# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Several of the city's homeless take shelter at the McPherson Square Metro station on Jan. 25 in Washington. Volunteers Brian Gober, of the DowntownDC Business Improvement District, left, Girum A. Gebretsadik, of Pathways to Housing DC, middle, and Jordan Gulley, also of Pathways to Housing DC, conduct an annual census of homeless people in the District. (Amanda Voisard/For the Washington Post)

The number of homeless people in the nation's capital has declined 11 percent since last year, a drop that was driven by reductions in the number of homeless families counted in the District and mirrored declines in homelessness throughout the region, according to a report released Wednesday.
Fast, informative and written just for locals. Get The 7 DMV newsletter in your inbox every weekday morning.
The reduction was a welcome development for Mayor Muriel E. Bowser in her struggles to curtail the District's high rate of homelessness.

But the news was not all good. The city's homeless population of 7,473 remains higher than it was in 2015 - Bowser's first year in office - and has increased 8.9 percent over the last five years.

"These results show that our efforts to prevent homelessness and connect more residents to safe and affordable shelter are paying off," Bowser said in a statement. "We still have more to do, but we have made significant progress over the past two years, and we will continue this work until every D.C. resident has a safe place to call home."

The District accounted for about two-thirds of the homeless people counted in the regional survey, which was published by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments. The count is based on reporting by homeless shelters and a one-time count by volunteers who walked the streets on the night of Jan. 25.

Most jurisdictions saw declines in homelessness from 2016, though the population was flat in Prince William County and increased by 33 percent in Arlington County.

Kathleen Sibert, the president and chief executive of the Arlington Street People's Assistance Network, noted that because Arlington has a relatively small homeless population, modest fluctuations can create dramatic-looking percentage increases or decreases.

Fifty-eight more people were counted in 2017 than in 2016, bringing the total homeless population in Arlington County to 232, nearly the same number of people as were counted in 2015.

"We look at the trend line over several years more than the year-to-year anomalies," Sibert said. Since 2013, the county's homeless population has dropped 52 percent, she noted.

The county has also been aggressively seeking to eliminate homelessness for several years by using a "housing first" approach that seeks to break down barriers among the agencies and departments that provide services to people who don't have shelter.

"We feel positive about the direction Arlington is going, but tomorrow someone new is becoming homeless," Sibert said. "We've made strides, but we have a way to go."

In the District, long-term trends in the homeless count tell two stories. There were 3,578 homeless adults without children in 2017, a decrease from the 3,690 five years ago. Over the same five-year period, however, the number of homeless people in families - adults and children - grew to 3,890 from 3,169.

Nevertheless, there were signs in the newly released count that the city is making headway against the problem of family homelessness: The number of homeless people in families decreased by 16.6 percent from 2016.

"The numbers are turning in the right direction," said Kristy Greenwalt, director of the D.C. Interagency Council on Homelessness. "It's good evidence that the reforms we are making are working."

Greenwalt said those reforms - outlined in a plan Bowser released during her first year in office - include efforts to prevent people from becoming homeless in the first place and to move them back into housing as quickly as possible when they do.

Kate Coventry, a senior policy analyst at the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute, said the count suggests that city policies to lower homelessness are beginning to have an effect.

But she said the problem that is driving many families into homelessness in the first place - a lack of affordable housing - is still far from being remedied.

"That's not a problem that's going to be fixed in a year," Coventry said.

Patricia Sullivan contributed to this report.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
D.C. homeless population drops 11 percent, report says

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The number of homeless people in the nation's capital has declined 11 percent since last year, a drop that was driven by reductions in the number of homeless families counted in the District and mirrored declines in homelessness throughout the region, according to a report released Wednesday.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
According to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority's most recent data, there were more than 51,000 homeless individuals in Los Angeles county, which has one of the highest homeless populations in the country. But it turns out that programs to provide housing for these unlucky individuals actually helps LA save money.

A study conducted by a Los Angeles County research unit followed Project 50, which began in 2007 as a $3.6-million plan " to find the 50 people likeliest to die on skid row's street - the hardest of the hard cases - and house them however possible." Since the beginning of the project, "the number of participants has grown to 133."

According to the study, the project yielded a net savings of $238,700, which is "equivalent to $4,774 for each apartment provided." Zev Yaroslavsky, the project's supervisor, articulated the logic of Project 50 in the following statement:

My notion was that front-end investment in social services and stable housing would not only prove to be vastly more humane, but less costly for the public treasury. This audit makes the case for accelerating the county's efforts to house the chronically homeless and provide them with the critical social services they need.

The Department of Veterans Affairs, for one, began a program in 2011 modeled off of Project 50 that seeks to permanently house the "60 most vulnerable veterans."

- Nina Liss-Schultz

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Study: Providing Housing For The Homeless Saves Government Money

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
According to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority's most recent data, there were more than 51,000 homeless individuals in Los Angeles county, which has one of the highest homeless populations in the country. But it turns out that programs to provide housing for these unlucky individuals actually helps LA save money.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Giving people access to support services and a place to stay can reduce the number of those living on the streets. But can that be done affordably?

A&Q is a special series that inverts the classic Q&A, taking some of the most frequently posed solutions to pressing matters of policy and exploring their complexity.
On any given night in the United States, half a million people are homeless. Some of them sleep in shelters, others on the streets; roughly one-quarter are children.

About 15 percent are so-called chronically homeless, which means they haven't had a permanent home in years, and often cycle through jails, hospitals and homeless shelters in search of a place to lay their heads.

