More and more states dump Housing First's failed model
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Legislators in Florida, Georgia, and Utah are fed up, and took steps this year to redirect funds away from the deeply flawed Housing First approach to homelessness, and towards policies built on rehabilitation and behavioral health services, with the ultimate goal of independence from government support. Devon Kurtz from the Cicero Institute explains in City Journal.
For homeless individuals with behavioral health issues, substance-use disorder, and severe mental illness, the situation in the U.S. is particularly grim. Nationally, 60 percent of homeless people who use drugs lack shelter; the same is true for just under half of those with severe mental illness.
More intensely than most states, Florida and Utah have witnessed a shift toward this higher-need, more complex homeless population. In Florida, the figures have climbed 27 percent and 13 percent, respectively, over the last five years; in Utah, they have each roughly doubled. Georgia has fared better by some metrics, but with 47 percent of its homeless population lacking shelter, the state has taken the lead in pioneering a different approach.
As its name implies, Housing First argues that homeless people need housing without strings attached—in other words, without making housing contingent on behavioral or treatment requirements. Housing First de-emphasizes temporary, treatment-oriented programs like transitional housing and prioritizes permanent, subsidized-housing programs, which prohibit evicting homeless individuals, even those who refuse to participate in treatment or maintain sobriety.
Most states have suffered from HUD’s policy decisions, with all but nine reducing their transitional housing supply and 18 states cutting that supply by more than 25 percent since 2018 alone. HUD policies, particularly its federally funded Continuum of Care program, with its implementing agencies in every state and metropolitan area, drove these changes in the transitional housing supply. Through nongovernmental organizations, HUD can enact policies in parallel with states but without the approval of state officials.
Florida, Georgia, and Utah have had enough. Florida now forbids its state homelessness funding from being used for Housing First; instead, the state will redirect more than $30 million annually to transitional housing and other treatment-oriented programs. Georgia has created a Housing Accountability Trust Fund that will provide millions in funding for programs that do not subscribe to Housing First. And Utah has devoted more than $50 million to short-term shelter and behavioral-health programs. Earlier this month, Governor Spencer Cox put homeless service providers on notice, warning that they could lose funding if they don’t produce results.
Other states are getting restless, too. An ambitious bill in Arizona that would have transformed how that state approaches homelessness narrowly stalled in the legislature. But with 35 states seeing a more than 30 percent rise in unsheltered homelessness in just the last five years, more states are likely to follow Florida, Georgia, and Utah’s lead.
Read the whole thing here.
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