homelessness Archives - DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS

Supreme Court docket to resolve Oregon homelessness case

Daily SF News — Wed, 17 Apr 2024 15:02:48 +0000

GRANTS PASS, Oregon — A pickleball game in this leafy Oregon community was suddenly interrupted one rainy weekend morning by the arrival of an ambulance. Paramedics rushed through the park toward a tent, one of dozens illegally erected by the town’s hundreds of homeless people, then play resumed as though nothing had happened.

Myles Baida plays pickleball as emergency responders put a homeless person in an ambulance March 23 in Grants Pass, Ore. Relatives had called police and requested a welfare check.

Jenny Kane, Associated Press

Mere feet away, volunteers helped dismantle tents to move an 80-year-old man and a woman blind in one eye, who risked being fined for staying too long. In the distance, a group of boys climbed on a jungle gym.

The scenes were emblematic of the crisis gripping the small, Oregon mountain town of Grants Pass, where a fierce fight over park space has become a battleground for a much larger, national debate on homelessness that has reached the U.S. Supreme Court.

A volunteer holds on to a wheelchair as Max Hartfelt is helped into his tent after being relocated from one park to another March 23 in Grants Pass, Ore. The rural community has become the unlikely face of the nation’s homelessness crisis as its case over anti-camping laws goes to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Jenny Kane, Associated Press

The town’s case, set to be heard April 22, has broad implications for how not only Grants Pass, but communities nationwide address homelessness, including whether they can fine or jail people for camping in public. It has made the town of 40,000 the unlikely face of the nation’s homelessness crisis, and further fueled the debate over how to deal with it.

Grants Pass Mayor Sara Bristol visits Tussing Park on March 22 in Grants Pass, Ore.

Jenny Kane, Associated Press

“I certainly wish this wasn’t what my town was known for,” Mayor Sara Bristol told The Associated Press last month. “It’s not the reason why I became mayor. And yet it has dominated every single thing that I’ve done for the last 3 ½ years.”

Officials across the political spectrum — from Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom in California, which has nearly 30% of the nation’s homeless population, to a group of 22 conservative-led states — have filed briefs in the case, saying lower court rulings have hamstrung their ability to deal with encampments.

Like many Western communities, Grants Pass has struggled for years with a burgeoning homeless population. A decade ago, City Council members discussed how to make it “uncomfortable enough … in our city so they will want to move on down the road.” From 2013 to 2018, the city said it issued 500 citations for camping or sleeping in public, including in vehicles, with fines that could reach hundreds of dollars.

A vehicle at left drives down Rogue River Highway as light shines on the area March 23 in Grants Pass, Ore.

Jenny Kane, Associated Press

But a 2018 decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals changed the calculus. The court, whose jurisdiction includes nine Western states, held that while communities are allowed to prohibit tents in public spaces, it violated the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment to give people criminal citations for sleeping outside when they had no place else to go.

Four years later, in a case challenging restrictions in Grants Pass, the court expanded that ruling, holding that civil citations also can be unconstitutional.

Civil rights groups and attorneys for the homeless residents who challenged the restrictions in 2018 insist people shouldn’t be punished for lacking housing. Officials throughout the West have overstated the impact of the court decisions to distract from their own failings, they argued.

“For years, political leaders have chosen to tolerate encampments as an alternative to meaningfully addressing the western region’s severe housing shortage,” the attorneys wrote. “It is easier to blame the courts than to take responsibility for finding a solution.”

In Grants Pass, the town’s parks, many lining the picturesque Rogue River, are at the heart of the debate. Cherished for their open spaces, picnic tables, playgrounds and sports fields, they host everything from annual boat-racing festivals and vintage car shows to Easter egg hunts and summer concerts.

Brian Wright, center, prays during bible study at Gospel Rescue Mission on March 21 in Grants Pass, Ore.

Jenny Kane, Associated Press

They’re also the sites of encampments blighted by illegal drug use and crime, including a shooting at a park last year that left one person dead. Tents cluster along riverbanks, next to tennis courts and jungle gyms, with tarps shielding belongings from the rain. When the sun comes out, clothes and blankets are strung across tree branches to dry. Used needles litter the ground.

Grants Pass has one overnight shelter for adults, the Gospel Rescue Mission. It has 138 beds, but rules including attendance at daily Christian services, no alcohol, drugs or smoking and no pets mean many won’t stay there.

Cassy Leach, a nurse, leads a volunteer group providing food, medical care and other basic goods to the town’s hundreds of homeless people. They help relocate their tents to comply with city rules.

Cassy Leach, a nurse who leads a group of volunteers who provide food, medical care and other basic goods to the hundreds of homeless people living in the parks, talks to Kimberly Marie, who is homeless and camping in Fruitdale Park on March 21 in Grants Pass, Ore.

Jenny Kane, Associated Press

At one park last month, she checked on a man who burned his leg after falling on a torch lighter during a fentanyl overdose and brought him naloxone, the opioid overdose reversal medication. In another, she distributed cans of beans, peas and Chef Boyardee mini ravioli from a pickup truck.

“Love, hope, community and a safety net is really as important as a shower and water,” Leach said.

Dre Buetow, 48, from northern California, has been living in his car for three years after a bone cancer diagnosis and $450,000 in medical bills. The illness and treatment kept him from returning to his old tree-trimming job, he said.

Laura Gutowski’s husband died from a pulmonary embolism and she suddenly found herself, in her 50s, with no income. They didn’t have life insurance or savings and, within a month, she was sleeping outside.

“I used to love camping,” she said through tears. “And now I can’t stand it anymore.”

But some residents want to limit aid because of the trash left behind after encampment moves or food handouts. The City Council proposed requiring outreach groups to register with the city. The mayor vetoed it, laying bare the discord gripping Grants Pass.

Before the council attempted, unsuccessfully, to override the veto last month, a self-proclaimed “park watch” group rallied outside City Hall with signs reading, “Parks are for kids.”

The group regularly posts images of trash, tents and homeless people on social media. On Sundays, they set up camp chairs in what they say is a bid to reclaim park space.

Brock Spurgeon says he used to take his grandkids to parks that were so full it was hard to find an available picnic table. Now, open drug use and discarded needles have scared families away, he said.

“That was taken away from us when the campers started using the parks,” he said.

Homeless encampment sweeps spike in cities across US as housing crisis grows

Michael Johnson gathers possessions to take before a homeless encampment was cleaned up in San Francisco on Aug. 29, 2023. Cities across the U.S. are struggling with and cracking down on tent encampments as the number of homeless people grows, largely due to a lack of affordable housing. Homeless people and their advocates say sweeps are cruel and costly, and there aren’t enough homes or beds for everyone.

Jeff Chiu, Associated Press

Roxanne Simonson, 60, removes her long-sleeve shirt July 27 after being told by Rapid Response Bio Clean that she has 72 hours to vacant her illegal campsite in Portland, Ore. Simonson has been homeless for two years.

Craig Mitchelldyer

Will Taylor, 32, cleans up the campsite of a friend July 27 before Rapid Response Bio Clean removes the belongings during a sweep in Portland, Ore. Taylor says that he has had to move three times since becoming homeless. Tent encampments have long been a fixture of West Coast cities, but are now spreading visibly across the U.S. The federal count of homeless people reached 580,000 last year, driven by lack of affordable housing and a pandemic that economically wrecked households.

Craig Mitchelldyer, Associated Press

Prohibited items that have been collected by Rapid Response Bio Clean while cleaning homeless camps sit on a table in the company warehouse in Portland, Ore., on July 27, 2023. Weapons, car parts and drug paraphernalia are not allowed to be returned to people whose items have been confiscated during a sweep.

Craig Mitchelldyerr, Associated Press

A San Francisco Police Department vehicle drives through a homeless encampment being cleaned up in San Francisco on Aug. 29, 2023. Records obtained by The Associated Press show attempts to clear encampments increased in cities from Los Angeles to New York as public pressure grew to address what are dangerous and unsanitary living conditions. But despite tens of millions of dollars spent in recent years, there appears to be little reduction in the number of tents propped up on sidewalks, in parks and by freeway off-ramps.

Jeff Chiur, Associated Press

Members of the San Francisco Homeless Outreach Team’s Encampment Resolution Team walk toward an encampment in San Francisco Aug. 29, 2023.

Jeff Chiu, Associated Press

Two small stones that say “hope” and “peace” respectively and two flowers lay inside a circle of rocks on the ground in Portland, Ore., on Oct. 17, 2023. The rock circle is next to the site of a former homeless encampment that was cleared several times over the course of the year. With homelessness on the rise in the U.S. and a lack of affordable housing, cities and states are cracking down on mushrooming tent encampments.

Claire Rushr, Associated Press

San Francisco Public Works crew load a truck while cleaning items from a homeless encampment in San Francisco Aug. 29, 2023. Cities across the U.S. are struggling with and cracking down on tent encampments as the number of homeless people grows, largely due to a lack of affordable housing. Homeless people and their advocates say sweeps are cruel and costly, and there aren’t enough homes or beds for everyone. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

Jeff Chiu, Associated Press

A woman gathers possessions to take before a homeless encampment was cleaned up in San Francisco on Aug. 29, 2023. Cities across the U.S. are struggling with and cracking down on tent encampments as the number of homeless people grows, largely due to a lack of affordable housing. Homeless people and their advocates say sweeps are cruel and costly, and there aren’t enough homes or beds for everyone.

Jeff Chiu, Associated Press

A woman gathers possessions to take before a homeless encampment was cleaned up in San Francisco, Aug. 29, 2023.

Jeff Chiur, Associated Press

Members of the San Francisco Homeless Outreach Team’s Encampment Resolution Team speak with people at an encampment in San Francisco Aug. 29, 2023.

Jeff Chiur, Associated Press

A San Francisco Public Works crew cleans items from a homeless encampment in San Francisco Aug. 29, 2023.

Jeff Chiur, Associated Press

Maurice Palmer waits with his possessions as a homeless encampment is cleaned up in San Francisco Aug. 29, 2023.

Jeff Chiur, Associated Press

Francis Zamora, of Department of Emergency Management, walks past a puddle near a homeless encampment being cleaned up in San Francisco Aug. 29, 2023.

Jeff Chiur, Associated Press

A man pushes items while a homeless encampment is being cleaned up in San Francisco Aug. 29, 2023.

Jeff Chiur, Associated Press

Roughly 30 large boulders occupy the narrow strip of land between a sidewalk and a parking lot wall in Portland, Ore., on Oct. 17, 2023. The boulders were installed sometime after late July at the site of a former homeless encampment to prevent tents from being set back up. The encampment was cleared several times over the course of the year. Cities across the U.S. are struggling with and cracking down on tent encampments as the number of homeless people grows, largely due to a lack of affordable housing. Homeless people and their advocates say sweeps are cruel and costly, and there aren’t enough homes or beds for everyone.

Claire Rushr, Associated Press

Amber Nastasia from Rapid Response Bio Clean cleans a homeless camp July 27 in Portland, Ore.

Craig Mitchelldyer, Associated Press

Will Taylor, 32, cleans up the campsite of a friend July 27 before Rapid Response Bio Clean removes the belongings during a sweep in Portland, Ore.

Craig Mitchelldyer, Associated Press

Will Taylor, 32, cleans up the campsite of a friend before Rapid Response Bio Clean removes the belongings during a sweep in Portland, Ore., July 27, 2023. T

Craig Mitchelldyerr, Associated Press

Amber Nastasia from Rapid Response Bio Clean cleans a homeless camp in Portland, Ore., on July 27, 2023.

Craig Mitchelldyerr, Associated Press

Amber Nastasia, left, and Jacob Miller from Rapid Response Bio Clean clean a homeless camp in Portland, Ore., Thursday, July 27, 2023.

Craig Mitchelldyerr, Associated Press

Be the first to know

Get local news delivered to your inbox!

The post Supreme Court docket to resolve Oregon homelessness case appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

San Francisco RV Group Fears New Parking Guidelines Might Push Them Nearer to Homelessness

Daily SF News — Thu, 15 Feb 2024 22:12:20 +0000

Finding temporary shelter in the interim won’t be easy. As of Oct. 23, there were 377 people on the waiting list for emergency shelter in San Francisco.

With the clock now ticking, advocates for unhoused people say the city must find a solution quickly so no residents are ticketed, towed, or forced to abandon their vehicles and live on the street.

“The families on Winston Drive and Buckingham Way deserve dignity and safety, including a safe parking site and access to permanent housing,” Eleana Binder, policy manager for the homeless services nonprofit Glide, said in a written statement. “Implementing the parking restrictions without options will push them deeper into instability and homelessness.”

People like Suarez say it will be impossible to move their vehicle every four hours while at work, so they’ll have to find a new place to park to avoid the $92 parking tickets. For him, a single parking ticket is nearly half of this daily $220 paycheck.

SFMTA also noted it has payment plans for tickets, community service alternatives and discounts for people experiencing homelessness.

Jessica Coello puts a wedge under the front tire of her RV after moving it for street sweeping on Winston Drive in San Francisco on Oct. 17, 2023. (Beth LaBerge/KQED)

Others said they have no other option but to try to stay and move their vehicle when they can.

Jessica Coello has lived on Winston Drive for about a year with her two kids, ages 15 and 17, who go to high school in the city. Like many of her neighbors, she started living on Winston during the pandemic after she lost work. It was cheaper than paying rent and has allowed her to save up some money for her kids’ college education.

“We aren’t going to have a safe place to go, and we’ll get a lot of tickets,” she told KQED about her fears looking ahead. “If we get a lot of tickets, they’ll tow the RVs, and we won’t have anywhere to live.”

Coello, who works in childcare and housekeeping, has struggled to find regular work after the pandemic. But she wants to stay close to her children’s school so they can graduate on time. She feels lost without options.

“They don’t accept RVs anywhere. Either they are too close to the houses, and people there don’t want RVs near, or we are on the streets, and they can’t stay there,” she told KQED. “If you put restrictions, we’ll be homeless. It will be an even worse situation for us.”

Residents chant during a rally calling on San Francisco to provide safe parking sites and housing for families living in RVs near San Francisco State University at risk of eviction on Winston Drive on Oct. 24, 2023. (Beth LaBerge/KQED)

Joshua Hernandez, 21, moved to an RV on Winston Drive with his girlfriend just three months ago, after it got too expensive to continue renting their apartment in Daly City. He’s working as a plumber and his girlfriend is taking classes at Skyline Community College.

“Even if we worked long days everyday, it wasn’t enough to pay our bills and still go to college. So we moved here. And it feels way better now, we can save for our future,” he told KQED outside a rally on Tuesday morning where families living in RVs were demanding the city find a safe parking site before the new rules kick in.

For many of the families parked next to him, Suarez said, the new parking limits will “pretty much force everyone out.”

But Suarez hopes he’s wrong.

The post San Francisco RV Group Fears New Parking Guidelines Might Push Them Nearer to Homelessness appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Homelessness within the US: Can “tiny houses” assist with the reasonably priced housing disaster?

Daily SF News — Wed, 29 Nov 2023 15:32:42 +0000

Sharon Sandelin is a resident at 33 Gough Street in San Francisco.

Gabriela Hasbun for Vox

Before she moved into the first shelter village of “tiny houses” in San Francisco, Sharon Sandelin — a 66-year-old who goes by “Mama T” — had been sleeping on the streets.

Now she lives in a 64-square-foot unit with heat, electricity, a twin bed, desk, and chair. There is a combination lock on the outside. The gated community where some 70 other people now live is clean and cheerful-looking, painted teal and sea-foam green. Residents are connected with supportive services like health care and served three meals daily.

Sandelin detests traditional homeless shelters, and appreciates the privacy of her locked room on Gough Street, knowing she can rest undisturbed. But she still considers herself homeless. Though she likes her tiny cabin more than she liked being unsheltered, residents must use porta-potties, they are not allowed to have outside visitors, they can’t shower after 2 pm, and they can’t cook anything that requires more than a microwave or toaster.

“I want to eat my own cooking,” she told me. “My daughter can’t visit me, and there shouldn’t be no set time for a person to take a shower.”

Sharon Sandelin is a resident at 33 Gough Street in San Francisco.

Gabriela Hasbun for Vox

Sandelin has a place to sleep in large part because of Elizabeth Funk, who spent three decades working at investment firms and tech giants like Yahoo and Microsoft, while serving on boards of various homeless nonprofits. Since 2020, Funk, now the CEO of Dignity Moves, which fundraised and developed the San Francisco village, has brought her experience and Rolodex to bear on a singular goal: to, as Silicon Valley puts it, disrupt the problem of homelessness in America.

