WE NEED NEW WAYS TO HELP HOMELESS PEOPLE

The city of San Diego’s decision last week to remove a homeless encampment that had sprung up in the Midway District while tossing tents and other belongings into a garbage truck led to intense criticism from advocates for the unsheltered who said those in the camp were given insufficient notice and had nowhere else to go. On Twitter, Michael Mcconnell wrote that Mayor Todd Gloria would “never solve homelessness treating people like garbage.”

He’s right. It’s a terrible look. But in a Friday email, the Gloria administration vigorously defended its actions. It noted that the Midway encampment was obstructing an adjacent road; that San Diego’s deadly 2017 hepatitis A outbreak spread by squalid conditions in similar homeless camps; and that the city receives an average of 500 complaints a week from residents about camps where homeless people live. The email also said that contrary to some criticism, the belongings of those in the encampment were not callously and entirely thrown away. Only tents and other goods that posed “biohazards,” soiled by human and pet waste, were thrown out — not items “deemed unsoiled, in good, usable condition or of irreplaceable personal value.”

Homelessness is one of San Diego’s most difficult issues. Unemployment, high housing costs, violence, mental health problems, addiction and bad luck can all drive people to the streets. And Gloria is trying for a nuanced approach. In March, his office decreed that those clearing encampments take care to retain legal documents, identification and photos so they could be picked up later by homeless people. As it should be. Homeless people are people first.

In June, Gloria and county Board of Supervisors Chair Nathan Fletcher announced the launch of a coordinated city-county response to homelessness, including the deployment of Community Harm Reduction Teams to help people with drug and mental health problems with outreach and engagement, health care and bridge housing. The announcement included a commitment to following the “best practices” that have worked around the U.S. to reduce the number of those without shelter.

On Sept. 20, President Joe Biden’s office issued a news release with similar language as part of what the White House billed the boldest federal effort yet to coordinate with local and state governments to reduce homelessness. Biden’s aides said the $350 billion in federal relief under the pandemicprompted American Rescue Plan could go a long way toward adding shelter. Oakland, for example, expects to see its federal homeless aid quadruple.

Yet the problem is that “best practices” that have a history of working to reduce homelessness aren’t unassailable. Like President Barack Obama and the state of California, Biden has embraced the “housing first” philosophy that getting people to shelter puts them on the path to productive lives. But Columbia University economist Brendan O’flaherty, who has studied research on homelessness over the past decade, no longer believes it is an effective strategy. In 2019, he concluded that providing subsidized housing with no preconditions to homeless people and families worked in the short term — for up to two years — but had little long-term effect. “We don’t know how to end homelessness. Not in the aggregate, anyway,” he wrote. And because of the extreme cost of shelter, the problem is more intractable in California than anywhere in the U.S.

The San Diego Union-tribune Editorial Board strongly supports humane, holistic policies to help homeless people find long-term housing. But there is a 30-year track record showing the emptiness of vows to end a complex issue by throwing resources at it. Here’s hoping the Gloria and Biden administrations find a “best practice” that actually works.