day. We also have our street outreach program that works to connect with people who are living unsheltered in our community, getting to build relationships with them, hopefully help get them into a better place by connecting them with services. So we really touch a variety of different points of the homelessness system and the individuals in our community. - Can you talk about numbers a little bit? Do you have identified a number that are homeless in the Fargo area? - So I can really speak specifically to the folks that we serve in our programs. So at the Engagement Center, when we have a really busy day, we'll see upwards of 150 people. We recently partnered with the city for our Winter Warming Initiative. And that was also really eye-opening for the number of people that were in need of temporary shelter throughout the winter months. And we saw over 700 unique individuals throughout the winter coming in to access the Winter Warming Center. And about 200 of those individuals were not previously known to us, so they had not been accessing any of our other resources before. And so that really tells us that there was not only a demand for the Winter Warming Center throughout the winter months, but we'd continue to see more and more people coming in and attempting to access services. The Gladys Ray Shelter is a 24-bed shelter and very frequently throughout the year, we're serving above that capacity just again to try to meet the need of people. - Does it change with the seasons, the number of people you see? - It can't, absolutely. We know that the Winter months can be deadly. We have really, really cold winters. And so we do tend to see more people present for shelter at that time, but there are many factors that can contribute to that. Weather really is one of them. This rainy weather that we've been having has also driven people more folks to come into the engagement center, more folks to present for shelter. And so we do see it kind of wax and wane, but the trend just is that it's increasing. - Is housing the ultimate goal here and long-term solution or not? - I mean, absolutely, housing is the goal. When we think about what qualifies somebody for being homeless, if you're accessing emergency shelter, if you're accessing transitional shelter, you are still considered homeless. It is only once you become permanently housed that you no longer fall into that category of experiencing homelessness. And so if we really want to address homelessness, we do need to get people into permanent housing. That's the only way to kind of resolve the issue. - Well, I understand representative from Milwaukee came by. Ken, maybe you talk about how they're dealing with their homeless situation. - So we had James, James Matthew from Milwaukee County come and present to our community. And really what Milwaukee has been able to do is implement a housing first approach with fidelity. And so what housing first really means is that you're able to move someone into housing without preconditions. What we've learned is that when people are given the opportunity to have a dignified place to live, they're more likely to attend to other barriers that may keep them from being stably housed or may have led to their homelessness in the first place. And so when we combine that access to housing with supportive services that people need in order to improve their situation, people tend to stay housed longer. And one of the strategies that Milwaukee County has employed is master leasing. And so they'll partner with local property managers, local apartments. And they will receive a certain number of units that then they can move people in and out of as they identify folks who are in need of housing and then really serve as that liaison between that property manager and the tenant. - Are there other cities that Fargo's learning from and things you can do? - Absolutely, I think that we are learning from other communities all the time. I think Fargo is unique because of our size. And so Milwaukee's a lot bigger than us and they've been able to reduce their chronically homeless and unsheltered population by over 90%. And when they've been able to move people into housing, those folks stay in housing at percentages of 80% or higher above 90% actually in their community. When we look at other areas, there are lessons learned in terms of what works, what doesn't work. And so we're always kind of evaluating what's working in other communities and how might we be able to implement that here. - How does Fargo's homeless situation compare with the Grand Forks, Bismarck, Minot? - So we do know that homelessness is increasing throughout our entire state. There isn't a single county in our state that hasn't been touched by eviction or where people aren't at risk of becoming homeless. Of course, because our population is larger, we do tend to see a larger percentage of people experiencing homelessness. There are people experiencing homelessness in all of those communities. And one of the things that I think is actually really unique about the relationship between Fargo and other parts of our state is that sometimes Fargo will be able to implement something or kind of pilot something and then other communities will be able to replicate that as well. So we saw that with our Winter Warming Center, many communities were facing more people than they had seen before in need of shelter and there just wasn't available shelter beds. And so because we were able to adopt our Winter Warming Center, other communities began to explore that model as well. - When you talk about the homeless, some of homeless is because of mental health reasons or alcohol or drug addiction, but can you talk about the services or treatment that you have that's out there available for that, for the homeless? - We are in need of more mental health and substance use services for everyone in our community. And the vast majority of people who have a mental health issue or a substance use issue are housed. But we also know that the need for those services just really outweighs the availability in our community. And so it would benefit everybody if we were able to build up those services more not only to meet the needs of people experiencing homelessness, but also people who may be housed who are struggling with those same issues. So it's absolutely an important intervention for everyone in our community. - You know, what percentage of the homeless population are I guess