What if I were to tell you that providing homeless people with high quality, unconditional shelter actually makes them amenable to seeking treatment, all the while decreasing a city’s cost per homeless (especially chronic homeless) and with the vast majority moving through the system paying for their own housing to some extent? Because that’s exactly what Houston did, decreasing unsheltered homelessness by over 50% and chronic homelessness by over 70% since 2011.
Housing First and similar initiatives, the current favored school of thought for attacking homelessness, do not provide a universal solution. It has not proved to be in feasible in California. Maybe it would not be in Austin. But at the very least, an evidence-based approach to reducing homelessness is what we should aspire to. “Homelessness should be hard” or “Why bother helping those who don’t want help” are useless statements from a policy standpoint and frankly belie an understanding of the basics of homelessness: the vast majority (75-85%) get out within a year, because being homeless is awful. The rest, chronic homeless, are generally beset with mental illness or addiction. And homelessness is caused by housing prices.
That small group is our focus. If the tent camps get them out of sight and out of mind while costing the city less money in the long run, why do you care? The issue, of course, is whether the plan will work - that’s the conversation. I don’t know. I think it’s a national issue. But the moralism is largely pointless and muddies this debate.