New Homelessness Study in Light of “Housing First” Initiatives

By Pierce K. Kozlowski

A study on the homeless population was published last week, identifying the potential factors causing and prolonging homelessness, in addition to other relevant correlations associated with homelessness. Data were collected by questionnaires followed by over 350 in-depth interviews, and the sample population comprised roughly 3,200 homeless adults collected from 8 different regions of California. That was its purpose and method, but what of its findings? Amongst many, three were the most significant. First, racial minorities like black and Native Americans are most at risk for homelessness, (p.23). Second, there’s a strong positive correlation between homelessness and addiction, trauma, incarceration, and mental illness (p.29). And third, loss of income coupled with rising costs in housing has made it less accessible to low-income individuals (p.74).

"Housing First" policies have a history of face planting

Now there’s been solutions to broaden accessible housing, however, those efforts have been wildly unsuccessful. In 2013, Obama’s administration pledged to end homelessness by 2023 under his “Housing First” model, all the while, homelessness increased by 20% from 2014 to 2019 according to the homeless census. In California, unsheltered homelessness sharply raised 50% in 2020, and the following year, Obama’s model cost Californian taxpayers $1.2 billion to cover only 59,000 of the 172,000 who were homeless.

Even respected center-left think tanks like Brookings Institute found that housing subsidy programs using approaches like “place-based discrimination” – “divesting in neighborhoods wholesale on the basis of race,” or directing more funding towards formerly redlined areas – have inadvertently been ineffective and harmful to black Americans in terms of promoting affordable housing, much less lowering the rates of homelessness or addressing the problems that indirectly cause and are correlated with homelessness. In fact, these programs haven’t reduced rates of addiction or psychiatric problems amongst the homeless at all, notwithstanding the fact that both issues afflict well over 75% of the homeless population.

What’s the takeaway? These solutions are expensive and ineffective. Yet despite a decade of statistical analysis demonstrating the failure of these policies, this didn’t prevent the author of the study from recommending much of the same policies (pg.86). And while this was well within their rights, it’s important to note the study’s bias towards the exact welfare solutions that “Housing First” Democrats have advocated, and the poor success rate of those solutions.

Why the media’s takeaway of the study was absurdly wrong

In response to the study, however, household names in legacy media have suggested that the study’s findings indicate that expensive housing and loss of income are the problem (as if this wasn’t apparent), and that mental illness, substance abuse, and the other factors strongly correlated with homelessness were either unrelated or insignificant. Such a sentiment was expressed verbatim in the New York Times, stating that “a lack of affordable housing, not mental illness or substance abuse, was the main driver of homelessness in California.” And again, in the Los Angeles Times, they wrote a think piece hoping to fix the “common misconception” which “tied the road to homelessness with mental illness and drug addiction,” and instead disingenuously chalked it up to “precarious poverty.”

Their first claim is unremarkable. If there are people in an older age bracket who should be able to afford housing but can’t, then it’s too expensive . . . Eureka! Of course, this is bitter sarcasm. Repeating the findings of a study in oversimplified fashion isn’t noteworthy. The second part, however, is extraordinary, because repeating the sections of the study that say “homelessness is due to lower income and expensive housing,” while writing off the sections that say “homelessness is strongly correlated with substance abuse and mental illness,” is not only anti-scientific, but thoroughly nonsensical – especially considering that no supportive research was cited, or even loosey mentioned to support their statements.

Of course, mental illness and addiction correlating with homelessness don’t mean they’re confirmed causes of homelessness. In fact, they’re not confirmed. So if I’m in no position to say that “mental illness and addiction are confirmed causes of homelessness,” then I’m confused why legacy media believe they’re in a position to say that “mental illness and addiction are confirmed as non-causes of homelessness.” And even if they were to walk back their statement, they might craftily say “Well, if it cannot be verified or falsified as a cause of homelessness, then we shouldn’t be investigating it since it cannot be known.” But this would also be erroneous because while correlation doesn't equal causation, a correlation that cannot be confirmed as a causation does not prohibit it from further investigation.

What are some better housing solutions?

So what makes mental illness and addiction, among other factors, worth investigating in relation to homelessness? Let’s quickly revisit the Times articles. Both outlets asserted that current homelessness was purely a financial problem, mostly disconnected from cognitive and physiological health. But this has two problems. First, we saw earlier that billions go towards subsidized housing, only for homelessness to rise the most dramatically in areas that adopted those policies most fervently. You’ll recall, California is the only state to completely embrace the “Housing First” model, yet they had the sharpest increase in homelessness, with a similar trend across hundreds of American cities. The cost-benefit of this policy is disproportional because “Housing First” demands a colossus of funding with consistent and depressingly underperforming results.

Second, the “Housing First” approach is reductionist and incomplete in its approach, overlooking important dynamics. Specifically, it fails to account for highly correlated, external-health-related factors which were mentioned ad nauseam in the study. As we saw earlier, taking a community primarily affected by chronic dysfunction, and transporting that community from no housing to subsidized housing does not remove or mitigate the chronic dysfunction. Nor does the policy contain any provisional incentive structures, e.g., requiring sobriety or participation in mental health services – meaning those who are receiving housing right now are not receiving help for a condition that very likely may’ve contributed to their lack of housing in the first place.

It is well understood that Democrats herald themselves as the caring representatives of the people compared to the “cold” and “greedy” Republicans. If this is true, Democrats will hopefully consider two effective approaches. The first approach, nicknamed “Tough Love,” focuses on using law enforcement to prevent “street camping” and “drug consumption,” which was used by Democrat Sylvester Turner in Texas back in 2011, and has since yielded a 54% decrease in the homeless population. The second approach focuses on the “Treatment First” program, which tries to get the homeless off the street, into recovery and mental health services, connect them with employment, and hopefully work towards independence. This yielded tremendous success, with 44% of men in housing and 53% properly employed within only 12 months.

The way forward isn't hard, just follow the research!

The way forward for politicians is simple: follow the research. If census data shows our “Housing First” models don’t work, then it’s time to review the literature on the potential causes and correlations of homelessness that “Housing First” hasn’t accounted for. The study that this article is about identified loss of income as the obvious cause of homelessness, and mental health issues and drug abuse as strong correlations. What is the appropriate response? It’s not what the New York Times or Los Angeles Times purported, desperately clutching to an outdated housing model from the Obama era and cleverly reframing the issue into a one-dimensional problem.

The correct response is to look at existing findings and supplemental research, as we did above. And what have we found? Using law enforcement to prevent street camping, and using “Treatment First” programs that treat chronic issues while encouraging employment and independence have not only been shown to radically reduce homelessness, but they also address all the causes and major correlations of homelessness found in the study.

And say new literature comes out, correcting the previous consensus as to what contributes to homelessness, invalidating the solutions I just mentioned – what then? Then we would turn to new solutions that have been shown to better address the problem on the basis of robust research and historical success, taking into account all the relevant factors that the most up-to-date research deems relevant. This is the approach of every good scientist, but more importantly, the approach of every great politician. While I’m hesitant to say if any Republicans would find the aforementioned housing approaches palatable, I'm confident in saying that Democrats should not only find it palatable, but as a consequence, should be pursuing those very approaches and others like it with every fiber of their being if they believe housing to be a right.