Heroes Of The Homeless Crisis: How DiDi Delgado Of Restore National Is Helping To Support Some Of The Most Vulnerable People In Our Communities
Listen to the folks who are trying to get you to take care of you.
As a part of our series about “Heroes Of The Homeless Crisis” I had the pleasure of interviewing DiDi Delgado.
DiDi Delgado (Pronoun — DiDi) is an award-winning poet, a frontline activist, an experienced anti-racism educator, a writer/author/journalist, and an international Black liberation organizer. Through work in arts and activism, Delgado developed a platform audience of tens of thousands of people who follow to be informed, challenged, and liberated. Delgado has nearly 15 years’ experience of community service and organizing in NY and Boston; during the holiday season, DiDi and a team of Black organizers from across the US run a fundraising campaign to help single Black moms pay rent. www.rentformoms.org
Thank you so much for joining us! Our readers would love to ‘get to know you’ a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your personal background, and how you grew up?
Thanks for this opportunity to talk with you all about my work. I grew up in a two-parent household that was very uneven when it came to emotional and financial labor. I’m the oldest of my mother’s three children, and I often felt that responsibility as a latch-key kid. My mother worked as a cosmetologist, a bartender, in investment brokerage operations; I remember during 9/11, she worked at Cingular Wireless. My mother held down any job she could, all while being medically disabled. My stepfather worked for GM for many years until his plant shut down, and then our whole family moved to Florida. I grew up in the South for the next 13 years and saw my mom go through a lot more than she should have in order to be a great parent for us. When my mom and her husband got divorced in 1998, we had already moved back to Boston. It was then that I saw my mom really do it all on her own. Apartment after apartment, move after move, always because the rent was too damn high.
Is there a particular story or incident that inspired you to get involved in your work helping people who are homeless?
At the age of 16, I sought emancipation from my mother. I eventually ended up in a local homeless shelter — Bridge Over Troubled Water in Boston — where I was placed with a case worker. Through our conversation we discovered that my mom was a former client of this same caseworker, several years prior. The deep impacts of generational trauma became increasingly apparent to me. I used these lessons to focus on Black liberation and Black safety. Do Black families deserve to be housed? I think that we do.
As I got older, I started to see how things were set up against people. How it was especially set up against Black women and non-men. I learned about income disparity between white and Black families — especially single moms — and it made me think about things like financial imprisonment and how paying rent is actually racist.
It irks my soul that every month millions of Black Americans hand over half of our livelihood to the descendants of those who forcefully brought our ancestors here to work for free. Essentially, America is in the business of charging its captives rent.
Yet and still, the vast majority of Black and Brown Americans rely on renting in order to avoid homelessness.
Homelessness has been a problem for a long time in the United States. But it seems that it has gotten a lot worse over the past five years, particularly in the large cities, such as Los Angeles, New York, Seattle, and San Francisco. Can you explain to our readers what brought us to this place? Where did this crisis come from?
It’s important to note that the average homeless family in the US is a single parent household headed by an African-American woman — homelessness, like mass incarceration, disproportionately impact marginalized groups. Black and Latinx individuals make up over 50% of all homeless people in the US. And although more than half of Black women have attended college, Black moms are still almost twice as likely to live below the poverty level in the US compared to white folks or Asian Americans.
While paying rent is difficult for everybody, it disproportionately impacts families of color. And since the heads of household for Black families are predominantly mothers, it disproportionately impacts Black women.
We generally lack the financial or social capital necessary to begin the process of purchasing a home; or as CNN bluntly put it, “Buying a home is easier if you’re white.”
A question that many people who are not familiar with the intricacies of this problem ask is, “Why don’t homeless people just move to a city that has cheaper housing?” How do you answer this question?
It takes money and connections to just up and move. It takes a new job, a remote job, or one flexible enough to move to a new city. Service industry jobs aren’t going to allow for that; most jobs in general don’t. If you have kids, moving them from school-to-school to try to follow where rent hasn’t been hiked up multiple times is not an option. “Just move” is ableist, it’s racist, it’s misogynist, and it’s anti-community. It’s self-defeating. Moving rips you away from the community and support that you DO have, making you even more vulnerable. It’s not a solution for most people.
If someone passes a homeless person on the street, what is the best way to help them?
If you really want to help, talk to individual, ask them what they need. Trust them and don’t make anyone prove their story. Then give them something they need, usually it’s money, without stipulation or expectation. Fight your own biases in the moment, because the ask, believe it or not, isn’t about you. Believe people when they say they need help, and give what you can. People passing by get so caught up in “Oh, what are they using this money for?” and forget that they are also people with their own agency who know what they need.
The sheer number of people who need help can be overwhelming. Give what you can. Help where you can. Be generous. Budget your time and resources so you aren’t over or under-extending yourself. Encourage others to care and realize the importance of wealth distribution. Keep focusing on the most marginalized. It’s not your job to save everybody. It’s our collective job to make sure everyone is taken care of.
What is the best way to respond if a homeless person asks for money for rent or gas?
With money. Housing needs to come first. When housing is not a stressor, people are able to secure better jobs and build better family and community connections.
We need rent relief in the form of mutual aid the same way we needed mutual aid in the face of COVID-19. Rent relief is a government bailout that should happen, but the government didn’t bail us out during the pandemic and we felt like, “Damn, we need to help each other. Why are we not helping each other during this housing crisis?”
Can you describe to our readers how your work is making an impact battling this crisis?
By putting cash directly in the hands of Black moms across the country, we work towards subverting oppressive and predatory economic systems stacked against Black MaGes (Marginalized Genders). Together, we help ensure the agency that families deserve and are owed.
