Homeless Advocates Have Lost the Moral High Ground

S ince President Trump announced his executive order on homelessness programs in July, it seems as though every week has brought a new statement from advocacy organizations decrying the inhumanity of these impending policy changes. But for decades, those organizations have failed to acknowledge the inhumanity at the core of their own policy preferences — housing instead of treatment. And according to national polls, large majorities of Americans across the political spectrum have had enough.

The National Alliance to End Homelessness (NAEH) has been the preeminent voice on homelessness policy since the Clinton era. However, its credibility has eroded as tens of billions of dollars in federal, state, and local spending on programs that the group promised would eliminate homelessness have not, in fact, achieved anything of the sort. To the contrary, homelessness is worse than at any point since the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) began collecting data.

The data are clear: Creating more permanently subsidized, low-barrier housing for homeless people has failed to reduce homelessness. But instead of adjusting course, advocates have doubled down, insisting that if the federal government dares to reform the programs that have failed to reduce homelessness, then homelessness will rise even more. Their logic is as muddled as it is self-serving.

HUD’s application for homelessness funding previously read more like a loyalty pledge to Housing First — the approach that provides homeless individuals with permanent, no-strings-attached housing without first treating their underlying disorders — than a framework to fund dynamic and innovative programs. Now, the White House and HUD have redesigned the application to allow for more flexibility in the kinds of programs offered to homeless people, especially those dealing with addiction and mental illness. These changes, including treatment and employment requirements as a condition of housing, are supported by large majorities of both progressive and conservative Americans. In fact, they enjoy greater support among Democrats than Republicans or independents.

Housing First advocates are apoplectic.

They are resorting to alarmist notions of rising homelessness and of people dying on the streets addicted, psychotic, and alone — as if these tragedies have not been unfolding in city after city on their watch. The era of Housing First will be marked in history as a humanitarian disaster.

For these same advocates to call themselves the experts at solving homelessness is offensive to the communities that have seen their downtowns sink more deeply into decline with each year that they invest more deeply into Housing First.

In state after state, Americans have turned away from the idealistic but empty promises of Housing First advocates and toward commonsense policies. For instance, moving people from dangerous encampments and into shelters and transitional housing that are integrated with treatment and support for the root causes of homelessness. States are demanding results and accountability, concepts alien to Housing First advocates.

These advocates have lost their seat at the table. Instead of seeking to collaborate with skeptical state and federal policymakers, they have resorted to extremist rhetoric, including comparing these new policies to the Holocaust.

The NAEH and the National Homelessness Law Center should not speak for all homeless service providers. But it currently appears that they do. And their rhetoric and intransigence are doing service providers and the homeless no favors.

It is time for organizations that truly care about helping homeless people and saving lives to make their programs more effective. It is time for them to allow for greater transparency so that communities know whether their approaches align with their values.

The lives of hundreds of thousands of homeless people depend on it. Enough is enough.