Thus far in this series we’ve kept things pretty general in terms of the underlying
issues we face here in the United States as we prepare to transition out of the Trump
years and into the Biden administration.
I’ve talked about voting, phone banking and getting involved in political campaigns,
and finding and supporting local mutual aid and charity groups.
But the more we learn about specific problems, the better we’re able to decide whether
or not we have something meaningful to contribute toward a solution.
So, the first specific problem I want to examine is one that has existed throughout the world
for centuries, and has been a recurring subject of the national conversation in the U.S. since
the 1980s.
That problem, as the cleverest among you have no doubt already deduced from the title of
the video, is homelessness.
Homelessness in the United States has been a recurring problem for as long as the country
has existed.
Historically, spikes in the number of homeless people have been associated with specific
events — the Civil War, for example, or the economic depressions of the 1870s and
1930s.
However, homelessness in the post-World-War-II era has also been exacerbated by cuts to social
programs that benefit the poor, and drastic reductions in federal funding to cities.
The result of those cuts, plus the reduction of government mental health services, lack
of support for those recently released from jails and prisons, rising health care costs
and cost of living generally speaking, and the stagnation of wages as measured in real
dollars since the 1960s, is that in my lifetime — I was born in 1980 — homelessness in
the United States has become a chronic problem.
While the total number of homeless people has declined slightly since 2007, according
to the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), on any given night there are over 550,000
homeless people in the U.S.
In a nation as wealthy and powerful as this one, that’s more than unacceptable — that’s
an obscenity.
Figuring out what to do about homelessness requires us to take a closer look at what
causes it.
In many cases, homelessness is the product of another large scale social problem that
we ought to be addressing anyway.
For example, according to the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, the agency created
by Congress to coordinate the federal government’s response to the homelessness crisis, 48,000
people a year enter homeless shelters directly from prisons or jails.
We subject way too many people to long term detention and imprisonment just in general
— according to the World Prison Brief, the United States has both the largest prison
population and the highest rate of incarceration per 100,000 people in the entire world — but
what makes matters worse is the lack of support many prisoners find upon their release.
It can be extremely difficult for people with a criminal history to find work and stable
housing.
And in many cities, homelessness itself is criminalized, which can lead to people being
released from jail, finding themselves homeless, being arrested on a charge related to their
homelessness, and being sent back to jail, where the cycle just starts over again.
So, in order to address homelessness, we need to address mass incarceration, and significantly
improve the support system for those just released from jails and prisons, which in
many cases is practically non-existent.
People can also find themselves homeless as a result of medical issues.
HUD estimates that 20 percent of the homeless population in the U.S. has a serious mental
illness, and chronic conditions affecting physical health such as heart disease, diabetes,
and HIV/AIDS are three to six times more common among the homeless than among the general
population.
The dramatic rise in opioid abuse over the last twenty years — which is a medical issue
— has also contributed to the homelessness problem, and homeless people are far more
imperiled by drug abuse and other life-threatening medical conditions than those in stable housing.
The United States is one of the only developed nations in the world that doesn’t have a
system of universal health care.
As long as we continue to treat health care as a commodity, and as long as medical expenses
have the potential to ruin people financially, the lack of some form of universal health
care system will continue to contribute to homelessness in this country.
It’s inevitable.
If we want to fix homelessness, we will also have to fix health care.
And just to be clear, by “fix health care,” I mean stop treating it like a product to
be bought and sold and start treating health care — physical and mental — like the
basic necessity it is.
In other words, make health care a human right.
Another cause of homelessness — perhaps the most basic of all — is a lack of affordable
housing.
It’s not that there aren’t enough homes in the country to accommodate the homeless
— there are over half a million homeless people in the U.S. on any given night, while
there are currently approximately 17 million empty houses — that’s thirty four houses
per homeless person.
But all the empty houses in the world don’t make a difference if nobody can afford to
live in them.
Reducing homelessness by increasing access to affordable housing requires us to do a
few different things.
One of those things is building more affordable housing in areas that need it.
Another is expanding local, state and federal programs that provide assistance to enable
people living on low incomes to afford to rent or purchase a home.
And another is to prioritize placing and keeping people in permanent housing ahead of the profits
of banks and private landlords.
