Housing First
Listening to a “Factually” podcast they talked about the housing and homeless problems in America. The guest, Dr. Sam Tsemberis, described his research working with the homeless which had shown how the most effective method to helping people who were homeless was to give them a place to live. This led him to push for this method, called Housing First:
Housing First is a homeless assistance approach that prioritizes providing permanent housing to people experiencing homelessness, thus ending their homelessness and serving as a platform from which they can pursue personal goals and improve their quality of life. This approach is guided by the belief that people need basic necessities like food and a place to live before attending to anything less critical, such as getting a job, budgeting properly, or attending to substance use issues. Additionally, Housing First is based on the theory that client choice is valuable in housing selection and supportive service participation, and that exercising that choice is likely to make a client more successful in remaining housed and improving their life.
What this boils down to is, if you treat people like people, help them address their biggest problem, in this case having no place to live, its the most effective way to help them, and in turn, addresses a host of other problems. Which makes a lot of sense. If you have no job, no money, medical/mental health/addiction trouble AND no places to live, you’re pretty screwed.
For the past thirty years or so we’ve tried to address the last one, no place to live, by trying to fix everything else first. If they buckled down and worked hard, they could conquer all of these problems and get themselves right they’d be able to get themselves a home. This, surprise surprise, doesn’t work.
If you have no place to live, you can’t get a job. If you have no job, you have no money to eat and take care of yourself. If you have no place to live, you’re more likely to experience medical issues. Living out in the elements isn’t very good for you.
And this doesn’t even touch on the fact that people can have jobs, no mental health or drug issues and still be homeless. People aren’t paid enough to be able to afford to live in a lot of places. The podcast goes more into those things but what really stuck with me was when they were talking about the concept of “housing first” and the surprising amount of push back you get with that idea.
It’s the same kind of knee jerk response you get to the idea of basic income. Why should people get stuff for free? They didn’t earn it. Etc Etc. But to me, this response seems ridiculous. The thing that makes people worthy of care is that they exist. That’s it.
We, as a society of humans, should look out for each other. Everyone should have their basic needs met. Food, water, shelter, health, dignity. How we provide those can vary but if they’re not being provided, we’ve failed as a society.
The trouble is, when people lack these things, it gives others that don’t a tremendous amount of power. You’re hungry? Come to my church and listen to my sermon and I’ll give you something to eat. Your sick? Work for me and put up with whatever I want and I’ll get you healthcare. Don’t have a home? Follow this checklist of how I think you should live your life and we’ll get you a place to live, eventually. Not feeling like society cares about you? Come join the (military/gang/cult/religion/political movement), learn to follow orders, and find a place to belong.
Instead, how about let’s think about helping people first? Because, as the Housing First studies have shown, when you help people solve their basic problems, they’re much better at addressing everything else.
