Should you give a homeless person money or food, or just keep walking? It’s a quandary many Americans face, especially those who live in big cities. Homelessness raises other questions as well. How can we reduce the problem? How do the data misrepresent the issues? In what cities are there real “states of emergency”? And are shelters for the homeless – a seemingly obvious solution to the profile – actually effective in solving the greater social problems that homelessness embodies?
I sat down with Kevin Corinth to get some of the answers. He is a research fellow in economic policy studies at AEI where he focuses on homelessness and the programs and policies put in place to assist the homeless. (He has written repeatedly for the blog; see some of his work here, here, here, and here.) Corinth has a bachelor’s degree in economics and political science from Boston College and a master’s and doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago, where he was also a lecturer.
Some excerpts of our talk via my podcast over at Ricochet.
Shutterstock.
James Pethokoukis: The last time I remember people really talking about homelessness, it was the 1980s, during the Reagan Administration. Mitch Schneider here in Washington DC really gave the issue a lot of public attention. So why does this issue seem to pop up, and then go away and re-emerge? Is this a business-cycle thing, where we’ve had a recession and so the number of homeless has gone up? Why does has it emerged and receded from the public consciousness over the past generation?
Kevin Corinth: There’s a pretty broad consensus that homelessness has gone up a lot, beginning in the early 1980s. There’s a lot of debate over why that happened – the de-institutionalization of the mentally ill, increasing poverty, whether there was an increase in single-parent families. There’s been a lot of debate about that… We started to actually do some surveys beginning in the ‘80s and ‘90s.
Taking you up to the modern era, starting in 2007, there has been a much bigger federal government effort to count homeless people. And once you start to count them on a regular basis, you get a lot more of the politics involved [around] whether numbers are going up or down. There’s a lot more interest in that.
So yes there’s a reality part, which is that homelessness is higher than it was before the ‘80s; how it’s gone up or down since then, there’s a lot less that we really know.
Before we get to the state of things today, just one more thing about the ‘80s. You mentioned a few different theories. What do you think was the causation for that increase? De-institutionalization of the homeless? Poverty? What strikes you as the most plausible reason that it jumped from the ‘60s and ‘70s?
It looks like it is “all of the above.” The de-institutionalization can’t really explain all of it; there’s been good work showing that but it probably does explain some of it, especially for those sleeping on the streets. There’s more of those people. I think one reason that isn’t talked about as much is perhaps the disillusionment with the family. You have a lot more single-parent families, a lot more kids growing up without parents. Maybe that disconnection amounts later on to potential spells of homelessness. And there’s less attention on that. I think that’s another theory that could explain part of the increase.
Am I wrong to say the issue seems to have reemerged in the past few years as something policy makers pay attention to? Why is it a big issue again?
With the recession you would expect there would be more homelessness but actually you didn’t see any more homelessness as the Recession happened, or as it recovered. That’s a very interesting puzzle, and I have a theory about that, that for a lot of the sheltered homeless population, shelters really didn’t expand when the Recession hit. When people don’t go to shelters, either they turn to the street or they turn to other situations where they are not found in the street with other people.
So why is there more attention now? Maybe the Recession has something to do with that. But I think a lot of it is based on these annual counts and there is more emphasis from the federal government to really do something about homelessness. A focus on trying to end homelessness, we don’t want to add shelters, we want to bring homelessness down, and I think that brings a lot of excitement from people as a social justice type of issue.
What do we know about how many people are chronically living on the streets? And that is what we mean by homeless, right? If you are able to go to a shelter, are you no longer counted homeless? So who are the homeless? How do you define that? And then let’s get into the causes.
These are extremely difficult questions. These very basic questions – how do you define them? How do you count them? – those are two of the hardest things to answer. And I won’t give you the magical definitions or counts today. But to answer your first question about how many… If we are talking about numbers of people on the street, they do a count every year. Volunteers go out across the country, this is done in the middle of January. They find about 170,000 people on the streets. That number is probably higher in the warmer months, especially in colder weather places, New York City, Chicago, but they find lots of people in warm weather areas.
In terms of definitions, obviously they count people on the street as homeless. People who are in emergency shelters and also something called transitional housing, maybe apartment-style living but maybe it’s for six months to two years at most – that’s all called homelessness. Everything else is not, at least when we are talking about the official Department of Housing and Urban Development definition. Other departments have other definitions. For instance, the Department of Education has another definition which includes people who double-up for economic reasons.
What does that mean, doubling-up?
