Five Questions for... the people behind the Urban Institute research. In traditional interview format, our experts talk about the nature of their work and offer insights on what they've learned.
Mary Cunningham, author of “Preventing and Ending Homelessness—Next Steps,” answers five questions about how to combat homelessness. Evidence-based approaches have cut homelessness among chronically homeless single adults and new strategies are now being adopted to help homeless families. Investing in proven strategies is crucial as the economic crisis puts more people at risk of ending up in shelters and threatens to reverse the progress communities have made toward ending and preventing homelessness.
Also, listen to Mary Cunningham’s talk at the First Tuesday forum “Preventing Veteran Homelessness” held on April 7, 2009. (11m 29s)
April 22, 2009
1. Are the housing and economic crises driving an increase in homelessness?
The national research hasn’t come in yet, but we have some community-level data. The Washington, D.C., region just announced a 15 percent increase in homeless families from January 2008 to January 2009. New York City, Massachusetts, and other cities and states also report significant increases, particularly among families. The people at high risk of becoming homeless during the recession are poor families with young children who are paying too much for rent and have thin social support networks. It’s not easy to tell who in this risk pool will become homeless though. It’s not like you lose your job and the next day you’re homeless. There are a lot of stops along the way—maybe you rely on friends and family and live off of unemployment payments for a while. It’s only after people burn through their resources that they show up at the shelter door.
The big unknown is how foreclosures will affect homelessness. I suspect it’s the renters living in foreclosed homes who will really take the hit. If you’re a low-income renter and suddenly get an eviction notice because your landlord was foreclosed on, you’re likely unprepared, unable to afford finding and moving to a new home, and likely won’t get your security deposit back. There’s been a lot of talk about how to modify mortgages and help homeowners, but let’s include renters in the conversation. For starters, Congress could require banks to give at least 90 days notice of foreclosure to renters and fund relocation assistance for renters facing eviction.
2. In the past decade, the approach to fighting homelessness has changed—and seen some success. How have strategies changed and why?
In the 1980s and ’90s, homelessness rose sharply and the country responded with emergency shelters and transitional housing, believing the spike would be temporary. But it wasn’t. Emergency shelters keep people from having to sleep on park benches or on the streets, but shelters aren’t set up to help people get back into housing. Homelessness continued to get worse, so the government built more shelters and more transitional housing units. Then a couple things happened that really shifted the strategy from merely managing homelessness to trying to end and prevent it.
Research conducted at the University of Pennsylvania showed that most single adults coming into shelters exited pretty quickly but that a small group of single adults were chronically homeless. They typically had serious mental illnesses and frequently used public services, such as emergency shelters, emergency rooms and hospitals, and prison or jails. Research showed that this group could be helped with permanent supportive housing, which provides a housing subsidy alongside intensive services to promote housing stability. The clincher? Providing this group with permanent supportive housing could cost almost the same as doing nothing.
This work and other research debunked the “housing readiness” theory—the idea that people have to overcome their personal problems and be ready for housing before leaving shelters. Instead, evidence supported the “housing first” approach. “Housing first” says that most people, even people with mental illness and substance abuse problems, can stay housed with the support of wraparound services. Having a safe, stable place allows people to work on their other problems. You can’t improve your life if you’re living out of a shelter, checking in and out every day, sleeping with bedbugs, having your things stolen, and possibly experiencing sexual or physical violence—those aren’t optimal conditions for finding and keeping a job or stabilizing mental illness. Recent evidence from Seattle shows that people who move from the street into stable housing do improve their lives—for example, they may start drinking less.
In light of this research, in 2000, the National Alliance to End Homelessness called on communities to end homelessness in 10 years by getting people into permanent housing. Soon after, President Bush launched an initiative to end chronic homelessness and Congress committed to building 150,000 permanent supportive housing units. We are almost halfway to that goal—65,000 to 72,000 units were created or under development between 2002 and 2007. Counts of the homeless aren’t precision instruments, but we know that homelessness among chronic single adults has declined as the number of permanent supportive housing units has increased.
3. What about homeless families?
In the past five years, we’ve seen the same shift in strategies for homeless families. Most families exit shelter pretty quickly on their own, but some get stuck there. Transitional housing, the primary response to family homelessness, has mixed results for families. It’s an expensive resource and should probably be targeted to families in transition—people coming out of prison or substance abuse treatment or escaping domestic violence situations. Most families don’t need a transitional period and can get back into housing right away with a housing subsidy and links to community-based services.
Recent research has helped inform our thinking about how to respond to family homelessness. In the past year, HUD collected a full year’s worth of emergency shelter and transitional housing-use data. These data provide a much more accurate picture than previous point-in-time counts. Roughly 131,000 families used shelters and transitional housing at one point during the year. What that says is that family homelessness is a solvable problem. It’s not as big a problem as we previously believed and we have some clear solutions, like rapid rehousing, housing vouchers, and community-based services.
4. Besides bringing rapid rehousing and permanent supportive housing to scale, what other recommendations do you have for policymakers?
Research clearly shows that affordable housing ends homelessness for people. And we have a real housing need in this country. In 2006, 8.8 million renter households were spending more than half their income on housing. We need to invest more in affordable housing and make some changes in our tax policies to support rental housing. Current policies are heavily geared towards homeowners. If the foreclosure crisis has taught us anything, it’s that not everyone should be a homeowner and that a strong rental policy can be a good thing for the country. Perhaps some of the tax subsidies going to homeowners could be used to build affordable housing because the market doesn’t do it. We need more housing vouchers too. Some are nervous about increasing the housing voucher program, but the program works. Vouchers can help people get stable housing and are typically used for only a few years.
Also, we should invest in preventing homelessness among groups in transition. People leaving hospitals, prisons, and mental health facilities who can’t find housing end up in shelters. Many kids who age out of foster care are unprepared to be on their own. An independent living program or housing subsidy and services could help them transition to adulthood. Prisons and jails also need to take some responsibility for connecting released prisoners to housing because research suggests links between homelessness and recidivism.
5. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act includes $1.5 billion for homelessness prevention and rapid rehousing. How should this new investment be spent?
The timing couldn’t be better. Overnight, the current budget for homeless assistance services almost doubled, so we can now respond to the increased need. Communities can spend this money on housing search assistance, housing stabilization services, and some short- and medium-term rental assistance. The challenge is getting that money out the door quickly, getting it to the right people, and figuring out how to transform the system to sustain change.
This new infusion of funds is an opportunity for communities to change the way they do business, especially for homeless families. If we invest money now to bring rapid rehousing to scale, we’ll have a permanent system in place after the economy recovers and funding returns to normal levels. No matter what, we can’t go back to the old system where people were coming to emergency shelters and transitional housing and languishing there, struggling to get back into stable, permanent housing.
