HOMELESSNESS: IT’S PERSONAL

I’ve been a van dweller for several years, so homelessness is personal for me. I’d like to think that California’s homeless crisis will improve in 2020, but my outlook is decidedly mixed.

Here’s what won’t happen. The Supreme Court recently refused to consider whether human beings have a constitutional right to sleep in public when they have no place else to go. This means sidewalk encampments won’t be going away anytime soon. California cities will have to continue to scramble to figure out how to accommodate their homeless populations. The state’s new rent cap, which also requires just cause for eviction, will help keep more people from winding up in tents, cars and RVs on city streets, but appropriations to build more affordable housing won’t spur enough construction in the next year to stem the tide of homelessness.

I’d like to see California cities take up ideas that have worked in other places. A 2016 study of Chicago residents at risk of becoming homeless found that those living in a household that received a single cash infusion of about $1,000 were 88% less likely to be homeless three months later. A national program called Built for Zero, which uses a data-based approach to help figure out who needs what services, is making a serious dent in homeless statistics in dozens of communities. The United States Interagency Council on Homelessness reports that 78 communities have eliminated veteran homelessness and four eliminated overall chronic homelessness — so it can be done.

If other places can do it, why can’t California? Well, we seem to be trying. It’s encouraging to see that Gov. Gavin Newsom’s task force on homelessness appears to be truly trying to solve the problem by creating more ways to get people into housing and treatment, and it’s just getting started. The concept of housing first, in which shelter is made a priority without preconditions, followed by appropriate social services, is also gaining traction across the country. Since July, homeless programs in California that receive state funding have been required to incorporate “housing first” into their approaches. Studies show the housing-first model works.

Efforts like these give me and others a lot of reason for hope over the long term.

But for 2020? To solve homelessness, you need to give people somewhere to sleep besides the sidewalk. Coming up with better alternatives can’t happen soon enough. Not soon enough to save the lives of the three homeless people who die, on average, every day in Los Angeles County. Not soon enough to stop the elderly and disabled from seeing the RVs they call home often being towed away. Not soon enough to make the sidewalks safe again for all of our neighbors, whether housed or unhoused.