To End the Violence, We Must Build
While housing is GIMA’s focus, we believe social issues don’t exist in a vacuum. We believe housing is the foundational social determinant of health. The National Alliance on Mental Health (NAMI) says, “Housing is considered the foundational social determinant of health because it significantly influences overall well-being, affecting physical and mental health outcomes. Safe, stable, and affordable housing is essential for individuals to achieve optimal health and access other critical resources like education and employment.”
Safe and stable… is it no wonder youth, many of whom have neither, resort to violence as both an outcome and cause of this insecurity? In this recent essay from Chief Violence Prevention Officer for the City of Indianapolis Ralph Durrett, Jr., he clearly lays out the systemic issues that cause youth violence, as well as the systems changes needed to end normative violence in our city.
“This is about a culture and an environment that allows violence to grow faster than opportunity. A culture and an environment that values death over life.”
As with concepts like Housing First, these are data-driven, proven solutions that will end, or at least certainly diminish, violence in our city. Why aren’t we doing them? We lack the political will and leadership to take on the challenge. As Durrett says, “This is about a culture and an environment that allows violence to grow faster than opportunity. A culture and an environment that values death over life. A culture and an environment that reveres clout over dignity and integrity. A culture and an environment that values ignorance over understanding. We are not simply facing a crisis of individual choices—we are facing a crisis of conditions that are the outward manifestation of our culture and the environments we exist in.”
Changing culture is hard, slow, has no silver bullet, takes funding, and most of all, a commitment to do the right thing. “If we are serious about change—real, sustainable, generational change—then we must invest in our young people not as a side project, but as a central priority.” Like so much in our city, we talk the good talk but actions say something totally different.