It means if you have a family who moves in with a relative or friend because otherwise they wouldn’t have housing on their own.
So what do we know about the reasons? I went on Twitter and asked people what they’d like to know, and I think the number one thing is: is this a poverty-issue? Is this a mental illness issue? A substance abuse issue? What do we know about the causality?
It’s kind of all those things. The thing is, if you’re just poor and don’t have these other issues, you probably won’t be homeless. If you just have a substance abuse issue but you’re not poor, you probably won’t be homeless. So a lot of times it’s the combination of poverty, high-housing costs, substance abuse, mental illness, that causes someone to land in homelessness. And another important part of this too is disconnection from family. This isn’t true in all cases but often those who end up in homelessness have a lot of disconnection from family – a recent divorce in history, or the breakdown of a family relationship. So instead of going to live with somebody else, they may end up in a shelter or on the street.
I think when someone sees someone on the street, a couple things pop into mind. One, does this person have a drug problem? [Two], this person came from somewhere; they have parents, they must have cousins somewhere… where are these people and that family safety net?
That’s an important and sometimes ignored issue. Sometimes people do use those other safety nets. People who are on the street or in shelters — before they were there – they were in family situations, or they will go there after. I find those social supports are extremely important, and there may be policy levers we can press to spur those on, because that could be both a cheaper and maybe more effective and humanizing way to deal with homelessness.
And again, many people are homeless because those relationships have broken down and are not healthy. So it’s a really hard field to play with in terms of policy but it’s one we really can’t ignore because these are real human beings. Somebody’s brother, somebody’s daughter, son, or parent. Those relationships are hugely important and we need to make sure when we think about policies, we think about these things too.
The other thing that pops into people’s heads is that this is a breakdown of the mental health system. You mentioned earlier that we loosened up all these rules in the 1960s and 70s. Address that issue.
That’s such a tough issue and it’s a big one. Personally I think there could be a role for some institutionalization… it’s such a hard line to draw [between incarceration and institutionalization]. I think reasonable people could come up with a reasonable policy. But that wouldn’t solve homelessness. There would still be non-mentally ill people on the streets, whether for substance abuse issues, or just total poverty or some life choice. You get the gamut of reasons. Any one thing won’t be the magic bullet. But those issues around mental health should really be decided by mental health experts… We need a more holistic policy around it in that area.
I remember as a kid watching these ABC after-school specials and I remember one of them being – this was in the late ‘70s or early ‘80s – about homelessness and a family. They had lost a job and were living in their car. How typical is that kind of homelessness today?
You’ve now transitioned into a different form of homelessness. Before we were talking about the single-adults, people on the street… but when it comes to families, at least when we do these flawed government counts, we are finding people who are mostly in shelters. Not many of them are on the streets or in their cars.
But that being said, these counts are flawed so people may end up in their cars. The most common place where people end up as a homeless family is again these shared-housing, doubled-up situations. You can decide whether to call that homeless or not; I say not. But that’s what most people do when they lose their housing, a job. A lot of people will say they are one or two paychecks away from homelessness. A lot of people have family members who will take them in in those situations, and a lot of people in poverty too. But again when those relationships dissolve or opportunities are no longer available, they may end up in shelters or in cars.
Again, these families don’t want to be found. If you are found with your kids in a car on the street, you may potentially lose your children, so these are really tough things to do from a policy perspective – when people you are trying to count and serve are hesitant to even appear.
So, any idea what share of the homeless are families in shelters or doubling-up versus single people on the street?
If you look at these annual counts done in January, you have about 107,000 who are on the streets and that’s almost all single adults, mostly males, mostly middle aged. There’s another 2 to 300,000 who are in shelters, single adults, some families as well. And that’s at a point in time. There are a lot of people doubling-up. There are some reports on family homelessness, and for those who define family homelessness as doubling-up for economic reasons, you get something in the millions.
I think that’s the wrong way to define homelessness. A lot of people share housing for economic reasons, but that can be a good thing. There’s obviously crowded situations and issues of domestic violence and abuse that we want to avoid. But the fact that people are using family support systems, friends, especially on a stable basis, that allows them to free up money for other things, school, etc. It’s important to distinguish between single adults on the streets and in shelters versus doubling-up. They are very different issues and require different solutions.
Do you have a feel for what share of those adults on the street have diagnosable psychological issues?