Since 2016, unsheltered homelessness — meaning those sleeping somewhere not designed for human residence, like a car, a park, or a train station — has been going up. Particularly on the West Coast where housing costs are often prohibitive, local governments have struggled to curb sprawling and politically unpopular tent encampments, and many unhoused people prefer sleeping outside to crowded shelters with bunk beds. The challenge has been exacerbated by Martin v. Boise, a 2018 court ruling that said people can’t be punished for sleeping outside on public property if there are no adequate alternatives available.

Elizabeth Funk, founder and CEO of Dignity Moves.

Gabriela Hasbun for Vox

To Funk and other tiny house proponents, villages like the one where Sandelin now lives offer creative solutions to all these issues. The small, relocatable cabins provide leaders new ways to bypass restrictive zoning rules, by leveraging emergency building codes and “borrowing” rather than purchasing land. They also offer, at least for some, a more dignified shelter option, providing an affordable answer to the difficult reality that many people prefer to sleep outside rather than endure the rules and conditions of typical shelters.

Advocates of “tiny homes” as a solution to the homeless crisis say the units should be understood as a key tool to preventing chronic homelessness amid a brutal housing shortage. If people lose their homes but can get quickly off the streets into a temporary private dwelling, then they’re in a much better position to get back on their feet, and avoid the tumble into longer-term homelessness that can transpire from even just a few weeks without shelter.

For elected officials, the villages also mean that fewer people have to see — or think about — homeless people on a daily basis. Tiny homes provide leaders with a faster and cheaper alternative to building permanent housing or congregate shelters, and may provide cities with the legal authority to then clear out any remaining tent encampments: Funk told me she can determine “exactly how many units you need in order to make it illegal to sleep on the streets within the city limits in San Francisco.” All this has thrilled leaders eager to reclaim their cities from what they see as spiraling chaos and disorder.

Advocates for the homeless, meanwhile, worry that the tiny shelter boom will divert funds that could otherwise go to new permanent housing, preventing people from moving into a real home for even longer. The rush of private industry into the space also gives advocates pause, and they worry that cities will buy bare-bones, cheaper models, place them in remote parts of town, and criminalize those who refuse to go.

At the heart of the tiny houses debate is a question about the meaning of housing and shelter itself. As more companies rush to manufacture models with varying features — some out of plastic, some out of repurposed shipping containers, some built on factory assembly lines, others on-site or on wheels, some with in-suite bathrooms, kitchenettes, and storage space, others lacking plumbing and electricity and with virtually no amenities at all — there is little consensus on what a “tiny home” is, or what standards it must meet.

Tiny house shelter units are typically between 60 and 150 square feet, but the sharp variety of products within the industry creates confusion. How spartan is acceptable? Is anything better than sleeping outside?

Lots of arrangements can be tolerated if they’re understood as emergency solutions — but some communities have also started to explore the idea of treating the units less as temporary shelters and more as something approaching new housing options.

“Harnessing NIMBY” to expand tiny houses

America has a housing shortage in part because it’s become so expensive and difficult to build new housing. The cost to purchase new land has skyrocketed, byzantine zoning rules make residential construction hard, and people living in communities often protest new development — wary of decreased property values, new neighbors, noise, traffic, or general change. This barrier is so common it goes by NIMBY, short for “not in my backyard.”

Yet over the last few years, “tiny home” shelters have been built in communities through what you could call creative hacks of the zoning code. In some places, structures smaller than 120 square feet are not classified as permanent dwellings, and therefore not subject to the same regulations applicable to residential buildings. Other groups have capitalized on cities that declared local states of emergency, which give governments more flexibility to build units with faster permitting.

Dignity Moves is a transitional housing program in San Francisco. These 70 modular units are set at 33 Gough Street, right in the middle of San Francisco. They offer the unhoused a non-congregate shelter option.

Gabriela Hasbun for Vox

Dignity Moves formed in 2020 as a task force within the Young Presidents Organization, a global networking group of chief executives. The group wanted to “apply private sector approaches and Silicon Valley-style ‘disruptive thinking’” to America’s homelessness crisis, as they describe it.

Funk could hardly hold back her grin as she outlined Dignity Moves’ theory of change. Instead of buying expensive land for tiny houses, she told me, they “borrow” it from developers who aren’t yet ready to use it.

Leveraging emergency building codes and word-of-mouth networking, “we take advantage of under-utilized assets,” she said. Maybe the shelters will go on a plot of land for two or three years, and then get transferred via forklift to another location when the developer needs their property back. (There are certain tax breaks available for landowners interested in making this deal.) The San Francisco village I visited on Gough Street rests on such borrowed land.

Sometimes Dignity Moves encourages faith-based groups or local governments to pony up their vacant property — like parking lots or land reserved for future infrastructure projects. In Santa Barbara, leaders countywide have jointly committed to finding locations for tiny houses in their neighborhoods and giving shelter priority to those sleeping outside in the surrounding areas. Funk’s group is spearheading this, and envisions the future playing out similarly in cities all over the country. By erecting many villages at the same time, Funk thinks it’ll be possible to get people off the street at once, a strong incentive for housed residents who are tired of seeing individuals living on sidewalks. “Then we can harness NIMBYism, which is a very powerful force,” she said.

There are at least some encouraging signs that local opposition to tiny house shelters wanes. When researchers at Portland State University surveyed housed neighbors who lived around various Portland “tiny homes” villages, they found the neighbors’ concerns about crime and decreased property values significantly diminished over time. “Some of the biggest initial opponents became some of the biggest champions,” Todd Ferry, a lead researcher of the study, told me. “I genuinely think it became beloved to many people in the neighborhood.”

Perhaps no politician has been more enthusiastic about the potential of tiny house shelters than San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, who proposed this past summer to divert more than a third of his city’s housing funds to increase village production. Up for reelection in March, Mahan has made moving unhoused people quickly off the street a major part of his pitch.

San Jose started opening “tiny home” shelters about four years ago, originally to reduce the risk of contagion during the pandemic. About 500 units currently exist now in the city across six locations, and hundreds more are in the pipeline. Mahan credits their growth with reducing San Jose’s unsheltered homeless population by 11 percent in the last year, though he laments that new units seem to be taking longer to build than they did during Covid-19 and coming with new requirements.

“We were standing these up in six months at a cost of $80,000 or less all-in, including the utility hookup and common space, and now it’s taking progressively longer and costing more,” he told me, pointing to a new village project that cost the city $250,000 a door. Another San Jose village that took a year and a half to build saw costs go from originally $100,000 per unit to more than $175,000.

In September, Mahan urged his colleagues to quit making excuses for why they couldn’t build more units faster, and led a successful push to adopt a shelter crisis emergency declaration so San Jose could bypass certain building rules. Mahan says he’s motivated not only by a desire to help the homeless but to improve local neighborhoods generally. Calls for crime, fire, and blight in the immediate areas of the villages went down a year after they were built, according to a city analysis.

Each tiny house village in San Jose costs about $15 million to launch, and $3-4 million annually thereafter to operate. In June, the city’s budget director said funding roughly 1,400 of these shelter units will cost upward of $60 million by 2030, a “difficult” figure for San Jose to manage. The mayor, for his part, remains optimistic that external funding sources will come through.

Out of sight, out of mind?

Another reason some have grown excited about “tiny home” shelters is often left unsaid: to no longer have to witness homeless people outside on a daily basis.

Tiny houses provide elected officials with faster and cheaper alternatives to building permanent housing or congregate shelters, and may provide cities with the legal authority to then clear out any remaining tent encampments. This has roused city elites anxious about their increasingly visible homeless crisis.

A federal lawsuit led by Los Angeles business leaders frustrated with their city’s lack of action around tent encampments resulted in LA pledging to construct up to 16,000 new shelter beds by 2027, to house 60 percent of the homeless population in each of the fifteen council districts. These can include “tiny home” shelters, and in exchange, LA officials can sweep remaining tents and resume enforcing anti-camping bans.

“We are now getting much more excited about this 60 percent thing,” Funk, of Dignity Moves, told me. “I’m going to be working privately, quietly, but [to] give you a little preview, [we’re] thinking about doing this for San Francisco specifically as well in San Jose.” If San Francisco has about 4,500 people sleeping outside, according to the last Point In Time count, then Funk believes leaders can confidently estimate how many shelter beds will be necessary to build to start enforcing anti-camping laws again. “Let’s be clear,” she said, “one of the big motives here is Martin v. Boise, and people being concerned about getting sued.”

Funk’s legislative partner in the California state Senate, Josh Becker, plans to reintroduce a bill that would make it easier for cities to build tiny house shelters, and potentially even allow cities to count them toward their state-mandated housing production goals. Given that the tiny structures are much cheaper to build than both traditional housing and permanent supportive housing, a state green-light to include them in production targets could prove to be a major incentive. But that’s worrying news for those concerned the units may be less of a temporary, emergency solution after all.

Bryant Akers works on repairs at 33 Gough Street.

Gabriela Hasbun for Vox

“We’re definitely seeing some cities focusing on this model as more than what I would call an interim solution and a gap solution,” said Amy King, the CEO of Pallet Shelter, a Washington-based company that produces tiny houses between $7,500 to $12,000 apiece.

When Becker’s bill was first introduced earlier this year and included the possibility that shelter units, including those produced by Pallet Shelter, could one day be considered permanent housing and even accept rent or housing vouchers, King’s company came out against it. “There’s just so much opportunity for people to take advantage,” King said of the idea.

Homeless advocates worry about a scenario where cities start to invest in lower-quality shelters that aren’t suitable for everyone, reduce investments in permanent housing, and grow more aggressive about fining or arresting those resistant to shelter offers. “We see sweeps and tiny homes going hand-in-hand,” said Alex Visotzky, with the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

A senior official with the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, who was not authorized to speak publicly, told me the agency has no hard-and-fast policy yet on tiny houses, but is currently “evaluating whether there’s a place for them” in their efforts to end homelessness. As part of that the federal housing agency is investigating whether communities have been abiding by fair housing and civil rights laws as they expand the units.

“Not just segregation, but are people put there by choice?” the official asked. “Are there potential consequences if you don’t go there — like subject to arrest or other penalties? We’re considering all of that.”

The line between housing and shelter

In 2020 a fire broke out within a Pallet Shelter community in Banning, California — destroying 19 prefabricated homes, and displacing 38 people. Two years later another fire broke out within a Pallet Shelter community in Oakland, California, burning down three of the structures. One resident told Curbed she barely made it out as “the walls were melting” around her.

Pallet has denied responsibility for these fires, though the company did make changes to the building materials it uses. The two incidents loom large as leaders debate how cheaply they can build these structures and how tightly together they can pack them together on high-priced land.

A row of Pallet shelters at the Chandler Street Tiny Home Village in February 2021 in the North Hollywood neighborhood of Los Angeles.

Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images

Some housing advocates say the challenges cities are running into with building tiny shelters now mirror the same issues that often derail producing more housing at all. Proponents fear that as more pandemic-era emergency codes expire, and if more accidents like those in Banning and Oakland occur, such “quick-build bridge housing” will be built far less quickly.

“Our biggest challenge is the regulations, the code compliance to make sure everything meets all the parameters of the building code,” said Viken Ohanesian, CEO of Boss Cubez, which manufactured the prefabricated units used at the San Francisco shelter village. “It’s kind of like you can never have too much insurance, you can never be too safe in this world that we live in because it’s a litigious world.”

One option is to try and convince state lawmakers to pre-empt cities from tacking on new regulatory requirements. California lawmakers already took this step last year in banning mandates for fire sprinklers in “temporary sleeping cabins.” Funk says she’s “really, quite frankly, tempted to take the 10 other things that cities are starting to ask for, take them up to Daddy and say, ‘Can you break this rule?’” The costly rules and regulations, she believes, are a big part of how we got the housing crisis in the first place.

“I think our definition of housing with a capital ‘H’ is causing homelessness,” she said. “So we can either solve it or we can be stuck to our like, you know, our principles.”

Beyond worrying about building requirements and the practical longevity of tiny shelters, a broader, more existential set of criticisms have emerged around the policy idea.

A worker cleans in front of a row of tiny homes for the homeless, in February 2021, in the North Hollywood section of Los Angeles.

AP/Marcio Jose Sanchez

One major concern is that investments in “tiny home” structures actually sustain homelessness, by diverting needed investments from permanent housing. Many people living in temporary shelters of all kinds end up returning to the streets after their allotted time to stay ends, not having anywhere else to go.

“Until there is more affordable housing, this ‘solution’ leads nowhere,” argued Josh Kruger, a formerly homeless journalist in Philadelphia. “Instead, these are just feel-good boondoggles so middle and upper class people can feel like they’re doing something … They’re storage sheds for human beings who otherwise remind us all of our society’s failure to care.”

In 2021 the Washington state’s Lived Experience Coalition — a group of current and formerly homeless individuals — issued a statement lambasting the “dehumanizing conditions and lack of services” some experience in tiny house villages, and warned of lawmakers who avert focus from more permanent solutions. In Seattle, for example, some residents lived in tiny wood huts that lacked heat and electricity, where school children had to do their homework with flashlights.

Barbara Poppe, the former executive director of the US Interagency Council on Homelessness during the Obama administration, said while some models are better than existing congregate homeless shelters, some are “far worse.” What really alarms her, she told me, is the “corporate investor model, for-profit industry” that’s cropped up, naming companies like Tuff Shed and Pallet Shelter as examples.

“Some of these are quite inhumane, and some of those cost studies — Pallet will say it costs $12,000 [per door], but that’s a sleight of hand, it’s very deceiving, because there’s all the site preparation cost on top,” she said. “It seems like what the public wants and by extension what the elected officials say they want is an easy answer and a cheaper answer to the fact that we have an extreme affordable housing crisis that sits on top of growing inequality.”

For advocates like Visotzky with the National Alliance to End Homelessness, conceptualizing housing and shelter as distinct categories remains important. “If we start calling [tiny homes] housing then folks are going to potentially lose eligibility for a lot of key services and resources,” he said. “We need to make commitments and not shortcuts.”

Supporters of building more tiny houses say their critics are stuck in the status quo, implicitly accepting that thousands of people will remain outside. They say it’s a false choice that cities can’t invest in both permanent and interim solutions at once, and that the crisis demands vision and urgency.

“One of the biggest hurdles that’s blocking us from ending unsheltered homelessness is lost optimism,” said Funk. “Dignity Moves’ value-add can be to come in and say, ‘Oh, no, it’s very possible, here’s exactly the paint-by-color map of how.”

What does a real dignified investment look like?

The Connect Homes factory in San Bernardino, California, located about an hour outside Los Angeles, had homeless shelters on the assembly line the day I visited in mid-October. The company was working to fulfill a contract for Long Beach, California, which plans to open its first village of tiny house shelters in early 2025.

A view of the Connect Homes manufacturing plant in San Bernardino, California, on October 23, 2023.

John Francis Peters for Vox

Originally founded in 2012 to produce factory-built houses, Connect Homes leaders realized during the pandemic they could use virtually their same industrial tools to develop shelters, too. The company now wants to build shelters nationwide.

John Francis Peters for Vox

Gordon Stott, co-founder of Connect Homes, explains new homes in various stages of production. These will be used as interim housing in Long Beach, California.

“Is it housing, or is it shelter? Well I think what we’re seeing is it can be both,” said co-founder Gordon Stott. While at a higher price point than some of his competitors — units can be sold to cities at $80,000 per door — Stott believes his products are more durable investments, and prove homeless shelters don’t have to be ugly or stigmatized.

The shelter units set for Long Beach will be between 110 and 185 square feet (the larger ones will be ADA-accessible) and the city specifically looked for vendors who could build units with en suite bathrooms. The city used part of a $25 million state grant to finance the construction and expects to spend about $930,000 per year annually in operating costs.

Workers build tiny homes at the Connect Homes manufacturing plant.

John Francis Peters for Vox

“We’re in a moment where cities are having to step up and do things they haven’t done before,” Rex Richardson, Long Beach’s mayor, told me. “We’ve had a big history of dealing with homelessness and providing housing but we weren’t prepared for the crisis — the way it manifested — with a 62 percent increase between 2020 and 2022.”

A Connect Homes employee works on a bathroom floor for a new shelter that will be used as interim housing.

John Francis Peters for Vox

Models with private bathrooms might deter some local governments, tempted to spend as little as possible. But if the structures are likely to stick around for years in a city, and if people are likely to live in them for extended periods of time, then investing in nicer units with higher standards makes more sense. Ferry, with Portland State University, said he tells municipalities considering tiny house villages “to think really carefully about” their request for proposals, or RFPs. If you put out a contract for a non-congregate shelter between 70 and 150 square feet with no other specifications, then you’re generally obligated to go with the cheapest bidder.

John Francis Peters for Vox

Connect Homes shelter products, from construction to finished and on display at the Connect Homes manufacturing plant in San Bernardino, on October 23.

For now though, most leaders have been drawn to companies that offer cheaper upfront products. While most players on the market say their relocatable shelters can last at least a decade if not more, none have been operating long enough to really put their claims to the test, to truly see if “tiny home” units can last, bouncing around from plot of land to plot of land.

