Poverty, Planning & Politics

The United States Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH), which is comprised of 19 different member agencies including federal departments, offices and corporations, just released "Opening Doors: Federal Strategic Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness 2010." The strategic plan was released yesterday, and can be read here.

The stated goals of the strategic plan are to end chronic homelessness and homelessness among veterans in five years, to prevent and end homelessness for families and children in ten years, and to set a path toward ending all types of homelessness. The goals laid out in this strategic plan are definitely ambitious, and the federal government acknowledges that it will need the support of state and local governments and organizations in order to accomplish them.

The strategic plan was created with what appears to have been much careful thought and deliberation, with myriad sources and experts called upon to support the plan's claims and guide their action. I was particularly happy that a lot of the macroeconomic and cost-effectiveness arguments were brought to the table.

Because helping to end homelessness is chiefly about improving peoples' quality of life, many people who devalue public policy aimed at ending homelessness seem to assume that these efforts will help a few at the cost of many others. And though I'm sure advocates of this viewpoint were thinking about Googling information to support their claim at one point, and probably spent an entire three to four seconds thinking up their brilliant correlation, this is not the case. Quite the contrary, it makes no economic sense to leave the poorest members of our population without an economic safety net or productive outlet for personal economic growth.

The Opening Doors strategic plan lays out some of the basics to show how the country could save millions of wasted dollars by investing money more intelligently - and help the poorest members of our society at the same time. Instead of allowing local municipalities to collectively waste millions upon millions of public dollars on idiotic campaigns to criminalize the homeless or compete with each other through fiscal mercantilistic transportation, utility and service provisions (which lead to high investment costs, low payout, and millions of wasted tax dollars), we could invest in sustainable low-income housing, local community development loan agencies, job training programs, youth centers, metropolitan-level planning agencies, micro-level economically incentivized development zoning for empty areas of the city long forgotten since the era of urban renewal, and a host of other methods, but you get the point.

A few examples of how it costs more money to ignore the problem of homelessness than it would to do something about it are provided by the Obama administration's USICH within this report. For instance, the graph above (click for a larger view) shows the average costs of serving homeless individuals in a variety of ways, according to data gathered from many metropolitan areas across the country.

It's important to note other facts brought up throughout the plan to understand the full implications of this graph, such as that homeless individuals are much more likely to wind up in the emergency room, or a hospital in general, than other low-income housed individuals. Also, the high cost of jail compared to supportive housing is important to note for obvious reasons, debunking half-assed theories conjured up by city officials who thought it'd be a good idea to pass laws making it illegal to block sidewalks, set up tents in public, or sleep in parks.

As far as the actual plan goes, the strategies recommended by the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness are split up to pursue ten overarching objectives. These include the following:

1. Promote collaborative leadership
2. Strengthen capacity and knowledge
3. Provide affordable housing
4. Provide permanent supportive housing
5. Increase economic security
6. Reduce financial vulnerability
7. Integrate health care with housing
8. Advance health and housing stability for youth
9. Advance health and housing stability for adults
10. Transform crisis response systems

Hey everyone, I have a bit of a special request here for everybody reading. I know that across the country, there are many laws specially designed to discourage homeless people from simply living within municipal borders. Laws that criminalize actions such as sleeping in public, setting up tents under highways, and even laws that make it illegal for a person to feed homeless individuals. There are also cases where the police will target homeless people when enforcing laws such as loitering, jaywalking and other crimes that are hardly ever accounted for when it comes to anyone else.

A lot of practices such as these may go on because homeless people are viewed as a nuisance, and because that outlook is a lot simpler than having to face the truth and admit that the structure of our economic system is inherently flawed, and in need of careful and detailed change.

We occasionally see stories in the newspaper or online of homeless people being treated as if they weren't human, as if it was against the American moral and legal code to be without a home, and that this was their fault. But stories like this seldom receive enough attention to make the news. In conversations with homeless individuals, activists, and even classmates, I heard several stories from people who had witnessed homeless people being harassed by the police, kicked out of their homes, or leaving behind and losing all of their belongings on the street once they were arrested.

I want to hear about the instances in which homeless individuals and families have been criminalized in your city. Not everything makes the news, but now it can! If you consider a blog with a handful of regular viewers news... Stories that are sent in to me from readers across the country (or across the world!) who have witnessed or otherwise know about homeless people being treated unfairly in their communities will be posted on the blog periodically for everyone to read. Small steps like this towards public awareness can make a big difference in long-term public policy outcomes, so send in those stories!

You can send your stories to me by sending an e-mail to davidboston88@gmail.com.

As always, thank you for reading.

- David