Again, these numbers are hard. There was a survey done in 1996 that tried to survey those who said they were using some kind of service but were sleeping on the street. They found that 40 to 50 % had diagnosable mental health problems. 75% had either a mental health or substance abuse problem. So yes among that population, those problems are prevalent. And again there are people who do not have those issues either, so I don’t want to cast any… be too general with this.
This is a question from Twitter: Is there some sense in which homelessness is a lifestyle choice?
You hear about that. I don’t believe it’s common at all, though I’m sure it exists. And to the extent that it does exist, from a policy perspective, I’m not sure there’s anything we need to do about that. If it’s someone who’s making a choice, who has places to go, assuming they aren’t using expensive services, don’t have mental health problems, don’t have drug abuse problems interfering with their ability to make decisions, that becomes less of an important issue. But that said, this is probably a small subset. There are important policy things to do for those who are not in that group.
This is one of the first questions I asked you when you joined AEI, and I’m sure you get it all the time: someone’s on the street, asking for money. What do you do? Keep walking? Hand them money? Give them a card to go to McDonalds? How should that interaction go optimally to help that person?
Optimally I think it’s important to acknowledge another human being’s humanity. Operating from that mindset is key. I personally don’t offer money to those on the street; I worry it will be used for something that will harm them. When they do surveys, they find people do often use it for food but do often use it for these other harmful things. There are usually soup kitchens and services available in the community.
That being said, though I think that money may not be the best thing, I do think that addressing someone’s humanity by offering some amount of money may not be the worst thing in the world. There is this cost obviously that they may do something bad with it. If that’s what allows you to address someone and act out of love, it’s not the worst thing in the world. But from a practical perspective, I generally would not.
As you’ve written, there are plenty of cities where the goals are to not acknowledge these human beings, move them away so we don’t have to see them. What’s going on with those sorts of policies right now, especially in big cities?
There’s a lot of concern for what people call the criminalization of homelessness. In some cities not-for-profits are not allowed to feed people in certain areas of homelessness. There may be bans on sleeping in certain or all areas, bans on panhandling …
Or physical obstacles to people sleeping in certain areas, so beside the legal restrictions, they make it less desirable and likely to be in certain areas.
Yes so in London they put spikes out on the sidewalks where people were sleeping. On the criminalization issue, the big problem I have with this, I think there can be room for policies that maybe restrict where people can sleep. The thing I worry about is when these laws are put in place to make people go away, so we don’t have to see them. I mean, there could be some really worthwhile ordinances that say where you should not sleep for safety reasons, or we could involve the police to help get people into services that they need.
But I think a lot of cities aren’t thinking in that compassionate way and more “we need to clean up our cities for tourists.” I think the worst example is something known as Greyhound therapy. Greyhound, as we know, is a bus line and there have been a lot of anecdotal cases and some cities that have been caught giving one-way bus tickets to people with severe mental health problems. That’s a really tempting thing to do if you are just trying to get rid of the homelessness problem, and so I worry a lot about that. But I think there are reasonable measures that can be taken for a city, even from a quality of life perspective. If someone’s outside of a store blocking customers, I think it’s reasonable for the city or police to ask someone to move.
San Francisco – very expensive to live there. There’s a public defecation thing happening there. If you are a policy maker in a city like that, what is the next step? Maybe now’s the time to talk about the new Housing First idea. What is that?
Let me be modest and say I don’t have all the magical solutions. Housing First has been one of the major policy developments in the last decade or so; it’s a very simple, very intuitive, very hopeful policy message. It says, for people who have been sleeping on the street, they may have a lot of mental disease or substance abuse problems. You give them permanent housing, no strings attached, you do offer supportive services for things like mental health and getting over substance abuse problems. People are not forced to comply.
So there has been a huge increase in supportive housing which uses this Housing First approach. Something like a 67% increase since 207. That’s deemed as the current favorite for what will solve homelessness.
So you’re putting someone in a completely subsidized apartment?
It could be an apartment. It could be one large facility with lots of different rooms. Usually the person does have their own apartment.
With a door and a lock and a key, so you’re not in a cot in the corner.
Exactly. They usually pay 30% of their income, usually money off the government, less frequently money from a job, so there’s a lot to like about this. It gets us on the right path. It says we will target our assistance on the chronically homeless, those who need the most help. We won’t screen people out because they aren’t willing to engage in any services. So there’s a lot to like about it though I don’t think it’s the ultimate solution.
My issue is that it doesn’t really … it’s not results based in terms of addressing these other issues. It’s good at keeping people housed. It hasn’t been shown to be any better at getting people over their drug abuse or addressing heir mental health. So I think there are two things. One, I think it is really important we do address those problems, and they are really important to me in order to overcome homelessness.