Patrick Monahan, a 42-year-old resident of the shelter village in San Francisco, had been sleeping outside off and on for almost 10 years before he moved into his tiny cabin on Gough Street.

Volunteers plant gardens for the residents at 33 Gough Street.

Gabriela Hasbun for Vox

Patrick Monahan is a resident at 33 Gough Street.

Gabriela Hasbun for Vox

Monahan never wanted to stay in traditional homeless shelters, and he’s appreciative of what the village offers him: a “fairly safe” environment that’s “very pretty and clean” and where the “food’s not great, but it’s free.” He doesn’t love using a porta-potty but thinks it’s better than going on the street.

Still, Monahan holds out hope that one day he’ll have something more. “I can’t have visitors here,” he said. “I rather have my own place, that’s mine.”

Will you support Vox’s explanatory journalism?

Most news outlets make their money through advertising or subscriptions. But when it comes to what we’re trying to do at Vox, there are a couple of big issues with relying on ads and subscriptions to keep the lights on:

First, advertising dollars go up and down with the economy. We often only know a few months out what our advertising revenue will be, which makes it hard to plan ahead.

Second, we’re not in the subscriptions business. Vox is here to help everyone understand the complex issues shaping the world — not just the people who can afford to pay for a subscription. We believe that’s an important part of building a more equal society. And we can’t do that if we have a paywall.

So even though advertising is still our biggest source of revenue, we also seek grants and reader support. (And no matter how our work is funded, we have strict guidelines on editorial independence.)

If you also believe that everyone deserves access to trusted high-quality information, will you make a gift to Vox today? Any amount helps.

Yes, I’ll give $5/month

Yes, I’ll give $5/month

We accept credit card, Apple Pay, and

Google Pay. You can also contribute via

The post Homelessness within the US: Can “tiny houses” assist with the reasonably priced housing disaster? appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Homelessness within the San Francisco Bay Space: The disaster and a path ahead

Daily SF News — Thu, 23 Nov 2023 08:14:27 +0000

Homelessness in the San Francisco Bay Area has reached crisis proportions. The region has the third-largest population of people experiencing homelessness in the United States, behind only New York City and Los Angeles. Two-thirds of the Bay Area’s homeless residents are living on the street, in their cars, or in encampments, while the remainder live with daily uncertainty over whether their bed at night will be a relative’s couch or a temporary shelter cot. Tent encampments are becoming a visible feature of the region’s streetscape, and the crisis is placing an undue burden on auxiliary support systems, such as healthcare, criminal justice, and behavioral health. Despite concerted effort by public officials and substantial investment in housing and related supports and services, the number of homeless is growing, as inflows continue to outpace outflows.

Addressing this issue will likely require a regional, multi-stakeholder approach that holistically supports homeless families across the full journey, from housing insecure to homeless to housed, and integrates resources across the government, nonprofit, and private sectors.

The journey from housing insecure to homeless to housed

While most of the public thinks about homelessness as “unsheltered” homelessness, or street homelessness, the reality is a broader journey as individuals enter, experience, and transition out of homelessness, with myriad possible interventions along the spectrum (Exhibit 1). Complicating the crisis further are the facts that an individual or family’s path into and out of homelessness is often not straightforward and that the support system itself is fragmented, with limited communication and data sharing between service providers and across regions. Efforts to improve the crisis response system will benefit from an end-to-end strategy to stem the instances of entry into homelessness, increase exit opportunities, and better coordinate care across the support spectrum to ensure people don’t get “stuck.”

The state of the crisis in the Bay Area

Based on a 2017 point-in-time (PIT) count, 28,200 people were estimated to be homeless in the Bay Area, with 70 percent of these living in Santa Clara, San Francisco, and Alameda Counties (Exhibit 2). Preliminary PIT counts released in 2019 indicate an increase of 17 percent in San Francisco, 31 percent in Santa Clara, and 43 percent in Alameda Counties from 2017 to 2019. The total number experiencing homelessness in a given year is likely substantially higher: PIT counts may underestimate persons experiencing homelessness on an annual basis by at least two to three times.

Contrary to popular myth, the majority of homeless persons in the Bay Area are not coming from other regions: 89 percent of people experiencing homelessness in 2017 reported living in their county for one or more years. However, practitioners report high rates of interregional mobility, with persons experiencing homelessness crossing county lines regularly, many separated only by a short bus or metro trip.

A large portion of the Bay Area homeless population is unsheltered: 67 percent in 2017, second only to Los Angeles. Relative to other metropolitan areas, the Bay Area also has high rates of chronic and youth homelessness (Exhibit 3).

How we got here

The combination of a long-standing housing-affordability crisis, insufficient inventory, and a lack of system-level and regional coordination means the Bay Area has failed to sufficiently stem inflows, increase exits, and effectively navigate those experiencing homelessness to lasting solutions.

Housing affordability

Long-standing housing-affordability challenges affect every stage of the Bay Area’s homelessness cycle. From 1999 to 2014, the Bay Area permitted construction of 61,000 fewer very-low-income affordable-housing units than recommended by the state and lost a substantial portion of existing housing inventory to market pressures—in San Francisco, for every two affordable housing units created, the city lost more than one from its existing inventory because of units being permanently withdrawn from the protection of rent control.

The result is a severe housing shortage: according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, as of 2017, in the San Francisco–Oakland–Hayward and San Jose–Sunnyvale–Santa Clara metropolitan areas alone, there was a supply gap of more than 157,500 affordable and available units for extremely low-income households. Two-thirds of extremely low-income households lived in rental accommodations they struggled to afford, leaving them one unexpected expense away from entering homelessness (Exhibit 4).

Insufficient inventory

Insufficient inventory across the homelessness spectrum further limits exit opportunities and leaves many waiting on permanent solutions without a temporary home. In keeping with the national push for Housing First, the Bay Area has doubled down on increasing permanent-supportive-housing and rapid-rehousing options. However, in light of the affordability challenges previously discussed, current inventory is not nearly enough to meet demand. Accounting for permanent-supportive-housing and rapid-rehousing supports, the current Bay Area crisis-response system currently shelters 30,000 homeless individuals. Assuming current bed-count utilization is at 100 percent, more than 28,000 additional individuals require permanent housing, with more than 18,000 of those in need of immediate shelter (Exhibit 5). Ultimately, an “all of the above” strategy is required: the right mix of affordable housing, permanent supportive housing, and temporary shelters to meet the full accommodation need.

Lack of coordination

The Bay Area’s crisis-response system is highly fragmented, with limited communication and data sharing between service providers and across regions. Each county operates its own Continuum of Care: submitting its own strategic plan, collecting its own data on its homelessness population and system performance, and receiving its own funding from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Given the substantial interregional mobility of the Bay Area’s homeless population, this approach impedes understanding of current service needs and gaps; it also hampers much-needed collaboration to determine the most effective strategies to meet growing need.

Pillars of the solution

Practitioners across the system agree: there is no silver bullet. Progress on the issue will likely require regionally coordinated efforts by governments, philanthropists, and the private sector across three key spheres.

1. Meet the accommodation need

At its core, the solution to homelessness is a home. The Bay Area must expand the housing supply available to extremely low-income households to keep people in their homes and increase exit opportunities into permanent housing solutions. Efforts will need to target both families and individuals able to benefit from rapid rehousing services, as well as the Bay Area’s large chronically homeless population, who, in most cases, require housing with wraparound services in order to successfully transition out of homelessness and remain housed long term. These solutions aren’t free, but neither is the status quo: a 2015 study in Santa Clara County estimated that indirect costs of homelessness on the healthcare, criminal justice, and social services systems amounted to more than $520 million annually.

Meeting the affordable-housing gap will likely not be possible under the status quo: convoluted permitting, high construction costs, and long timelines fraught with administrative bottlenecks impede meaningful progress. Renewed efforts by stakeholders in the public and private spheres could reduce the time and cost needed to build new units, incentivize housing production for lower-income brackets, and test and scale innovative models to meet accommodation needs and provide the necessary support services.

2. Drive greater state and regional collaboration

The fragmented solution landscape and intraregional mobility of the Bay Area’s homeless population point to the importance of a cohesive strategic approach to homelessness that integrates funding, data collection, and advocacy efforts between service providers and across regions. Creation of a regional Bay Area Homeless Management Information System could help to build a more accurate map of inflows, exits, available services, gaps, and cost to serve. Establishing a regional homelessness-management plan—like the regional emergency-management systems that have been set up in the wake of disasters—could enhance service delivery, reduce redundancies, increase accountability, and enhance the region’s power to advocate at the state and national levels.

3. Engage private and philanthropic capital to enhance services and pilot innovative solutions

Private and philanthropic dollars can be deployed in innovative ways to expand and improve services for current homelessness populations. Public–private partnerships and innovative models, such as pay for success, could mobilize much-needed capital to rapidly test and scale highly effective interventions. Fast-growth employers expanding in the Bay Area can add housing as they expand or invest in efforts to preserve affordability, such as the recent Partnership for the Bay’s Future, supported by Facebook, Genentech, Kaiser Permanente, and several local foundations. Innovative technologies can enhance outreach efforts, reduce costs, and simplify complexities in the current service system.

Unprecedented growth in the Bay Area has brought unprecedented challenges. The region has long been an engine of growth and prosperity, but it has also increasingly become marked by unaffordability and inexcusable conditions for our most vulnerable. The problem is not intractable: the Bay Area has the intellect and resources to turn the tide, but doing so will likely require additional resources and a more cohesive, coordinated, and substantial approach than the status quo.

Stay current on your favorite topics

The post Homelessness within the San Francisco Bay Space: The disaster and a path ahead appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Fixing homelessness isn’t so simple as offering a home

Daily SF News — Sun, 12 Nov 2023 12:39:48 +0000

By Devon Kurtz

A recent Post-Dispatch editorial suggested a “housing first” solution that seeks to build more free housing while removing accountability measures like mandated drug treatment could help the city manage its growing homelessness crisis. (“

St. Louis’ approach to homelessness clearly isn’t working. Here’s what might.

” Oct. 8.) Yet, mounting evidence shows that housing-first policies fail to address the underlying drivers of chronic homelessness — mental illness and substance abuse. It’s something policymakers are increasingly coming to understand. Similarly, as the public has witnessed and endured the consequences of these quixotic policies, opinion has shifted away from policies that deprioritize and, in many cases, outright ignore the crucial role of mental health and substance abuse treatment in favor of policies that center on accountability, transparency, and long-term outcomes. Housing-first policies do little to help program participants transition to independent and flourishing lives. To make matters worse, the qualifications for housing disincentivize mental health stability, sobriety, and financial well-being. And the housing-first approach isn’t just ineffective — it’s expensive. San Francisco has a $1.1 billion budget that is mainly allotted to permanent housing, in addition to federal funding that flows into the city for the same purpose. Like a line from the famous Eagle’s song, results have been disastrous and even deadly — trapping people in their own devices. An investigation by the San Francisco Chronicle found that despite the program’s high price tag, individuals were living in squalor, with toxic mold, dilapidated ceilings, and rampant crime. Sadly, 166 people overdosed in these hotels between 2020 and 2021. Housing operators who turned a blind eye to dangerous drug use and crime in their housing units never faced any accountability for these failures. Though program proponents claim that “wrap-around services” are a central tenant of their policies, all participation in those services is optional. And there is little transparency into how widely available those services really are. Studies have found that Housing First programs do nothing to reduce criminal activity among homeless people. These cracks in the system have stretched across the country. St. Louis is not immune. Making services and treatment optional for tenants struggling with substance abuse and mental illness is woefully ineffective and carries fatal consequences. A 2021 study by the Urban Institute found that 12% of Denver permanent supportive housing program participants died over three years, compared to 8% in the control group who did not enter the program. The good news is that there is a better way for cities like St. Louis to address this growing crisis. Empowering people to transition out of homelessness through short-term shelters and mental health and substance abuse treatment would help them get a stable footing while building a community of support. A meta-analysis of studies comparing the impact of housing-first programs and recovery programs on substance abuse found that the latter had much more effective outcomes for those looking to rebuild their lives. But accountability and recovery can’t stop there. Those who refuse to take advantage of much-needed services like short-term shelter and treatment services for mental health and substance abuse cannot be allowed to put themselves and others in the community in danger. A vital component of this is removing and cleaning up dangerous tent encampments, as Phoenix has recently done. To do this, policymakers must swiftly address the shortage of temporary shelter space. The creation of sanctioned camping facilities away from residential and business areas is one immediate solution. Sanctioned camps can be monitored by law enforcement and provide sanitation, clean water, and services, creating a safer environment for homeless individuals than city streets. Denver recently took this approach, serving 242 people in 2021 and helping 47 to transition into more stable housing. Despite crime in Denver increasing by 14% during this time, crime in the sanctioned camp actually decreased. Policymakers should consider ways to expand short-term shelter options as well. St. Louis has options and examples of alternatives to housing first that work well in addressing the homelessness crisis. Providing immediate help to individuals on the street is a more compassionate path to sustained independence — and growing research shows the public supports it. Pursuing innovative policies that target the underlying causes of homelessness will help restore communities and the lives of those experiencing homelessness.

Yet, mounting evidence shows that housing-first policies fail to address the underlying drivers of chronic homelessness — mental illness and substance abuse. It’s something policymakers are increasingly coming to understand.

Similarly, as the public has witnessed and endured the consequences of these quixotic policies, opinion has shifted away from policies that deprioritize and, in many cases, outright ignore the crucial role of mental health and substance abuse treatment in favor of policies that center on accountability, transparency, and long-term outcomes.

Housing-first policies do little to help program participants transition to independent and flourishing lives. To make matters worse, the qualifications for housing disincentivize mental health stability, sobriety, and financial well-being. And the housing-first approach isn’t just ineffective — it’s expensive.

San Francisco has a $1.1 billion budget that is mainly allotted to permanent housing, in addition to federal funding that flows into the city for the same purpose. Like a line from the famous Eagle’s song, results have been disastrous and even deadly — trapping people in their own devices.

An investigation by the San Francisco Chronicle found that despite the program’s high price tag, individuals were living in squalor, with toxic mold, dilapidated ceilings, and rampant crime. Sadly, 166 people overdosed in these hotels between 2020 and 2021.

Housing operators who turned a blind eye to dangerous drug use and crime in their housing units never faced any accountability for these failures. Though program proponents claim that “wrap-around services” are a central tenant of their policies, all participation in those services is optional. And there is little transparency into how widely available those services really are. Studies have found that Housing First programs do nothing to reduce criminal activity among homeless people.

These cracks in the system have stretched across the country. St. Louis is not immune.

Making services and treatment optional for tenants struggling with substance abuse and mental illness is woefully ineffective and carries fatal consequences. A 2021 study by the Urban Institute found that 12% of Denver permanent supportive housing program participants died over three years, compared to 8% in the control group who did not enter the program.

The good news is that there is a better way for cities like St. Louis to address this growing crisis.

Empowering people to transition out of homelessness through short-term shelters and mental health and substance abuse treatment would help them get a stable footing while building a community of support. A meta-analysis of studies comparing the impact of housing-first programs and recovery programs on substance abuse found that the latter had much more effective outcomes for those looking to rebuild their lives.

But accountability and recovery can’t stop there.

Those who refuse to take advantage of much-needed services like short-term shelter and treatment services for mental health and substance abuse cannot be allowed to put themselves and others in the community in danger. A vital component of this is removing and cleaning up dangerous tent encampments, as Phoenix has recently done. To do this, policymakers must swiftly address the shortage of temporary shelter space.

The creation of sanctioned camping facilities away from residential and business areas is one immediate solution. Sanctioned camps can be monitored by law enforcement and provide sanitation, clean water, and services, creating a safer environment for homeless individuals than city streets. Denver recently took this approach, serving 242 people in 2021 and helping 47 to transition into more stable housing. Despite crime in Denver increasing by 14% during this time, crime in the sanctioned camp actually decreased.

Policymakers should consider ways to expand short-term shelter options as well.

St. Louis has options and examples of alternatives to housing first that work well in addressing the homelessness crisis. Providing immediate help to individuals on the street is a more compassionate path to sustained independence — and growing research shows the public supports it. Pursuing innovative policies that target the underlying causes of homelessness will help restore communities and the lives of those experiencing homelessness.

Devon Kurtz is the Director of public safety policy at the Cicero Institute, a public policy organization based in Austin, Texas.

Devon Kurtz is the director of public safety policy at the Cicero Institute, a public policy organization based in Austin, Texas.

Catch the latest in Opinion

Get opinion pieces, letters and editorials sent directly to your inbox weekly!

