Last week’s tragedy in Baltimore’s City Shelter showcased the many faults of homeless shelters. Both in Baltimore and nationally, these places can be overcrowded, unsafe, and not equipped to work with people who might be mentally ill or combating addiction. Having never stayed the night at a shelter, I am wholly unqualified to evaluate which of these shortcomings is the most serious, but my biggest gripe with shelters is something else.
The biggest fault of homeless shelters is simply that they are only ever meant to be temporary. The most commonly mentioned solution when people discuss homelessness actually does nothing to alleviate homelessness. Someone can stay in a shelter every night for a year- or longer- and be no closer to permanent housing. Homeless shelters are only a band-aid on a potentially deadly issue. Despite the human and financial costs to homeless shelters, these institutions do nothing to improve the lives of those who stay there.
Shelters, like band-aids, serve a purpose. Immediate resources are not unimportant, but they cannot be the only solution we offer those who experience homelessness in our cities. This week, fellow ChangeEngine author Robyn Stegman suggests that even when people are experiencing homelessness, they have the right to their own money and to make their own decisions. Housing First is the radical idea that people have a right to housing. Housing first programs focus on housing people as rapidly as possible, providing supportive services, and providing a standard lease (without mandated therapy).
For years, the path out of homelessness required jumping the hurdles of finding employment, remaining clean from drugs and alcohol, and maintaining a mental health regimen. Many programs that serve homeless citizens impose such rules on their clients before they will help find them housing. In 2005, Health Care for the Homeless, a Baltimore health care agency, moved 30 people who were about to be evicted from a local park into their own housing and found that nearly all of these individuals were able to remain housed. Having housing led many people to successfully secure an income and participate in mental health treatments.
Here’s the shocking thing about a program that doesn’t require its users to be clean, employed and seeking treatment before they are allowed a safe place to live: it works. In a New York City study, 84 percent of active drug users housed remained in their housing. This statistic is higher than what plenty of social service programs achieve by requiring clients to abstain from drugs and alcohol before “earning” housing. In Seattle, housing people who were chronically homeless and addicted to alcohol (without requiring clean time) not only allowed for most study participants to remain in housing — it reduced costs for the city by $2,449 per person, per month.
Baltimore’s 10 Year Plan to End Homelessness relied heavily on the Housing First Model when it was written in 2008. In Chicago, Housing First is one of three pillars of the plan to end homelessness and policy makers in Los Angeles, Boston, and New Orleans are discussing the merits of this practice. Earlier in 2013, consultants for Baltimore drafted a new version of the 10 Year Plan to End Homelessness, which mistakenly does not provide enough resources for Housing First to reach its full potential. Moving people experiencing homelessness into sustainable shelter should be a priority for any city that is looking to save lives and money. Revisions of the plan are ongoing.
For some reason, many people think that safe, affordable housing is a carrot we can hold up as an incentive to force others to make huge life changes. If shelters were used only as temporary places to stay instead of consolation prizes, we would see a dramatic decrease in not only the number of people experiencing homelessness, but also the number of people struggling with debilitating mental illness and addiction. Cities could literally hand people they keys they need to overcome addiction and maintain their mental health. Housing is not a prize for the healthy — housing is a human right.
