No one should ever have to experience homelessness and the trauma that accompanies it. Ending homelessness in the most effective manner requires equitable, housing-focused approaches that respect each person’s dignity and autonomy.
Because many communities are angry with seeing increased homelessness in their neighborhoods or areas, some are implementing carceral responses that do not align with current evidence-based practices – and in fact cause harm to people who are experiencing homelessness. These approaches only impede progress, and present danger to implementing proven strategies and best practices that are successful in ending homelessness. The Alliance encourages homeless service providers and communities to adhere to these practices, even in the midst of opposition. Lives are dependent upon it.
When communities consider approaches to homelessness, the Alliance urges adherence to the following values:
(1) Policy decisions must be based on an equitable, systemic approach, not an individual one. Homelessness is a national crisis that requires a coordinated response. By treating homelessness as a policy failure, not an individual choice, systems can begin to change. Decisions, particularly on housing and homelessness, must center equity and community to create policy that positively impacts both housed and unhoused people.
(2) Criminalization only prolongs and complicates someone’s experience of homelessness. In an increasing number of communities, arresting people is seen as the solution for unsheltered homelessness: an ordinance or law is passed about sleeping outside or using public spaces, a person experiencing homelessness has nowhere else to go and is arrested, and they end up off the streets and in jail. While this option may get people off the streets temporarily, it doesn’t actually end homelessness.
- If a person experiencing homelessness doesn’t have housing after they leave jail, they are likely to head back to the streets: a landlord is generally less likely to rent to someone with an arrest on their record.
- Citing and/or arresting people who are living outside will only make it harder – and take longer – for someone to get into housing, secure a job, or move forward with anything that may require a clean record. This will keep them on the streets longer, and not truly end their homelessness.
- Criminalization exacerbates existing racial disparities. Black and Brown people are already over-criminalized; criminalizing homelessness only adds to this disparity, given the disproportionate rates of homelessness among BIPOC.
(3) Coercive tactics aren’t effective, and aren’t ethical. Everyone deserves to have their dignity and autonomy upheld, especially people experiencing homelessness. Forcing people into a different encampment or into treatment violates this principle. Mandatory treatment is not proven to be an effective response, and may counteract its intentions. Compulsory policies can also have implications on existing racial disparities in the homelessness system.
(4) All approaches to ending homelessness must be housing-focused. Affordable housing is under resourced nationally and in most communities, and must be a major focus to end homelessness. Housing-focused strategies are good for the whole community: moving people into housing as quickly as possible lessens the burden on health care and legal systems, among others. Shifting unsheltered people from encampment to encampment, encampment to prison, or encampment to shelter and back, does not solve their homelessness. Housing does.
(5) Homelessness funding must promote best practices – not enforcement. Criminalization distracts from what’s at stake: getting people into housing. Funding for homeless services must focus on efforts that adhere to best practices and proven solutions in the field.
(6) Homelessness shouldn’t be political – it’s a human issue. Funding and policies aimed at ending homelessness have traditionally been supported in a bipartisan manner. Ensuring people have a home should be seen as a right, and should not be controversial nor divisive.
