Wednesday, June 15, 2022

Fighting Homelessness in Houston

Michael Kimmelman in the NY Times:

During the last decade, Houston, the nation’s fourth most populous city, has moved more than 25,000 homeless people directly into apartments and houses. The overwhelming majority of them have remained housed after two years. The number of people deemed homeless in the Houston region has been cut by 63 percent since 2011, according to the latest numbers from local officials. Even judging by the more modest metrics registered in a 2020 federal report, Houston did more than twice as well as the rest of the country at reducing homelessness over the previous decade. Ten years ago, homeless veterans, one of the categories that the federal government tracks, waited 720 days and had to navigate 76 bureaucratic steps to get from the street into permanent housing with support from social service counselors. Today, a streamlined process means the wait for housing is 32 days.

Houston has gotten this far by teaming with county agencies and persuading scores of local service providers, corporations and charitable nonprofits — organizations that often bicker and compete with one another — to row in unison. Together, they’ve gone all in on “housing first,” a practice, supported by decades of research, that moves the most vulnerable people straight from the streets into apartments, not into shelters, and without first requiring them to wean themselves off drugs or complete a 12-step program or find God or a job.

There are addiction recovery and religious conversion programs that succeed in getting people off the street. But housing first involves a different logic: When you’re drowning, it doesn’t help if your rescuer insists you learn to swim before returning you to shore. You can address your issues once you’re on land. Or not. Either way, you join the wider population of people battling demons behind closed doors.

Some people object to the "housing first" approach because it seems unjust; isn't it unfair to give housing to people when so many others have to struggle and scrimp to find or keep it? There are thousands of people in America who don't have their own homes but stay off the street by crashing with relatives or what have you, and many of them have jobs; why should we help people at rock bottom over them? But the cold, hard logic is hard to refute. Homeless people cost cities a ton of money in medical care and police time, and the presence of homeless camps makes some city dwellers cranky enough to leave for someplace else. Homelessness is a problem cities need to solve, or at least reduce, in order to thrive, and by that metric no other policy comes close to "housing first."

6 comments:

G. Verloren said...

Some people object to the "housing first" approach because it seems unjust; isn't it unfair to give housing to people when so many others have to struggle and scrimp to find or keep it?

What makes these objectors think that the homeless didn't struggle and scrimp to find or keep housing, and simply failed in their attempts? No one wants to be homeless. They end up there because they are unable to make things work despite their best efforts.

There are thousands of people in America who don't have their own homes but stay off the street by crashing with relatives or what have you, and many of them have jobs; why should we help people at rock bottom over them?

Again, the logic of the objectors is bizarre - if the homeless had people they could crash with, they wouldn't be homeless. The reason these people are on the streets is that they don't have any other recourse - they don't have people willing to put them up somewhere.

Likewise, these people don't have jobs, which is often something you need if you're going to "crash with relatives or what have you" - usually there's some sort of expectation of repayment or "chipping in" financially, even if you're staying with people who care about you, which someone who doesn't have a job simply cannot do. So even if they did theoretically have people they could crash with, they don't have the money to do so.

When someone has no home and no job, they're stuck. It's virtually impossible to get a job if you're homeless - and it's virtually impossible to get a home if you're jobless. The only sensible solution is to provide people with one, or the other, or both of those things. And as it turns out, giving someone a job when they don't have a home isn't very useful, because it's incredibly difficult for them to KEEP that job when they don't have a roof over their head. But giving them a home instead gives them the physical security and amenities needed for them to find, and then keep, a job - which in turn will allow them to transition to a home of their own down the road.

It doesn't take a tremendous amount of consideration or thought to comprehend the issue, people just seem to object to the solutions thoughtlessly and automatically - too much societal conditioning to reflexively respond to the poor with disdain, judgement, and cruelty.

Anonymous said...

They end up there because they are unable to make things work despite their best efforts.

Sorry, but a lot of the homeless are homeless because of mental issues and/or drugs.

people just seem to object to the solutions thoughtlessly and automatically - too much societal conditioning to reflexively respond to the poor with disdain, judgement, and cruelty.

No, it's not thoughtless. It's just that the narrative that's been pushed since the 80s is that all the homeless are hardworking folk simply down on their luck. Most people know that's simply not the case. Homeless shelters end up causing major problems in the neighborhoods they're placed in. Homeless shelters become such an issue that the homeless themselves don't want to stay there.