The government has tried to tackle the problem of homelessness on nearly every level, but comprehensive solutions have proven elusive, despite billions spent over time. The federal government has set a series of goals of ending homelessness for veterans by 2015, chronic homelessness by 2017, and homelessness for families with children and youth by 2020. But reaching these benchmarks appears to be much further off.

Seemingly every policy group that works on this issue has ideas about how to solve it for good. But what really works to help people get-and stay-off the streets? And is there any way to do it that wouldn't be wildly expensive?

ANSWER

First we need to consider space. We should increase the number of shelters available to the homeless.

QUESTION

Can we count on that as a long-term solution?

Shelters are certainly useful in that they provide beds and roofs to people who don't have them, especially on cold and rainy nights where sleeping outside could be fatal for some.

But shelters are incredibly expensive to operate. Nationally, the average monthly cost of serving a family in an emergency shelter is $4,819. Providing them with a voucher for housing, on the other hand, is just $1,162. Shelters might be good for emergencies, but does having a bed to sleep in mean that someone has a home?

And quality can be an issue for these shelters: Many homeless people have told advocates trying to get them off the streets that they avoid shelters if they possibly can. They've heard about bad experiences there, or have themselves suffered through violence, theft, or other trauma in these ostensibly safer spaces. There were 826 "violent incidents" in New York City homeless shelters last year, including sexual assault and domestic violence, according to the New York Daily News.

People often have to leave food and other belongings behind when they check into a shelter, making it hard to accumulate anything of sentimental or material value. Plus, shelters don't allow residents to develop a sense of permanency-and it's permanency that helps people get a job or stay sober, as numerous studies have indicated.

ANSWER

Affordable housing would be a longer-term solution. Let's just increase the number of these units overall. If more people can afford housing, they won't be homeless.

QUESTION

If it were that easy to add more affordable housing, cities like New York and San Francisco would be very different than they are now, and far less expensive. It's costly to build new apartments and homes in cities where land is pricey, and developers want to recoup their investment as soon as possible, which means they have to charge a lot for rent.

That's not to say cities, states, and the federal government haven't tried out a few strategies for hastening the construction of affordable housing. Have any of them been effective?

There are federal Low Income Housing Tax Credits that help certain developers build 100 percent affordable housing. But developers compete for those tax credits, and there aren't enough to held build affordable housing for all the people who need it, much less for those who don't have homes in the first place.

Inclusionary zoning policies can help create more affordable housing; in places such as Montgomery County, Maryland, for instance, all new apartment buildings with more than a certain number of units have to set aside a few of them to be designated as affordable housing, priced much lower than market rent. But then developers usually have to pass the costs of that lost rent onto the other tenants, which increases market-rate rent.

In most municipalities, inclusionary zoning is voluntary, which means that developers who include affordable units can skirt some regulations, allowing them to build higher, for instance, or make their buildings denser.

Making this kind of zoning mandatory can be tricky, though, because developers argue that they can't charge enough for market-rate units in low- and middle-income neighborhoods to subsidize the affordable units. In March, New York City made inclusionary zoning mandatory in some neighborhoods, and developers are already complaining that it's become harder to build affordable housing in the city.

ANSWER

Okay, so if we can't rely on affordable housing units alone, it sounds like we should find other methods to give homeless people special access to permanent homes. That would be better in terms of lasting success, boosting their chances of landing and keeping a job, and maybe helping those who struggle with addiction to stay sober.

QUESTION

This is what's called a housing-first approach, and numerous studies have found it's much more effective than relying on shelters. Housing-first places homeless people in long-term housing without asking them to get sober or hang onto a job first. After they're settled in a stable home, they gain access to services such as drug and alcohol treatment, an assigned social worker, or job training. They don't have to take advantage of those services, but most people chose to do so.

Through housing-first, Utah reduced its chronically-homeless population 72 percent between 2005 and 2014. Just having a roof over their head, a permanent address, and a place to prepare food and store belongings made so much of a difference for people that the director of the state's Housing and Community Development Division told the Washington Post that the number of chronically homeless was "approaching a functional zero."

But why should homeless people get a free place to live? There are lots of people who need affordable housing but aren't currently homeless, after all. And housing-first isn't cheap-though tenants pay a small portion of their rent, the state or city usually picks up much of the tab. A voucher for a housing program, like Section 8, can cost $1,162 a month, and spending that money means fewer people get rental assistance overall.

When long-term housing is hard to come by, people desperate for help often get abused. As The New York Times pointed out in a heartbreaking story last year, cities such as New York with a large homeless population have seen the growth of three-quarters houses, which cram multiple people into one bedroom while purporting to help them. Often, they're just collecting these peoples' money without giving them any services or even a clean place to live.

Not every homeless person will thrive just because they have a place to live. Some have mental or physical problems that make it difficult for them to stay off the streets after getting a home. Others may never be able to support themselves completely without a community to keep them afloat. Jeffrey Nemetsky, who runs Brooklyn Community Housing and Services, says having a social worker knock on the door once a day to say hello can mean the difference between a tenant staying or heading back out onto the streets.

ANSWER

So that's the answer: provide the homeless with permanent, affordable housing, and wraparound services. Permanent supportive housing might solve this for us.

QUESTION

True, permanent supportive housing can be very effective at helping the chronically homeless get off the streets and stay stable. But is it legal?

Many people who need permanent supportive housing are battling mental problems or drug and alcohol abuse, and would have once ended up in institutions. But since the deinstitutionalization movement began in the 1960s and '70s, the number of in-patient beds at state or county mental health facilities has declined from more than 400,000 to fewer than 100,000.

