How Houston is successfully reducing homelessness
We can solve homelessness. This recent story from CBS Sunday Morning highlights the efforts of the city of Houston. While the story is about Houston, the method is nearly universal - we know that Housing First works when implemented “to fidelity” (thank you Chelsea Haring-Cozzi for that great term).
The term Housing First is bantered about with a lot of assumptions about its meaning. In its true form, “Housing First is a policy that offers unconditional, permanent housing as quickly as possible to homeless people, and other supportive services afterward.” The key words - unconditional, permanent, supportive services. Housing First is not sheltering, it is not temporary, it does not require treatment for addiction or mental health issues. It is, full stop, permanent supportive housing. In the mid 2010’s, HUD required city’s to implement Housing First to receive some federal dollars. Unfortunately, many cities like Indianapolis simply said they were doing it. What they are really doing is their own version of the program, and we know that doesn’t work.
We know it works and the data is, as the National Low Income Housing Coalition reports, irrefutable. There is a powerful movement led by the Cicero Institute that does refute the efficacy of Housing First. Their answer is not solving homelessness, it’s criminalizing it. Essentially, their solution is to warehouse people, separating them from the “rest of us.”
Cicero and other detractors base much of their evidence that Housing First doesn’t work on data from cities like Indianapolis. We are not doing Housing First to fidelity, i.e. the program that works in Houston. And the results are clear - homelessness is on the rise and we continue putting band aids on the problem.
