Homelessness is on the rise in America. With the recent increase of homeless encampments throughout communities, local municipalities are under increased scrutiny on how to address the issue. To promote greater social order and improve public safety – for those in the encampments and the broader community – the recent Supreme Court decision in City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson will greatly impact local policies.
We believe this decision will allow local governments and law enforcement agencies to determine how best to respond to homelessness in their own communities, allowing greater local autonomy in policy decision-making and implementation.
Esther Larson, Philanthropy Roundtable’s senior director of programs, interviewed Devon Kurtz, public safety policy director at Cicero Institute, to better understand this issue. The Cicero Institute is a nonpartisan public policy organization with deep experience in public policy and technology, law and entrepreneurship.
Q: Homeless rates across America are only increasing. What do you see as the key contributing factors to this reality?
Kurtz: When we talk about homelessness, we often refer to it casually as a monolith. But that’s exactly the same problem with the policies most states use to respond to it. Homelessness is very complex with distinct subpopulations with varied needs and challenges. For example, it is important to distinguish between sheltered and unsheltered homeless populations, the latter of which refers to people who live in tents and sleeping bags on the street.
America is not experiencing a homelessness crisis as much as an unsheltered homelessness crisis. All but 12 states have seen the proportion of their homeless population without shelter increase over the last five years, and 22 states have seen unsheltered homelessness increase by more than 50%.
The imprecision of how we talk about homelessness and in how we make policy means that most states are missing the mark. Federal homelessness policies take a one-size-fits-all approach known as Housing First, which prioritizes low-barrier housing interventions that offer people apartments without any requirements for behavioral health treatment or sobriety.
But more importantly, Housing First explicitly moves funding away from other types of programs that might be better suited to help high-risk, high-need individuals. The vast majority of states have moved in this direction, as federal funding decisions tend to drive local policies in the homelessness space. The result has been a growing gap between the capacity of communities to respond to different types of homelessness and the increasingly complex needs of those individuals living on the street.
Q: Policies at the federal, state and local levels have contributed both positively and negatively to homelessness in America today. What policies have had the greatest impact on homelessness – for good or bad?
Kurtz: Federal Housing First policies are at the root of most of the decisions made at every level of government in regard to homelessness. In addition to changing how resources are allocated, Housing First’s philosophy also de-emphasizes any sort of mandatory or coerced interventions, such as involuntary mental health treatment or legal prohibitions against street camping.
Cities well outside of California have followed along the same path in allowing sprawling street encampments to take hold of their downtowns. Austin is a notable example. These policies have good intentions—draw people into services and shelter with care and compassion rather than coercion. The problem is that they neglect service-resistant individuals or people whose conditions improve with personal accountability alongside compassion.
The line between “meeting people where they are at” and enablement is fine. But many homelessness policies lack that nuance out of an aversion to approaches that might be uncomfortable and involve penalties for failure. The results, however, speak for themselves—homeless encampments are toxic environments filled with waste and trash, and are often hotbeds of crime. Unsheltered homeless people have 2.5 times the premature mortality rate of sheltered homeless. The road to desperation was paved with good intentions.
A few states are taking a more nuanced approach with state resources. Florida, Georgia and Utah have all committed millions of dollars in state funding to fill the gaps for high-need individuals created by Housing First. They also take a more proactive approach with street camping that empowers law enforcement to intervene in dangerous encampments.
These policies are often criticized as lacking in compassion. But in many ways, they more effectively approach the situations of the street and the dangers faced by unsheltered homeless people and the communities around them. Most importantly, they take seriously the reality of the human condition in that they present an actionable response to severely addicted or mentally ill individuals who are “service-resistant.”
The policy discussion here is very, very challenging because we are ultimately discussing our society’s level of tolerance for squalor and human suffering.
Q: For those who are newer to the recent SCOTUS decision City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson, could you explain how the case went to the Supreme Court and what its impact will be?
Kurtz: The fundamental question before the Supreme Court was whether or not laws that prohibit people from sleeping on the street or in parks punish individuals for qualities inherent to their condition. In fewer words, whether they punish people for passively “being homeless” or for specific illicit actions. In 2018, the Ninth Circuit prohibited enforcement of bans on street sleeping or camping, with few exceptions, out of a belief that it punished people for their condition as “homeless” and was thus cruel and unusual. This decision fettered how communities could respond to unsheltered homelessness and street encampments.
Ultimately, SCOTUS saw that street sleeping could be committed by people who were not homeless, which broke down the argument that the law prohibited a condition rather than an action. But more importantly, the Court found that the federal judiciary was playing far too large a role in setting homeless policies for communities. Thus, it affirmed in part this theme of ‘multifaceted and tailored local solutions’ that I have discussed.
In most of the U.S., this decision will affirm communities’ power and responsibility over responding to homelessness. In the Ninth Circuit, the decision will help smaller communities the most. Big cities were already forced to deal with the undeniable public safety and public health crises in encampments, even if they tend not to be proactive. Smaller communities, however, see encampments a fraction of the size of those in L.A. The problems in those camps are still pressing, but law enforcement may have felt restrained in their ability to respond to smaller camps until they grew sufficiently dangerous to warrant action. Now, communities can respond earlier.
Q: Though your focus at Cicero is public safety, you also focus on homeless-related issues. How do you see homelessness relating to other issues – public safety, mental illness, addiction, incarceration, access to affordable housing, etc.?
Kurtz: Street homelessness is the great public safety crisis of our time. Visible public disorder is tied directly to street homelessness, and by some measures, a significant portion of violent crime is associated with homeless victims, offenders, or both. Yet, the relationship between criminal justice and homelessness isn’t simple. Roughly one-third of homeless people in California had left prison or long-term jail stays within six months of becoming homeless.
Rates of substance abuse and mental illness among prison populations and unsheltered homeless individuals are high and increasing rapidly. About 50% of America’s psychiatric beds are in prisons. These systems are highly interrelated and, in my view, inextricable.
Eleven states have seen the number of unsheltered homeless people with severe mental illness more than double since 2018. Thirteen states have seen the number with chronic substance abuse at least double. To deny the public health and public safety implications of this crisis is misguided.
Q: Is there a state or city you point to as a guiding light in this work, in terms of their effective approach to homelessness and curbing its impact on individuals and communities?
Kurtz: It is a difficult question to answer because no two communities are the same. So what works in Detroit might not work in Austin, and what works in a rural state like Vermont certainly won’t work even in Boston. We will not find a silver bullet. There are great organizations like Haven for Hope that are often cited. And cities like Miami and Houston are often shown off for their reductions in homelessness.
But instead of trying to copy what other people do, policymakers and the philanthropic community should look to social entrepreneurs and innovators to help build new solutions and push the borders of what we think is possible. We need to build systems that reward innovation and challenge incumbent programs to improve and grow. Experimentation and dislodging barriers to entry and innovation are essential to effectively responding to homelessness.
We also need to look in unlikely places. For example, Nomadik AI, a start-up in Austin, Texas, is bringing a whole new approach to data collection in relation to homelessness. Organizations like theirs are so important to evaluating interventions and tracking how complex social problems like homelessness evolve over time and in different communities.
If you want to learn more about how Philanthropy Roundtable supports donors committed to addressing our nation’s homeless communities, please contact Esther Larson, senior director of Programs at Philanthropy Roundtable here.