Though some institutions still exist, the practice of putting the mentally ill into segregated buildings falls into a gray area. In 1999, the Supreme Court ruled that the segregation of people with disabilities violated the Americans with Disabilities Act. Though the case was about people on Medicaid, homeless advocates interpreted it to apply to some chronically homeless with disabilities. Isolating those homeless people from the rest of society is akin to institutionalizing them, advocates say, and it violates the law.

That's why some housing developments provide both permanent supportive housing and low-income housing, so that homes can be made available to a larger swath of the population. This kind of mixed-use housing helps create communities; in one building in Harlem, single moms living in affordable housing helped out the ex-cons living in supportive housing, and vice versa. Though the building's developers worried that low-income moms wouldn't want to live with the mentally ill, some 2,000 people applied for just a few dozen units when the building opened. This and other experiences suggest that integrating supportive and low-income housing can be successful.

But still, agencies and advocates all over the country are struggling to serve the homeless people with mental illness and addiction. It often takes years for case workers to get people to try out permanent supportive housing and abandon the lives they've known on the streets. Some cities and states have started allowing judges to order people who cycle through the system to receive treatment for their illnesses, an approach that's controversial.

Across the country, experts on homelessness have solutions they think will work best. The problem is, housing in many cities is getting more expensive every month, and as prices rise, so do the costs of programs to combat homelessness.

Meanwhile, federal funds for affordable housing have stayed at the same levels for years. So as housing costs go up, those funds are spread more thinly and help fewer people.

But if homelessness is really a problem the country wants to solve by 2020, why not increase the amount of money overall that the government spends on programs to help the homeless? Where could that money come from?

Why not stimulate the creation of affordable housing so to assist both the chronically homeless and those who are homeless temporarily? Such housing could be available to people below certain income levels, and they could qualify whether they are on the streets or are in an apartment they can't afford.

For some, it's hard to imagine carving out more money from the country's budget to address these issues. But solving homelessness can help fix a lot of other problems too, including truancy from schools, food insecurity, drug and alcohol abuse, unemployment. Is it possible that directing more resources toward solving homelessness could actually save society money by helping to fix its other ills at the same time?
Maybe there's an answer we haven't considered yet. Drop your thoughts into an email to etters@theatlantic.com.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Giving people access to support services and a place to stay can reduce the number of those living on the streets. But can that be done affordably? A&Q is a special series that inverts the classic Q&A, taking some of the most frequently posed solutions to pressing matters of policy and exploring their complexity.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In our Explainer series, Justice Collaborative lawyers and other legal experts help unpack some of the most complicated issues in the criminal justice system. We break down the problems behind the headlines-like bail, civil asset forfeiture, or the Brady doctrine-so that everyone can understand them. Wherever possible, we try to utilize the stories of those affected by the criminal justice system to show how these laws and principles should work, and how they often fail. We will update our Explainers quarterly to keep them current.

Most evenings, Aguirre Dick rides his bike about three miles from the streets of Waikiki in Honolulu to the slopes of a volcano, where he sleeps. If he doesn't make that trek, he could be arrested. A 2014 law made it illegal to sit or lie down on the public sidewalks in Waikiki. As a result of this law, those without homes, like Aguirre, live in constant fear of being pushed into the criminal justice system simply because they are too poor to own or rent lodging.

In San Diego, police arrested a pregnant Alexis Leftridge as she slept in her tent and jailed her for several days. Leftridge became homeless after losing her nursing job in 2014 - without money for rent, she was evicted. To get out of jail, she agreed to an order to stay away from the area, but she now has so many that she does not know where to go. According to pleadings filed in a lawsuit against the city, she is afraid she will be arrested for "walking along the wrong street." She has subsequently given birth to a baby boy and currently has a room at a shelter. But, because the shelter is within the "stay away" area, she is at risk of re-arrest.

In Houston, Texas, Spencer Stevens became homeless in 2015 after losing his job as a forklift operator. He has congestive heart failure, which prevents him from taking another manual labor job. Living under the highway median, he cooks meals on his griddle. If legal challenges fail, he could be arrested for both living and cooking there. Houston has made it illegal to block a sidewalk, stand on a roadway median, sleep on public property or in a makeshift shelter, or have a heating device in public.

Every day, law enforcement officers across the country issue tickets to those experiencing homelessness as they engage in basic, life-sustaining behaviors, like sleeping on the streets or cooking a meal in public on a griddle. Prosecutors then frequently charge those individuals with crimes. By relying upon law enforcement to address an issue that should more appropriately be considered as falling within the domain of public health, communities are expending a tremendous amount of public money unnecessarily and ineffectively, and exacerbating the underlying causes of homelessness. Below, we discuss the destructive and often devastating human and financial costs of criminalizing homelessness in America.