This fight won’t be won by government officials. The system isn’t broken waiting for the right fix. It was built intentionally to be operating like this and kudos to the architects, because it’s been working really well. We have to build lifeboats and imagine futures outside of white supremacy and capitalism.
How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected the homeless crisis, and the homeless community? Also how has it affected your ability to help people?
The COVID-19 pandemic hit Black and Brown communities the hardest, in both infection rates and income insecurity. It also created a unique opportunity for receiving direct support for these communities, amidst calls for Covid-19 relief funds. In 2020, we raised $170,045.95 (including over $20,000 we raised with other reparations groups for Black moms to pay their rent over the holidays) and handed it over with love, confidentiality and no strings attached to 500 Black organizers & families.
White folks who called for Covid-19 “mutual aid” are some of the same who previously decided that direct reparations (white folks paying for exploited labor in the form of direct giving to Black communities) were not appropriate. Yet the principles in both calls are the same: because systemic oppression has kept some away from the resources they need to live, we as a community must make sure that those resources get to those who have been kept in the margins of society.
Can you share something about your work that makes you most proud? Is there a particular story or incident that you found most uplifting?
There was a defining moment in my work when one of the people we helped gave us this huge shoutout on social media.
And then she asked people to wish me a happy birthday and send prayers for me and my work, because it turns out we didn’t know she was an organizer where she lived 😂😭
Without sharing real names, can you share a story with our readers about a particular individual who was impacted or helped by your work?
We don’t require that kind of transactional testimonial — we call it trauma porn, because it is. What I can tell you is that last year our Rent For Moms campaign got over a million dollars in requests and we helped more than 50 moms with rent and utilities. This year, those requests have more than TRIPLED — we have over 3 million dollars in rent support needed, and it’s still open.
Can you share three things that the community and society can do to help you address the root of this crisis? Can you give some examples?
Contribute your time, contribute your money, and contribute your resources. I’m also involved in a project called Decolonize Abundance, and our affirmation is we believe that there is enough in this world to meet everyone’s needs and desires if we aim to live in such a way that rejects scarcity, embraces gratitude and heals our land. The more you give, the more there is.
If you had the power to influence legislation, which three laws would you like to see introduced that might help you in your work?
- Reparations are LONG past due. It’s time to pay your debts, America.
- Meeting basic needs through guaranteed services (housing, food, water, child care, heat, basic necessities to survive) and minimum income.
- Dismantling the whole carceral system. The entire system of policing and prisons was built on slave catching and keeping our communities vulnerable and at the mercy of whiteness. That needs to go right now.
I know that this is not easy work. What keeps you going?
My relationships, my community, and especially my kids. I’ve learned so much about who I really am from being a mother. There will never be anything I can’t and won’t do for my children.
Do you have hope that one day this great social challenge can be solved completely?
I’ve struggled with hope at times, but I have to hope and believe that change is possible. I have to keep dreaming big and building community for these kids to have a future. Because there’s nothing more radical than living in our truths, and finding ways to break cycles that have been passed down to us for generations.
What are your “5 things I wish someone told me when I first started” and why?
- White donors and “allies” will be more fickle and fragile than you can ever imagine. I’ve had a person protest to me that she was kicked from my group when she blatantly told off the moderator who was trying to make sure she followed the community agreements. Like, why are you crying to me?
- The conflicts will never go away, but you can get support and keep going.
- Listen to the folks who are trying to get you to take care of you.
- The person you saw interviewed on the news yesterday may not have the money to pay rent today.
- White people and companies will continue to try to take your labor for free — do not let them.
You are a person of enormous influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
Reparations. Period.
Reparations to Black women and non-men are essential to the dismantling of white supremacy. We have had our labor stolen, exploited, and extracted for centuries.
I’m not talking about the government finally paying up — we don’t have time to wait while they avoid responsibility. People are dying from capitalism now. Reparations are due now.
I’ve spent years experimenting with ways to reclaim wealth and resources from white society and redistribute them where they belong, invested in Black futures. It is possible. We can begin the healing. We can initiate the necessary process of repair.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“I will pay you back for the years the locusts have eaten” Joel 2:25–26
That quote sticks with me because when I get discouraged I think about all the adversity that people were facing during that period of time, and that was god’s promise that they would be restored. Whenever I feel down, even during this period where I am trying to do so much good.
I have to remind myself that God or whatever spiritual entity that is looking over me will restore everything that has been taken from me.
Is there a person in the world, or in the US whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. 🙂
LeBron James. My seven-year-old was reading “I Promise” for her weekly book report and I asked her what was one of the important things she took away from the book and she said that he helps moms just like we do.
I asked her what she meant and she was using terms like rent and single mom and hard-working so I was like give me this book! lol i’d love to have a conversation with him so he can tell my nephew Jaelynn that my lymphedema machine is an important commodity, and not just a relaxing one! And I’d love to see how he feels about basic universal income for single moms and housing security.
How can our readers follow you online?
@TheDiDiDelgado & @restorenational on FB, Instagram, and whatever Elon is calling Twitter these days
@TheDiDiDelgado on Tiktok
Done for DiDi — White Labor Collective Facebook Group
linktr.ee/thedididelgado
If you’re interested in joining our current Rent for Moms campaign — as a team member or fundraising from folks in your networks — you won’t be doing it alone! We’ve got all the toolkits and resources you need. www.rentformoms.org
This was very meaningful, thank you so much!
Heroes Of The Homeless Crisis: How DiDi Delgado Of Restore National Is Helping To Support Some Of… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.