They’re Dismantling Systems, We’re Building New Ones

I keep hearing the same refrain in meetings, messages, and those late-night calls when nobody can sleep: “I don’t know what to do. I’m scared. What happens next?”

The fear is real. I feel it too. Federal contracts canceled. Technical assistance dismantled. Years of progress seemingly erased with a signature from people who’ve never slept on concrete.

Let’s acknowledge the grief in this moment. For those of us who’ve experienced homelessness, who know the deep dehumanization of it, there was something transformative about being seen – about moving from writing poetry to perform our pain to writing policy that transformed it. As my friend Rasheema brilliantly named her consulting business, we turned “Pain into Purpose.”

As someone who just lost all my remaining federal contracts, I understand both the vertigo of watching institutional doors slam shut and the rage of seeing pathways to change narrowed. The ability to create change so others would never have to experience what we did – that was sacred work. It mattered.

But here’s what I’ve been thinking about at 3am while the rest of you are sleeping: They just gave us a gift they don’t even understand.

The Dual Work We’ve Always Done

For years, we’ve been doing double duty. We’ve been simultaneously trying to dismantle broken systems while building new ones in their place. This framework, which I first learned through the Coordinated Entry Equity Initiative, has been our north star – we’ve been fighting against dehumanizing practices while creating frameworks that center those most impacted. We’ve been pointing out what doesn’t work while demonstrating what could.

It’s exhausting work, this dismantling and rebuilding. It requires constantly code-switching between institutional language and community wisdom. It means moving through systems that were never designed for liberation, trying to transform them from within while also imagining alternatives from without.

I know the profound sense of safety coursing through my body with the first click of a locked door to my own space. That glimmer – a concept Ann Oliva taught me as the opposite of a trigger, a moment that sparks joy – shapes my understanding of our work. Even in our most challenging moments, these glimmers shore up the shoulders of our greatness, reminding us what we’re fighting for.

That journey taught me something crucial: systems built on control can never fully transform into systems built on care. Not completely. Not without burning the whole damn thing down and starting over.

When They Do the Dismantling For Us

So what happens when the administration starts dismantling these systems for us?

They think they’re destroying our work. What they’re actually doing is freeing our energy.

Every hour we spent fighting to reform a system that resisted change at its core is now an hour we can spend building something new—something that never had to compromise with structures designed for control rather than care.

I have faith in the possibilities. Not some naive, kumbaya faith, but one forged through witnessing what happens when people stop waiting for permission. I have faith that we can do things differently – even one thing differently. I have faith in the knowledge that when we do, we are becoming the change we seek.

Think about it: When your federal contract required you to document housing outcomes in ways that never captured the full humanity of the people you served, you were splitting your energy. Half to meet the requirements, half to actually serve people. Now? All that energy can go directly into service and community building.

When your grant demanded you contort your program into artificial categories created by people who’d never experienced homelessness, you were doing two jobs at once. Now you can build categories that actually make sense.

Communities That Thrived by Creating Parallel Systems

This isn’t theoretical. We have examples everywhere of communities that built parallel systems when official ones failed them.

In the South Bronx in the 1970s, when the city abandoned entire neighborhoods, residents formed community land trusts and rebuilt housing block by block. They didn’t wait for permission.

During the AIDS crisis, when the government turned away, ACT UP created underground networks for medication access and care that saved countless lives. They didn’t ask for approval.

After Hurricane Katrina, when federal response failed, mutual aid networks like Common Ground created distributed systems for resource sharing and rebuilding. We didn’t wait for FEMA. I was there in September, witnessing firsthand how communities stepped in where institutions failed.

After Hurricane Harvey, I worked 15 hours a day for the first seven days with Counter Balance ATX, coordinating an evacuation center in Austin. We created driver maps on the fly – “drop off water and diapers here, then pick up this family here” – helping over 800 people find places to stay. No shelters, no FEMA. We even got SNAP benefits administrators to come directly to our restoration center.

My favorite memory from that time: a barber from Beaumont who was literally rescued from rising waters. He managed to escape with nothing but his barber’s license. When he arrived at our center, exhausted and having lost everything, he immediately offered haircuts to other evacuees. Someone found a tall wooden chair, we laid down blue tarps on the ground to catch the hair, and this barber – still wearing his rain boots, having lost nearly everything – stood giving haircuts to children and adults who had also just lost everything. This moment captured it all for me: this man – who had every reason to focus only on his own needs – instead helped in the way he knew how. Small acts of dignity and care, outside any official system.

The Liberation in Building Without Permission

There is profound liberation in building without permission.

For years, we’ve been asking, “How do we reform these systems to center the voices of those most impacted?” We created frameworks where people with lived experience had seats at tables they didn’t build. We celebrated incremental wins while the fundamental structure remained unchanged.

Now we get to ask: “What would we build if we weren’t constrained by these systems at all?”

We get to build tables where everyone who sits there helped create it. We get to create structures that don’t just include voices of those with lived experience but are fundamentally designed by them from the ground up.

We get to stop translating community wisdom into bureaucratic language and instead create systems where community wisdom is the only language that matters.

The Broom Is Right There

So here’s my challenge to you:

Stop waiting for someone else to pick up the broom. You are that someone else. You get to be that person. It’s a profound responsibility, but also an incredible opportunity.

What specific action have you known you could take, but have been waiting for permission or the “right time” or “more resources” to do? What small thing in your immediate sphere could you change tomorrow if you stopped seeing it as part of some enormous, untouchable “system” and started seeing it as something within your reach?

Maybe it’s knowing your unhoused neighbor’s name and what medication they need. Maybe it’s opening your community space after hours. Maybe it’s documenting exactly how your organization successfully houses people so others can replicate it without federal funding.

How much discomfort are you willing to endure if it means someone else is afforded the same dignity you take for granted? What risk are you willing to accept to create the world you claim to believe in?

This isn’t just a thought exercise. This is the work now.

What we build is up to us doing the actual work. When it seems impossible, that’s just fear – and the structures that have failed us want us to think it can’t be done. The greatest threat we have is what is possible when we are accountable to each other, not to institutions.

They think they’re ending our movement by taking the funding. What they’re actually doing is unfettering it.

Breathing in this moment requires us to be active players in our own lives – here, present, and engaged in the actual work. It’s time to stop talking about what we might do and start doing the things we’ve been dreaming of. The blueprints exist in our collective imagination. The skills exist in our communities. The willingness exists in our hearts.

What’s ending isn’t our movement – it’s the illusion that we need permission to build what we know is necessary. From poetry to policy to mutual aid, the transformation continues. The path just looks different now.

They’re not ready for what comes next. Are you?

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What system that’s being dismantled are you now free to rebuild differently? Drop it in the comments and let’s start building.