Almost everyone now agrees that what America has been doing about homelessness isn’t working. But that’s where the agreement ends.
In the final episode of Street Fight, we lay out the two camps and let them make their best case. On one side is Housing First: the idea, backed by academic studies, that you should give a struggling person an apartment before you ask anything of them — because no one solves their addiction or their illness while sleeping on the pavement. Believers in this philosophy say it's a proven strategy when it's done right. But others are frustrated, saying the high price tag hasn’t paid off.
On the other side is Enforcement Now, the name we give to a group that believes a city has to be able to say that no one lives on the sidewalk, and to back that up with teeth. They argue that what gets called a homelessness problem is often an addiction or mental illness problem that no amount of housing will fix. But others counter that a night in jail, or a ticket, doesn’t leave the person any better off than they were before.
After listening, please let us know what you think by sharing your questions and comments below.
Discussion (2)
Mark Horvath (the former homeless person interviewed in the 3rd episode) is right that homelessness is a symptom. It’s easy to get captured by various boogeymen to think otherwise; I know I did for a long time, especially while living in San Francisco for 5 years; having to step over human shit on the sidewalks on my way to work is but one of many detractions from supposed Silicon Valley Paradise! I've just finished all 3 episodes and enjoyed them. But nearly everyone interviewed was arguing over the bottom layer, when the more useful question is what's pressing down on it. I don’t feel like anyone interviewed or the host nailed why this is. The best evidence I know of says the underlying condition is housing scarcity in America’s more desirable cities, sitting on top of a very thin social safety net. Max Fisher’s (YouTuber) recent video does a pretty good job of explaining the socioeconomic strata that basically guarantees homelessness. Picture a stack of cardboard boxes. Every box carries the weight above it, and the bottom one crushes first, not because it took the heaviest load (although it did) but because it has the least margin left to accommodate more pressure. Something that should be relatively trivial finishes the job of landing someone into homelessness: an unpaid bill, a painfully expensive car repair, a landlord selling up. The heaviest weight is housing. Colburn & Aldern (Homelessness Is a Housing Problem) found that homelessness rates follow rents and vacancy, as distinct from poverty, mental illness or drug use. Mississippi is far poorer than California and has a far lower rate, because a home there costs a fraction as much. Each layer pushes on the one below, as people and families get priced out of their tier and have to bid further down the ladder, until the shortfall lands on the poorest. The US is short about 7 million affordable rentals for extremely low-income households, and federal rental assistance reaches only about 1 in 4 eligible households. Why so few homes? A century of zoning, district preservation tactics, and endless public review, defended mostly by ordinary homeowners. Tax policy has taught Americans to treat a house not only as somewhere to live, but also as their retirement funds (eg. downsizing in retirement, or selling that investment property), so voting to block new homes is a rational act! Nobody designed this, AFAIK, yet it works like a conspiracy. Drug addiction then decides who lands at the bottom (opioids ravage the lower layers, and recovery is close to impossible without a stable base), whilst affordable housing availability decides how many. Everyone is tangled up in it, but homelessness ends up argued as tents versus compassion, as distinct from why rents are so high. Finland has come closest to ending long-term homelessness by pairing housing supply with a proper safety net. But Americans inculcated with American Exceptionalism from birth hate taking lessons from other states, let alone other countries…
Excellent opening anecdote. I’ve had two similar experiences – and it’s relevant to know I’m non-American with an American partner. First, early on when I first met my boyfriend, we were in Portland and I saw a guy lying immobile and unresponsive on the ground. I was quite alarmed, just like the woman in the comedy bit, and pressured my bf to call 911. During this time a police car drove by and not only didn’t stop but didn’t even seem to take in there was a guy lying face down in the street! My bf made the call, a little begrudgingly from the perspective of someone who'd spent many years in west coast cities, and while he was on the phone, the guy on the ground started groaning and swearing at us for making the call. They sent some specialist social worker team rather than an ambulance or police. For a foreigner’s point of view, this whole situation was pretty alarming, I'd never seen anything like it. Fast forward many years later and much more time spent in US cities, and we were in Europe. Boarded a city bus where there was a guy lying on the floor around that area reserved for the elderly and disabled. He was kind of in fetal position with his face obscured. Everyone was averting eyes. I thought to myself it was nice of the driver to let a homeless person get some sleep. My bf assumed he was drunk. We’d gotten on at a stop near a tourism site, so a lot of Americans were on the bus and everyone was doing the same polite eye aversion and keeping their distance. A few stops later, some local workers get on and one lady starts freaking out when she sees the guy on the floor and shouts for the driver to stop the bus; the driver jumps out of his seat and they start first aid. Turns out the guy on the floor was a young man with an intellectual disability, who’d left his home alone, got disoriented, fell, hit his head, and needed medical assistance. I’ve never felt so awful in my life for ignoring him, my bf felt the same, and I truly think all the time we’ve spent in Portland, Seattle, SF, NYC, Austin etc kind of programmed us to have that reaction - avert eyes, pretend it's normal. Being exposed to those sights day in and day out hardens people on both sides of the interaction, which probably makes the problem even worse.