Inside LINK is a regular column normally written by our CEO, Lacy Starling. This week, we have a special guest writer: LINK’s managing editor, Meghan Goth. Email her at mgoth@linknky.com.
As a community, we have, in many ways, lost nuance.
People are right or left. They are a hero or a villain. They are good or bad.
But nothing is quite that simple, is it? Things aren’t always one way or the other. Two things can be true at the same time. And the context surrounding a person or a business or a situation can help reveal just how gray the topic of housing – or education or health care or almost everything we’re grappling with here in NKY – can be.
When we set out to write about the Emergency Shelter of Northern Kentucky, we could have simply published a press release that a few Covington residents wrote, complaining about the shelter and its leadership. Several of our region’s other local news organizations did just that.
We could have interviewed the neighbors, given their voices a platform, reached out to the shelter for the perfunctory comment, and moved on.
As Kenton County reporter Nathan Granger made phone calls and records requests and interviewed just about anyone he could find connected to the shelter, we began to piece together a nuanced, complicated situation.
What we ended up with is a long, multi-faceted story. In order to understand the complexity of the situation of homelessness in Northern Kentucky, you’re going to have to commit to it. Please don’t skim it. Take a break if you need one, but read all of it.
The story became not just about this one shelter; soon we saw it was about the state of the unhoused in our region, whose responsibility it is to look out for them, and what kinds of systems – or lack thereof – exist to create a safety net for one of the area’s most vulnerable populations.
The emergency shelter is a low-barrier shelter. That means those who stay there don’t have to undergo Breathalyzer tests or background checks. We spoke to many people who have worked with the unhoused population throughout the years, and what we learned is that there are inherently things that come along with caring for those experiencing homelessness that would mean Breathalyzer or background checks would keep them from coming through the doors.
Many deal with physical and mental health problems. Many are grappling with addiction.
But does that mean our community shouldn’t care for them?
In a place where the cold can literally kill people, the emergency shelter is one of the only places in the region that provides a place to stay for those with nowhere else to go. No questions asked. This means people who work in low-paying jobs are helping people who struggle with their mental health or addiction or any other number of things.
To be clear, no one ever said, over the course of our reporting, that they thought the shelter should close. Even those who had complaints about the shelter saw its societal value.
Just about anyone who had a complaint about the shelter also said they recognized how dire the need was for it to exist.
Our reporting showed that both of those things could be true.
So Nathan kept asking questions. He kept writing, and he kept revising. And we kept editing. We kept sending him back out to interview more people, to get another perspective, to find more context.
When you’re done reading the story, you’ll probably have opinions. Feel free to share those opinions with Nathan or with me. You can reach us at ngranger@linknky.com and mgoth@linknky.com.
But hopefully you’ll also see how complex this issue is, and that there are no villains. There are no heroes. There are just people who need help, people trying to help them, and a community of people trying to figure out what they think, how they can help and what solutions should exist.