The post Fixing homelessness isn’t so simple as offering a home appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

San Jose ‘Tiny Houses’ Are Curbing Homelessness, Metropolis Says

Daily SF News — Mon, 23 Oct 2023 16:32:36 +0000

It was the bathrooms that convinced Darlene Pizarro to accept an offer of shelter at a lot of “tiny homes” in San Jose last month.

The 67-year-old has been homeless five years and did not trust traditional shelters, where she said “you have to sleep with one eye open” to evade theft. With a stable place to sleep, Pizarro says she plans to look for retail work and apply for a housing voucher to get her own permanent place.

“I’m very hyper and active, and I like to work because I know if I sit around, I’m going to fade away and I’m not ready for that yet,” she said.

RELATED: Building Tiny Homes a Gigantic Task in Broken San Francisco

Pizarro’s new place is one of 94 city-funded units for the homeless at that lot. The site of Pizarro’s tiny home, on Guadalupe Parkway in the city’s downtown, opened in May as the newest of San Jose’s six sites that aim to fill the steps between traditional, congregate homeless shelters—think “room full of bunk beds and cubicles”—and an apartment of one’s own.

Pizarro, who last lived as a squatter in an abandoned house, was relieved to be there with her dog, Angel.

“Tiny home” describes a specific type of housing more permanent than a tent or disaster shelter, but less than a single-family home, townhouse, apartment, or something else thought of as permanent housing. The structures—smaller than 400 square feet, often lacking either a kitchen or private bathroom—have become increasingly common in California’s response to homelessness over the past five years, though opinions are split on how much to rely on them in years to come.

Pizarro’s unit boasts all the fixings of what homeless advocates say are best practices for temporary housing:

Individualized case management allowing residents to stay as long as they need to get permanent housing
Laundry and kitchen facilities
The privacy of individual rooms that lock, with personal bathrooms
Other elements that emphasize residents’ dignity, like dog runs and weekly community events.

Tiny homes are sometimes called modular homes or, in the case of San Jose, “emergency interim housing.” The city is all in, operating more than 600 such beds across six sites and building more. Mayor Matt Mahan credits them with a recent 10% decline in the city’s unsheltered population, and notes that of the 1,500 people the city has sheltered in its tiny home sites, 48% moved to permanent housing. That’s compared to an average rate of 34% across Santa Clara County’s shelters over the past three years.

Tiny homes are increasingly California cities’ shelter option of choice for new sites to house the homeless. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration earlier this year said it is sending out 1,200 units statewide. San Jose and Sacramento, each set to receive hundreds, recently said they had selected their sites; as of October the state is still selecting vendors to build the homes.

“They are our single best solution to the crisis on our streets,” Mahan said.

Mia Salvaggio organizes her room at the DignityMoves tiny home village in San Francisco on Oct. 3. | Source: Loren Elliott for CalMatters

The rise of the tiny home

Mahan’s zeal to open more tiny home sites got him in hot water this year in an age-old debate over which end of the housing shortage to focus on: temporary or permanent.

Advocates of tiny homes say they’re fast, cheap ways to get people sheltered immediately. Other longtime homeless advocates applaud tiny homes as improved shelter options, but are wary about over-relying on them as a long-term solution to homelessness.

“Non-congregate tiny homes are better than congregate shelter, but people are still homeless when they live there,” said Jennifer Loving, CEO of the nonprofit Destination: HOME, one of the primary agencies coordinating Santa Clara County’s response to homelessness. “You may be getting some more homeless folks into temporary shelter, but what about the hordes of people dying for an affordable place to live?”

In June, San Jose officials diverted $8 million of the city’s $137 million in homelessness and housing funding from developing affordable housing to running and building more tiny homes.

Mahan initially proposed putting 36% of the housing funds, which come from a 2020 property sales tax, toward temporary housing and 53% toward permanent housing for low- and middle-income households (the remainder would go toward rental assistance and administrative costs). He called it a one-time diversion to address the homelessness crisis on the streets, while waiting on affordable housing that can cost more than $1 million a unit in the Bay Area and take years to build.

Advocates and several city council members pushed back on what would have been a dramatic shift from past spending plans, which put three-quarters of the funds toward developing affordable housing and 15% on shelter. The city passed a compromise budget that put 68% of the funds toward permanent housing and 21% toward temporary.

Loving said the only way to keep temporary sites successful is to keep developing permanent housing for residents to move into.

“People are tired of seeing homelessness and they’re saying, ‘Do something, now,’” Loving said. “I think these non-congregate shelters are being positioned as the, ‘We’re doing something now.’”

A new tiny home community in San Jose on Oct. 10. | Source: Talia Herman for CalMatters

While California cities have been installing tiny homes for at least the past five years, it was the pandemic that thrust the potential solution into the spotlight.

California has for the past decade been shifting its focus from temporary shelter towards building permanent supportive housing: affordable, long-term living options that come with social services. Permanent supportive housing units have been on the rise since 2008 in California as the number of temporary spots fell, according to an analysis of federal data by the Terner Center for Housing Innovation.

But with a global pandemic and a record number of Californians falling into homelessness faster than the state could house them, officials turned toward non-congregate but temporary options like hotel rooms and tiny homes to keep people sheltered. In 2021, interim housing spots in California again exceeded permanent supportive housing units for the first time since 2015.

A sense of privacy

Also making the sites attractive are a host of modular housing companies springing up to offer tiny homes that are more livable.

Compared to flimsier and less fireproof prior models that evoked disaster zones, many tiny homes now include double-pane windows that can open, individual thermostats and doorbells. In San Jose, one site where the city broke ground this year will include some tiny homes that have private kitchenettes.

Though not all cities use them, many companies build modular units with en suite bathrooms, which residents say provide significantly more privacy and dignity.

Monica Rojo is a resident of the new tiny home community built in San Jose. | Source: Talia Herman for CalMatters

Monica Rojo, 50, moved into her room in May after having lived at a creekside encampment with about 70 others.

As a woman camping alone, she feared violence constantly. She now feels safer, and since getting her own shower, she no longer feels the disdain of others when she walks into stores. She’s personalized her room with photos of her three adult children in Mexico—two engineers and a nurse, she beams.

Rojo, a former janitor, said she’s recovering from leukemia and depression and working on getting her IDs after most of her documents were stolen.

“This program opens the doors, for work, for everything,” she said.

Advocates split on tiny homes

The more each tiny home feels like a real one, the more it costs—and the closer it inches to the “real housing” that advocates say is what actually solves homelessness. In San Jose, plumbing and utilities for the Guadalupe Parkway site drove the cost of each unit from $30,000 for the structure itself to more than $175,000. (Some of the cost was covered by philanthropy, city officials said.)

Mahan’s aware of the tradeoffs. But he said he’s striking the right balance by pushing for temporary shelter that is dignified, while folks wait for permanent housing.

“We all know the two extremes,” he said of the spectrum of housing options, from camps to permanent supportive housing. “One is kind of the perfect solution, or as close to it as you can get. The other is abject human misery and totally unacceptable. I am of the opinion that we have to spend more, we have to put more of our emphasis on the lower rungs of the ladder, the side of the spectrum that is improving on sanctioned encampments.”

Some in the tiny homes movement would take it even further.

Jezzeille Murdock speaks with a clinical case manager at the DignityMoves tiny home village in San Francisco on Oct. 3. | Source: Loren Elliott for CalMatters

Elizabeth Funk is CEO of DignityMoves, a nonprofit advocating for tiny home shelter sites. More than two years ago, the nonprofit got San Francisco’s only tiny homes village so far set up in mere months, with donated structures on a sliver of a city parking lot. Residents can stay as long as they need, with regular access to social and health care workers at the 90 structures. Funk said the site takes advantage of a lot that’s in the yearslong wait of being developed into housing; the structures can be easily relocated when the project breaks ground.

DignityMoves pushed a bill in the state Senate this year to allow non-congregate, relocatable tiny home projects to bypass certain permitting procedures, and direct cities and counties to make available empty land for those uses. The bill initially defined such projects under the state building code as a type of housing, rather than as temporary shelter. Funk even suggested using housing vouchers to pay for them.

She said she didn’t expect the controversy she sparked. A group of advocates pushed back on the bill, arguing that, as Alex Visotzky of the National Alliance to End Homelessness put it, “it blurred the line between housing and shelter.” Sharon Rapport of the Corporation for Supportive Housing pointed out that certain shelters already can bypass permitting restrictions.

“It should be that that kind of expedited process is reserved for housing projects or any other kind of projects that are really promoting good policy,” Rapport said.

Despite some amendments requiring the projects to include plans for residents to get permanent housing when the land is needed for other uses, the bill died in the Senate appropriations committee in May. Its author, San Mateo Democratic Sen. Josh Becker, said he intends to bring it back next year.

Even Pallet Shelter, an early tiny homes builder that has supplied units for 36 sites across 32 California cities, was opposed to Becker’s bill. Amy King, CEO of the Washington-based company, said she asked for the bill to be amended to prohibit such sites from charging rents to tenants. No such change was made.

“I am not a supporter of this type of housing becoming a substitute for permanent housing,” King said.

Funk said she wasn’t trying to divert resources from one end of the housing spectrum to the other, but said the lines between the two may be too rigid when permanent housing is so scarce.

If someone needs or wants to stay in a tiny home for multiple years until they’re “ready” to move into a permanent apartment, she says, why shouldn’t it count as their housing?

The site DignityMoves opened in San Francisco illustrates both her point and her skeptics’.

Mia Salvaggio moved in two and a half years ago. She became homeless in 2020, after couchsurfing and battling a drug addiction. After bouncing around different campsites in the Bay Area, Salvaggio chose the offer of shelter space at DignityMoves because it afforded her some privacy, she said.

Being there has allowed her to meet a caseworker who helped her get her Social Security card. In an interview, she rattled off a long list of goals to focus on next: drug treatment, getting evaluated by a mental health provider, landing a part-time job. She was waiting for news about a permanent housing placement in early October.

She said she was grateful for the stay at the site, but some aspects still make it a far cry from a home: There’s no kitchen, the communal restrooms are porta-potties and the showers are on a trailer, which staff only keep open until 2:30 p.m. each day.

Salvaggio was also tired of living in close quarters with other residents, whom she accused of stealing her things and dirtying common areas. The rooms at that site are only 64 square feet, smaller than San Jose’s structures, and guests aren’t allowed.

“As long as I can prepare my own food and have my own bathroom,” she’ll be satisfied, Salvaggio said. “I haven’t literally sat on a toilet seat for probably two and a half years.”

Questions, comments or concerns about this article may be sent to [email protected]

The post San Jose ‘Tiny Houses’ Are Curbing Homelessness, Metropolis Says appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

West Virginia has the nation’s worst drug downside, however a lot much less homelessness than LA | Area

Daily SF News — Thu, 12 Oct 2023 09:38:58 +0000

HUNTINGTON, W.Va. — Signs advertising drug rehab or access to emergency overdose kits are easy to spot here. It’s harder to find the downtown homeless encampment, a discrete cluster of three tents along the Ohio River, squeezed by a bridge and a construction site.

To people who believe drug addiction is to blame for the mushrooming tent cities in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Portland, Oregon, West Virginia presents a paradox. It leads the nation in overdose deaths per capita — by a wide margin. But this state best known for coal mines and the leafy Appalachian Mountains has one of the country’s lowest rates of homelessness.

“People conflate these crises,” said Dr. Margot Kushel, a UC San Francisco professor who led the largest representative study of homeless people in three decades, released earlier this year. “They are related but they are far from one and the same.”

Huntington, a college town and riverside port city along the border of Ohio and Kentucky that was once dubbed the overdose capital of America, illustrates the knotty relationship between the two plagues.

Nearly two-thirds of the homeless people here self-reported that they were struggling with addiction this year. But cheap and available housing has kept the official homeless count at 244 people in Huntington’s two-county service area, up since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic but still about a fourth of the per capita homeless population of Los Angeles County.

Housing markets operate a bit like rock concerts. Almost everyone can get in when demand and prices are low. But when Taylor Swift comes to town, and far more people want a seat than can get one, the barriers to entry grow, even for the cheapest tickets.

Those with the most hurdles — addiction, mental illness, criminal convictions and poverty, in the case of housing — are most likely to be stuck at the end of the line and shut out of a tight market.

From there, the problems feed off each other. People who lose housing are more likely to increase their drug and alcohol use, according to research by Kushel and others. And experiencing both homelessness and drug addiction — along with mental health issues in many cases — lengthens the time it takes to tackle each of the problems.

“A lot of people don’t understand that — but my substance use was kind of fleeting,” said Amanda Leffler, a 42-year-old Huntington resident who was homeless for about 15 years after leaving her husband.

She began taking more prescription drugs after getting hit by a paint truck, but shame from being homeless pushed her over the top, she said.

“The amount of loathing that you can sense, just by somebody looking at you from across the street, is enough to break your damn soul,” Leffler said. “So if you can imagine having that happen for 24 hours a day, every day, for years and years and years, you’d get f—ing high too.”

Using drugs made it harder for her to imagine a life off the street, where she would need to shop and cook or perform tasks beyond “basic survival instincts,” she said.

Leffler said she kicked her drug habit before she found a subsidized apartment seven years ago, but she still has trouble living inside.

Leffler is a patient at OVP, a primary care and outpatient treatment clinic where signs under the fluorescent lights tell patients that they are loved and that “you can start where you are and change the ending.”

Changing the ending is hard work when it involves OxyContin, heroin or methamphetamine. People relapse. Overdose deaths haunt the nurses and counselors. They keep sticky notes on their computers to remind them of their successes: “I LOVE MY JOB — LOVE MYSELF.”

One patient who came in on a recent Wednesday said he knew of at least seven members of his high school football team — and 30 people at his school, including the homecoming king and queen — who died from overdoses.

Amid the wreckage, Julie Thompson, a nurse practitioner who grew up in the area, estimates that 75% of her addiction patients are currently housed, though not always consistently.

“A lot just float from family member to family member to keep them off the street,” she said. “Some of [those relatives] are drug addicts themselves. So it’s kind of like — give me drugs and you can stay here.”

That codependence can prolong addiction.

But extremely low housing costs and long-term ties to the region make it possible for West Virginians to get by with less. The state has 50 affordable and available rental homes for every 100 extremely-low-income households, more than double the number that California has, according to a study by the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

An average family here can afford a modest two-bedroom rental on less than $17 an hour, the second-lowest figure in the nation. The same family would need to make more than $40 per hour to afford a two-bedroom rental in California, which has the highest costs, according to the coalition.

Candy Robinson, 42, said she never had a problem finding work or a place to stay during more than a decade of drug use, living mostly in a nearby coal-mining town where she grew up. Her family occupied a house in a coal camp where they had been living for generations, paying a nominal $16 a month in rent until she was in 11th grade, when it went up to $200. She stayed there and in trailers, sometimes with no electricity or running water, in the years she used drugs.

“I was a functioning addict. So I always had money and drugs,” said Robinson. “Everybody wanted to be my friend.”

Others struggling with addiction here have been able to maintain a higher standard of living. Thompson, the nurse practitioner, ticked off a list of people who had been in the clinic for treatment in recent days: a nurse, a surveyor, employees at the Toyota plant and a slew of truckers.

“It was just in my routine,” said Rodney Johnson, a 58-year-old cook who described his heroin habit while working in restaurants where he said drug use was rampant. “Get up, take a shot, go to work.”

Johnson said he “put his wife and family through hell,” sometimes disappearing for stretches when they had no idea if he was alive or dead. He lost his oldest son and oldest daughter to overdoses. He spent time behind bars, including four years on federal charges. But he never lost his home.

He often worked and his wife held a steady job with the state highway department, allowing them to pay about $900 a month in rent, even as they struggled to buy groceries. Last year, as Johnson began rebuilding his life, they bought a house for $65,000, with a $450-a-month mortgage.

It’s a two-story brick house, with a backyard and a grill on the porch along a cobblestone street. His neighbors across the street pay $400 a month in rent and fees to live in one of an estimated 70 sober houses sprinkled throughout the city.

The mix of cheap real estate and high addiction rates has led to a proliferation of these houses, which rent rooms to people fighting addiction who might otherwise struggle to pay a security deposit or pass a background check.

City officials, concerned that the houses were growing without proper regulations, approved an ordinance in September requiring the facilities to create exit plans so that patients aren’t dumped onto the street without recourse. Some of the operators had become almost predatory, profiting off tenants who sometimes are asked to surrender their benefits checks, said Sarah Walling, a City Council member and attorney with OVP.

“A roof over your head does not necessarily equal stable housing or a safe place to live, or a healthy place to live,” Walling said.

Walling pointed to Craig Hettlinger, a former Marshall University soccer player who started a recovery program after he stopped using drugs in 2018, as one of the good guys. Hettlinger, 41, runs an in-patient treatment program, operates recovery houses with counseling services and fixes up apartments for people who progress toward independent living.

