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It is in plain view that we have failed the homeless. We all
pass by people who look healthy, able-bodied, and well-fed, asking for help on
a street corner, professional panhandlers who have a nice car and a home to go
to – they make a living panhandling. But
then there are those sleeping in the streets, in the cold, in the rain, too
dirty and too exhausted to beg; they’ve become so invisible and ignored, nobody
speaks to them anymore.
How did they get this way? Homeless people live in unimaginable
places. How can a society as rich as ours allow this to happen? Why do we care
about the downtrodden of the world but not our own citizens?
The Department of Housing and Human Development (HUD) told
us in 2014 that there were 84,000 chronically homeless, down from 120,000 in
2007 thanks to a 2002 program aimed at ending chronic homelessness in ten
years. As any government program, the goal failed and the program was extended
through 2017. HUD used the Homeless Assistance Grants, the Veterans Affairs
Supported Housing Program and other demonstration programs to achieve this
goal.
The government had decided to end chronic homelessness
because it cost the taxpayers too much money to care for individuals who “use
many expensive services often paid through public sources, including emergency
room visits, inpatient hospitalizations, and law enforcement and jail time.”
Citing the fact that putting the homeless in shelters is also costly,
bureaucrats admit that there are also ethical reasons to help our fellow man
and end chronic homelessness.
The previous model did not work so a new strategy was
deployed – “allowing chronically homeless individuals to move into permanent
supportive housing without preconditions. Permanent supportive housing (PSH) is
not time-limited and makes services available to residents.” http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R44302.pdf
One such PSH is Housing
First, supported by both HUD and the Department of Veteran Affairs, chosen
because the homeless people can select the type and “intensity of services and
does not require abstinence or medication compliance.”
PSH increases days spent in housing and reduces days spent
homeless. “The outcomes in other areas are not as clear.” In other words, they
either don’t know or are not saying if costs are reduced in use and service, if
substance use and abuse are diminished, and if mental health improvements are
present.
Medicaid funds are used for housing-related services;
lobbyists and housing advocates prefer that states use “their own shares of
Medicaid funds to finance permanent supportive housing for chronically homeless
individuals” since funding through HUD programs is limited for new units. Another
source of funding could be Pay for
Success Initiatives; private investment in PSH would be paid back if “certain
outcomes are attained.”
The term “chronic homelessness” has been used in research since
the 1980s, referring to people who have spent more than a year in the streets
while suffering from one or two disabling conditions, substance abuse and/or
mental illness.
Randall Kuhn and Dennis Culhane categorized homelessness in
three groups of people:
-
Transitional
(short periods of time in shelters who do not return)
-
Episodic
(more frequent users of shelters, not exceeding a few months)
-
Chronic
(stay in shelters for long periods of time)*
According to Libby Perl and Erin Bagalman, the federal
standards to be deemed chronically homeless are as follows:
-
Individuals and families can be chronically
homeless even though in the Hearth Act
only unaccompanied individuals were included in the definition
-
One unaccompanied individual or adult head of
household must have a disabling condition such as “substance use disorder,
serious mental illness, developmental disability, post-traumatic stress
disorder, cognitive impairments resulting from a brain injury, or chronic
physical illness or disability, including the co-occurrence or two or more of
those conditions”
-
Duration requirement (continuously homeless for
a year or more or at least four occasions in the past three years)
-
Where someone sleeps (a place that is not meant
for human habitation such as a park, street, abandoned building, sewer, emergency
shelter, or safe haven)**
In 2015 HUD reported the total number of homeless
individuals to be 564,708. Mental illness and substance use disorders (drugs
and alcohol) seemed to be prevalent among the homeless.
The permanent supportive housing (PSH) is not time-limited
and services are available to residents. HUD provides much of the funding and
thus requires certain criteria such as basing it in a community, not an
institution; time of stay cannot be limited; residents can have a renewable
lease; and helping residents with disability to live independently.
PSH may rent units in a condominium or apartment complex;
subsidies are provided through housing vouchers; single-site multi-family
rental property with affordable housing designation; residents pay 30% of their
income towards rent and the rest is subsidized. Such units exist around the
D.C. area. Some of the units are reported by the other residents as sources of
bed bugs infestation and other pests.
Not all PSH providers require their residents in permanent
housing to “abstain from drugs and alcohol” in order to remain eligible for
housing. Housing First, developed in
New York in 1990s under the name Pathways
to Housing, does not require residents to abstain from drugs and alcohol or
to take their meds, but services are available 24 hours a day to help them if
they ask – nurses, caseworkers, and psychiatrists.
Prince William County in Virginia is considering placing its
409 homeless people in 8X12 tiny prototype homes at a cost of $3,000 per unit. Woodbridge HUGS, a non-profit formed last year
to “assist the county’s homeless population” and to provide the homeless with
essential goods and housing, said through its representative, “We found what we
want as our prototype… we want to put in a composting toilet, a skylight, a
generator, a door that locks, [and] windows for cross-ventilation.” http://whatsupwoodbridge.com/2016/01/15/tiny-houses-homeless-prince-william/
I cannot imagine what these tiny slum units would do to the surrounding
landscape and the property values of the adjacent properties. Is this the best way
to help the homeless in one of the richest counties in the nation?
Instead of sheltering the homeless in proper and stable
housing, why are we moving them essentially into shanty areas? Why must we
relegate the homeless, the unemployed, and the poor to ePodments, to tiny
homes, to mini-homes, to dwellings made of junkyard scrap and other cheap
materials, to dwellings the size of closets?
Are we doing this because the economy is in such dire-straights
thanks to this administration’s disastrous economic policies? Or is there
another reprehensible Agenda and plan in place to crowd people into stack-and-pack
tiny apartments and temporary units the size of a dog house in order to return the
suburbia to its original wilderness?
In spite of HUD Homeless Assistance Grants, as a primary
tool of the federal government of funding housing for homeless people, HUD-VA
Supported Housing program, which was started in 1992, and other social programs,
homelessness is far from being addressed properly and will continue to exist.
____________________________
*Randall Kuhn and Dennis P. Culhane, “Applying Cluster
Analysis to Test a Typology of Homelessness by Pattern of Shelter Utilization:
Results from the Analysis of Administrative Data,” American Journal of
Community Psychology, vol. 26, no. 2 (April 1998), pp. 207-232.
**CRS Report 44302, December 8, 2015, pp. 3-4.
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