chronic homeless versus maybe those who are in a temporary situation or in a transition phase? - So most people who experience homelessness are able to self-resolve. There is a small portion of people who are chronically homeless. And that population does continue to grow as well. And so I think, you know, the numbers that we see in our community of people who are experiencing chronic homelessness, that's really driven by the fact that they have just so many more significant barriers to access housing than folks who are maybe becoming homeless for the first time. And that's just the nature of being on the street for a prolonged period of time. But it is a small population of the overall population of people experiencing homelessness. - Why do people end up homeless? I know a variety of reasons, but maybe you can explain a little more about why they are and what they can be. - I mean, there are a number of personal crises that an individual can face that can lead them into homelessness. A lot of times those are economic factors, like unplanned medical bills or car repairs. Sometimes there's a death in the family and maybe it's the breadwinner and people are now in a financial situation that they didn't think that they were going to be in. Some folks have been in foster care of their whole lives and age out of that system into homelessness. And some people have actually been homeless in their entire lives. So there's a variety of different factors that lead to someone being homeless, but ultimately, it's really because they have lost their place of residence and they cannot get back into housing. And that's kind of where we see people kind of fall into that trap of being homeless. - Maybe a tough question, but how do you balance the humanitarian issue when it comes to homelessness versus issues for patrons who are downtown that may feel unsafe or are subject to panhandling? - That's a great question. And it's something I grapple with quite a bit in my day-to-day work. And I actually don't see those two issues as in contradiction or conflict with one another. Everybody in our community is harmed by the experience of homelessness, whether you're housed or unhoused. And so if we're able to address homelessness, move people effectively into permanent housing, that makes our entire community a better place to live and a place where everybody belongs. And so I feel like if we were able to address that homeless issue with those more permanent solutions, we wouldn't be dealing with some of those symptoms of homelessness as well. - What kinds of shelters are available at night for the homeless and know a certain time of the year, churches open up, other organizations help with this situation? Do you work with those or are you aware of those? - We are in constant collaboration with the shelters in our community. I already mentioned the Gladys Hooray, which is our only kind of true low barrier shelter in the community. We do have the New Life Center, which is a shelter for single adult men. And they serve many, many individuals in their programs. We have churches united on the more head side that serves homeless individuals and families. We also have the YWCA that primarily serves women and women and families fleeing domestic violence. There is a shelter that opens up in the wintertime at Fraser, their Stepping Stones Resource Center that houses youth and in homeless terms, we kind of identify youth as individuals between the age of 18 and 24. And then we also have youth works and they have up to five spots of shelter beds for youth who are under 18 in our community experiencing homelessness. And so that really makes up the continuum of shelter availability and kind of the identified populations that they're meant to serve them. - Can you talk about the personal humanitarian angle to this? Obviously these are human beings and not just faces they have a back story in their life. - I mean, because I work out of the engagement center every day, I have the pleasure of getting to meet some of our guests and hearing their stories. And some of the things that people have done and experienced are just truly incredible. People have attained really high education. Some of them have been business owners. Some of them have really just traumatic past that have led them into the situation that they're in. But the level of resiliency that these individuals show the level of commitment to changing their situation is really inspiring. And so I'm grateful to sometimes be able to see a little bit beyond just the face and get to know more about that person as an individual. These are moms, sisters, fathers, siblings. These are people who live lives of meaning and substance every single day, whether they're housed or unhoused. And so I think it's really important for everybody in our community to recognize that these people have a role to play in our community and if we're able to kind of permanently address this homeless situation, again, that just makes our community a better place to live. - Well, without naming names, can you talk about any success story that you've been involved with, seeing people getting off the streets, so to speak? - So in my role, I don't do as much direct service as some of my peers, but I have been able to hear success stories of people who maybe have gotten their first apartment in their entire life. And just how their life can completely transform when they have that dignity of housing. You just have access to different choices than you have when you're on the street. You're able to address other issues that you may want to in your life, maybe reconnect with your children, maybe get a job, or maybe pick up a hobby that you have abandoned because you haven't had a place to live. I think the folks that I know who've been able to get housing are just some of the most incredible, resilient people. And I want to see more of those success stories continue. - So what's your message maybe to the public who go to downtown Fargo or Moorhead, in terms of safety and in terms of what the city of Fargo is trying to do? - That's a great question. And I think, you know, because I work in the harm reduction division of Fargo-Cast public health, we really think about this in terms of wherever we go, there's an element of risk, right? And so what we try to think about is, how do we minimize or mitigate the risks that are associated with any type of activity? And so we work really hard to meet people