1. Homelessness is a chronic problem.

Experts believe that as many as two million people in the country experience homelessness at some point in a given year, with about 500,000 living without a home each night. [ Alastair Gee, Liz Barney, and Julia O'Malley / The Guardian] About 15 percent of those are chronically homeless, meaning they have been without a home for years. [ Alana Semuels / The Atlantic]

Racial minorities comprise a significant percentage of the population experiencing homelessness. While African Americans represent about 12.5 percent of the general population, they represent over 40 percent of the homeless population. [ Eddie Kim / The Guardian]

In some communities, there has been a significant increase in the population of Latinos facing homelessness. [ Esmeralda Bermudez and Ruben Vives / Los Angeles Times] Many experience acute fear or face unique obstacles as a result of their uncertain legal status. [ Leslie Berestein Rojas / scpr.org] Consider Hector, a homeless man in New York who does not utilize shelter services because he is afraid that he will be identified and then deported. He lives near the train tracks along with several others who have refused to enter shelters since President Trump's immigration crackdown. [ Caroline Spivack / Brooklyn Paper]

Military veterans confront homelessness at an alarming rate. More than 10 percent of the adult homeless population has served in the military. [ FAQ / National Coalition for Homeless Veterans]

Survivors of domestic violence also experience high rates of homelessness. A recent study in Minnesota showed that 35 percent of homeless women reported domestic abuse as a cause. [ Stephanie Nelson-Dusek / Post Bulletin]

A 2017 nationwide survey revealed that, on a given night, almost 41,000 people experiencing homelessness were 24 years old or younger, 12 percent of whom were below age 18. Many of these young people have suffered significant trauma. Youth who identify as LGBTQ, have special needs or disabilities, or are pregnant or parenting are also more likely to become homeless. [ Youth and Young Adults / National Alliance to End Homelessness]

Half of those experiencing homelessness have a physical or mental disability, or both. [ Gale Holland / Los Angeles Times]

2. The criminalization of homelessness is growing.

Hundreds of jurisdictions across the U.S. have criminalized homelessness, and the trend shows no signs of abating. Laws criminalizing homelessness have multiplied in the last 10 years in 187 studied cities. [ National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty / Housing Not Handcuffs] The report calls out several jurisdictions in a "Hall of Shame" section, including Honolulu, Denver, and Dallas. [ Dennis Oda / Honolulu Star-Advertiser]

In 2016, Honolulu adopted a spate of laws that target homeless people, and police ramped up enforcement of these "quality of life" ordinances. Why? Pressure from the business and tourism industry, which in the past has funded airfare to the mainland for homeless people who came to Hawaii. [ Adam Nagourney / The New York Times]

In Denver, the state's 76 largest cities have, as a group, passed 351 ordinances that target homeless people, including bans on camping and bans on sharing food outside. [ Bryce Covert/ The Appeal]

In Dallas, police issued 11,000 "sleeping in public" citations between 2011 and 2015. Police also stopped people for loitering, panhandling, and for sleeping in public spaces in the city - even though the city lacks sufficient shelter beds. [ Stephanie Kuo / KERA]

In late 2017 in Portland, Oregon, the Columbia Sportswear CEO called for more policing of the homeless population after moving his company headquarters downtown. [ Tim Boyle / Oregon Live] In response, the head of the Business for a Better Portland urged the city to adopt "holistic and collaborative solutions" to systemically address the underlying causes of homelessness. [ Ashley Henry / Oregon Live] Activists also fired back by protesting the city's "no-sit" laws in front of Columbia Sportswear's downtown store, forcing the company to close for the day. [ Abe Brettman / Oregon Live]

3. Criminalizing homelessness does nothing to address its root causes.

The causes of homelessness vary, but experts largely agree that both structural and individual factors play a role. Structural factors include poverty, inadequate affordable housing, inadequate access to meaningful public assistance, decreased availability of mental health care, and discrimination. [ Jonathan Hafetz / Fordham Urban Law Journal]

In Detroit, for example, advocates report that an increasing number of families experience homelessness because the city lacks affordable housing and has a high rate of evictions. About 3,000 children experience homelessness each year in Detroit. [ Violet Ikonomova / Detroit MetroTimes]

Similarly, in San Diego, skyrocketing rents, low vacancy rates, and a severe shortage of affordable housing have placed the city at a "tipping point." Over the past year, there has been a 14 percent increase in people living on the streets in San Diego. This situation is likely to grow worse, as California has cut $200 million from the city's affordable housing programs over the past six years. [ Scott Wilson / The Washington Post]

There are also personal factors that can cause homelessness, including traumatic events, family crises, and the onset of mental or physical problems. [ Jonathan Hafetz / Fordham Urban Law Journal]

In an interview with NPR, David Pirtle described why, even when temperatures dropped below freezing, he stayed on the streets. Suffering from schizophrenia, he feared large crowds and experienced paranoia, so he avoided shelters: "All I can say is that my fear of the unknown, of what might be waiting for me at that shelter, was worse than my fear of the known risk, you know, of staying out on the street." [ Jay Evensen / Deseret News] [ Talk of the Nation / NPR]

Dorothy Edwards spent eight years on the streets of Pasadena, California, where she slept in alleys and ate food out of Dumpsters, smoking meth to ward off depression. During that time, she was repeatedly sexually assaulted. She checked herself into a psychiatric ward on numerous occasions, but kept returning to the streets. It took eight years for counselors to diagnose her with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. Now receiving adequate treatment, she lives in an apartment with her dog and is actively looking for a job. [ Rick Jervis / USAToday]

4. These laws criminalize what for many is life-sustaining behavior.

Instead of addressing the root causes of homelessness, states and cities have adopted hundreds of laws making it harder for homeless people to survive.
Camping, sleeping, or lying down in public
According to a 2014 analysis of 187 American cities by the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty, over half prohibited camping, sitting, or lying down in certain areas, and a third banned these activities citywide. [ Robert Rosenberger / The Atlantic] Cities often outlaw these practices without providing additional shelter beds. [ Emily Badger / Washington Post].