His business depends on buying properties for as little as $4,000 to $6,000 — including former drug houses — and then fixing them up himself for another $20,000 or so.

Chuck Evans, who works for Hettlinger as a rehab counselor, lives in one of Hettlinger’s more expensive properties — a six-unit apartment building that went for $225,000.

Evans and his fiancee pay a combined $600 a month. Their clean two-bedroom unit has a full kitchen, a washer-dryer, a living room that holds Evans’ coin collection and a back room where he keeps several bicycles.

It’s a vast improvement for Evans, who spent six years homeless — living in camp sites, on couches and in “trap houses” with fellow drug users.

But Evans doesn’t want to stay at his current apartment much longer. He’s been looking for a fixer-upper that never had homeless people squatting in it because, he said, they are more likely to have stripped out the plumbing and electrical wiring.

On a recent Tuesday, he pulled up an auction website and pointed to a listing. He had put in a bid the night before to buy the house for $1,500.

Then he called his father, who offered to help pay for it, or whatever else he might find. “Get one dirt cheap,” his father instructed him.

—-

The post West Virginia has the nation’s worst drug downside, however a lot much less homelessness than LA | Area appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

West Virginia has the nation’s worst drug drawback, however a lot much less homelessness than L.A.

Daily SF News — Fri, 06 Oct 2023 13:06:49 +0000

HUNTINGTON, W.Va. —

Signs advertising drug rehab or access to emergency overdose kits are easy to spot here. It’s harder to find the downtown homeless encampment, a discrete cluster of three tents along the Ohio River, squeezed by a bridge and a construction site.

To people who believe drug addiction is to blame for the mushrooming tent cities in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Portland, Ore., West Virginia presents a paradox. It leads the nation in overdose deaths per capita — by a wide margin. But this state best known for coal mines and the leafy Appalachian Mountains has one of the country’s lowest rates of homelessness.

Blake Orner, right, stands in the doorway of his bedroom as he talks with Fred Von, transition coordinator at Huntington Addiction Wellness Center. Orner has been in the program for four months after battling addiction.

(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)

A man walks on a road that leads to West Huntington.

(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)

1. Amanda Leffler said she kicked her drug habit before she found a subsidized apartment seven years ago, but she still has trouble living inside. 2. Amanda Leffler cleans her apartment. 3. Amanda Leffler stands in front of the apartment.
(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)

She began taking more prescription drugs after getting hit by a paint truck, but shame from being homeless pushed her over the top, she said.

Using drugs made it harder for her to imagine a life off the street, where she would need to shop and cook or perform tasks beyond “basic survival instincts,” she said.

Leffler said she kicked her drug habit before she found a subsidized apartment seven years ago, but she still has trouble living inside.

Amid the wreckage, Julie Thompson, a nurse practitioner who grew up in the area, estimates that 75% of her addiction patients are currently housed, though not always consistently.

1. A patient of OVP clinic, which provides treatment for people with substance use disorders among other treatments. 2. Blake Orner stands in the doorway of his bedroom at Huntington Addiction Wellness Center. Orner has been in the program for four months after spending time battling addiction. (Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)

That codependence can prolong addiction.

Michael, 39 and Candy Robinson talk on the tailgate of their truck outside their apartment. Candy says she never had a problem finding work or a place to stay during more than a decade of drug use.

(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)

“I was a functioning addict. So I always had money and drugs,” said Robinson. “Everybody wanted to be my friend.”

Zachary Moore, left Advanced Practice, RN., conducts a follow up visit with a patient of OVP clinic , which provides treatment for people with substance use disorders.

(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)

Rodney Johnson has a cigarette on his front porch in Huntington, West Virginia.

(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)

A riverfront homeless encampment in Huntington.

(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)

“A roof over your head does not necessarily equal stable housing or a safe place to live, or a healthy place to live,” Walling said.

Craig Hettlinger, founder and chief executive officer of Huntington Addiction Wellness Center, stands outside one of his facilities.

(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)

His business depends on buying properties for as little as $4,000 to $6,000 — including former drug houses — and then fixing them up himself for another $20,000 or so.

Chuck Evans, who works for Hettlinger as a rehab counselor, lives in one of Hettlinger’s more expensive properties — a six-unit apartment building that went for $225,000.

Chuck Evans, a peer support specialist at Huntington Addiction Wellness Center, walks in front of the facility.

(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)

It’s a vast improvement for Evans, who spent six years homeless — living in camp sites, on couches and in “trap houses” with fellow drug users.

Rows of railroad track wind their way through the town of Huntington, West Virginia.

(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)

On a recent Tuesday, he pulled up an auction website and pointed to a listing. He had put in a bid the night before to buy the house for $1,500.

Then he called his father, who offered to help pay for it, or whatever else he might find. “Get one dirt cheap,” his father instructed him.

The post West Virginia has the nation’s worst drug drawback, however a lot much less homelessness than L.A. appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

San Francisco tries to recruit cops from TEXAS because it faces scarcity of a whole lot of officers and enterprise leaders like Salesforce’s Marc Benioff slam town’s widespread homelessness and drug use

Daily SF News — Tue, 19 Sep 2023 19:41:52 +0000

Representatives for the California force are currently on a recruitment drive, visiting four Texas colleges
It comes after the police department had funding cut, causing them to pay out high amounts of overtime
San Francisco is currently experiencing high numbers of homelessness and open drug use

San Francisco is trying to recruit cops from Texas as it faces a shortage of officers, after businessman Marc Benioff slammed the city’s homeless and drug problems.

The San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) is visiting four Texas university campuses throughout the month as part of a new recruitment drive.

Candidates from outside of the state of California will take a written test, a physical ability test and an interview to see if they make they cut.

A police spokesperson told the San Francisco Standard that the number of estimated applications this year is 2,104, nearly a 20 percent increase from 1,756 last year.

The recruitment push comes as the department faces staffing issues, causing them to pay out high amounts of overtime.

Representatives for the California force are currently on a recruitment drive, visiting four Universities in Texas As part of the move, the SFPD are visiting four Universities, with the poster for Sam Houston State seen here The four Texan universities are Texas Southern University, Sam Houston State University, Prairie View A&M University and Texas A&M University Corpus Christi

The Standard reported that between 2017 and 2022, cops spent $88.9 million more on its employees, despite working fewer hours.

The four Texan universities are Texas Southern University, Sam Houston State University, Prairie View A&M University and Texas A&M University Corpus Christi.

Following widespread calls for reforms that swept the national following the murder of George Floyd, the department in the California city had their funding cut.

Mayor London Breed was one of the first to openly speak out in support of defunding the police.

During a July 2020 press conference, Breed said: ‘We chose to change how this city and how this country treats our young Black men.’

Breed announced $120 million would be cut from the police and sheriff’s departments to reinvest in programs that help black and brown communities.

The following year, Breed u-turned on the decision and increased the police budget as the city faced a rampant rise in property crime and looting.

At the time, she said: ‘More aggressive with the changes in our policies and less tolerant with all the bulls*** that has destroyed our city.’

Mayor London Breed speaks during the celebration of the 9th Annual Chinatown Night Out in San Francisco, California, United States on September 6, 2023 Latest figures up until Sunday show that there have been more homicides so far this year, than the whole of last year

Last year the San Francisco Board of Supervisors approved a $50 million increase in SFPD’s budget.

Latest figures up until Sunday show that there have been more homicides so far this year than the whole of last year.

So far, there have been 40 murders in the city in 2023, while there was just 36 last year.

Likewise, the number of robberies in the city is also higher now than for the whole of last year, with 1,989 reported incidents this year, compared to just 1,704 last year.

The number of total crimes this year is also closely catching up with last years full total, with 36,573 crimes committed this year, compared to 37,674 in 2022.

It comes after Salesforce Inc. CEO Marc Benioff said that he had pushed officials in the city to clean the place up before the company’s annual conference.

AI convention Dreamforce, which draws 40,000 people from around the world according to the company, was held in the city last week.

During a press event on Wednesday, Benioff said: ‘We put a lot of pressure on the city this year. It looks great. It’s very safe right now. We’re moving in the right direction.’

Benioff, 58, held the event at the Moscone Center, which is in an area that is currently facing issues including homelessness, crime and open air drug markets, according to Kron4.

Benioff also posted on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, saying: ‘San Francisco has been incredibly clean, beautiful, and safe for the last 3 days of Dreamforce.

‘It is great that the city is able to put its best foot forward for this major event that brings in 40K people from around the world, and $80M to the economy.

‘It is important to ask why the city cannot be this clean and safe every single day?’

Salesforce Inc. CEO Marc Benioff, pictured here, said he had pushed officials in the beleaguered California city to clean the place up The AI convention, which draws 40,000 people from around the world according to the company, was held in the city over the past few days

Benioff had previously warned that the company could pull the large scale convention from the city due to the ongoing problems it is facing.

He told The San Francisco Chronicle: ‘If this Dreamforce is impacted by the current situation with homelessness and drug use it may be the last Dreamforce.’

Mayor London Breed responded to Benioff’s claim that Dreamforce made the city’s transformation possible.

She told ABC7 News: ‘It’s not just because of Dreamforce. There are other conventions. This is what we do for every convention that comes to SF.

‘My pushback is San Francisco changing. Things are getting better.’

Despite this, Mayor Breed did concede that some areas of the city, particularly the Tenderloin and South of Market, did still present challenges.

The city has struggled for years with rampant fentanyl use and fatal overdoses, and is on pace for its deadliest year yet.

More than 849 people are expected to die of drug overdoses in 2023, on pace to exceed the current record of 720 deaths in 2020

In the first five months of 2023, preliminary reports show there were 346 overdose deaths in the city – an increase of more than 40 percent from the same period in 2022.

Latest figures show that overdose deaths are continuing to rise, soaring in August with an additional 84 deaths, 66 involving fentanyl.

Economists have warned the city is spiraling into an ‘urban doom loop’ – a vicious circle of interconnected trends and forces that send cities into economic and social ruin.

Over the past few months, dozens of retailers announced they would be vacating the downtown area of the city.

Drug addicts and the homeless congregate in the Tenderloin District of the California city Open drug use is now common in the city, something which the police are cracking down on San Francisco Police have attempted to shut down open-air drugs markets in the hard-hit Tenderloin and SoMa areas of the city. Pictured: 64-year-old Deliada Valdez who has been homeless for four years is seen in Tenderloin District of San Francisco, California, United States on August 28, 2023

Retail stalwart Old Navy announced they would be shuttering their flagship store in the area last month, becoming the latest chain to exit the city.

Nordstrom also announced they would be closing all of their locations in the city.

The company said that due to the ‘changing dynamics’ of San Francisco it would be shuttering all remaining stores in the next few months.

In April, Whole Foods announced it was closing all their locations, with Anthropologie and Office Depot having also made the same decisions.

High theft has proved a problem in the area recently, with a Walgreens in the city center resolving to chaining their freezers to stop shoplifters.

A map reveals the major businesses which have left, or plan to leave, San Francisco in recent months

A disturbing recent report showed 95 retailers in downtown San Francisco have closed since the start of the COVID pandemic, a decline of more than 50 percent.

Out of 203 retailers open in 2019 in the city’s Union Square area, just 107 are still operating, a drop of 47 percent in just a few pandemic-ravaged years.

One Target store in the city has been forced to lock up more of its products to stave off thieves.

An employee at the location previously said it was being robbed as often as ‘every ten minutes.’

Video footage of another Target has been shared on social media and shows large quantities of their stock now behind barriers.

The post San Francisco tries to recruit cops from TEXAS because it faces scarcity of a whole lot of officers and enterprise leaders like Salesforce’s Marc Benioff slam town’s widespread homelessness and drug use appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Opinion | What We Realized From the Deepest Have a look at Homelessness in A long time

Daily SF News — Sat, 19 Aug 2023 20:58:15 +0000

[MUSIC PLAYING]

ezra klein

From New York Times Opinion, this is “The Ezra Klein Show.”

So before we begin today, we’ve got a job announcement. We are looking for a new senior editor on the show, which is sort of our showrunner. This is really my editorial partner. This is a person who manages the show team and in many ways, the show.

We’re looking for somebody with significant experience driving editorial on a podcast, at a magazine, at a paper, someone who has real editing experience and real managing experience. So it is a senior level role. It does not, as I mentioned, have to be an audio role. If you come from magazines or something like that, that’s important. It’s going to matter to me much more your sense of the intellectual and news and current affairs space than specifically which medium you’re working on that in.

But if you think you’re a good fit or you know someone who is, take a look at the show description, which will be in the show notes.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

So this is an episode close to my heart because it is an episode about a study. And in particular, it’s an episode about a topic that has become more central to, I think national politics, certainly more central to Californian politics, but is not always debated in the most evidence-rich forms — let me put it that way.

So here’s some actual evidence. In June 2023, the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative released the “California Statewide Study of People Experiencing Homelessness.” And this is the single best, biggest, deepest, most representative piece of research we have had in decades on who is homeless, how they become homeless, what they need, and what has happened to them since.

So it’s built on nearly 3,200 questionnaire respondents, 365 in-depth interviews, and I think helps us get our arms around what this issue really is, particularly in California, which is the epicenter of the problem.

California is 12 percent of the nation’s population. It is 30 percent, around, of its homeless population, and 50 percent, about, of its unsheltered homelessness population. So when you’re talking about homelessness in America, to a large extent, you are talking about California.

But that may not be true for very long because a lot of what happened in California to create this problem is now happening in other states. So understanding what is going on in California is of, I think, paramount national importance. Here to talk with me about it is Jerusalem Demsas, one of my favorite people to talk with about housing and homelessness. She’s at The Atlantic. She covers these issues very, very deeply.

And I’d want to talk not just about the study, but about the broader set of political and policy dynamics here that have made this topic both so combustible, but also so hard to make real progress on, even though it’s become a focus for politicians, not just in California, but all across the country.

As always, my email, ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.

Jerusalem Demsas, welcome to the show.

jerusalem demsas

Thanks for having me.

ezra klein

Or back to the show. I guess you’re a repeat guest here.

So I thought maybe I’d begin with some reasons that maybe explain why a report on the nature and causes of homelessness in California is worthy of national attention. So California, 12 percent of the nation’s population, 30 percent of the homeless population of the nation, and then about half of the unsheltered homeless population nationwide.

So maybe a good opening question is, why is homelessness so concentrated in California?

jerusalem demsas

California has a lot of homeless people because California has really high housing costs. And places in the U.S. that see really high housing costs see higher rates of homelessness, even if they’re colder, even if they have lower rates of poverty, even if they have lower rates of mental health affliction, even if they have lower rates of opioid abuse.

The very core question here is, is there a place affordable for people at very low incomes to live? And if there’s not, you’ll have high rates of homelessness.

ezra klein

There are two framing devices that get used here that I think are helpful. So one is this idea that homelessness is the interaction of three things: structural conditions, so maybe high housing costs, things like that, the thickness of the social safety net, and then individual risk factors — that if you’re an individual who maybe loses her job in a place with a great social safety net, probably don’t become homeless. If you’re somebody who has mental health issues in a place with a weak social safety net and high housing costs, you’ve got a pretty good chance of becoming homeless.

And then the other one is this idea that comes from this book, “Homelessness is a Housing Problem,” which is the musical chairs analogy, which I find pretty helpful for this. So do you want to go through that?

jerusalem demsas

Sure. So everyone, I’m sure here, has played musical chairs when they were young. And if you’re observing kids now, and they’re playing musical chairs, right, you’ll see as the chairs get removed from the game, the faster kids, the stronger kids, the more aggressive kids, kids who have more confidence are the ones who get left. You know, if you’re a shy kid, you might just kind of give up. And if you’re someone who has a broken leg, you’re someone who’s probably not going to make it to the last chair. And so there are a lot of things that go into who becomes the last person sitting in that winning chair.

But it’s almost a ridiculous question to ask. Like, why is there so much chairlessness in the game of musical chairs? It’s because you took chairs away. If there were 10 chairs, and there was a good amount of time, and you were able to help people with their broken legs get into the chairs, then everyone has a chair.

And the way this gets analogized into homelessness is that of course there are incredibly important individual stories for who becomes homeless. Why is it that Black people are overrepresented in homeless populations, people with disabilities, people with mental illnesses, trans youth? Why do you see that is — tells you a story of vulnerability within society.

But the core question is, they’re actually just not in homes. And if you were to, in a game of musical chairs, not allow anyone with a disability to play, make sure only confident kids could play, make sure only people with really high sprint times could play, there would still be a chairless person at the end of the day.

ezra klein

And this gets into a comparison I sometimes see get made, which is between West Virginia, say, and California. Because West Virginia, you have high rates of poverty, you have high rates of mental health affliction, you have high rates of addiction. So some of the individual risk factors that you often see blamed for homelessness in California, you very much see in West Virginia.

