In some American cities, whole streets are lined with tents. These makeshift cities now almost-permanently remain in places like San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, and Denver.
All day, people come in and out, sometimes causing trouble, sometimes hanging out sometimes sleeping, but experiencing lives different from the rest of the city.
When you see this, what is your first reaction? Pity? Compassion? Conviction? Disgust?
These kinds of scenes can inspire a vast array of reactions, depending on who you believe is at fault. Your political view and life experiences will probably largely influence this reaction, leading you to scramble for a way to explain this.
You might argue it’s drugs, or mental illness, or the rising cost of rent.
We’re human beings, after all. We often demand an explanation, and want (or need) someone to blame.
So you start a conversation with someone else about it. One person claims that this is a moral failing, a group of people that are lazy, drug-addicted, and totally worthless.
Another says it’s a structural problem, that the crushing weight of capitalism and inequality has forced people onto the streets.
Who’s right, who’s wrong?
Maybe, at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter who’s right. What matters is what we do about it.
Then again, the question of the cause will inevitably inform any sort of solution. After all, don’t we want to prevent this in the future?
A PPIC study in 2001 found that there was a high correlation between income inequality and homelessness. The contribution of rising rent and stagnating incomes across the United States to the number of homeless in American cities was also observed by a recent Los Angeles Times article:
By looking at the rate of homeless per 1,000 people, they (the authors Clayton Page Aldern and Gregg Colburn) found communities with the highest housing costs had some of the highest rates of homelessness, something that might be overlooked when looking at just the overall raw number of homeless people.
Even when presented with information like this, many still hold strong to the idea that it’s drug addiction and moral failing that really feed the homeless problem.
But do they actually know how many people on the streets are addicted to drugs? How many are mentally ill? And did these people start that way, or did the experience of being homeless drive them to do drugs and lose a grip on sanity?
Eventually, this becomes a chicken or an egg situation. But instead of a thought experiment, we’re dealing with people’s lives.
This divide, over what we think the cause of homelessness is, has created a rift in the implementation of possible solutions. Though this isn’t a comprehensive article by any means, maybe I can cast a little light over some possible ideas.
Though personal failings and drug addiction definitely play a factor in homelessness, we have to deal with the facts that housing supply and cost play a critical role in how many people experience housing. From this place of housing equity, perhaps we can implement a holistic decision that offers people affordable housing while getting their lives together, along with any therapy and addiction help they need.
What will this look moving forward is anyone’s guess. But what is apparent is that something needs to be done. A quick drive through the downtowns of California cities will illustrate that point efficiently enough.
As NPR stated in a 2021 article:
But as long as California fails to address the root cause — a chronic shortage of affordable housing and an ongoing failure to significantly ramp up new construction — the state seems doomed to grapple with obscene levels of homelessness.
What do you think are some good solutions for the homelessness crisis?
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This article is also published on Medium in The Urbanist, which you can find here.
Answer to the high cost of housing: Corral the cars, devote housing space to houses rather than bitumen and brick paving, walk to and from the car and meet your neighbours in the process. Use handcarts or a better version of a shopping trolley to get from car to home. Plant real grass and trees, allow for walkways, gardens, courtyards and places for kids to mingle and neighbours to meet and enjoy a coffee or a beer. Rent rather than own the land. Make the house in a factory and drop it in or take it out with a crane. Abolish fences. Allow for creative activities that could lead to employment locally. Include two and three stories as a matter of course. Provide for outside cooking when weather is favorable. Allow for boats and caravan parking and the storage of sporting gear near the cars. Otherwise possessions to be stored inside the house. The house is treated like a chattel that can be owned by the landowner, an investor or the occupants.