In Houston, a city ordinance, enacted allegedly for "safety," makes it illegal to sleep in a tent, box, or other makeshift shelter on public property. A federal district judge issued a temporary restraining order against the ban, writing that those individuals targeted by the ordinance are "involuntarily in public, harmlessly attempting to shelter themselves - an act they cannot realistically forgo, and that is integral to their status as unsheltered homeless individuals." [ Gabrielle Banks / Houston Chronicle] But in December, the judge lifted her order. [ Michael Graczyk / Boston Globe]

In Dallas, one individual, Sarge, has been ticketed repeatedly for sleeping in public, something he must do to survive. He estimates that he has received around 75 tickets over the years. [ Eric Nicholson / Dallas Observer]

In Austin, a man named Ross reports being "herded like cattle" because of the city's anti-camping law. "They have a law saying you can't sit down. So if you don't have anywhere to live and all the homeless shelters are full, then where do you go? Do you walk in a circle 24 hours a day? You have to sleep and if you slow down to sleep you go to jail for it, which I've done, that's pretty much where you get to sleep." [ Kylie McGivern / KXAN]
Begging in public (panhandling)
According to the 2014 National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty report, there was a 25 percent increase in anti-panhandling laws between 2011 and 2014. [ Scott Keyes / Think Progress]

In 2014 in Denver, police arrested 300 people for panhandling. [ Scott Keyes / Think Progress] In New York, police arrested a homeless man after he asked a police officer if he had a dollar to spare. [ Fernanda Santos / New York Times]

Jason Metts of Fayetteville, North Carolina, reports that he is disabled and can't work. "To survive," he told a reporter, he has started panhandling. Police have arrested him seven times. "I'm not stealing, I'm not robbing people, and I'm not approaching anybody. Those that give to me roll down their windows, I'm not scaring them," Metts stated. [ Sheena Elzie / CBS North Carolina]
Encroachment - storing property in public ways
Laws across the country make it illegal for individuals to place property on public ways. For those with no home, there is no other place to store their belongings.

In San Diego, police cited Army veteran Eric Arundel several times after he placed his tarp, bedding, clothing, medication, and toiletries on the sidewalk. He suffers from pneumonia and uses the tarp to stay warm. Also in San Diego, police cited Jeff Hayes for encroachment, even though he had nowhere to store his belongings. Hayes became homeless as a result of suffering from multiple sclerosis, which made it impossible for him to work. He had no criminal record until receiving the encroachment charge. He then missed his court date because he was in the hospital for sepsis. Both Arundel and Hayes are plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit challenging the law. [ Lisa Halverstadt / Voice of San Diego]
Living in vehicles
City laws often preclude people from sleeping in their parked cars during certain hours of the night.

Nearly 7,000 people live in their cars in Los Angeles, but the city recently enacted regulations banning parking "for habitation purposes" on residential streets from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. New ordinances also make it illegal to live in a vehicle parked within a block of schools, daycare facilities, and parks. [ Bianca Barragan / Curbed Los Angeles] Santa Monica, Malibu, and Culver City have similar bans in place [ Dean Kuiper / LA Mag], as does San Diego. [ Mike Madriaga / San Diego Reader]
Food sharing
Controversial city ordinances ban organizations from feeding people in public, claiming that doing so constitutes a public health and safety risk.

Police arrested seven people in Tampa, Florida, for distributing food to homeless people without a permit. Members of the Tampa-based organization Food Not Bombs stated that the arrests prove the city is criminalizing compassion. [ Kathryn Varn / Tampa Bay Times]

In response to a hepatitis A outbreak in San Diego, the El Cajon City Council passed an emergency ordinance prohibiting food distribution on any city-owned property. In November, activists handed out 100 bagged lunches, calling the ordinance "a punitive measure to dehumanize and criminalize the homeless." [ Deborah Sullivan Brennan / San Diego Union Tribune] The city finally lifted the ban in late January. [ Karen Pearlman / San Diego Union-Tribune]

In Atlanta, on the Sunday before Thanksgiving 2017, two Food Not Bombs activists went to a local park to hand out food to the homeless, as they do every Sunday. But on that day, police ticketed them, citing a rarely enforced law requiring organizations to obtain a permit before distributing food. According to a flier distributed by the Atlanta Department of Public Safety (that cites no actual evidence), enforcement is necessary because "many people become dependent on these activities, leading them to stay on the streets instead of seeking the help and support they truly need." [ Zaid Jilani / The Intercept]

5. Laws criminalizing homelessness make the problem worse.

In addition to being unfair and often inhumane, these laws exacerbate the problems they purport to address.

Individuals who are saddled with criminal records for engaging in survival activities like sleeping on the street face steeper challenges finding jobs, housing, or other benefits like food stamps, thus perpetuating the cycle of homelessness. [ Jonathan Hafetz / Fordham Urban Law Journal] Under federal law, people who have spent more than 90 days incarcerated lose their "chronic homelessness" status and are no longer a priority for permanent housing. [ International Human Rights Clinic / Yale Law School]

Stay-away orders-often issued alongside tickets for sleeping in public-also keep people from accessing social services that they urgently need. In San Diego, for example, most social service providers are downtown. But police regularly issue stay away orders from these locations to those found sleeping on the street. This means they can't get food stamps or other assistance without risking arrest. [ Lisa Halverstadt / Voice of San Diego]

