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Homeless Woman Secures National Policy Change in Environmental Justice Agency

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Kelly Miller
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At this point Kelly was more than disappointed the MOST vulnerable experiencing environmental injustice on a daily basis would be completely left out of such an important topic and event. As the summit ended Kelly went back to her dirty cold place on the street to sleep and the next morning still highly motivated from the previous two days' lack of inclusion of the most vital unsheltered homelessness arena Kelly wrote a three-page letter to the EPA Environmental Justice Agency enlightening them of their omission of homelessness in the summit and offered her personal assistance and lived experience to support the Environmental Justice agency in correcting their oversight in future events. Evidently the EJ office wanted to meet this homeless woman who would be so daring as to comment on their oversight to their obvious exclusion and offer her assistance in correcting for their future events. As a direct result of Kelly's three-page letter Kelly was asked to meet with the Environmental Justice agency senior attorney and staff regarding her concerns.

Kelly happily went to the EJ Agency meeting excited to see some upward movement for the homelessness arena and was delighted to meet such wonderful representatives supportive of her agenda. After a lengthy discussion of concerns, issues and venues Kelly was told she needed to meet the EJ Director Matthew Tejada so he could meet her face to face and hear her story. An appointment was made for early spring 2017 and Kelly began to prepare her presentation to show the director exactly how homelessness and environmental justice related hand in hand and to secure future networking and partnerships were incurred. Kelly created a 30-slide PowerPoint outlining the variances between her homeless experiences in the rural Appalachia region of eastern Kentucky and in the urban streets of the nation's capital. As a result of meeting with the EJ Director Matthew Tejada over coffee in the early spring of 2017 where Kelly presented her 30-slide PowerPoint the EJ director agreed to give Kelly a "round table" on homelessness.

Kelly immediately began working on her "round-table" presentation and contacted Eric Tars at the National Law Center for Homelessness and Poverty and asked Eric to partner with her on presenting a "Round Table on Homelessness" to the Environmental Justice Agency demonstrating "HOW" homelessness and environmental justice went hand in hand. Eric and Kelly began networking and then enlisted the assistance of Robert Robinson, National Economic and Social Rights Initiative, and Bob Erlenbusch, Sacramento Regional Coalition to End Homelessness, to form a powerful homelessness team finally presenting before the EJ Director and representatives on March 28, 2018.

In Kelly's presentation she put forward several items for the Environmental Justice Agency to embrace in their agency, which would include homelessness at little to no effort. The Homeless Round Table was a huge success and positive enlightenment tool as the Environmental Agency agreed to implement Kelly's homeless items, one of which was to include homelessness in an EJ-grant opportunity. In addition the EJ director became involved at high ranking levels with homelessness as a whole.

As a direct result of Kelly's lobbying with the EPA Environmental Justice Agency for the homeless arena to be included in their core agency the Environmental Justice agency responded with incorporating "homelessness" in the 2019 RPF for Small Grants as a national opportunity (https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2018-11/documents/fy2019_ejsg_rfp.pdf), allowing all government-approved organizations across the nation to submit grants on behalf of homelessness and receive EJ Agency funding.

Kelly received a Master's in Adult Education and a Masters in Counseling from Morehead State University in Eastern Kentucky. Kelly is a United States Human Rights Network member and 2018 "FIHRE" Fellow (Fighting Injustice through Human Rights Education--https://ushrnetwork.org/news/4/38/Meet-our-2018-FIHRE-Fellows) who brings an immense "fire" to the human-rights platform in her passionate advocacy for basic human rights. Kelly advocates in the environmental and social-justice arenas of human rights and policies specifically concerning homelessness, domestic violence and political corruption. Kelly focuses her advocacy forte as a community liaison connecting resources and organizations in networking possibilities to bring positive resolution to the issues. Kelly is currently on the National Law Center for Homelessness and Poverty's website under Staff Volunteer for Development and Communications Department (https://nlchp.org/about/our-staff/).

The United States Human Rights Network supported Kelly in her successful lobbying for policy-change efforts in securing homelessness issues into the Environmental Agency police by publishing the following article on their website (https://ushrnetwork.org/news/87/100/FIHRE-fellow-Kelly-Miller-secures-new-EPA-Environmental-Justice-Small-Grant-opportunity-for-homeless-communities).

Kelly currently volunteers at "The National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty, Attn: Kelly Miller, 2000 M Street NW, Suite 210, Washington, DC 20036."


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Kelly is an active advocate for Political Corruption, Sex Trafficking, Human Rights, Social Justice and Homelessness. Kelly summited a report of targeted withholding of medical services by Virginia hospital and the NLG added it to their report (more...)
 

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