Addressing Homelessness
I am not a big believer in "helping the homeless" as a mental model for how to effectively address homelessness. If you require people to be homeless in order to qualify for assistance, you actually make the problem more intractable.
See also:
This is a piece about providing SOME support for the homeless, but mostly it's about providing basic, decent housing for the PEOPLE (not "the homeless") and enhancing free public services, like parks and libraries, in a way that's especially helpful for homeless individuals without being a homeless program per se.
In the US, California is especially hard hit by the homeless problem but I believe this is a nationwide problem which disproportionately impacts California.
California has been in the news more than usual of late for their anti-homeless laws and policies. I was reminded of that by this discussion of apparently a new law in Fresno, California.
I do not think laws of that sort are at all constructive. It's a policy of "The beatings will continue until morale improves." and it only makes it harder for homeless people to survive, resolve their problems and try to get back into housing.
My read on what's currently going on in California: California is fed up with being the dumping ground for America's national homeless population. There is a nationwide shortage of affordable housing and homeless people routinely go online and ask "Where is a good place to go?" and dry, temperate weather is a frequently listed desirable criteria.
In a nutshell, California has:
- Roughly 12 percent of the overall population for the US.
- More than 25 percent of its homeless population.
- More than 50 percent of its unsheltered homeless (people sleeping outside, basically).
Those stats are so crazy I think it's ridiculous on the face of it to claim all those homeless people are Californians and not people from across the US.
But the narrative that gets told over and over and over is that California has policies that are broken resulting in crazy expensive housing, it doesn't build enough housing and those people are almost all Californians. In other words, it's their fault they are drowning in homeless people.
The claim that the vast majority of homeless people are LOCALS who got priced out of housing is a politically motivated exercise in how to lie with statistics.
Agencies use various tricks to claim they are locals based on their most recent address, even if that address was a jail stint during their time on the street, and my understanding is they do so to try to garner sympathy and support for their programs to "help the homeless" rooted in the idea these are tragic victims from OUR community because if you admit a lot of them showed up from ELSEWHERE as homeless people, California would want to send them back.
I spent years homeless and I've researched this problem space for more than two decades. My conclusion is:
1. The primary root cause of homelessness at the societal level is a lack of "affordable housing" (though I hate that term with a passion and feel it is poor communication to use it).
2. The primary root cause of homelessness at the individual level is "Too many problems. Not enough solutions."
3. The solution at the societal level is build more market rate housing that makes financial sense and works for our changed demographic.
4. Society can make it easier to get off the street by providing services for ALL people that help homeless people more than most but are not available based solely or primarily on your unhoused status.
So I'm a fan of the food stamp program because it lets poor people buy food at normal middle class establishments which are generally vastly superior in quality to soup kitchens and the like. (Though some programs are excellent, a lot of homeless programs are diabolically designed to keep you trapped, not help you get your act together.)
Here are things I think actually work to help mitigate the issue:
Healthy Brown Bag Lunches
One of the problems with the typical cadre of homeless services is they end up concentrating the most destitute and desperate homeless in some area of downtown of usually relatively large cities (or "the big city" for the area in question).
You can get three hot meals a day IF you stand in line all day and do little else. This actively interferes with trying to job hunt, earn money, problem solve, look for housing, etc.
Helping poor people eat healthy so they remain healthy and are able to job hunt etc. not only empowers them to try to get their lives working again, it reduces the odds that they will pose a public health threat.
(We currently have a quiet little Hepatitis A epidemic in the US. It originated in the homeless population in San Diego, California and I watched it in real time spread up to Los Angeles and outward from there. We don't need more "fuck the homeless" policies biting us in the butt.)
In addition to brown bag lunches, the above linked website has other ideas for both people on the street and people running homeless services. You could share the website generally or specific pieces on it via whatever contacts you personally have which may help get the word out.
Enough PUBLIC Bathrooms
Most places in America have too few public bathrooms. This is a problem for delivery drivers and other people but it's an especially big problem for homeless people.
Please see Parks and Public Restrooms for more info. You may also wish to read ROW Park and US Cities Need More Public Bathrooms.
I spent a lot of time in libraries while homeless. Some nice features for public libraries to be supportive of the homeless include gender neutral bathrooms, high speed USB ports that charge a phone super fast and having enough outlets.
More Affordable Housing Solutions
I hate the term "affordable housing." It means different things to different people, usually something BAD.
I've largely given up on trying to talk conversationally about that with people and developed an entire website fleshing out my thoughts on the topic:
I will suggest that you contact commercial developers about Project SRO. It is intended to be a for profit or market rate solution providing small rental units appropriate for households with one to three members in a "car optional" design.
This post has a quick and dirty calculation for how many to start for your community, which may help you decide how many developers to contact.
Miscellany
1. If you are on good terms with the local chief of police, you could send this piece to them.
2. Free or cheap buses, commuter buses and other inexpensive intracity transit are helpful.
3. Building more affordable housing (a la Project SRO) ANYWHERE in the US will help alleviate California's problems.