Similarly, stay-away orders cause people to lose touch with service providers who are helping them find housing. According to one such service provider in Baltimore, when homeless people seeking housing "are forced out of their (outdoor) home bases and seek refuge in other parts of town, people often lose touch with the points of contact we have for them. Thus, they lose their long-term housing opportunity." [ National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty / Criminalizing Crisis]

These charges often carry fines that people cannot pay-and unpaid fines eventually lead to jail time. In Dallas, for example, citations for sleeping in public often carry $150-$300 tickets. Most homeless individuals cannot afford these fines, and may, as a result, skip court dates. Many also miss court because they have no address to receive court notices, or because they lack money for transportation. Missing court can lead to arrest warrants, more charges and jail, thus driving them deeper into the criminal justice system. [ Stephanie Kao / KERA]

6. Criminalizing homelessness is expensive.

Studies show that it costs more to jail those who are homeless than to provide them with shelter. On average, one day in jail costs $87, whereas a shelter bed costs $28. [ International Human Rights Clinic / Yale Law School]

And that, in turn, diverts money from implementing effective solutions. In San Diego, homelessness is a serious problem. But, while officials focus on ticketing and jailing people, they neglect to address the root causes of homelessness, such as an inadequate supply of affordable housing. This negligence was on full display during the hepatitis A outbreak that killed at least 16 people and caused over 400 to get sick. [ Parisa Ijadl-Maghsoodl / HuffPost]

7. Criminalizing homelessness may be unconstitutional.

Aside from being counterproductive, there's ample evidence that criminalizing homelessness violates the Constitution.
The First Amendment
Freedom of Expression: In 2015, in Reed v. Gilbert, the Supreme Court struck down a ban on the public display of signs for religious services, ruling that laws regulating the content of signs are presumptively unconstitutional. Relying on that case, the Seventh Circuit and other federal district courts have struck down panhandling laws in Colorado, Florida, Illinois, and Massachusetts, finding that they impermissibly regulate expressive conduct. [ Joe Palazzolo / Wall Street Journal]

Fundamental Right To Travel: In Florida in 1992, a Federal District Court declared Miami's sit-sleep-lie laws a violation of the right to travel, writing that, "Preventing homeless individuals from performing activities that are 'necessities of life,' such as sleeping, in any public place when they have nowhere else to go, effectively penalizes migration." [ Jeff Weinberger / Miami New Times]
The Eighth Amendment
Cruel and Unusual Punishment: In 2006, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down Los Angeles's city ordinance prohibiting sleeping, sitting, or lying on the street at any time of the day. The court ruled that the ordinance unconstitutionally criminalized unavoidable conduct. The city had a major housing shortage and an inadequate supply of shelter beds. Homelessness, the court held, is "a chronic state that may have been acquired 'innocently or involuntarily." Thus punishing people for sleeping on the streets-an inevitable consequence-violated the Eighth Amendment. [ Theresa Walker / OC Register]
The Fourteenth Amendment
Vagueness: Courts have struck down anti-loitering laws as unconstitutionally vague. For example, in a 1972 Supreme Court decision, the court complained that, because of its unspecific language, an ordinance in Jacksonville, Florida, placed "almost unfettered discretion in the hands of the police." [ Aarian Marshall / City Lab]

Attorneys are challenging San Diego's encroachment laws, originally enacted to force people to remove trash bins from sidewalks. However, police are using the law to force the homeless to leave public places. Attorneys are arguing that the law is unconstitutionally vague because it provides almost no notice for what is criminal -making it potentially illegal to even place a bag on the sidewalk for just a moment. [ Lisa Halverstadt / Voice of San Diego]

Equal Protection: In response to an "emergency" homeless street sweep of encampments, the ACLU of Indiana recently filed a lawsuit against the city of Indianapolis. The lawsuit alleges that the city targets homeless people while exempting others, raising due process and equal protection concerns. [ Fatima Hussein & Maureen Gilmer / Indianapolis Star]

8. Prosecutors and state legislators can choose to stop criminalizing homelessness.

Prosecutors can refuse to charge for violations of laws that specifically target the homeless population, like bans on camping and panhandling. [ Violeta Chapin / The Appeal] In Spokane, Washington, for example, the city and district attorneys have embraced initiatives to dismiss citations for offenses that homeless people incur when engaging in life-sustaining activities in exchange for commitments to utilize housing and social services. [ Rachel Alexander / The Spokesman-Review]

Prosecutors can side with those challenging the constitutionality of laws criminalizing homelessness. In 2015, the Department of Justice filed a " statement of interest" arguing that Idaho's laws criminalizing sleeping in public were unconstitutional. "It should be uncontroversial that punishing conduct that is a universal and unavoidable consequence of being human violates the Eighth Amendment. ... If a person literally has nowhere else to go, then enforcement of the anti-camping ordinance against that person criminalizes her for being homeless." [ Harrison Berry / Boise Weekly]

Prosecutors can also champion homeless courts and diversion programs, which allow people to avoid criminal charges after taking life-skills classes or signing up for social services. In Seattle and Santa Fe, officials have implemented a Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD) program that places people in treatment programs pre-arrest. [ Carlos Andres Lopez / Seattle Times]

Prosecutors can agree to dismiss outstanding warrants for unpaid fines and quality-of-life offenses. In Los Angeles, in 2015, the city attorney agreed to do just that if people accepted social services, job training, and drug and alcohol treatment. His office put together clinics to help the homeless population participate. [ Gale Holland / Los Angeles Times]

The most straightforward path to ending the criminalization of homelessness runs through state legislatures. State and local officials should refrain from passing new laws that target homeless individuals, and they should repeal existing laws that criminalize life-sustaining and necessary behaviors. [ Yale Law School Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic / "Forced Into Breaking the Law"]

