Analysis: Housing First just “politically correct cover” for inaction on homeless crisis
The Marin Post analyzes LA's botched Skid Row Housing Trust, and suggests that merely giving unhoused folks housing doesn't tackle the chronic problems feeding into homelessness (hear that, SCC?). As homelessness is strongly tied with mental illness, precondition-free housing is often demolished by residents who desperately need treatment.
The operating theory about homelessness at the moment is a policy called “Housing First.” It posits that housing is a human right and that homelessness is, itself, a disease, so providing a home is the cure. It’s a nice idea. It sounds compassionate. But what if it’s not true? What if it’s just another one-dimensional, ignorant, and even inhumane way to view homeless people, because reducing the causes of homelessness to having a home allows politicians to turn their backs on the real causes and what we really need to do?
What if homelessness has little to do with not having a roof over one’s head and is actually just a symptom of a more pervasive disease(s) and that ‘Housing First’ is no better than putting a Band-Aid on an infected wound without providing antibiotics? Because, in the majority of instances of homelessness, “Housing First” is a theory akin to believing that we can give brand new computers to people who can’t read or write or do math, and expect things to change....
Of course, I'm not saying that providing housing for the homeless is a bad thing. I'm just saying that it can't be the only thing and shouldn't necessarily be the first or the best way to address homelessness...
To treat a person who is suffering from mental illness or drug addiction as if they are ‘just like anyone else’ and talk about their “right to housing” because it’s politically beneficial to ‘virtue signal’ that we care is an insult to the needs of desperate, chronically homeless people and shows a profound lack of human compassion. It’s just politically correct cover for ‘declaring victory and leaving the field’ without doing anything to really help them, to heal them, and to treat their illnesses and conditions....
A nonprofit called Skid Row Housing in Los Angeles was, until recently, one of the most successful homeless housing organizations in the country, ever. They were housing more people in better buildings (mostly brand new and designed by award-winning architects at a deep discount) than anyone else. They were a model that many tried to emulate.
Their recent demise shows just how challenging housing the homeless is and is additional evidence that chronic homelessness is not solved by housing.
As chief executive of Skid Row Housing Joanne Cordero noted,
“You get residents who have some kind of a meltdown, and they destroy their unit, and then they come back, and they destroy the new unit."
The reasons for homelessness are complex and idiosyncratic but what is obvious is that housing the chronically homeless without the suite of publicly-funded, individualized, social, support services noted above is a feeble solution.
This article originally appeared in the Marin Post. Read the whole thing here.
Read more on Housing First here and here.
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