Fixing homelessness? (Just some brainstorming)

Last updated on: March 10, 2016 at 9:23 am by Jane the Actuary

Fixing homelessness? (Just some brainstorming) 2016-03-10T09:23:12-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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Here’s an extended article at Vox.com, a first-hand account of homelessness as experienced by a woman who is not mentally ill, not a substance abuser, not fleeing an abusive partner, but experienced bouts of homelessness due to more mundane reasons of job loss without a savings cushion, problems with roommates, and lack of a support system of family and friends.

Separately, there was another long article from last week (which I can’t seem to find any longer — anyone else see this) about homelessness in one of those northwest coastal cities — Seattle or Portland, presumably, which describes the issue still largely in terms of those with mental illness and/or substance abuse problems. Apparently, in that city, there are large numbers of homeless who camp out in parks and on sidewalks, and there’s an always-open, never turn anyone away soup kitchen which ensures that none of the panhandlers seeing change are actually going hungry.

The disconnect was surprising. In the Vox article, the author described a complete lack of resources because she was a single woman, so she slept in her car until she found a new job and new living situation. Around here, from October to May, there is a program in the suburbs, “PADS” (a clever acronym, as these things always are, in this case derived from Public Action to Deliver Shelter), in which churches provide a place to sleep and three meals (dinner, breakfast, and a sack lunch) on a rotating schedule, as well as a Day Center which provides showers, laundry facilities, mail/voicemail, etc. The guests/clients are typically men, but there are smaller numbers of women, and sometimes there are families, too. My husband serves regular shifts and I’m on a meal crew.

So what I want to do this morning is just think about this a little with you and have a conversation, speaking more specifically about those whose homeless is more narrowly a result of poverty and joblessness or low-paying jobs, rather than mental illness, substance abuse, or choosing to live a hippie lifestyle (as supposedly some of those homeless in San Francisco do).

For years, there’s been a disconnect in our discussion about housing, as we simultaneously cheered on housing appreciation and at the same time lamented housing unaffordability. We’d wanted to have our cake and eat it, too, with existing homeowners seeing growth in their largest investment while somehow, as if by magic, households looking to buy, or even just rent, would be insulated from the effects of this appreciation — by some government policy or another that subsidizes their purchase or lease.

Of course, this doesn’t work.

Now, part of the housing appreciation is “natural,” if you will — when increasing numbers of people want to live in commuting distance of cities with employment growth. But some is “unnatural” — when states and cities deliberately zone in restrictions in housing growth, restrict the number of unrelated roommates, require new apartments meet certain size requirements, limit density and require single-family housing where the region needs multifamily, even high rises.

And it’s always seemed to me that the single best way to lower housing cost, especially for single individuals (and with due recognition for the fact that roommate situations have their own problems, as described in the Vox piece as well), is a modernized SRO — single room occupancy — model, or a “dorm for adults,” in which poor adults have options for ultra-low-rent private rooms with shared kitchens and community spaces. Certainly there are some cities where, reportedly, even closet-sized rooms have sky-high rent (e.g, San Francisco), but in those cities, the only real solution is for people to vote with their feet, and for companies looking to hire, to decide that there are better places to staff up. And in Chicago, there were articles a while back that developers were finding it profitable to buy such SRO buildings as already exist and convert them into more upscale housing — but that doesn’t really answer the question of what a minimum price point is, for a developer to build an SRO-type building with very rudimentary amenities, and be able to offer these units without needing government subsidies.

But the second issue is this: our federal housing programs are based so much on waiting lists and lotteries, that they help only a small percentage of the people who struggle with housing due to being extremely low income. It’s a matter of a lottery in another sense, too, that those who do get help, qualifying for Section 8 vouchers or public housing, “hit the jackpot” of paying little or nothing for housing, rather than spreading the aid more broadly among all those who need it, even if it means that each person gets less help. But should the programs simply be transformed into a combo of TANF and EITC benefits (that is, existing programs for the non-working and working poor) to help everyone at least a little? The problem there is that there is a considerable amount of “luck” in individual housing needs, too — some have a home already, that they inherited, or purchased when times were better, others have family or friends that they can share housing with, and some have neither.

So what’s fair?

And what would you do to solve the issue? (If your answer is “just spend more federal money on the problem,” please be specific.)

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