where they're at, both our house community members and unhoused community members. And that's actually helped us develop a brand new program, our neighborhood response team, which is specific to downtown. This is a team of harm reduction advocates that are walking around downtown every day from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., business owners, visitors and residents can call the neighborhood response team if they identify somebody who's in a crisis or maybe have passed somebody who's in a crisis or interacting with them. And they're able to then kind of manage a response to that. And just by default of being downtown, actually, alongside these folks, sometimes we can prevent a crisis altogether. And so that's really our approach to trying to make our community as safe as possible for everyone. - Sorry, we're out of time. But if people want more information, where can they go? - Please visit us at the Fargo-Cast Public Health website. We've got some great information there about our programs and how to get in touch. - Thank you for joining us today. - That was Chandler Esslinger with John Harris, Prairie Public's general manager and host of the Prairie Pulse television show. Prairie Pulse airs Thursdays at 8 p.m. on the television service of Prairie Public. Up next, Chuck Lura shares how to use technology to enhance our birding experiences here in North Dakota in his natural North Dakota essay. When it comes to observing nature, bird watching ranks perhaps at the top of the list. Whether it's watching Robins in the yard, rapidly watching an eagle soar overhead, or trying to identify a bird making that sweet call from some thick brush, birds seem to draw our interest. But many among us may not be aware of a couple of aids that can help enhance our birding experiences. One of the widely used sources of information is eBird, eBird.org. Birders around the world construct checklists of what, when, where, and how many birds they observe and submit their results to eBird. All that information is available on the website. Users can explore all observations for a year, a month, last observed, or in a particular area such as the state or county. If you're so inclined, you can even register with the eBird and submit your observations. A quick check of recent observations for North Dakota included seven Western Caddly, or it's near Pettibone, seven White-faced Ibis and Mackenzie Slough, one Bard Owl and Fargo's Oak Grove Park, and a Ruddy Turnstone at Long Alkaline Lake in Kitter County. Each observation also lists the observer. Have you ever heard a bird calling from some hidden location and wondered what species was making the call? Not with the help of Merlin, a free app developed by Cornell University's Lab of Ornithology, you can identify that bird. Simply pressing sound ID on the app will record the bird songs or calls you're hearing, and it will list the possible species making the call or calls. It's fun and quite accurate. There's also a bird ID wizard where a user selects from a variety of silhouettes as well as colors of a bird and where it was observed, and the app will produce a list of possible matches. Users can also take a photo of a bird and photo ID will produce a list of possible matches. There are other aids as well, including the ability to create your own life list. So check out these bird watching aids. I've put links to the eBird website and more information on Merlin, along with the text of this natural North Dakota. You can access them at PrairiePublic.org. I'm Chuckler. Support for Dakota Datebook is provided by Books on Broadway and Dakota Soda and Coffee Company of Williston, featuring coffees and a wide variety of books for children and adults. Books on Broadway, the independent bookstore for independent minds. North Dakota, Native American essential understanding number three is about sharing and generosity. It states, "Native people have rich traditions "of sharing and generosity, "which include gifting, shared meals, powwow gatherings, "shared living spaces, and care for relatives, "including the environment, natural resources, and waters." In this episode of the Dakota Datebook, we listen to Dennis Fox Jr., enrolled member of the Mandan Hidatsa Aricara Nation in We Are Honored, and So We Give. - You know, that's like a lot of us that try to maintain ways of Mandan Hidats, or rock rock people, understand that if you're honored with something, that even if where I work is the three affiliated tribes, if they say, "Oh, your employee, "now you're going into retirement, "and we want to gift you with all these stuff," and you take it in a good way, and they gift you and everything, but you, as an Indian person, realize they're honoring you, and that honor that happens then means, "Well, I gotta do something. "I gotta take this seriously." And so, when I receive something, and it's not everybody, but when I receive something, okay, I really appreciate they give you a blanket, but I didn't expect this honor, so I'm gonna give this blanket to, usually an elder lady, or elder man, or something, and I appreciate what you're doing for me, but in my way, I'm gonna give away because you're honoring me, so I'm giving that industry meeting those goods, or I'm gonna feed, I'm gonna tell people that, boy, they honored me, I want you all to come eat with me, I'm gonna feed at my camp, and we'll feed everybody, 'cause it's quite the honor that they honored me in, and they gave me employee of the month, or whatever it was, but... I'm Scott Simpson. If you'd like to learn more about the North Dakota Native American essential understandings, and to listen to more indigenous elder interviews, visit www.TeachingsOfOurElders.org. Dakota Datebook is produced in cooperation with the State Historical Society of North Dakota. Funding for this series is from Humanities ND, and the North Dakota Department of Public Instruction. We'd like to thank the North Dakota Council on the Arts for supporting arts programming here on Prairie Public. That's a wrap for today's edition of Main Street. We are deeply grateful for the privilege of your time. Tomorrow on the show, philosopher Dr. Jack Russell Weinstein sits down with my co-host, Ashley Thornberg, for one last philosophical currents together, and they'll reflect on how the segment came to be, and what they've learned from working together. We hope you'll join us again tomorrow, right here on Main Street. (upbeat music)