Homelessness Isn't an Unfixable ProblemStart by looking at the government policies that have made it worse.
STEVEN GREENHUT
5.19.2023
California is home to nearly one-third of the nation's homeless population and the problem—by almost everyone's account—continues to worsen. The statistics tell part of the story: More than 170,000 people sleep in tents in public parks, under freeway bridges and on sidewalks in our cities and suburbs. The state has spent $20 billion to address the problem in five years.
The anecdotes are even more telling, given that the common, appalling street scenes cause businesses to shutter and discourage people from visiting downtowns or using public transit. I was chatting on my cellphone on a Sacramento street when a homeless man started screaming in my face. It doesn't take many incidents like that to harden our attitudes.
Liberal Democrats, who typically run big-city governments, have understandably been reluctant to embrace enforcement-centric policies. That's changing as scared and angry residents speak out. Gov. Gavin Newsom announced efforts to clear out 1,200 homeless encampments. Officials in San Francisco even unleashed the National Guard to tamp down open-air drug markets.
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The head of Orange County's Rescue Mission has told me that the vast majority of people the nonprofit assists self-identify as having a mental health or addiction issue. Yet homeless activists and political commentators push the fiction that homelessness is primarily a housing issue—and advocate their usual litany of solutions: rent controls, eviction moratoria, and additional spending on subsidized apartments.
They make the problem sound easy to fix. As a headline in the Jesuit magazine, America, noted: "Homelessness is only getting worse, but we know the solution: a right to housing." Declaring new rights doesn't solve anything, of course, and only will make matters worse.
Depriving property owners of the ability to evict non-paying tenants and imposing rent controls demonstrably discourages housing investment—and leads to further shortages. In reality, homelessness is a mental health and social issue that's exacerbated by our state's inordinately high cost of housing.
The overwhelming nature of the problem, poor public policies, and aggravating debates lead many people to basically throw in the towel. But that might not be necessary. I recently moderated a homelessness panel in downtown Sacramento, where attendees watched a short movie that compared San Francisco's intractable problems with those in San Antonio. There are no easy buttons, but the documentary, "Beyond Homeless," did offer a thoughtful blueprint.
Essentially, the Texas city built a lovely campus in an industrial area not far from downtown. It offers dormitories, a cafeteria, clean restrooms, and a panoply of social services. It's run by a nonprofit organization. According to the filmmakers, San Antonio's downtown unsheltered homeless population dropped by 80 percent. The program has moved 6,000 people into permanent housing.
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Source:
https://reason.com/2023/05/19/homelessness-isnt-an-unfixable-problem/