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Criminalization of Homelessness: Explained

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In our Explainer series, Justice Collaborative lawyers and other legal experts help unpack some of the most complicated issues in the criminal justice system. We break down the problems behind the headlines-like bail, civil asset forfeiture, or the Brady doctrine-so that everyone can understand them.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Unhoused and Unequal: How Homelessness Undermines American Democracy - Stanford Politics

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
wo weeks ago, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced an eviction moratorium that extends through the end of 2020.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Few, if any, American cities or metro areas are grappling with the large scale of homelessness seen in the San Francisco Bay Area. Locally, the issue is front and center, too: 70 percent of San Francisco residents cite homelessness among the top three problems in the city. And while California is on track to become the fourth-largest economy in the world, it also hosts half of the unsheltered homeless population in the United States, with a significant share of the population concentrated in the Bay Area. On any given night, 38,000 individuals in the Bay Area are homeless, an increase of 35 percent since 2019.

People who are at risk for or experiencing homelessness each have a unique journey, and each individual is forced to navigate a complex maze of shelters, services, and programs that vary not only in size, scope, and approach but also in effectiveness. As this article details, homelessness in the Bay Area comprises three distinct problems but is largely perceived and treated as one via a complex and fragmented response ecosystem. A breakthrough may come in part from recognizing the distinct problems faced by those who are unstably housed and by considering bold approaches to reenvision our response ecosystem around people, not siloed individual programs.

In this article, we consider how homelessness is defined and who is at risk, and examine how funding, changes brought by the COVID-19 pandemic, and other factors have affected homeless individuals and those at risk.

Resources have never been greater. Funding has accelerated and become more flexible to meet needs: state spending grew to $4.7 billion from $800 million during the past three years. The state has also introduced more flexible grants, such as the Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention program, that have provided local jurisdictions with greater latitude over their local action plans. Cash infusions from pandemic-related programs include Project Roomkey-albeit expected to expire in the first quarter of 2023-and Project Homekey, which continues into round-three funding in March 2023.

Understanding the crisis

Our research suggests five key facts that the Bay Area community could consider in its direction to accelerate solutions to the crisis.

1. Homeless experiences vary and require a range of different interventions.
There is no universal or uniform path that leads to homelessness; each unhoused individual likely has had to contend with myriad hardships and causal factors. While each journey is unique, a robust response system could systematically target the most common factors. In the Bay Area, the public conversation around homelessness can be challenging because commentators often refer to different aspects of the experience or journey and potentially are talking past each other. From our research, there are broadly three distinct types of homeless experiences that have unique needs and potential solution pathways:

At risk of becoming homeless: Homelessness is ultimately a challenge that is faced by people and families-not just those who are currently homeless but also the many individuals and families at risk of becoming homeless. More than one million people in the Bay Area earn below 30 percent of the Area Median Income, and many spend more than 75 percent of their income on rent. These individuals are forced to make hard choices every day to meet and balance their basic needs for food, healthcare, childcare, shelter, and transportation, and are often one unexpected expense or crisis away from becoming unhoused.

Nonchronic homelessness: For most people who become homeless in San Francisco, it's a relatively brief, and often a one-time, experience that is largely caused by financial factors such as job loss and eviction. In some cases, people may resolve their homelessness quickly, without significant support or services. In other cases, accessing interim housing and other supportive services becomes critical to quickly returning to a more stable situation. The research shows that the longer people remain unhoused, the higher the risk of experiencing acute illnesses and substance abuse.

Chronic homelessness: 35 percent of the homeless population in San Francisco are estimated to be chronically homeless, about ten percentage points higher than the rate of chronic homelessness nationwide. Chronically homeless individuals are the most visible and vulnerable people in the homeless community-they often suffer from disabling health conditions, such as mental illness and addiction, and chronic health issues that create tough barriers to becoming self-sufficient. For people who experience chronic homelessness, one-time interventions or basic services are likely insufficient to help them successfully transition out of homelessness. Instead, they will likely benefit from sustained case management and higher-touch service models designed to meet their needs, such as residential recovery programs.

2. Prevention is critical and does not receive investment commensurate with its effectiveness.
For every household that is permanently housed through the existing homelessness response system, four new households enter homelessness, according to the San Francisco Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing. At this ratio, reducing inflows (either from within the region itself or external to it) into homelessness through preventative solutions for the populations at highest risk of becoming unhoused is critical to sustainably changing the trajectory of the crisis.

3. Early intervention could change the odds.
The current response system focuses the bulk of its efforts on the chronically homeless population-for example, Santa Clara County found that 5 percent of its residents experiencing homelessness, which largely consists of persistently homeless individuals, accounted for 47 percent of public and medical costs. In addition, eligibility for permanent supportive housing is reserved for those who have been unhoused for more than a year and have a disability of some kind, also known as being chronically homeless. However, research shows that earlier interventions have an outsize impact on future outcomes. Research shows that youth who were unhoused for more than 24 months are twice as likely to experience homelessness as adults, compared with youth who are unhoused for fewer than 12 months. Every additional day unhoused and potentially on the street brings compounding challenges. Investing in solutions that intervene earlier in the path to homelessness reduces inflows into chronic homelessness, which prevents deeper suffering at the individual level and provides a more cost-effective intervention at the systems level.

