Impact
Homelessness: The Way Forward
Homelessness is not insoluble: we know what we need to do to end homelessness—we need leadership, know-how, and resources. We know that because, in little over one year, two cabinet-level agencies, working with communities across the nation, exceeded ambitious goals and housed 140,000 families and individuals who had been homeless.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) “House America” initiative was launched in September 2021, with the goal of housing at least 100,000 households experiencing homelessness. Using the COVID resources provided by Congress and leadership from more than one hundred communities in thirty states, “House America” exceeded that 100,000 goal. https://www.hud.gov/press/press_releases_media_advisories/HUD_No_23_015
The Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) vowed that it would house at least 38,000 veterans experiencing homelessness in 2022. In fact, VA exceeded its goal by more than 6%, housing 40,000 veterans during the previous year. And this total excludes veterans who became homeless and had to be housed again as well as any veterans who fell out of housing during the year. https://www.va.gov/opa/pressrel/pressrelease.cfm?id=5854
HUD credited Housing First for much of the success of the “House America” initiative, referring to the approach as “a proven model of addressing homelessness by quickly rehousing people experiencing homelessness and ensuring that they have access to permanent housing and supportive services.” VA reported that its own successful efforts “are grounded in the evidence-based Housing First approach, which prioritizes getting a veteran into housing, then provides the veteran with the wraparound support they need to stay housed — including health care, job training, legal and education assistance and more.”
A List of Specific Legislative Efforts Supported by the Alliance
Homelessness: The Way Forward
Homelessness is not insoluble: we know what we need to do to end homelessness—we need leadership, know-how, and resources. We know that because, in little over one year, two cabinet-level agencies, working with communities across the nation, exceeded ambitious goals and housed 140,000 families and individuals who had been homeless.i
The Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) “House America” initiative was launched in September 2021, with the goal of housing at least 100,000 households experiencing homelessness. Using the COVID resources provided by Congress and leadership from more than one hundred communities in thirty states, “House America” exceeded that 100,000 goal.
https://www.hud.gov/press/press_releases_media_advisories/HUD_No_23_015
The Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) vowed that it would house at least 38,000 veterans experiencing homelessness in 2022. In fact, VA exceeded its goal by more than 6%, housing 40,000 veterans during the previous year. And this total excludes veterans who became homeless and had to be housed again as well as any veterans who fell out of housing during the year.
https://www.va.gov/opa/pressrel/pressrelease.cfm?id=5854
A List of Specific Legislative Efforts Supported by the Alliance
1. Homeless Assistance Grants: The Alliance will call for a $200M increase in homelessness funds for FY24. The Alliance is very appreciative of the $116M increase in Homeless Assistance Grants proposed by the Biden Administration in its FY24 budget. However, we seek an increase of $200M over last year’s amount. While the $116M would cover the increased cost of renewals and fund important priorities like programs for youth and survivors of domestic violence, it would not address increases in unsheltered and chronic homelessness and the difficulty in recruitment and retention of homelessness services workers. The remaining $84 million could be used to pay for a modest cost of living increase for staff who provide critical support services to chronically homeless people with behavioral health needs; some ESG to help communities maintain shelter resources established with soon-to-expire, one-time COVID funding; and investments to address the significant increase in unsheltered homelessness.
2. Workforce compensation: It is imperative that compensation for front-line homelessness services workers be made more competitive. The non-profit services providers, on which local homelessness systems depend, are finding it difficult to compete with low-level retail outlets for
workers, especially given the stress from working in homeless services. Homeless services consist of rents (rental assistance, leasing, and operating) and supportive services, and the biggest cost of supportive services are the employees who provide those supportive services.
Rents are adjusted for increases in fair market rents, but supportive services (which includes coordinated entry costs as well as supportive service costs in other housing grants) are not.
3. The Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) program is the federal government’s major program for assisting very low-income families, the elderly, and the disabled to afford decent, safe, and sanitary housing in the private market. Recent studies have demonstrated that rental assistance is critical to reducing homelessness, improving outcomes for children and families, and lifting people out of poverty. Vouchers work, but three out of four low-income renters at risk of homelessness do not receive assistance because of limited funds. The Alliance will call for a robust increase for FY24 in funding for the HCV program.
4. Two-year competition process for Continuum of Care (CoC) funds: The Alliance supports the Administration’s FY23 budget request to allow HUD to award CoC program funds every other year instead of every year, so that a CoC would experience a full competition every two years and an abbreviated process for new/renewal grants during the off-years. As the Administration correctly noted: “Responding to an annual (competition) requires CoCs to spend many hours implementing a local competition process and additional time to complete the application.
Many of our CoCs have limited capacity to fulfill the many requirements of addressing homelessness…A two-year (competition) process would allow CoCs to focus more on strategic planning and performance evaluation to better prevent and end homelessness in their communities.”
