Studies show: Accountability-free, taxpayer-funded housing frequently destroyed by residents

Analyzing LA’s Skid Row Housing Trust and SF’s Tenderloin Housing Clinic, Built in the Cloud’s Adam Mayer discusses why barrier-free Housing First policies inevitably feed into a “vicious cycle” of property damage and expensive unit repairs—as similarly observed in SJ.

If one needs evidence that housing alone is in sufficient in addressing drug addiction and mental health, one needs to look no further than this alarming deep dive by the Los Angeles Times into the collapse of the Skid Row Housing Trust.

Once a darling of local LA media and homeless advocates, the Skid Row Housing Trust was a non-profit housing provider that owned and operated over two dozen residential buildings in Downtown Los Angeles. But, according to the LA Times piece, a series of managerial failings and poor financial decisions led the Trust’s Board of Directors to vote to break up the organization last October.

Underlying the mismanagement of the Skid Row Housing Trust’s residential portfolio was a situation in which basic building maintenance became next to impossible due to ongoing damage and destruction by some residents. According to the LA Times piece:

“Added to that structural challenge is a policy shift of the past decade giving priority for housing to people who have been homeless the longest, have mental and physical health conditions and often substance use disorder. Wear and tear on apartments suffers accordingly, building operators say, potentially creating a downward spiral in which damaged units cannot be reoccupied, cutting into the building’s rental revenue.”

In San Francisco, non-profit housing providers face similar challenges. As Randy Shaw, Director of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, explained in a 2022 San Francisco Chronicle article:

“We throw all these people into our hotels who have no demonstrated ability to live independently, who have severe problems and need to be elsewhere.”

In the same Chronicle piece, UCSF researcher and supportive housing expert Margot Kushel adds:

“We’re shooting ourselves in the foot - we can’t house people who are incredibly high-risk and not give them the services they need. It will not work.”

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

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Image by Trevor Patt