That doesn’t mean forcing landlords to go bankrupt by requiring them to house tenants
who can’t pay the rent, nor does it mean abolishing landlords — however you feel
about your landlord, or the ethics of having landlords in general, simply getting rid of
them and socializing housing entirely just isn’t realistic, at least as far as the
near future is concerned, however appealing the thought might be, and I want to focus
on things that are practical and attainable in the here-and-now.
That means funding programs that encourage landlords to rent to low-income tenants, provide
mediation to settle conflicts between landlords and tenants and prevent evictions, and educate
landlords on their responsibilities and the rights of their tenants.
So, yeah, finding long term solutions for homelessness will require us to deal with
a whole host of other problems — problems which, as I said already, we should be dealing
with anyway, because homelessness is not the only negative impact things like mass incarceration,
stagnant wages, and the high cost of medical care have on our society.
But that doesn’t mean we can’t do anything about homelessness until we solve those and
other large-scale social problems.
There are places — including right here in the United States — that have been able
to significantly reduce their homeless populations.
For example, the state of Utah was able to virtually eliminate chronic homelessness beginning
in 2005.
How’d they do it?
They gave homeless people homes.
First, the state government identified people who were chronically homeless, which it defined
as people who had been homeless for more than a year or had been homeless at least four
times in the past three years.
Then, the state gave them houses.
They weren’t required to find a job first; if they had substance abuse issues, they weren’t
required to get clean first.
They were simply provided with a house to live in.
And if they needed help finding a job, or getting treatment for alcohol or drug addiction,
they were provided with those services.
But the only requirement they had to meet in order to get a house was having been chronically
homeless.
This approach to solving homelessness is called Housing First.
Instead of relying on temporary shelters, or requiring people to hold down a job, or
enter drug treatment or career training programs, which are difficult and stressful enough without
having to deal with homelessness on top of everything else, Housing First programs provide
the homeless with a permanent place to live, which gives them the stable base from which
they can then proceed to deal with whatever other problems they may be facing.
Not only did implementing a Housing First program enable Utah to drastically reduce
the number of chronically homeless people in the state, it also saved the state money,
which isn’t the point, but is a nice bonus for those of you who give a shit about that.
Hey, maybe they could put the savings toward funding other necessary programs?
Or building even more affordable housing?
According to a 2015 article in the Washington Post, the state of Utah saves around $8,000
per homeless person per year compared to before the Housing First program started.
According to that same article, while Housing First was very successful at reducing chronic
homelessness, as of 2014 there were still over 13,000 total homeless people in the state.
Eight thousand dollars multiplied by 13,000 equals . . . a lot of affordable housing.
And all that affordable housing will require ongoing maintenance, which will create jobs,
which means ending homelessness by giving homeless people homes would also be good for
the economy — hey, why don’t we just do that?
Can we do that?
Speaking of things we can do, this may be all well and good generally speaking, but
what can you do, right now, in your own community, to help address homelessness?
First and foremost, find out which organizations in your local area are trying to help.
Find the local shelters and other groups that offer support services for the homeless, and
donate to them.
Give to your local food pantries and clothing banks.
Volunteer, if you’re able.
Homeless shelters aren’t a sufficient response to homelessness, but they are necessary, and
making sure they have the resources they need is absolutely vital.
Beyond supporting your local shelters and other groups that provide aid to the homeless,
I’d also recommend that you get in touch with your government officials at the local,
state and federal levels.
Tell your members of congress, your state legislators, your mayor and members of your
town council, that you support Housing First programs, and decriminalizing homelessness,
and expanding services to keep people threatened by eviction in their homes and transition
people on the street or in shelters to permanent housing as quickly and smoothly as possible.
Finally, and perhaps most fundamentally, push back against the dehumanization of the homeless.
When you talk to your representatives, when you talk to your friends and family, when
you speak out about this on social media, remember that when we talk about the homeless,
we’re not talking about litter or graffiti or something else that needs to be cleaned
up so we can keep things looking nice — we’re talking about human beings.
We call them homeless people, and the more important word there is “people” — people
with rights, people entitled to basic respect, people who deserve to be treated with dignity.
So, let’s treat them that way.
And let’s do what we can to encourage our society to start treating them that way, too.