Hey DoGooders!

We have a treat for you this month: November’s interview is with one of DoGoodery’s very own, Sammy Step! In addition to her role here as Director of Strategy & Technology, Sammy is incredibly active in her community. We are ecstatic to highlight the good our team does outside of our office!

Read on to learn more about Sammy’s work to support unhoused folks in Los Angeles and how you can help!

DoGoodery: Please introduce yourself and tell us about your role here at DoGoodery.

Sammy: Hey! I’m Sammy and I am the Director of Strategy & Technology at DoGoodery. I implement technological solutions both for our team and our clients. I do web design, assets, and strategy for programs with web aspects.

DoGoodery: How did you get inspired to start giving back to the community? Tell us about starting Fairfax Mutual Aid.

Sammy: The back story is, when I was in college, I was involved in some political organizing around environmental justice. I felt like I was often more focused on the community aspects of it and there was this concept of mutual aid. I hadn’t heard of it before, but realized that it was such a big thing. Mutual aid is recognizing where systems fail us and where we are responsible for helping out each other. In March 2020, during lockdown, a friend and I saw a bunch of stuff going around about mutual aid. So we started with getting groceries for people who didn’t have the means for grocery delivery and were immunocompromised and things like that. Then we connected with a larger organization that used to give out resources to unhoused people in the neighborhood and do sweep defense. When the government comes in and does these big sweeps of encampments, they tend to be a lot less cruel if the housed neighbors are nearby watching and holding them accountable. And so we would do that, and, on a weekly basis, we would have a table near an encampment with food, hygiene products, blankets, and other stuff people might need. We could also take requests sometimes.

About a year later, the larger organization ended up disbanding, due to funding complications, so my then-roommate and I, along with some other friends who had been involved, formed a group called Fairfax Mutual Aid. Fairfax Mutual Aid does a lot of the same things that the larger organization did, but as a stand-alone group. We also do some advocacy with the local city councilmember and help folks navigate Section 8 Housing. We have helped them make sense of the process and stay in touch with their caseworkers. We just try to help out with that.

DoGoodery: From your perspective, what are the challenges to doing this kind of on-the-ground work?

Sammy: Yeah, I mean, it could get really intense. Some housed neighbors were okay with it. But we also got a lot of people coming up to us yelling and screaming. It’s very controversial. People don’t want unhoused folks on their street, but those people have to exist somewhere. The idea that us giving food and harm reduction supplies is making the neighborhood worse, I just don’t think that’s true.

There’s not a ton of housing and they just keep getting pushed around to different areas.There was a big sweep fairly recently and they put down these massive, ugly planters, that are not going to be filled with anything, on the streets so that unhoused folks wouldn’t sleep there. The street is not residential, there are stores around the corner, but, you know, it’s fairly out of the way. Some reports came out saying that the cost, plus labor to install, was something like $5,000 per planter. That is so much money that could be better spent on getting people housing, getting people food, doing anything that would actually aid people. It’s so frustrating.

Unhoused people are still people and individuals. On top of all the basic needs like food and sleep, there’s also so much variation in people’s circumstances and needs. Even I’m mistaken when I tend to talk about unhoused people as this huge monolith, but they’re really just individual people who are trying to figure out a way to survive in this city. I think most people, including me, know how hard it is to pay for housing. Rent is a significant portion of many people’s salaries, mortgages are higher than ever, and minimum wage hasn’t really gone up in a long time. It’s really hard to pay for housing. Even programs like Section 8 require you to have consistent phone access, consistent access to documents on computers, which makes it difficult for a lot of people. It still can’t help everyone who needs it. And a lot of people will say “why don’t they go to shelters?” They don’t realize that shelters have super strict rules that a lot of people wouldn’t be able to adhere to. I mean, sometimes you have super limited phone and internet access. You’re not allowed to interact with friends in your room. There are a lot of situations where I can imagine myself getting kicked out of a shelter because I wanted to get home past 9pm or wanted to hang out with a friend in another room and that’s the kind of stuff that gets you kicked out. Or wanting to keep some of your stuff! Shelters restrict what you can bring in. Who wouldn’t want to keep some of their own stuff?

DoGoodery: Is there anything that you’ve learned or that has really stuck with you?

Sammy: I feel like people see encampments and are really scared of them, like it’s a takeover of space. But I’ve learned through this process and being at encampments, they’re community spaces. There’s spaces for people to sleep safely, to gather, to get to know each other. They can borrow things from each other. I feel like our world sometimes really isolates us from each other, people talk about not knowing their neighbors. How nice is it to be able to ask your neighbor for a tool or something?

It’s a community. I think in many ways, that’s the most human thing there is. Seeing these spaces and being able to help in them really reminds me what it is to be human, a connected human.

DoGoodery: In your own words, why is it important for you to give back to your community? Why is this work important for you to do and for other people to get involved in?

Sammy: It’s interesting, I think of the pandemic as this time that brought mutual aid to my attention and so many other people’s attention. In the name of this collective crisis, we realized we have to turn to each other during this uncontrollable, scary thing. And I think so much of life is like that, when you start paying attention to it. The climate crisis is getting worse, there’s so much disparity in wealth. I don’t know if this answers the question [laughs], but this work and being friendly with my unhoused neighbors makes me feel really connected to other people. It reminds me… that my little home and my little life are not the only things worth defending. And through that, makes me feel really lucky for everything I have and I’m lucky to be able to connect with other people.