5. Emergency Housing Vouchers (EHVs) are an unqualified success with landlords, Public Housing Authorities, homeless services providers, and people experiencing homelessness, one which weneed to build on with the other voucher programs—from Tenant-Based Rental Assistance to HUD-VASH. However, not all voucher programs have the authority and the funding to use all EHV incentives and flexibilities. ii
6. The Homelessness Health Care and Coordination Act (H.R. 773) would make it easier for local homelessness systems to access behavioral health care services for people experiencing homelessness who have mental health or substance use problems.
7. The Eviction Crisis Prevention Act (S. 2182 in the 117th Congress) establish a dedicated emergency fund to help stabilize households experiencing an economic shock before it causes homelessness, which often requires prolonged and more costly homelessness assistance.
8. The Source of Income Discrimination Act (H.R. 8213 in the 117th Congress) would prohibit landlords from denying housing to individuals who use Section 8 and HUD-VASH vouchers to pay for rent.
9. The Safe Parking Programs Act (H.R. 2965, as amended, in the 117th Congress) would make safe parking programs eligible for Emergency Solutions Grants funding. Such programs allow vehicularly homeless people safe places to sleep and connect them with permanent housing.
i HUD credited Housing First for much of the success of the “House America” initiative, referring to the approach as “a proven
model of addressing homelessness by quickly rehousing people experiencing homelessness and ensuring that they have access
to permanent housing and supportive services.” VA reported that its own successful efforts “are grounded in the evidencebased Housing First approach, which prioritizes getting a veteran into housing, then provides the veteran with the wraparound
support they need to stay housed — including health care, job training, legal and education assistance and more.”
ii Per HUD: “The EHV program provides communities new flexibilities and resources to help individuals and families with higher
barriers successfully use housing vouchers. This includes robust administrative funding and a new service fee that allows
program administrators to pay for costs necessary to help families find and retain housing. PHAs are required to coordinate
with their CoC partners to provide housing search assistance and can also use service fees for landlord incentives, tenants’
security and utility deposits, and even for furniture and household goods, which are often a significant expense for families who
are directly transitioning from homelessness.
Homelessness: The Wrong Way / Two Bills Opposed by the Alliance
- H.R. 6287 (in the 117th Congress) would change the definition of “homelessness” in order to make the insecurely-housed, those people living doubled-up with family and friends as well as in motels, eligible for homelessness programs. Changing the definition of “homelessness” does not create more resources to help the insecurely-housed. The homelessness system already has inadequate resources to meet the needs of the 582,000 people who are estimated by HUD to be actually homeless (living in shelters or in uninhabitable spaces) on any given night, let alone the more than four million people estimated by the Census to be insecurely housed. At best, enactment of this legislation would have no benefit to the insecurely-housed people—because homeless funds would continue to be used on the homeless; at worst, it would take resources away from the nation’s most vulnerable families and individuals, people experiencing homelessness. Does it make sense, logically or morally, that our nation, with an annual budget of $1.2 trillion just in discretionary spending, can find resources to help the insecurely-housed only by taking them away from homeless families and individuals?
- H.R. 6018 (in the 117th Congress) would limit HUD’s ability to promote Housing First, a proven approach for getting homeless people housed, particularly those with the most acute needs. Under Housing First, homeless people are provided with housing and services. Most people need a short-term rental subsidy and light services (e.g., employment and financial counseling) to find permanent housing. Others with more acute needs—because of physical health, mental health, and substance use—may need more services, e.g., help with housing (finding affordable rentals, resolving issues with landlords and neighbors), case management, health care, substance use treatment, and peer support. Everything is easier to deal with when one has a home—as opposed to shelter space or a park bench—including getting services to address any underlying problems that might have played a part in becoming homelessness. Given HUD’s limited resources, it makes sense to use an approach to a housing program that actually gets people housed. And make no mistake: this is a housing program, not a health care program, which is why it’s under HUD.
The unspecified alternative approach to Housing First is “tough love”—discriminating against and thus denying housing and services to people who are difficult to serve, especially people with mental illness and substance use issues. But recovery is not like flicking a switch. And it’s wasteful and cruel to deny clients housing and services or kick them out of programs for those failures and setbacks, especially as their problems will only become worse out on the streets. People who are unsheltered have much more serious health problems than people living in shelter. One-half of unsheltered people are tri-morbid, with physical, mental and substance use illnesses, while only 2 percent of sheltered adults are tri-morbid. And many of these unsheltered people did not become homeless because of tri-morbidity, but the reverse–they became seriously ill because they were left unsheltered. A study by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health found that homeless people are 35 times as likely as the general population to die of a drug or alcohol overdose. They are also four times as likely to die of heart disease, 16 times as likely to die in a car crash, 14 times as likely to be murdered and eight times as likely to die of suicide. Getting people housed is life or death, and it doesn’t make sense to deny admission or kick people out of housing programs for failure to meet strict, one-size-fits-all standards. That’s not “tough love”, that’s just cruel and perverse.
Some critics of Housing First try to fool people by confusing correlation with causation—”homelessness has increased nationally, HUD has promoted the use of Housing First; therefore, Housing First is responsible for increases in homelessness.” Housing First effectively gets people out of homelessness. Housing First does not cause people to become homeless, which occurs mostly because of an insufficient supply of affordable housing and sometimes because of other factors.