Opinion: Affordable housing is the solution to homelessness, not criminalization

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments this month in Grants Pass v. Johnson, which focuses on whether a local government can make it a crime to live outside when adequate shelter is not available.

This case has resulted in an inaccurate and harmful framing of homelessness by suggesting that there are only two potential outcomes: Either arrest those who are unhoused or homelessness will become an inevitable and permanent fixture of the urban landscape.

But there is a third path: providing subsidized housing with services to people experiencing homelessness.

Too often, policymakers ignore the obvious solution to homelessness — housing — in favor of immediate (and generally ineffective) responses, such as criminalization. Forced displacements and criminalization move people from one place to another, increasing their trauma and exacerbating the barriers they face to housing, while doing nothing to solve the underlying problem.

There are understandable short-term pressures on elected leaders due to the demands of voters who are frustrated with rising levels of homelessness. But without understanding the structural roots of this crisis — a lack of access to housing — homelessness will persist.

The recent U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s 2023 point-in-time estimate of the homeless population highlighted a troubling 12 percent increase in homelessness between 2022 and 2023. In one year, the estimated count rose from 582,500 to 653,100.

This can be attributed to multiple factors, including the worsening lack of affordable housing, the end of pandemic-era housing and social supports, and displacement of migrants and asylum seekers to cities where they lacked connections and housing. While troubling, the findings mask meaningful progress in some regions.

Denver is a growing city of 713,000 that has experienced an associated increase in unsheltered homelessness; over the last decade, median rents have doubled, from $872 to $1,711. To address the short-term crisis, Mayor Mike Johnston instituted the House1000 initiative, which moved more than 1,000 people — more than 70 percent of the unsheltered population — off the street.

Johnston’s team demonstrated how an appropriately scaled initiative can dramatically reduce unsheltered homelessness. However, Denver faces the ongoing challenge of providing permanent housing for those moved into temporary accommodations.

This challenge reflects a central tension in homelessness policymaking. Homelessness demands an immediate response, while the most effective response to homelessness — permanent housing — takes longer to create.

California’s Santa Clara County is one of the most expensive real estate markets in the country, where the average home is worth more than $1.5 million. But the county has created thousands of units of permanent, deeply affordable housing, while simultaneously ramping up its homelessness prevention efforts. The county used funds from a local bond measure and established a public/private partnership to increase coordination, leading to 26,000 people housed and nearly 17,000 people receiving homelessness prevention services.

Coordinated and well-resourced local efforts can make a measurable impact on homelessness, but without federal funding, there won’t be sustained success.

Marked decreases in veteran homelessness demonstrate the potential of an appropriately scaled federal response. With bipartisan support, the federal government increased funding for homeless veteran programs, from $713 million in 2010 to $1.65 billion in 2017 .  With these resources, the U.S. Veterans Administration and Department of Housing and Urban Development mounted a coordinated effort that resulted in a reduction in veteran homelessness by over half. The estimate of veteran homelessness in 2023 was 35,574, down from 74,087 in 2010 .

By using those funds for programming that adhered closely to Housing First — an evidence-based strategy established in the early 1990s in which housing and requisite supportive services are provided without precondition or requirement — they demonstrated that homelessness is solvable.

The answers to homelessness are clear. It is critical that policymakers in local, state and federal governments use their power to address the acute affordable housing shortage that plagues communities in every state in the nation.

Nationally, there are only 34 units available and affordable for every 100 extremely low-income renters — that is, those with incomes less than 30 percent of the area median income. This translates to a deficit of 7.3 million affordable rental units nationwide.

Adequate housing — particularly deeply affordable housing — will go a long way to reducing homelessness when combined with effective, proven solutions like Housing First. But leaders must fund and scale these interventions, rather than turn to the short-term temptation to criminalize some of the most vulnerable people in society. With proper focus and investment, we can ensure a future in which everyone has a place to call home.

Dr. Margot Kushel, MD, is a professor of Medicine at University of California, San Francisco and director of the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative. She is a Public Voices Fellow through The OpEd Project.

Dr. Gregg Colburn, Ph.D., is an associate professor at the University of Washington and is co-author of “Homelessness is a Housing Problem: How Structural Factors Explain U.S. Patterns.”

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