West Virginia has a lower rate of homelessness than California, despite again, if you look at the socioeconomics, it looks more conducive to people losing their homes. And so that’s the structural factor. That’s the idea that there are more chairs, or in this case, homes for the number of people who want to live there in West Virginia.

jerusalem demsas

Yeah, exactly. So the book you just mentioned, “Homelessness is a Housing Problem,” what the researchers do in this book is they tried to look at just simple correlations across states or across cities or counties or continuums of care, as they’re called. And they try to find, OK, there are a bunch of things that we think about, whether it’s what you just mentioned, whether it’s people living in poverty, which you have higher rates of in West Virginia, or opioid addiction, which you see in a lot of different states, or higher poverty cities like Detroit and Philadelphia, which themselves have very low relative rates of homelessness.

And they just are able to say, correlation after correlation shows that if you were saying that poverty caused homelessness, why is it a very low poverty city like San Francisco have such high homelessness? Same thing for mental illness, same thing for things like the weather. And these correlations really show that it’s very difficult for people to, when we’re talking about causality as policy wonks, explain that to someone who goes, when I see an individual person, they’re clearly poor, and that’s why they’re homeless. If they weren’t poor, they would have a house. But those are kind of different questions.

ezra klein

So one theory I heard often when I lived in California was that California’s got warm weather, it’s got, compared to some other states, at least, more generous policies here, and that all the homeless people all across the country were all rushing into California. And in this report from UCSF and the Benioff Center, they’re actually able to study that a bit. And I think they prove pretty definitively that’s not the case. But tell me a bit about what they found around whether or not the homelessness problem in California is among Californians.

jerusalem demsas

Yes, so what they found is that 90 percent of people who they surveyed, their last home was in California. So I think the first thing to do here is just take a step back, right? Imagine you’re a person who has lost your home.

Most times, when people are in the situation, whether you are someone who lost your job or whatever his situation is, you’re not going to leave your support network. You’re not going to just decide, oh, I’m immediately going to take a bus ticket and try to get all the way to California, where I have no friends, no access to job networks. I don’t know the lay of the land. I don’t even know how I would apply to social services if I got there.

I mean, even really just thinking about it on an individual level, how unlikely it would be that you would want to leave a place that you’re familiar with, a place where you likely could have easier opportunities to access, the friend and family networks, or just your knowledge networks — and also, of course, as a homeless person, you’re very vulnerable on the street. So if you’re unfamiliar with the area, you’re not going to know what places feel more safe in a city. So just at the very core, the actual presumption itself doesn’t really make a lot of sense, right?

The second thing is that people really call into question these kinds of survey data. They’ll say, well, people are just going to lie because they know that’s what nonprofits want to say. They want to say that everyone’s from California. They say people are going to lie because they want to get social services. They don’t want to be demonized as not from there, for whatever reason. So I talked to Margot Kushel, who actually ran this study. And what she did is not just say, hey, are you from California, and move on, right? What the researchers did in this survey research, and it’s probably the most comprehensive survey data that we have available of homeless folks in the U.S., so it’s really, really major — but what they do is, like, they ask people, where are you from? Oh, what county is that in? They’ll ask them other identifying questions about the place where they come from.

And then they also do a bunch of qualitative interviews, where they will go into in-depth conversations. And they’ll match those conversations with the survey answers given when the person was first interacted with. And in those conversations, unless these people are just master liars, they’re coming up with a whole life story about their lives, where they come from, and all these sorts of things, it’s extremely unlikely, in these situations, especially when they’re assured of anonymity and all this kind of thing, that they’re able to kind of fabricate that sort of level of knowledge.

Like, I can name maybe five counties in California off the top of my head. It seems unlikely that everyone in the U.S., without access to a bunch of the benefits that I have had, are able to do that as well.

ezra klein

Yeah, I was really struck by a secondary finding in the report, which is that not only were 90 percent of the folks surveyed, their last address was in California, but for 75 percent, it was in the very county they were still in. And it gets to your point that when people become homeless, they often don’t go very far.

And the logic that would seem to hold is actually not that you want to become homeless and then move from Ohio to California. It’s that if you became homeless in California, you want to get the hell out of California because the housing problem is so bad.

And people don’t really do that either, that one thing about losing your home and your life getting that hard is that the money and security and space for planning and transportation and so on that you would then need to make a major life change —

jerusalem demsas

Yeah, moving’s expensive.

ezra klein

I just moved across the country. It’s hard.

jerusalem demsas

Yeah.

ezra klein

It’s not easy. And it becomes harder if you don’t have the resources I had to, say, get a moving company, right, and plan out where you’re going to go, that in many ways, you’d imagine people could fall homeless in California, and then they go somewhere where there’s a low unemployment rate and a high housing vacancy rate — doesn’t really happen that much.

jerusalem demsas

And what I’ll say, too, is I guess two things. One is, 1 in 10 people saying their last known address was not in California obviously means that if you’re someone who works in a high-incidence field, like if you’re a doctor or a nurse or something, if 1 in 10 people, you’re finding out they’re not from California, that’s going to stick in your head. So I’m not trying to invalidate everyone’s experience of hearing that. But what they also found, researchers in the report, is that for many of the people who said they weren’t from California, they were from here maybe they grew up here, or they were born here, or they had family members here who were able to bring them out, and then they lost housing when they lost housing there, too.

But finally, I’ll just say this on here — I’m not really sure what the end game of proving this would be. Let’s say we found out that 100 percent of people in California homelessness population were not from California. California isn’t a wall with borders. It’s not its own country. It’s the United States of America. What, are we going to stop people from moving there? So part of me feels like it’s really just an attempt to sort of dehumanize the people themselves. Because if you say it’s not our problem, they’re not from here, then you can throw up your hands. You can throw them in jail. You can say, oh, it’s from some red state somewhere else. And you don’t have to take ownership of the policies that led you here because there’s not really a policy response that changes if they’re not from California.

ezra klein

I don’t think that’s quite right. So to just lay this bit of it out — because I heard this in California all the time, often from people who do not spend a lot of time thinking about the California housing situation, in my view. I mean, they lived amidst it, but they hadn’t studied it.

I think the theory is that if it’s in fact the case that California has unbelievably generous social insurance programs, and that we will let you live in California in tent encampments and provide you Medicaid and so on in a way that Texas won’t or that Ohio won’t, that it’s a kind of rational economic agent thing to come to California. And then what California has is not a housing problem, but an overly generous homelessness policy problem.

And so it implies that, oh, if we were just basically — I think this is really what the argument is doing — if we were meaner to the homeless in California, they would stop coming, right? It’s sort of a variant of the Trumpist — if it’s really miserable getting to the border, and you’re going to get separated from your kids and locked up and so on, people will stop coming. I think there’s a view that if it’s just that the country’s homelessness population is emptying into California because we’re so nice and generous, then the way to fix that is to be less nice and generous. You don’t need to worry about more housing, you just cut your social programs.

jerusalem demsas

Yeah, that’s definitely true. I think also largely what I’m trying to say is that the weather problem does not really make sense here. I will say this one thing — there is a correlation between unsheltered homelessness and weather. But it’s really unclear what’s driving that because in colder states like New York and other places on the East Coast like Boston, they have a right to shelter. So unsheltered homelessness is definitely going to correlate with better weather. But yeah, I agree that that is part of what’s going on there.

ezra klein

I want to ask something about the unsheltered question in California because as I mentioned before in those California stats, California, 12 percent of the nation’s population, 50 percent of the unsheltered homelessness population. And one thing you will hear that blamed on sometimes in California is a decision the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals gave in 2018 in a case called Martin v. Boise? I’m not exactly sure.

And the decision says, quote, “The government cannot criminalize indigent homeless people for sleeping outdoors on public property on the false premise that they had a choice in that matter.” And one of the things that decision has done is made it much harder in California and in other areas covered by the Ninth Circuit to basically rip up tent encampments than it is in some other places. How do you understand what that decision is or was, and whether that’s having an effect on why California specifically has an unusual unsheltered homelessness problem?

jerusalem demsas

Yes, so what Martin v. Boise does is, well, the case itself is, there was an ordinance in Boise, Idaho, that allowed police to clear homeless folks even if there was no shelter capacity. And the claimants in the case were basically like, this is a violation of our Eighth Amendment rights against cruel and unusual punishment. There’s nowhere for us to go. All you’re doing is you’re taking our stuff. You’re criminalizing sleeping, which is a normal human function. Like, where do you expect us to go from here?

And the court doesn’t say, which I think a lot of people think, that you’re not allowed to clear homeless encampments. What they say is that you can’t do this without providing a reasonable alternative. And then there’s not a ton of clarification outside of that of what that can look like.

And it’s important for a couple of reasons. One is that the Ninth Circuit, of course, only covers parts of the west coast and a few other states in the west. And so it doesn’t really bind, especially because the Supreme Court declined to actually hear the case. It doesn’t actually bind the rest of the country.

But what it has affected is that there are cities that have been — like San Francisco — that have been told, you can’t just clear people if you don’t have shelter capacity for them. And this seems quite reasonable at first blush, and not just on the basic human level of, like, you can’t just throw people out if there’s not somewhere for them to go, but just on the level of policy efficacy, right? We’ve seen this with homeless encampments — if you tell people to leave and there’s not a place for them to go, they just go form a homeless encampment somewhere else.

This happens in California. It happens all over the country when people are trying to clear homeless encampments. If there’s not permanent supportive housing for them to go to or shelter beds for them to go to that are actually accessible to them, it’s just not actually possible for that to actually be a policy response.

And it’s incredibly expensive. It costs millions of dollars to interact with these homeless encampments that keep popping up, and for police to keep clearing them. And so how it’s affected cities that are underneath the Ninth Circuit is mostly that they have many times tried to continue clearing homeless encampments. They have tried to say things like, providing some shelter — in D.C., for instance, which is not a Ninth Circuit — but they’ll say, we’ve given you a hotel voucher for the night. And that’s supposed to count as reasonable access to a shelter capacity or to not just being thrown out in the street.

And so I think that it’s really questionable for me how much it’s affected things because we know, of course, that police and different officials in government will often try to effectively evict people. We’ve seen this, of course, even during Covid, at the end of Covid, people trying to push folks out even when there’s not enough shelter capacity.

But it has seriously restricted the ability of some cities to do so so blatantly with the really big encampments that are really visible to reporters and to nonprofits, and that are being watched. So if you’re in that situation, it’s very difficult for you to do so in a really big, police-coming-in way. But I will say that because the Ninth Circuit did not really clarify what it meant to provide meaningful capacity, there are a lot of ways that cities can get around this ruling.

ezra klein

And it’s worth saying that when they surveyed these populations in California, 36 percent said they had experienced a sweep like that in the past six months, where the authorities in some way swept through where they were living. Many of them lost medication, cellphones, personal I.D.s.

And I will say from living there, this is one of the white-hot political spaces in the homelessness issue because people living in a community where you begin to get not just a couple people living on the street, but a tent encampment right next to them, they want their officials to get that out of there.

jerusalem demsas

Mhm.

ezra klein

And the shelter thing is somebody else’s problem, in their view. And the fight between the politicians and the courts, it’s very, very, very dysfunctional.

jerusalem demsas

And that’s what people usually mean by homelessness, often. They don’t actually mean, oh, are there people who are unhoused? They mean, are there people experiencing visible homelessness, often in tent encampments? Maybe it’s near your school, maybe it’s near your house. So it’s that visible disorder that people are mostly referencing, which is what makes it difficult sometimes to respond to that in a policy conversation.

ezra klein

And that gets to something I want to talk about, this way in which homelessness is one word that is pulling in under that description a lot of different phases and categories. And Margot Kushel, who is, as you mentioned, one of the main authors of the study, one thing this study does and that she talks about is get at this doom loop as she calls it, or slow downward slide through which people end up without a home and then homeless and then chronically homeless, and it keeps getting worse.

And the way that she and the report often see it beginning is with a leaseholder, somebody living in a place under their name. So do you want to talk a bit about that process, going from a leaseholder to a non-leaseholder, to homeless, to chronically homeless? How do they see that playing out? What did they find?

jerusalem demsas

They find that 32 percent of the people they surveyed were entering from a stable living situation in which they were on the lease, on the mortgage or another written agreement. It’s not always clear if these people were actually the ones paying significant amounts of rent, but they were on the lease. And then they find among those coming from a non-institutional setting, 40 percent are actually coming from holding a lease or a mortgage.

And so I think it’s really interesting here because people often think of folks entering homelessness as ones just experiencing really big disruption, and were already really, really on the fringes here. But people who are on leases, a lot of them say that they’ve experienced job loss recently, they had a job right before, or other form of income, whether it’s from the state or something else.

I mean, what they’re experiencing in a lot of these interviews is just a random major event will happen. And then they will make an attempt to do a bunch of different things. They’ll try to get friends and family to help them. They’ll try to avoid an eviction and will leave before that goes permanently on their record, or avoid a landlord that they feel like is not really going to honor the laws around evictions and tenants’ protections. These folks will enter their car sometimes and say, OK, I’m just going to live in my car for a little bit. And then I’m going to maybe drop my kids off at a family member who can take care of them. And what you see is that homelessness is not a static state. It’s not someone usually leaving their home and then immediately driving over to a tent encampment and pitching up a tent and starting to live there.

It’s usually a situation where an individual feels like they’re very close to being housed again. And then that slips further and further away because of a variety of circumstances, whether it’s job loss, whether it’s — in this case, this study was done in the heart of the pandemic. There’s pandemic-related housing insecurity and disability that happened. There’s one story that they talk about where the individual had a job, and they were working their way back to getting into housing. And then on the job, they were injured. They were no longer able to work. They weren’t able to qualify for certain services. I mean, that’s the kind of thing where you can see that if you’re already on the edge of homelessness, or you’re just entered homelessness and you think you’re about to get out, you just need $500 or $1,000 or something like that to get yourself back on your feet, how quickly that can slip away, and that cost can balloon and balloon and balloon.

ezra klein

It reminded me of the old Ernest Hemingway quote about how you go bankrupt, which is slowly, and then all at once.

jerusalem demsas

Yeah

ezra klein

And there is a dimension that, as you say, a lot of these folks are leaseholders. A really striking number from the report is that when they do lose their housing, often because of an event like that, they had a median of 10 days before losing housing. So that’s not a lot of time to figure something out, but maybe you do, right?

You begin living in a non-leaseholder situation, you’re living with your sister, you’re living with a buddy, that kind of thing, or you’re living in a overcrowded situation. But those are even more unstable. And in the report, they ask what leads people to lose that housing. And it’s often social, right? They have a fight with the person who they’re living, basically at their grace. And the median time of losing that housing was one day.

jerusalem demsas

Mhm.

ezra klein

So you go from having this place, something goes wrong. You’re kind of kicked out before you’re able to do anything about it. And then the next one, you really have no buffer. And then you’re homeless.

And then there’s this slide into worse and worse conditions. Maybe you’re living in your car. Then you’re in an encampment. And maybe you have run-ins with the police. Maybe you’re taking meth to stay awake, that kind of thing.

And it begins to sound a bit in the report, to me, like homelessness, particularly experienced chronically, becomes like a pre-existing condition. It becomes harder to become home-able again, right? If you’re somebody who you had a job, you just hurt your back, you couldn’t make some payments, now you’re living with your sister, that’s one thing.

If you’ve been on the street for a year, that’s another. It’s harder for people to take you in. You might have more things that have made it harder for you to be around people in that way. How do you think about that way in which homelessness feeds on itself?

jerusalem demsas

Mhm, yeah, I’m not sure where I first heard this phrase. It was from someone who works in homelessness. But it’s this concept called scarring, right? Because at the moment that you lose your home, usually, the main problem you have is homelessness. Maybe there’s something else concurrent, but something you were able to manage, you were able to be in a house for some period of time. Obviously, we’re excluding, in this case, 19 percent of people who are coming from institutionalized settings, mostly from jails and prisons.

But for the vast majority, 81 percent, these are people who are coming from some sort of housed situation. And when you go on the street, there are a bunch of reasons — or you’re in your car, you’re going to shelters or whatever it is you’re doing, or bouncing from house to house — there are a bunch of reasons why you might start becoming vulnerable to other things that increase the set of problems that you have, right?

You mentioned people really want to stay awake. They’re really afraid when they’re on the street or if they’re in their car of being victimized, of someone stealing their stuff, even of needing to move their car quickly so that they don’t get ticketed or booted. And because of that, they’ll take drugs to stay awake.

