Commentary: Housing, not hype, solution to homelessness (East Bay Times)
This
past week the local press was focused on issues surrounding
homelessness in the Bay Area. Solutions-oriented journalism is the
theme, which means the coverage is supposed to be about what we can do
as individuals and community members to help homeless people end their
homelessness.
However, we cannot seem to get to the heart of the
matter -- ending a person's homelessness -- because we are stuck in a
loop of venting about the "nuisance" of homelessness: panhandling,
encampments encroaching onto public space, troublesome behavior at parks
and business districts and how addiction and mental illness make people
"resistant" to our well-meaning interventions.There is a solution to homelessness. It is housing. Housing ends homelessness. Enough of it, at an affordable rent, could end homelessness for lots of people who are homeless.
Not shelters, which are important, but do not end homelessness. Not arresting people for being in tents or sleeping on church doorsteps, not issuing warrants for aforesaid citations that were never paid, not policing in any form.
Policing cannot end homelessness.
Nor can new laws designed to regulate public space, old laws enforced to "protect" small businesses, or lawlessness in ticketing homeless individuals for laws that do not even yet exist -- none of these ends homelessness. It is housing. Affordable, low-barrier housing ends homelessness.
Housing subsidies like Section 8 and Shelter Plus Care have become unspendable in Oakland and Berkeley. The HUD rules set maximum rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Berkeley at $1,746, about $800 less than market rate for such an apartment here. Oakland's rent ceiling for a Section 8 certificate is even lower.
Even when the federal government provides help in the way of a rare subsidy, it's too little in the hottest rental market in the country. So that cannot be our only way out of no housing for homeless people. Housing has to be both available and affordable to end homelessness for a person who needs shelter.
A Seattle program that targeted "chronic inebriates," aka people who drink and are homeless in Seattle, had amazing success by simply providing housing to people. No screening, no hoop-jumping, just immediate housing.
As a result of this program, costs for emergency services, Medicaid services and the like were reduced from about $4,000 per month to about $1,500 per month. The longer these folks stayed in housing, the fewer costs were attributable to them. Drinking also decreased in the group of 75 people who got into housing.
These types of housing-first solutions are the way to end homelessness. But it is clear that as a local community, we are so, so far away from this kind of problem-solving.
We are still stuck in the loop of how irritating it is to witness homelessness. Let us move past irritation and toward actual solutions.
Patricia E. Wall is
the executive director of Homeless Action Center, a legal services
program that provides public benefits advocacy for homeless and disabled
members of the East Bay community.
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