The other problem is that, if people stay in these housing programs and we are not getting them over these other issues, we cannot use this housing for other people in the future. I think we need a lot more accountability from some of these non-profit programs running these Housing First programs in addressing some of these other issues and getting more positive exits so we can use this system for other people in the future. Otherwise we are at risk of expanding our permanent housing, and there will be more homeless people coming, and there will be less money for more short-term assistance that gets at some of these core issues.
It reminds me of the classic left-right debate, when the right says “if you want to get a benefit, welfare, there needs to be a work requirement,” whereas those on the left say you should get those benefits as a human right. Is that the way the debate is playing out?
I think there is some of that, and I think there can be room for some strings attached eventually. I think it makes sense to get people into a supportive environment without strings at first. Even if there are no strings attached ever, I do think we have a moral and financial responsibility to ensure that these providers we are giving lots of money to are addressing these other issues. If it’s just about getting homeless bodies off the street and into some kind of housing, that’s fine. I don’t have a problem with it, I think it’s actually a good thing. But we do have the responsibility to make sure that we are only giving the best providers, the people giving the most supportive environments and doing a good job working with people to overcome these other issues, reconnecting with family, I think those must be part of the equation or we are selling human beings short.
Some people support the idea of a universal basic income. Maybe it’s cheaper to give people a basic income, no strings, just a check. Similarly just give people some sort of housing. Is Housing First more expensive? How much are we already spending?
People who are homeless are expensive. They use emergency rooms, jails, shelters, so if we do nothing, there are still lots of costs. Costs depend on the city. I’ve seen estimates of anywhere from $20,000 to $50,000 a year for some of the intensive users of services.
Per person?
Yes per person per year. Most of that is emergency room services. Health issues are exacerbated by living on the streets. That’s why there’s a lot to be said for Housing First. That said, Housing First is extremely expensive too. For most people, Housing First will cost money in the long run, and that’s why I think we need to focus more on these positive exits. Getting people into these housing programs and transitioning them into other places and making sure providers are really accountable.
To what extent is this a government-driven issue, with droning and regulations contributing to it such that even low-end housing is pricy?
Zoning is a huge issue and everyone pretty much agrees that housing costs are a big driver of homelessness, especially more on the family side. So government policy keeping housing prices high by zoning, that’s a big problem. That said, a lot of expensive cities will be expensive. So the question is, what do you do in those areas? Do you encourage people to move to cheaper areas, which would be the natural economic progression? Or do you try to get people to stay in their areas? There are people who have ties to a city and the extent to which we are not allowing people to stay there because we have zoning policies that keep housing way too expensive, that’s a huge problem. Getting rid of zoning regulations would be a great step towards making housing more affordable for people and decreasing homelessness. Just helping people in general.
What percentages of Americans are actually living one or two paychecks from homelessness?
The loss of a paycheck really isn’t the correct margin here. A lot of people may be one or two paychecks from being evicted from their apartments or having to ask someone for help. But in a lot of those situations, a lot of people will then go use their family safety net. The really important margin here is when they are living with those other people that that breaks down. I don’t know how many people are actually on the margin between missing a paycheck and going to live with family, obviously a lot of people doubled-up. How close they are to homelessness, I really don’t know. It depends on the strength of those relationships, and get back into making it.
What is the Zero: 2016 initiative?
Yes so it is an effort to end veteran homelessness by 2016. The Obama administration set forth a plan to end homelessness among veterans in five years and that timetable is about work. That wasn’t going to work. There were never going to be zero homeless veterans ever.
In the long run, these political campaigns just suggest that we are not taking these issues seriously, and if we fail once, can we ever trust the government again to do something. I am kind of weary of that stuff.
Homeless veterans: is that a separate issue? Does it require different kinds of programs?
Veterans are people too. I think the reason they are segregated is that there is more political will for funding programs for homeless veterans.
How did this end up being your specialty?
A lot of boring reasons. I guess in grad school I just turned to it. But what keeps me going is that the purpose of life is unconditionally loving other people, and when it comes to homelessness, these are people that a lot of horrible things have happened to – break down of family, poverty, job loss, mental illness, abuse, bad choices – but these are human beings owed unconditional love from other people. That’s got to be our drive. These are the least empowered people in society. Our solutions have to do a much better job at providing them the power and the ability to go out and serve others too.
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