There are other folks who are themselves maybe experiencing addiction already. They do mention in the report that a significant number of people had talked about, even previously to becoming homeless, had already experienced some level of addiction. And if you’re trying to stay clean, it’s not really the best environment to stay clean when you are in a homeless encampment, or when you’re experiencing a level of despair. I mean, I’m sure a lot of people, when they’ve experienced some really hardship in their lives, they maybe turn to alcohol. I mean, alcohol is one of the big drugs that are obviously abused in this situation. And so this kind of scarring and becoming also vulnerable to both police — I mean, people get arrested at high rates when they’re homeless, of course — and then if you’re in jail or even if you are just vulnerable, you’re scared of calling the cops. You might be victimized yourself. There are really high victimization rates for folks who are homeless. And all of these things, right, lead you to get traumatized or to become less and less capable of being the kind of person that can hold down a job, or that people want to hire, or that people want to rent to, or that people feel comfortable discriminating against because they realize you’re already on the margins. And so they describe a lot of these things.

And it becomes really clear that the original problem of homelessness, right, balloons very quickly into multiple extremely difficult problems for you to handle, but also extremely expensive and difficult problems for policymakers to deal with, which is why I think one of the big things that homeless researchers talk about is that obviously, prevention’s number one. But number two is, right at the moment where someone is going to become homeless, it is really important to get them housing as soon as possible.

One of the things that I think was most interesting about this report is it seems like it would actually be very easy, at the point of when someone’s getting kicked out of jail or prison, to just ask the question, do you have somewhere to go? And if they don’t, literally just having someone there who is in touch with services to explain what are the options for them right then. I mean, things like that, it becomes really clear that there are very small interventions, if there was just one small choke point, to making sure that we could cut homelessness by a significant margin.

ezra klein

As you mentioned, there were some pretty deep interviews in this report. And one is with this guy, Carlos, or someone they’re calling Carlos. And I want to go through his story a little bit slowly because I think it gets at the way this is a kind of phase to descent.

So what happens is he’s got a job. It’s physical labor. He falls off a ladder, hurts his spine and loses his job. So he’s got a rent to lease, but he decides to leave because he can’t afford it anymore, and he doesn’t want an eviction on his record, which is its own kind of tragedy. So he then ends up living with a roommate in this two bedroom apartment, but leaves after they have friction.

He tries to crash with his sister, but she doesn’t have much space, and her family has Covid vulnerabilities and some issues there. So he tries living in his truck, but it gets towed after receiving multiple tickets. And now, he doesn’t have a truck. So now, he’s in an encampment.

And I feel like at each point there, you can kind of imagine the way he’s changing, the way his situation is changing, right? He had a truck, and now he doesn’t. And the reason he doesn’t, which is going to make it harder for him to work, is because he had to live in his truck, right? And now that he doesn’t have a truck, he’s going to be in an encampment, and with everything that comes along with that — and just at the end of this, it’s going to be harder for him to have a job.

And this is a place where you’d think we would have a lot of policy intervention. And one thing you see in the report is that we don’t. A lot of people don’t know what’s available to them. If they do know, it’s hard for them to get it. There’s, I think, a searing line where somebody says being homeless is a full-time job, just the amount of time you’re spending going from shelter to shelter and place to place and trying to access benefits.

So talk a bit about what is that intervention? Like, what do we know works here?

jerusalem demsas

So people have a sense, right, that the programs that have been instituted, particularly in states like California or New York, places like Canada and other countries where they still see a visible homeless population, that those policies have failed. And these are called Housing First policies. It’s been kind of the dominant model for a while, which is basically you don’t have to prove a bunch of stuff to get into housing. The first thing you get, you get housing first. And then there’s wraparound services. You don’t have to prove you’re clean on drugs, or that you are taking your prescription medication, or you have a job. You get into housing, and then we’re going to deal with all those problems because it’s really difficult to deal with the rest of those problems if you aren’t housed. This is really, actually a very effective solution — and not just for the average homeless person. There’s another study by a researcher named Raven and also Margot Kushel from this study that looks at the folks who are the most vulnerable. It looks at people who have experienced multiple visits to the E.R. or all these different — and taken multiple inpatient — maybe they’ve been in jail a bunch of times. They really try to find and hone in on the folks who have experienced real chronic homelessness and a bunch of other accompanying problems.

And what they find is that when you put them in permanent supportive housing, you’re getting 86 percent of people who are remaining housed five years later. This hasn’t been published yet, but she just told me that the seven-year mark also, it’s at the same or better for all the categories they look at. And so these policies do work, right?

And the analogy used is, aspirin works to reduce heart attacks. But if you don’t give people aspirin, then you can’t just be like, aspirin doesn’t work at reducing heart attacks. It’s not getting everyone Housing First policies that is really difficult.

And the reason why that’s difficult is because the problem of homelessness is not a stock problem. It’s not like these 500,000 people in the US that are currently homeless, how do we get them into a permanent supportive housing model? It’s that every single day, there are millions of people at risk of falling into homelessness. There are hundreds of thousands who may experience a night of homelessness that we will never count, we will never realize in a given year. And all of those people, because it’s kind of a flow issue, you have to stop the bleeding. You can’t just address the current group of people.

And so because of that, you have to get at the prevention step of this, too. Housing First is very, very effective for the people who are able to get access to it. But it doesn’t work to just say we’re going to continue having really, really high housing costs, allowing tons of people to fall into homelessness, and then say at that point then, we will begin to provide them the kind of services they need in order to stay housed.

ezra klein

Well, also, to the point about Housing First, which is a policy that my sense is it has faded somewhat in its gleam over the past 10 years — I mean, I remember when it was getting these glowing write-ups in The New Yorker. And then now, I think there’s a sense that it has been more marred.

But my understanding of what has been very difficult about it is, you would need to build a lot of housing. If you’re going to do Housing First for every homeless person, then you need enough housing to do that. And the places where you have these very high homelessness problems for the reason we talked about earlier, which are already places where you have high housing costs because it is hard to build housing, are also the places that it is, in some ways, hardest to do Housing First effectively because you need all those units, and you don’t have the political and policy and building conditions to create them.

jerusalem demsas

Yeah, I mean, probably the model success story is Houston. They were able to cut homelessness by 63 percent since 2011. And they used the Housing First model.

But the thing about Houston is that they also have a ton of housing. And it’s not super difficult to build a lot more housing in Houston. And while they of course did a ton of work to try to streamline a bunch of the ways that people got access to that housing — they did a lot of work on the programmatic level, on the bureaucratic level to make sure that it was very clear that they were trying to end homelessness in the city — the city leaders are very, very clear that it would have been impossible if you had the kinds of housing building restrictions that are present in places like California and New York, and where we see the highest housing issues.

But amongst housing researchers, I don’t think that gleam has faded. I think amongst the public, there was this hope that you wouldn’t have to change a lot more, that you would be able to allocate a $1 billion bond measure here, another tax on downtown corporations there, and that would just be enough money. We could just throw enough money at the problem that you could solve it. But that was always a model that assumed that the stock problem was what it was.

ezra klein

It’s definitely become also much more controversial on the right. So there’s a Michael Shellenberger book called “San Fransicko,” which in many ways was not only, but heavily a critique of Housing First policies. J.D. Vance in the Senate just had a hearing that was largely about attacking Housing First.

So try to inhabit that perspective as much as you can. What is the case that gets made against it?

jerusalem demsas

The case is made against it is that we’ve spent billions of dollars, and there are a bunch of homeless people still. And that’s true. I mean, I’d like to go back to this aspirin analogy.

Imagine a pill, an aspirin pill costs $1 billion or something, right? It’s not that aspirin doesn’t work, it’s that it costs $1 billion. And so the question is then, how do you bring down the cost of aspirin — or in this case, building permanent supportive housing?

And the case that’s building on the right here is a couple of things. One is that there is a sense that given the difficulties of building permanent supportive housing, there’s too much permissiveness to allow homelessness to disrupt the order of everyday life, that allowing homeless encampments, entreating people not to clear them until there is enough shelter space that is available and adequate to meet the needs of people, that that sort of thing is infringing on everyone else’s enjoyment of the city and order. And not just enjoyment — I don’t mean to be frivolous here. Like, of course there are real costs here when the last places that are available to people are public parks and transit, and those things can become taken over by people who may cause difficulties on commute. There may be issues where people are afraid because there’s yelling going on in the subway.

There is a difficulty, and of course, many people feel very, very bad about the idea that their community has people who are living in such dire poverty. There’s real costs that are levied, of course, on the rest of the population.

And I think the focus on that is this very true fact that permanent supportive housing does work, and building more housing to make things more affordable does work. But those were projects of decades. And what people want is a solution right now.

And the answer is that there is not a solution right now. There is a way to get people out of sight right now. And that’s what I think the focus is on the right, which is to say we need to solve this problem of making sure that the problem of homelessness does not spiral out of control, that we stop the scarring as much as possible in our downtown areas and in places that people are inhabiting that are public spaces. And I think that’s mostly what the focus has been.

ezra klein

I think you also have — and we were talking about this a bit earlier — when we’re talking about the problem of homelessness, I think in that conversation, we’re often talking about the problem of visible disorder. That conversation is not really about the family that needs to spend three nights in their car, or the person who lost their job and ends up in a shelter for a couple weeks in-between things.

But you’re talking about the Tenderloin in San Francisco. You’re talking about Skid Row in Los Angeles. You’re talking about these places, and there are more of them, of course, than those where you’re seeing a lot of open air drug use, where you’re walking to school with your kids and you’re stepping over vials, and you’re stepping over human feces on the floor.

And that’s all true. I mean, I think sometimes people on the left want to downplay this. And I mean, there is a lot of disorder. San Francisco is a safe city by a lot of measures, like if you’re looking at violent crime. And also, if you try to go into a Walgreens in the Mission, everything, almost literally everything is behind plastic because there’s so much shoplifting.

And the argument you’re hearing from people on the right is that there is a permissive culture that has taken hold, not just Housing First, but we’re letting people just be out there clearly on drugs. We’re letting them use drugs in public. And if we weren’t so permissive, there wouldn’t be so much of this, that there has become a kind of move towards tolerance — that if it was working, we would see things getting better. But there’s been the move towards tolerance, and things are getting worse. And that should make us think the move towards tolerance is failing.

So how do you think about that on the sort of disorder front?

jerusalem demsas

I think that because policy debates like this are always framed between on one side, there are the bleeding heart people who really care about homeless people, and then there’s the other side, which are people who we’re realistic, we’re realistic, we’re savvy, this is a situation that’s untenable. And that framing is incorrect because there’s a question of efficacy.

You can effectively push people out of the margins, right? But they’re going to go somewhere. So when you have these calls on the right to just say, let’s just put people in jail if they are not willing to move to one sanctioned camp area that is far away from any transit, that is far away from any of their job networks, that’s far away from their families, is that you’re just saying more and more people will fall into that bucket until you’ve, I guess, essentially created a ghetto at some level.

And so to me, it’s not a situation where you can say, oh, we can just solve this part of the problem, and then the rest of it, we can get to later. They’re all connected. And so I do think it’s a bit disingenuous to make claims that if we can just clear out downtowns, then you can just get to this level of back to normal, and then you can start dealing with the problem.

I think that there is obviously the case that we need to have much more investment in shelters. And then it should be reasonable when you have a place to offer people to stay that they can’t just stay in public places if they’re causing problems.

But at the same time, the question is, how are we allocating public monies? And are they being allocated effectively? And is it most effective to spend a bunch of money on a public sweep if those people have nowhere else to go? And that’s the question I think a lot of the times, people who are supporting these arguments don’t have to answer.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

ezra klein

One thing that the Housing First discussion always brings up for me is the question of the second house or the second unit, let’s call it, because you can imagine a world where we have a bunch of, more than we do now, taxpayer-financed homes, tiny homes, shared apartment buildings. Maybe we build things that are more like dormitories with shared bathrooms, that kind of thing.

People then need a place to leave and go to next, right? One thing about a lot of these communities is there are a lot of strictures on them, right? You want to have partners, you want to have your dog there, et cetera. So what happens when people then want to move out onto their own? And do you have a housing market where there are cheap units somewhere for the people who need them?

jerusalem demsas

Mhm.

ezra klein

And this is a point that many people who focus on housing have made. But we used to have just a lot more midrange housing options. We used to have things that were more like dormitories.

You used to have boarding houses. You used to have things where the building code didn’t make sure that everybody had a bathroom, right, or their own bathroom, and that one of the things that even if you got a lot of shelters in place for, when people then get low-level jobs again, and they have some income but not that much, do they have somewhere to live? So how do you think about that — I don’t want to call it the middle of the market because it isn’t the middle. It’s lower rungs on the ladder that used to exist, and we kicked out by basically making them illegal to build.

jerusalem demsas

Mhm.

ezra klein

But it means that even if you do have finance shelter for a while, there’s often a really big gap between that and the next home that is out there for you to get.

jerusalem demsas

The people in this study, when they lost their housing, had an average income of $900 a month. Likely a lot of that is from social services as well. It may not be from a job. That is not enough money to save up for a down payment or to save up for even a monthly rent in most of the cities that we’re talking about here, or even in the adjoining suburbs. And so there is this real problem of how you bridge the gap to that second place.

And I want to be clear, there’s just not a simple, near-term solution to this problem. And everyone wants that to exist. And it just — it does not exist. There’s not going to be a way to build hundreds of thousands of units very, very quickly of this kind of housing.

But what you explained in your question here is that that is sort of like a manufactured problem. So SROs, single room occupancy hotels and housing options were a real problem when we think about housing quality. And people had the correct intuition that it’s unreasonable to say just because you are living in poverty, that you have to live in a place that is so run-down, so below code that no one would allow their children to live there.

And the problem is the policy response says, OK, we’ll just ban that type of housing. We’ll just say you’re not allowed to build that sort of thing anymore. And that will solve the problem.

But you can’t ban poverty, right? There are going to be poor people. And if there was an alternative outside of an S.R.O., they would have already been living there.

So there’s not really an alternative to saying, how do we make sure that there’s a bunch of cheap options that exist in the market, and saying, what we’re going to do is we’re going to outlaw all cheap forms of housing. I don’t think that that means we need to accept the kinds of housing quality that we saw in S.R.O.s, in the ‘70s in New York City. I think it’s very clear that there should be some level of subsidization that we can have, and code enforcement that we can have to make sure that those are up to code.

But we have to accept that there’s going to be housing options to ensure that poor people are not on the street, that there are housing options for people who are low income. And what that means is that those are not going to have as nice amenities. It means that you might have to share amenities with people. One of the recommendations in this report is to explore shared living arrangements for people. Finally, I mean, you mentioned Carlos’s story, right? And one of the big parts of that story is that he can’t stay with his sister. And there’s another family member he can’t stay with. And what’s important there too, right, is what we’re seeing with a lot of people who would probably house their friends and family if they had an extra room available to them, is that that real expensive cost of housing means that people can’t get that extra guest bedroom at this level of income. And their family members don’t have that, which means you can’t buddy up with your family for long because there’s not enough room.

And what you would see more often — and obviously during Covid, it was of particular concern because people were worried about transmission. Particularly in the early days, they couldn’t stay with their family members if they were worried about their unhoused member of their family going out and coming back in. But also, it creates a lot of instability in your household if you have a family member who’s in that space. And it may cause problems for you and your children or whatever it is. But it becomes much easier if you have a larger home for them to stay in.

And so I think that that’s one of the big things here too, is that when you liberalize and you make it easier to build types of housing that are more amenable not just to the very low income folks, but the lower income folks, the middle income folks, those are creating housing opportunities and spaces for their family members who might be in distress.

ezra klein

So we’ve been talking a bit about this narrative on the right about what has gone wrong here. There’s been a dawning narrative on the left in the past couple of years, which is that huge private equity firms and asset managers have been buying up all this housing stock. Maybe they’re holding it back on the market. Maybe they’re raising prices too much.

But one way or another, the problem isn’t how tolerant we’ve become, it’s that concentration has happened. Capitalists are holding this back. And they’re creating this housing problem.

So first, what is the reality that is being described there? Because you do see kind of striking numbers about how much of the housing stock in a given market a private equity firm will own. And then why are you skeptical that that is the problem?

jerusalem demsas

The argument that’s being driven by folks who are worried about very large investors buying up homes is that they’re buying up a ton of homes and one of two things is happening — either that their demand pressure is just functionally raising prices because it’s increasing demand in an area, or secondarily that because they’re able to get a certain concentration of the number of homes, they’ll have some sort of monopoly power, they’ll be able to raise prices as a result.

I think that there’s a couple of reasons to be skeptical about this. One is that if you’re looking at the whole country, right, we saw during the Covid-19 pandemic early months, the whole country saw a massive run-up in housing prices. The whole country has — 1 percent to 2 percent of the housing stock is owned by one of these large investors that we’re talking about here. That means that we should be very skeptical that those are the ones that are driving it if they own such a small percentage. When you look at very local levels — you can look at an area like an Atlanta or parts of Phoenix or even near Austin or other places in Texas — you see high numbers. And I think often, these numbers are presented in a pretty misleading way. So what you’ll often see in the numbers that are being reported are what percentage of homes purchased were purchased by very large investors in a given month, quarter, year.

