Housing, not Handcuffs
A great solution to homelessness is to build more housing: where housing is cheap and plentiful, the homelessness rate is low, even in places with a lot of mental health and substance abuse problems. And relatedly, taking a “housing first” approach to people with criminal convictions is effective at reducing the cycle of incarceration. For example, a 2021 study from the UCLA department of economics found that:
housing assistance lowers the number of emergency department visits within 18 months by 80 percent (compared to baseline mean), reduces the number of jail days within 18 months by 130 percent, the probability of committing a crime by 80 percent (compared to baseline mean), and increases the probability of reporting employment by 24 percentage points within 18 months."
However, “Just build housing” is a daunting solution, given obstacles like massive cost, aggressive resistance by cities that don’t want to allow more housing to be built, and opposition by powerful local groups that don’t want new housing near to them. These forces destroyed past social housing projects, and they’re still formidable. While there is a growing ‘pro-housing’ movement that’s advocating for laws and policies to increase the housing supply, it’s nascent.
Public frustration over homelessness could create the kind of major pressure needed to overcome obstacles to housing construction and rapidly increase it. But that’s not going to happen when city and state governments offer what looks like a simpler solution: criminalization and/or ‘compassionate’ forced removal. More police, more encampment sweeps, and putting people in jail or closed shelters can erase the visual homelessness and release public pressure to build housing (though you still have to build more jails and prisons this way, which is even more expensive).
Many people are uncomfortable with heavy handed solutions like police forcibly removing people to shelters or jails, but they are being persuaded by persistent rightwing campaigns that falsely argue: (1) all other solutions have failed, and (2) homeless people deserve virulent hostility (this trend builds on a long tradition of eliminating housing options for poor people) and should be forced to accept whatever solutions are offered to them, including shelters that are dangerous and overcrowded.
To tackle these opponents, one path forward for criminal justice reform people is to build alliances with organizations working to build more housing. Neither of us want electeds to get away with offering criminalization as an alternative to building housing. I wonder what our forces could look like, combined?
**For some great context on this, please be sure to read Ned Resnikoff’s article.**
Great insight. How about this: Instead of trying to build housing in the most expensive parts of the country - urban areas - why not provide opportunities to relocate communities to areas of the country in decline due to population loss? Public policy seems to always pit two adversarial parties and make us compete against ourselves. I'd be interested in a study that shows how cities, states and federal government could actually save money by building communities outside of urban SMSAs.
Thanks for writing this. It's so ridiculous that we have the solutions but lack the will and desire to treat everyone with basic dignity and humanity.