Driven to help the homeless
Diane Nilan lives in her van. It’s a 2014 Mercedes Sprinter with about 160,000 miles. The cargo space has been outfitted to accommodate her basic needs. From that 24-foot vehicle, Nilan tells the stories of America’s homeless.
She’s been on the road for the past 15 years, documenting the plight of those who live in shelters, on the street, in overcrowded apartments, in motels and in abandoned buildings, and those who sleep in cars and storage units or who couch surf, hopping from one transitional house to another seeking a place to lay their heads at night.
It’s not glorious work, but it’s her mission. “I try to go out of my way to see what no one else will see,” Nilan, 70, told me last week. “I go looking for poverty. It validates my premise that there are a lot of people being forgotten in this country.”
Nilan worked as a director for various homeless shelters in Illinois for 15 years before branching out across America in November 2005. During her shelter years, she began advocating for the removal of barriers that homeless families experienced when trying to enroll their children in school.
For many of these kids, school serves as a beacon of emotional and educational stability, and also as a source of food, warmth and comfort. Yet parents who lacked a proof of residence — or immunization, medical and academic records for their children — were turned away.
An estimated 568,000 people experienced homelessness in a single night in the U.S. in 2019, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Annual Homeless Assessment Report presented to Congress in January. But Nilan said that number is grossly underestimated. According to the National Center for Homeless Education, the number of homeless children enrolled in public schools — pre-K through grade 12 — topped 1.5 million during the 2017-18 school year.
The disparity exists because HUD accounts only for the number of individuals in shelters and on the streets on one night. Nilan is lobbying for that to change. If HUD adjusts its definition of homelessness to align with the Department of Education’s housing policies, social services and health care could be better constructed to help families get back on their feet.
The Education Department defines and tracks homelessness as those lacking a “fixed, regular and adequate nighttime residence,” including those who are living on the street or in unsheltered places, but also those who reside in shelters, hotels or motels, campgrounds, and those who are what is commonly referred to as “doubled up” — families trying to coexist with friends or relatives in close quarters. All state school districts are required to provide liaisons who offer support to those students and families.
Nilan, founder and president of HEAR US, Inc., has been traveling the country — 400,000 miles of mostly backroads through 48 mainland states, and Hawaii (she didn’t drive there) — interviewing families and producing documentaries. In 2005, she sold her townhouse, bought a 27-foot RV (she downsized to the van six years ago) and a video camera, and hit the road. She’s been driving and telling stories ever since — until this spring when the novel coronavirus pandemic hit. Before being grounded by COVID-19, she set out for a 2020 VisionQuest, a 9,000-mile journey across 25 states.
“It was the craziest thing I’ve ever done, but it was also the coolest thing I’ve ever done,” Nilan said of her decision to pick up and take her advocacy on the road. “I was rewarded instantly from such powerful stories from kids and their parents.”
“I have been working in this field for more than 30 years, and I thought I understood what contributed to homelessness,” she told me. “There are so many ways families get trapped into homelessness, and most people don’t understand it. When they are trapped, they are really, really trapped.”