In the most recent paper in AEI’s Economic Perspectives series, “Street homelessness: A disappearing act?,” my colleague Kevin Corinth casts doubts on the reported decrease in the number of homeless people living on America’s streets. According to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, national counts of the street homeless have gone down by about a third since 2007. Kevin shows that most of that reported decrease can be attributed to changing counting methodologies and drastic underreporting in certain cities alone: Detroit, for example, reported a 98% reduction in the number of street homeless people, or over 13,000 people, between 2007 and 2009. State and local homeless criminalization measures may also have played a (smaller) part. Federal policy, and actual attempts to help the street homeless stop being homeless do not appear to play a major role in the decrease:
[S]heltered homeless counts, which are much more reliable than street counts, have been remaining steady. This is true not just among families—who rarely sleep on the streets—but also among individuals—who are more likely to transition between the streets and shelters. Meanwhile, substantial expansion of permanent supportive housing appears to play only a minor role in the national street count reduction, although the possibility that altered homeless migration patterns are partially masking its effect cannot be ruled out. Ultimately, the evidence suggests that it is too soon to declare that we know what works in ending homelessness.
Kevin’s analysis ought to instill caution in those who believe that while the country was going through the deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression, the homeless flourished. Just last year, for example, HUD Secretary Julian Castro triumphantly declared the reported decrease in street homelessness meant that “our strategy is working.” In light of Kevin’s findings, that claim seems quite overblown.
from AEI » Latest Content http://ift.tt/1eJudPW
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