City-County joint effort to make progress on homelessness

TUCSON, Ariz. (13 News) -Pima County and the City of Tucson has teamed up for the first time in years to battle an issue that is sweeping through communities across the country – homelessness.

As home prices rise and affordable housing becomes more scarce, it has added a new and more complex issue to the homeless problem.

“So really, what I want to speak to today are just some of the complexities of the issues,” Tucson Police Chief Chad Kasmar told the Pima County Board of Supervisors as he updated the county on the progress that’s been made since the two jurisdictions teamed up last year.

Even though the collaboration is still in the early stages, it already yields some results. “68% of those folks we spoke to, just under 200, reported back to us they had lived in Tucson for over six years,” Kasmar told the board.

That’s dispelling one of the myths that the homeless in the county are basically transient, in and out of town quickly or seasonal when it gets cold back East.

Those interviews show that nearly seven in ten seen on the streets, or found in homeless camps, can, in many cases, be former neighbors.

“What we certainly saw through last year was folks that just couldn’t afford housing, lost their job and they’re facing other issues that don’t fit in that traditional category that we think of as mental health or substance abuse disorders,” he said.

That does not discount the people on the street with drug issues. Nearly 40% of them have substance abuse problems, and of that group, 75% of them have fentanyl issues.

It’s readily available in Arizona. Kasmar told the board that half the fentanyl seized in the US is seized in Arizona.

Another indication of how much is on the streets, the price of a fentanyl pill has dropped in half, from $2 a pill to less than a dollar. That led to more than 3,000 narcotics arrests in Tucson last year, which is swamping police agencies.

“It’s important here that our goal, our collective goal, is not to fill jails, but to create that discomfort so that folks will go into treatment and understanding though, that in the treatment process that people will have missteps,” he said.

But those missteps, the chief told the city today, following his county presentation, should not mean the end of the story. The reasons people are on the street homeless have changed significantly recently.

“It’s no longer just about folks with mental health issues or dealing with a substance abuse disorder, housing is expensive, folks are living out of their cars and raising kids and work three jobs,” Kasmar told the Tucson City Council. “So the problem has only gotten more complex.”

A complex problem without a simple solution. But the county and city, in their first joint partnership in a long time, are hoping to find one.

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