By Shanti Jensen, MPP/MBA Candidate 2018
Step off BART at San Francisco’s 24th St. Station and take a deep breath. There it is again making you cringe: the familiar smell of urine. Make your way up to street level and you will be greeted by a constellation of homeless men and women, some just resting on the ground and taking in the scene, some requesting money, some haggling bypassers, and many intoxicated.
For years I have accepted this as normal in The City, as something I just had to grit my teeth through. Homelessness is one of those impossible problems with so many causes that no one knows where to start to solve it. Mental health problems? Check. Substance abuse? Check. Low income families? Check. Veterans? Check. “Some people want to be homeless?” Maybe?
However, there is a shockingly bright hope for homelessness these days, and it’s shining from the unlikely state of Utah. The Beehive State is showing California how it’s done by housing an incredible 91% of their chronically homeless population. The chronically homeless are the individuals that usually come to mind when we think of the homeless. They tend to suffer from addiction, schizophrenia, and brain trauma. In Utah, they are defined specifically as people who have a disabling condition and have spent at least one year on the streets. The chronically homeless make up only 15% of the national homeless population, but they disproportionately fill up shelters, jails, and emergency rooms — all extremely expensive services.[1] Here in San Francisco they make up about 40% of the overall homeless population.[2]
Utah’s innovative program, Housing First, flips the traditional thinking on chronic homelessness. Instead of requiring people to stay sober or enroll in services to receive public housing, apartments are offered with no strings attached. This housing provides stability and safety for clients to start the healing process. Mental health and substance abuse services are available and encouraged, but not prerequisites for housing. As long as no one is hurt and the neighbors are not bothered, Housing First clients are allowed to drink or have mental breakdowns in their homes.[3] “People once had to change their lives to become housed,” says Gordon Walker, director of the Utah’s Housing and Community Development Division. “Now we give them housing first so they can make changes if they want to”.[4]
This harm reduction approach may sound suspicious to those who believe it enables addiction. But it turns out that taking housing away from people who can’t stay sober doesn’t actually get them clean; it just lands them on the streets again. The mental and physical health issues of the chronically homeless take far more time to address than the traditional approach allows for. The Housing First model gets people housed as quickly as possible which provides the foundation for healing to occur. As Dr. Sam Tsembris, innovator of the original Housing First program in New York puts it, “You actually need housing to achieve sobriety and stability, not the other way around”.[5]
Housing First has been a tremendous success, shrinking Utah’s chronically homeless population from 1,932 to 178 over the course of 10 years. The lion’s share of the new housing was built with federal assistance, and the remaining 10% of costs were covered by state and philanthropic funds.[6] Pilot programs have been run in Seattle and Denver with similarly positive results. Housing First has even been recognized by the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness as the most effective method to ending chronic homelessness.[7]
Housing First policies also result in big savings to taxpayers. A Santa Clara County pilot program targeted chronically homeless individuals who were each estimated to cost social systems over $60,000 per year. The program has been a huge success by providing supported housing that only costs $25,000 per person.[8]
You may be surprised to find out San Francisco already uses Housing First policies. But just as homeless individuals are placed into permanent housing, new ones keep arriving. The City is a major destination for all kinds of people, including tech workers and the homeless alike. Approximately 39% of San Francisco’s homeless population first became homeless in another location.[9] “San Francisco can’t end homelessness without much more support from the state and national governments” says Trent Rhorer, director of the city’s Human Services Agency.[10]Housing First policies need to spread widely so that homeless people are supported and protected wherever their place of origin is. Then they won’t feel they have to come to S.F. or any other city to survive.
A state as wealthy and innovative as California must take the bull by the horns on this issue. With the world’s 7th largest economy, we can solve homelessness![11] The solution is clear: build supportive housing both in San Francisco and throughout the state. Due to our disproportionate wealth, it makes sense for California’s funding to lean more heavily on philanthropic sources than Utah’s. San Francisco companies like Twitter, Salesforce and Airbnb should feel an obligation to do more to help the homeless sleeping at their doorsteps.
A state-wide Housing First collaboration would benefit both the chronically homeless and those of us who are already housed. Apart from being compassionate and cost-effective, it would create cities that smell better, feel safer, and are less depressing for everyone. We are all affected by the very public suffering of the chronically homeless. Who is not touched by a mixture of fear and compassion every time a homeless person asks for money? Some of us know that with a stroke of bad luck, we too could end up in the same desperate situation.
To those with great privilege comes great responsibility. The current winners of capitalism need to reckon with effect of the game: poverty. Governor Brown, Mayor Lee, Mr. Benioff, Mr. Chesky, Mr. Dorsey: let us learn from Utah and let us start building! We have the money; we have the data. Let’s end chronic homelessness in California!
[1] Carrier, S. (2015, March/April). Room For Improvement. Mother Jones.
[2] Knight, Heather. (June 27, 2014) A Decade of Homelessness: Thousands in S.F. remain in crisis. San Francisco Chronicle.
[3] Carrier, S. (2015, March/April). Room For Improvement. Mother Jones.
[4] Glionna, J. (2015, May 24). Utah is winning the war on chronic homelessness with ‘Housing First’ program. LA Times.
[5] Glionna, J. (2015, May 24). Utah is winning the war on chronic homelessness with ‘Housing First’ program. LA Times.
[6] Carrier, S. (2015, March/April). Room For Improvement. Mother Jones.
[7] United States Interagency Council on Homelessness. (November 2006). The Housing First Checklist: A Practical Tool for Assessing Housing First in Practice.
[8] Carrier, S. (2015, March/April). Room For Improvement. Mother Jones.
[9] Knight, Heather. (June 27, 2014) A Decade of Homelessness: Thousands in S.F. remain in crisis. San Francisco Chronicle.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Associated Press. (June 10, 2015). California Bounces Back As World’s 7th Largest Economy, Larger Than Brazil.
Um. I don’t know where you are getting the notion that SF uses housing first. I know of many homeless that have been on the streets for ten years or more. I only know of one or two that got housing. I have also sat in on Homeless coalition that puts out the street sheet. Never comes up actual
Housing. So .. where is it