So the percentage of homes purchased is very different than the percentage of homes that exist in an area. So it’s a much smaller percentage of homes. So it’s very small.

And secondarily, a lot of these investors are not just people who are sitting on their homes. Either they could be build-to-rent investors. That means they’re buying the home, and then they’re renting it out, which means you’re expanding the rental stock, even if you’re taking away a home that may have been a home that was owned by someone else. Secondly, maybe it’s an iBuyer. It’s someone who — Opendoor that is buying the house for someone quickly, and then maybe they’re doing a quick renovation or something like that, or they’re just making sure it’s home-ready, and then they’re reselling it immediately. They’re adding, actually, liquidity to the market there. Or potentially, it is a house flipper.

Most of the run-up in investors during the pandemic are actually medium or small to medium investors. Often, we see people who are owning 10 to 20 properties. These are not massive conglomerates or anything like that. But it still can be a problem, right? If the problem you’re identifying is, you want individuals to be owning these homes, you can say it’s a problem to me that those are going to go to a company that is then going to flip them or to rent them out or whatever it is.

But what I’ll say is a few things. One is that often, these homes that are either built to rent or homes that are being rented out, these are people who are now able to access neighborhoods that they were not previously able to access. So renting is obviously cheaper than owning homes in a lot of these markets. And so there’s that question there.

And secondly, I think there is a real question of, of course, maybe we’re concerned about concentration in a given market. We don’t have a lot of data right now in a lot of submarkets to see if it’s the case that there has been one entity that’s buying up a ton of the housing there.

But I think, to step back here, the point is when we’re talking about the problem of homelessness, we’re talking about this problem that’s multidecadal. It’s been happening since the 1980s. And this run-up is very, very recent. I think there’s still a lot of trepidation about making really big claims about what it’s doing or it’s done or what it’s responsible for.

And I think that the urge to try to find this sort of scapegoat, one entity that we can blame is to really try to just get around the core problem here, which is that this is a policy problem that is going to require real costs from a lot of people. And all of us are implicated in a housing system that has led to this moment.

I think the biggest concerns that people have pointed out when it comes to large investors like this is that you see higher rates in some submarkets, like in Atlanta, of these folks treating their tenants poorly. Post the Great Recession is when we first started to see these kinds of entities try to buy up homes. They’re getting them at the bottom of the market. And often, they were getting homes in worse areas, ones that were not being able to be bought and sold. And then they were renting them out to individuals who are more marginalized in society. And maybe they were breaking tenant laws and things like that. Those things are really harmful. And we know from eviction research that there are very small handful of bad actors who are making the worst violations, especially when it comes to unfair evictions.

I think it’s very clear that there needs to be a lot of investment in things like landlord registry. You should know if it’s a business. You should have to register with your city and say, this is the business. This is how many units I have in this building. This is what I’m charging. And it creates the ability, of course, for people to track these actors. But I think the core thing here is just a question of what is actually raising housing costs, what is actually contributing to homelessness. And I’m not here to defend private equity, who I think has earned a lot of their bad rep. But I think that the reason why I’ve been so concerned about the narrative building about this is because I think it’s a distraction from the core problem.

You could get rid of and outlaw Blackstone tomorrow, and you’re not going to see a change in the number of homeless people in California. And I think that very few people will say that. But they will spend a lot of their time talking about this.

ezra klein

Something else you mentioned there, which is the Great Recession — and we now refer to this time period by a bunch of different terms — Great Recession, the financial crisis. But at the core was a housing crisis.

And we had built a lot of homes for a while. We’d given people a lot of credit to buy them. And in the aftermath, the sense was we had overbuilt and overvalued. And so the pace of investment and pace of construction fell quite a bit for a while.

How much do you understand the rise in homelessness and the rising housing shortages? Or how much of a contributor to that do you see the kind of aftermath of the housing crisis as having been?

jerusalem demsas

Yeah, so there was not a recovery post-Great Recession. So pre-Great Recession, we built a significant number especially of single family homes. And we saw, of course, a housing boom, especially in the Sun Belt states, things like in Phoenix and Austin and places like that.

And after that, you saw a real fear of getting back into that space. Construction permits do not reach levels pre-Great Recession until the Covid-19 crisis, actually. And so that’s really, really tough because a lot of what was creating the escape pressure valve for places like California and New York were Sun Belt cities. And of course, they still are.

But in Sun Belt cities, building a single family home, single family neighborhood out in the suburbs of Phoenix, whether in Chandler or something like that, that was a very cheap and easy way for someone to get access to a large house and the American dream that they’re looking for that they couldn’t get in California, they couldn’t get in New York or other expensive states.

And so part of this question is this implication that some people have, that if we hadn’t had that financial crisis, in response, we would have continued to keep building, we’d be in a good place right now.

We’d be in a much better place right now. But the fundamental problem with relying on the Phoenixes and the Austins, outside of the climate change worries, of course, is that they also are going to run out of the commuting zone that people are willing to live within. We’re seeing a run-up in prices in these very cities. And the suburbs of Phoenix and Austin and in Salt Lake City, those places hit their commuting zone. So there’s basically a certain distance that people are willing to travel in order to get to their jobs. They’ll travel, like, 40 minutes, an hour. Once you hit two hours, you’re really hitting the limit at which people are willing to commute. And once you get to that point, once you’ve built out your suburbs to that level, then you’ve kind of run out of the cheap land and housing that can be built at the single family home level.

And so I think that we would still have reached this point here, where you would have seen a real need for more density in our big cities. But I think the Great Recession was a real problem for construction.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

ezra klein

So you’d mentioned Houston earlier and its work on homelessness. We’re a good number of years into there being a recognized housing problem in a bunch of what we called superstar cities, right? We have known for a while that L.A., S.F., New York, Seattle, et cetera have these big problems.

There’s also been, by now, a lot of policy passed. California’s passed a lot of pro-housing bills in the past couple of years. You’ve seen more or less movement in other states. But some have done real movement.

Are there success stories? Is this getting abated anywhere? I mean, all this stuff people at least seem like they’re doing, all this activity, all this energy and the space, is it resulting in anything?

jerusalem demsas

So there has been, especially since the beginning of the pandemic, I think a lot of policymakers and a lot of cities were shocked by the run-up in prices. I mean, people did not expect, when the pandemic started, that it would lead to that level of home price appreciation. And when it did, it really focused a lot of policymakers to say, we don’t want to be like California.

I mean, California had started taking a lead in passing some of these pro-housing bills. But then places like Montana, there was energy in places like Texas and in Colorado, where there were unsuccessful efforts. In North Carolina and in Massachusetts and in Washington and in Oregon, and in a lot of other states on very minor levels, you saw an increase in attention from policymakers on the issue of how do we build enough housing before we get to this level of unaffordability that prices out our entire population.

We’ve seen, obviously, an increase in permitting. We’ve seen a lot more housing being built as a result, especially when we think about the reforms to make it possible to build accessory dwelling units, which are just mother-in-law suites, or turning your garage into an apartment for your kid or something like that.

But you haven’t seen a massive decrease in rents. And I think this is for a couple of reasons. One is that these reforms have really only passed in the last three or four years or so. And it takes more time for people to adjust.

Minneapolis famously got rid of single family zoning and made it possible to build more triplexes. It was then held up in courts for a while. But even now, you’ve seen very slow takeup of trying to build these. And that’s because when you think about the industry, the home building industry in particular, usually, developers are very local, right? They have a way of doing things. They’ve done it for a long time. When rules change, it takes them a while to learn what the rules are, to decide what’s profitable, how they’re going to make it work, and make that actually happen. And because of that delay, I think people are not seeing the kind of immediate response that they hoped to see.

But also, I’ll say even though there are places that have taken really big steps here, when we’re thinking about a lot of these major cities, even in San Francisco and in Los Angeles, you’re still seeing quite a bit of reticence to tackle the issue. 78 percent of Los Angeles is zoned for only single family homes. And those kinds of timelines, where building a house can take years, and building any kind of multifamily house that you’re trying to get multiple people housed at once, that can take years. That’s not a process that even though there have been remarkable successes, more so than I think anyone really expected, is really one that can be said to have been working.

It’s like saying we have a problem of we have four million homes that need to be built across the country. And we’ve made it 5 percent easier in some places to build more homes. I think expecting a lot from that is not the path towards accuracy.

ezra klein

One of the pieces that really depressed me on this was written by your colleague, and my wife, I should say, Annie Lowrey. And she was working with some economics research that Enrico Moretti and others have done, trying to ask the question of what would it take to make housing affordable in these cities? Because when you’re asking that question, you’re not just asking, well, what would it take to get the currently homeless there off the street or into more permanent housing.

But also, if housing became cheaper, people who have been priced out of San Francisco right now would move there and want to live there. People who have been priced out of New York would move to parts of Brooklyn they would like to live in and try to live there. And when you really run that kind of number, the numbers of units you start to think about are so high. I mean, you’re talking about more than four million units at that point to make things affordable, not just to deal with the kind of shortage, holding things like demand static, that it seems very unlikely.

I mean, you can make this problem maybe a bit better, a bit worse. I sometimes think about the test of a firefighter or policeman, right? Can you be a firefighter in San Francisco and own a home in the city in which you fight fires?

jerusalem demsas

Mhm.

ezra klein

And they’re so far from that. And nobody’s really got a plan, I think, to get in that direction. I’m curious how you think about that. Do you think this is solvable in the context of the cities that need to solve it? Or the only actual solution is enough change over time in migration patterns that the problems of the superstar cities now kind of stagnate, and other cities arise that are building a little bit more from — I don’t want to call it square one, but are not trying to solve a problem, or trying to prevent one, or take advantage of somebody else’s problem as an opportunity for them?

jerusalem demsas

I think the biggest lesson that I’ve learned in the last three years is that trying to predict where demand to live is going to be is a fool’s errand. Trying to predict where people are going to move and want to be is extremely difficult even in the short term.

People didn’t expect there to be this sort of suburbanization effect when the pandemic happened, where people just really moved into the suburbs to the point where we’ve seen donut effects everywhere. I think if you asked people in the ‘80s, do you think that Brooklyn is going to be the most expensive place to live, or one of the most expensive places to live in the country, I don’t think that people would have expected that. And that’s what we see now. We see these brownstones that were maligned 100 years ago. They’re now one of the most iconic forms of housing that you can get in the city.

And so I’m very, very unsure. If we see that places like San Francisco and New York and Los Angeles remain kind of the core job-producing engines of the US, and all these superstar cities, Seattle, all these places, and there’s not some other countervailing effect, whether it’s climate change, whether there’s some other kind of job producer that kind of arises in other places, if you don’t see that kind of change, I agree, I think it’s extremely unlikely that you would ever see home prices seriously fall in any of these cities if you continued on on that pattern.

I think that marginal effects here, we can talk about that in really wonky terms, like, oh, what is the effect of there being 10 more homes that are available to someone who can pay $2,500 a month, right? And those are real people, right? So when you’re talking about on the margins here, can we build 100,000 more homes over 10 years, no, that’s not going to solve anywhere close to the problem in California. It’s not going to solve the problem in the Bay Area even if they built 100,000 homes in 10 years. But that’s 100,000 families that get to live there now who previously did not get to live there. It’s 100,000 families, or people, or whatever it is who now get to say, I wanted to live in San Francisco. I wanted this job. I wanted to solve this problem and work in this tech environment.

Or I wanted to go to Los Angeles and be an actor. And I’m going to share a small apartment with two people. Those are people with real dreams and hopes and lives.

And so I am very skeptical that in the short term, even in 10, 20 years, that you could see if trends continue, passing liberalizing laws on land use development change the game functionally in these big cities. But I am really optimistic that people have finally recognized the problem, that it’s become so bad that ignoring it has become impossible.

You used to hear even four or five years ago that people would just deny that we had to build more housing. People who are elected officials in California, in Washington, D.C., they would deny this reality. And I think that what’s happened is, especially in cities that are afraid of becoming like San Francisco — and it’s not just something they say behind the scenes. People are literally saying this in public, we are terrified of becoming like California, even liberal areas. And they don’t mean the Californication worries that Greg Abbott ran on when he worried about liberal values coming to Texas. They’re worried about the possibility that middle class people won’t be able to buy a house, or young people won’t be able to rent in their communities. And so they’re passing a lot of laws, or they’re taking a look at the way that their cities are built out, and trying to solve the problem before it gets that bad. And so I think the most likely path towards getting kind of affordability is going to be hoping that the new suburbs that are popping up, that the places like Nashville, like Knoxville, like Charlotte that have been expensive certainly for the region that they’re in, but are now experiencing a type of demand pressure they were unused to, especially because of remote work, that those places take it really seriously.

And I think that one of the biggest fights that we saw this past year was in Colorado, where that was the very big concern. And it was their first effort to attempt to pass a really, really major bill that would have gone further than basically any other state in trying to address the cost of housing. And it failed by a state which has a Democratic governor, a Democratic-led Senate and a Democratic-led House. And I think that that’s an effort that’s — they are still continuing. And just like in California and in Washington, all these successful places, it takes multiple years to pass these sorts of things. But the fact that a Denver or a Boulder or these places might become more affordable is a really, really, really big deal to even people in California, who are looking for a place to live.

ezra klein

I think that is a good place to end. Always our final question, what are three books you would recommend to the audience?

jerusalem demsas

So I think if you’re interested in learning about homelessness, I think one of the really good books to read is “Homelessness is a Housing Problem,” which you mentioned earlier, by Gregg Colburn and Clayton Aldern. And I always — and last time, I like to recommend fiction because I feel like people don’t read enough fiction, especially science fiction.

I think he was actually on the show, Adrian Tchaikovsky, but “Children of Time” by Adrian Tchaikovsky is really great, and I think actually feels relevant to the story of building new communities, how they develop. And so that’s one that I would recommend.

ezra klein

Spiders make it easier to build up, though.

jerusalem demsas

[LAUGHS] Exactly.

ezra klein

You don’t have quite these issues around —

jerusalem demsas

Construction.

ezra klein

— height requirements.

jerusalem demsas

Exactly. And the final one, I think, is “Strangers to Ourselves” by Rachel Aviv. This is a book that I think I’m recommending it for a couple reasons, one, because I thought that it was probably one of the best versions of someone writing a nonfiction book where they personalized the problem and clearly just know so much about the systemic issues, especially in health care, which is a field where I feel like maybe five people understand the entire system, but I think also because I think it really portrays this tension between understanding a problem as an individual one and understanding one as a systemic one.

And that’s something that I think is the type of policy analysis that I’m seeing increasingly when it comes to, of course, the mental illness issues that Aviv is pointing to, but also in housing and transportation and a lot of things we cover, the importance of moving beyond the individual to solve those problems is just more important than ever.

ezra klein

Jerusalem Demsas, thank you very much.

jerusalem demsas

Thank you. [MUSIC PLAYING]

ezra klein

This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact checking by Michelle Harris with Mary Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. Our senior editor is Rogé Karma.

The show’s production team also includes Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin and Kristin Lin. We have original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. And the executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks on this one to Sonia Herrero.

The post Opinion | What We Realized From the Deepest Have a look at Homelessness in A long time appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

homelessness Archives - DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS

Supreme Court docket to resolve Oregon homelessness case

People are also reading…

Homeless encampment sweeps spike in cities across US as housing crisis grows

Be the first to know

San Francisco RV Group Fears New Parking Guidelines Might Push Them Nearer to Homelessness

Homelessness within the US: Can “tiny houses” assist with the reasonably priced housing disaster?

“Harnessing NIMBY” to expand tiny houses

Out of sight, out of mind?

The line between housing and shelter

What does a real dignified investment look like?

Homelessness within the San Francisco Bay Space: The disaster and a path ahead

The journey from housing insecure to homeless to housed

The state of the crisis in the Bay Area

How we got here

Housing affordability

Insufficient inventory

Lack of coordination

Pillars of the solution

1. Meet the accommodation need

2. Drive greater state and regional collaboration

3. Engage private and philanthropic capital to enhance services and pilot innovative solutions

Stay current on your favorite topics

Fixing homelessness isn’t so simple as offering a home

People are also reading…

Catch the latest in Opinion

San Jose ‘Tiny Houses’ Are Curbing Homelessness, Metropolis Says

The rise of the tiny home

A sense of privacy

Advocates split on tiny homes

West Virginia has the nation’s worst drug downside, however a lot much less homelessness than LA | Area

West Virginia has the nation’s worst drug drawback, however a lot much less homelessness than L.A.

San Francisco tries to recruit cops from TEXAS because it faces scarcity of a whole lot of officers and enterprise leaders like Salesforce’s Marc Benioff slam town’s widespread homelessness and drug use

Opinion | What We Realized From the Deepest Have a look at Homelessness in A long time