Satire / commentary ·
EOH: EXCELLENCE IN THE ADMINISTRATION OF FAILURE
A public service. Admission: $1,065.
Satire based on reviewed correspondence. The imagined scenes are fictional; the quoted replies and fee estimate are documented. The attorney general complaint remains pending.
Before Rhode Island’s Executive Office of Housing could help a homeless man locate accountability, it had to locate its own chief administrator.
On September 30, EOH staff told me Secretary Goddard was not the official responsible for hearing my administrative appeal. I should mail it to the Department of Administration. There was no general email for that purpose, I was told.
On October 1, after consulting counsel, the office corrected itself. Secretary Goddard was the chief administrator. I could disregard the previous directions.
Responsibility had returned from its brief vacation.
Imagine the celebration. Somewhere in a fictional conference room, a missing-person notice comes down. An organizational chart is reunited with reality. A small ribbon is cut across the doorway of the correct office.
Before asking Housing to locate a home, apparently we must help it locate its own authority.
I am homeless. I am also building HOPE401 and Civic401, tools intended to help people navigate essential services and examine public systems. This creates a delicate administrative situation: someone classified as needing assistance has started asking whether the assistance system works.
There ought to be a form for that.
Instead, there was an estimate: $1,065 for the records I requested.
One thousand and sixty-five dollars. A sum calculated with the precision of an institution that knows exactly what an answer costs, even when the person asking cannot afford it.
I requested a waiver or reduction.
Initially, the office said it could not waive the fee. Later, Secretary Deborah Goddard’s signed decision supplied a rather different formulation:
“I am disinclined to grant that waiver given the disruption and resources necessary to respond to your Requests.”
Disinclined.
A beautiful word. A word wearing slippers. The sort of word one uses to decline a second helping of pudding while someone outside is calculating how long a phone battery must last.
And disruption. We must consider disruption.
A person asking government to explain itself can interrupt the government’s explanation of how busy it is. Someone may have to open a folder for a purpose other than adding to it.
In our imaginary staff meeting, this is treated as a serious operational hazard.
“What if everybody wanted to know what we were doing?”
Silence. Somebody closes the blinds.
The secretary recommended significantly narrowing the request and disputed that EOH was blocking my path to access.
Certainly. There was a path.
It had a $1,065 toll.
The distinction must be enormously reassuring to anyone standing at the gate. Access exists. Affordability is a separate question, which is an especially elegant position for a housing office to occupy.
Perhaps I could ask smaller questions.
Instead of “What happened?” I could ask whether anything happened. Instead of requesting the decisions, I could request the font in which they were written. Eventually, with sufficient narrowing, public accountability could fit on a blank page.
The office also suggested withdrawing the request “until you are able to afford what you are requesting.”
An inspiring model of civic participation: first escape poverty, then ask how the institutions addressing poverty are performing.
On October 7, the office wrote that EOH and Secretary Goddard could provide no further guidance. A meeting was deemed unnecessary.
At least that saved me another journey toward the place from which I had started.
There need not be a secret conspiracy behind any of this. An institution can become remarkably comfortable with outcomes that would be intolerable to the people living through them. Failure acquires procedures. Procedures acquire templates. Eventually, the template becomes the standard against which success is measured.
Was the person helped?
The correspondence was answered.
Could he obtain the information?
The estimate was supplied.
Did he understand where to appeal?
The incorrect instructions were corrected.
Everything is functioning. Please stop describing the consequences.
Meanwhile, in our final imaginary scene, the records enjoy excellent housing: dry cabinets, stable shelves, predictable temperatures. No folder has to explain where it slept last night.
A clerk closes the file. It has been received, routed, corrected, reviewed, and answered. Every necessary administrative event has occurred.
The file is put away for the night.
At last, something connected to this homeless man has been housed.