4. The crisis response ecosystem is fragmented.
Despite the urgency shown by leaders during the pandemic, today's system remains fragmented. The nine counties that make up the Bay Area receive funding from more than 40 different sources at the federal, state, and local levels, with varying amounts and stipulations on usage. They also largely rely on contracting to more than 200 third-party service providers and not-for-profit organizations to provide homeless services across a range of areas. The variety of funding sources and challenges in coordination of service providers leads to a complex response ecosystem in which people experiencing homelessness often find it difficult to navigate and potentially miss out on accessing services that they are eligible for and could benefit from, because connecting with them can be too burdensome and complicated. There are opportunities for leaders to reevaluate capital allocation strategies, roles and responsibilities between public entities and contracted service providers, and outcomes-based accountability and oversight for contracted services.

5. Affordable housing remains key.
At the most basic level, homelessness is a function of housing availability. While there are many ways to affect the demand side of those who need accommodation, getting people housed will also require addressing the supply. The Bay Area must build 700 new affordable housing units per month to meet the demand for affordable housing among extremely low-income (ELI) households. Based on a historical rate of meeting only 30 percent of the region's housing needs for low-income residents, achieving this will likely require significant changes in how housing is planned for and built. Currently, housing development costs and time-to-build in the Bay Area are three to five times the national average. While the recent housing plans put forward by San Francisco and other counties are a step toward increasing production, execution will be critical for making those plans a reality. The Bay Area must ramp up construction of affordable housing units, with a specific focus on serving households earning less than the Area Median Income, and local communities have a wide range of choices available to add new housing.

A different view of the unhoused journey

To gain a better understanding of the homeless experience, our research sought to shift focus from the typical point-in-time snapshots of those experiencing homelessness to one that observed the flow of people entering and exiting homelessness over time. The visual flow below (Exhibit 2) outlines distinct pathways in and out of homelessness, providing insights on key parts of the journey when intervention may have the most impact. The cycle of entering, experiencing, and exiting homelessness is driven by a range of disparate triggers, and occurs on a wide range of timelines, as short as several days and as long as years.

Despite this heterogeneity, three distinct solution areas emerge-supporting the at-risk, accelerating exits for nonchronic cases, and providing high-touch recovery support for chronic populations-each with clear and pressing intervention priorities (see sidebar "Glossary of terms").

There are multiple journeys made by those who at any given point may end up becoming homeless. To truly have a wide-reaching impact, the response system could consider not only those without homes but also those on the brink of homelessness-and the pressure points that can move those individuals closer to or further from housing scarcity.

Tackling homelessness will require the community to come together to recognize the distinct journeys and design solutions to match them in a clear way. Parallel investments should be made commensurate to need for all segments, rather than a piecemeal, "either-or" mentality that assumes a trade-off between those at risk and those who are chronically homeless (Exhibit 3).

1. For the at-risk population: Bolstering housing affordability and income security

Those who are currently housed but are at risk of homelessness would benefit most from preventative measures-keeping them sustainably housed is required for addressing the problem in the long term. Programs that increase the affordable housing stock, enhance income and economic mobility, and strengthen approaches to keeping people housed (for example, emergency rental assistance, tenant support services, and tenant right to counsel) could affect the growth trajectory of the demand side of the homelessness equation.

2. For the nonchronic population: Improving coordination among agencies in the response ecosystem

3. For the chronic population: Investing in intensive care pathways

The challenges of the chronically homeless extend beyond housing. The human suffering as well as the financial cost is often borne by the public health system and may be addressed holistically as a public health challenge with funding coordinated at a state or regional level. This may involve intensive interventions such as long-term residential recovery programs, integrated care campuses, and permanent supportive housing that reach the chronically homeless population, transition them into housing, and address their holistic needs. While these interventions can be costly, the overall costs of meeting the needs of a chronically homeless person typically decrease by 50 percent when they are placed in supportive housing, not to mention the benefits to the individual themselves.

Progress is possible

Despite concerted efforts and attention, homelessness in the Bay Area remains. However, we ought not surrender to the idea that homelessness is here to stay-we can and must bend the curve.

The Bay Area sees attention to the issue at local, state, and national levels; public and private resources are devoted to solving the issue, and there is a deep reservoir of on-the-ground talent and expertise (see sidebar "How the private sector can help"). To truly shift the tide, we must boldly reimagine our crisis-response ecosystem, which today is marked by insufficient housing inventory, overlapping mandates, minimal coordination, and many holes through which vulnerable individuals fall.

Despite concerted efforts and attention, homelessness in the Bay Area remains. However, we ought not surrender to the idea that homelessness is here to stay-we can and must bend the curve.

All the pieces need to come together-housing strategies, service-provider coordination, improved data systems, workforce development strategies, and alignment from all leaders, stakeholders, and residents. By treating homelessness as three distinct challenges, instead of one monolithic issue, solutions and resources can be rethought and potentially be much more effective. Homelessness has been a product of many compounding societal, policy, and market forces for decades, but the Bay Area could collectively act on choices that can begin to turn the tide on this historically intractable challenge.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The ongoing crisis of homelessness in the Bay Area: What's working, what's not

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Few, if any, American cities or metro areas are grappling with the large scale of homelessness seen in the San Francisco Bay Area. Locally, the issue is front and center, too: 70 percent of San Francisco residents cite homelessness among the top three problems in the city.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The homelessness crisis is getting worse.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Forbes EQ BrandVoice: How The U.S. Criminalizes Homelessness

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Laws that bar people experiencing homelessness from sitting, sleeping, or resting in public spaces are prevalent across the country.