G. Verloren said...

1/2

@Anon

Sorry, but a lot of the homeless are homeless because of mental issues and/or drugs.

See, at first I thought you might be mentioning this as a means of suggesting that sometimes, it's not even someone failing to succeed that renders them homeless - they can quite simply become the victims of addiction or mental illness.

But no! You're taking the opposite stance, and using their own victimhood to justify not wanting to help them, as some sort of karmic punishment for what you cruelly perceive as personal failings.

A lot of the homeless ARE homeless because of mental issues and drugs! So what? Does suffering from schizophrenia make you a bad person somehow? How about ending up addicted to opioids because you have crippling chronic pain from a workplace accident? Are those moral failings in your mind? Because in my mind, they're societal failings.

Someone with a degenerative mental disease can't just stop being mentally ill by themselves - they need help, and more importantly they therapy treatments and medication, both of which are far too expensive in this country for poor people to afford. And someone who has crippling chronic pain can't just stop living in agony - again, they need therapy and medicine, both of which are out of financial reach for many Americans, even the ones with places to live.

And let's stop for a moment and consider the "junkies", even. Yes - some people make bad and selfish choices and start taking drugs for awful reasons and end up addicted. We can absolutely blame them for their poor judgement - but we also need to help them recover and get back on the right path, because once they're addicts, they can't really fix the problem by themselves anymore. They can't learn until they're clean.

It's like if some stupid kid climbs around on a bridge, slips, and falls into a raging river that they can't pull themselves out of - only a psychopath would sit and watch them drown or get swept out to sea as a kind of "punishment" for their poor decision making. A sane person would help fish them out of the river, and then once they're safe on dry land (and able to actually DO something or learn from their mistakes), give them a serious talking to, teach them a lesson, and help ensure they never take dumb risks and fall back in the river again.

G. Verloren said...

2/2

Homeless shelters end up causing major problems in the neighborhoods they're placed in. Homeless shelters become such an issue that the homeless themselves don't want to stay there.

And here's the cream of the ignorance crop! As if homeless shelters which get people off the street, help them find jobs, give them food, give them access to medication and therapy, etc, are going to somehow produce worse conditions in a neighborhood than just leaving the homeless on the streets of that neighborhood unaided!

No, see - the problems you assign to homeless shelters are actually caused by homelessness itself. When you've got people who are freezing in the alleys, crime goes up because they steal clothes to keep warm or steal fuel to burn the keep warm. When you've got people who are literally starving to death, they steal food. When you've got people who are strung out on drugs and not getting help to treat their addiction, they steal anything of value in order to find their next fix, or the steal the drugs they need directly. When you've got desperate people in unlivable circumstances, they turn to crime if that's the only way they can get by.

But of course, you don't care about any of that. You just want the homeless to magically go away. You want the Pied Piper to lead away the plague of rats, all without you having to pay him.

Well tough luck, pal - that's not how this works. If you really give a shit about the problems caused by homelessness, then listen to the goddamn experts who say the only solution is to HELP the homeless, in order to get rid of homelessness itself.

John already explained it to you, but I think you could stand to read his words again (or perhaps for the first time) and actually stop and think about them:

But the cold, hard logic is hard to refute. Homeless people cost cities a ton of money in medical care and police time, and the presence of homeless camps makes some city dwellers cranky enough to leave for someplace else. Homelessness is a problem cities need to solve, or at least reduce, in order to thrive, and by that metric no other policy comes close to "housing first."

Get off your high horse, stop blaming people who are too sick and desperate to help themselves, and start listening to reason and the evidence. We know what we need to do, it's just vindictive, judgemental, skin-flint people like you who insist we shouldn't spend the resources to solve the problem, because you prefer knowing that homeless people are "suffering for their crimes" instead of being rehabilitated.

You are flat out wrong about this. I could understand and forgive that coming from someone who was mentally ill or strung out on drugs. But you? What the hell is your excuse?

Anonymous said...

As if homeless shelters which get people off the street, help them find jobs, give them food, give them access to medication and therapy, etc, are going to somehow produce worse conditions in a neighborhood than just leaving the homeless on the streets of that neighborhood unaided!

Yes, almost all homeless shelters AREN'T doing this, at all. Not even close.

But of course, you don't care about any of that. You just want the homeless to magically go away.

No, I just want to go away.

Get off your high horse,

Ditto, my friend, ditto.

Anonymous said...

Correction:

But of course, you don't care about any of that. You just want the homeless to magically go away.

No, I just want YOU to go away.