Housing First homeless approach needs more oversight (not dollars)

Historically, simply garnering more taxpayer money is not an effective path to solving local homelessness crises; instead, accountability for existing expenses is needed—ensuring we are investing resources in worthwhile places. Adam Mayer from Built in the Cloud surveys Housing First’s failure to address root factors of homelessness, and why “more funding” is a hollow call to action.

Over the years, it has become clear that one of the most significant barriers to solving California’s homeless crisis is not the amount of money the state spends but how and where it allocates its resources. For example, in San Francisco and Los Angeles, homeless service providers, drug treatment facilities and low-income transitional housing options are primarily concentrated in specific areas of the city (Skid Row in Los Angeles and the Tenderloin/SoMa in San Francisco). There are several reasons for this, including a history of disinvestment in central city areas after WWII and run-of-the-mill NIMBYism preventing services from being spread out and distributed.

What makes matters worse is that illicit open-air drug markets operate with impunity in these areas. Without the political will to shut down these markets, those struggling with hard drugs living in these neighborhoods will succumb to a lifetime of addiction and eventual overdose, regardless if they live on the street or in a single-room occupancy (SRO) unit. The drug markets also attract new clientele from other cities and states, creating an even higher demand for housing and services.

This has created perverse incentives not only for the homeless folks living in these areas but for the service providers as well. Because non-profit organizations administer homelessness and drug treatment services, there is little accountability or oversight into their spending of public dollars. As a result, promoting policies like “Housing First” allows them to appear virtuous while demanding increasingly more money for solutions that go nowhere.

This article originally appeared in Built in the Cloud. Read the whole thing here.

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Image by Karolina Grabowska