On any given winter night in Portland, when the weather is cold and damp, hundreds of homeless people go from shelter to shelter looking for a bed for the night. Some of these shelters close during the warmer months. It seems like a good idea, then, when well-intentioned people express a desire to have shelter beds that are available for homeless men in the winter, remain open year round. The logic is simple: when these beds close, 100 men won’t have a place to sleep, and may very well end up back on the streets.
It sounds like a good idea, but it isn’t.
If we keep winter shelter beds open year round, then we will likely be called upon to open more winter space for next year. Then we get into a cycle of funding shelter beds for everyone who may need it. Unfortunately, this does not work.
Research on homelessness from cities all over the country show that emergency shelter, by itself, does little to permanently end people’s homelessness. Not only that, it’s more expensive in the long run.
Emergency shelter is a costly alternative to permanent housing. While it is sometimes necessary for short-term crises, it too often serves as long-term housing. The cost of an emergency shelter bed funded by HUD’s Emergency Shelter Grants program is approximately $8,067, more than the average annual cost of a federal housing subsidy (Section 8 Housing Certificate).
— National Alliance to End Homelessness
We know there is a better approach. In 1992, the city downsized large mass shelters that had no services or housing placement assistance to four smaller ones that were focused on specific populations, had case management, rent assistance, and other necessary supports that help end homelessness. These programs, operated by Transition Projects Inc. and Cascadia, are good programs. They go beyond the emergency assistance model and move people from crises to stable housing.
Portland has never had enough shelter for everyone who needs it. Portland also does not have enough affordable housing or living wage jobs that pay for housing, a direct cause of homelessness. Since we have limited resources to address the issue of homelessness, we should put those resources where they can best end people’s homelessness; in housing, services, and employment supports.
Dennis Culhane, researcher from the University of Pennsylvania and author of the landmark research that quantified the cost effectiveness of ending homelessness said, “For the homeless system itself, the focus should be on housing stabilization and relocation strategies into permanent housing. As nice as they can be on occasion, I’ve never seen a shelter I’d want to live in for very long. I value my independence too much.”
Culhane nails the crux of the problem in this statement. Even if we could create enough shelter space for every homeless person on the street, there is no guarantee that we would see streets free and clear of homeless people. There is no way to forcibly move someone inside unless you want to violate his or her civil rights.
We should instead focus our resources and energies on programs that will motivate and help people move into a home and off the streets as quickly as possible. Housing first is the best approach we have, by far, to end homelessness for hundreds of people. Housing First means that the focus of ending homelessness is to place families and individuals in housing first, rather than placing folks in a continuum that moves them from emergency shelter, to short-term shelter, to transitional housing, and then to a permanent housing placement.
Housing First also means that housing is the operative tool to ending people's homelessness and other services should be focused on whatever it takes to support a person in that housing. From families with children to severely and persistently mentally ill individuals, housing first works. Through the City of Portland’s investment in “Key Not a Card," 167 chronically homeless households (disabled and homeless for a year or longer) were housed in permanent housing. 12 months later, 90 percent still remain in their housing.
Housing Rapid Response, one of the “Key Not A Card” projects, operated by Central City Concern, in partnership with the City, Portland Business Alliance, and local law enforcement (Portland Police, County Jail, and County Probation Office) focuses on a housing first approach for chronically homeless individuals who have extremely high rates of arrests for street crimes in the downtown core. Since its inception, there has been a 47 percent reduction in arrests of those individuals.
The Women’s Emergency Services Collaborative (WESC), a program launched in September 2005 after the initial closing of the Harbor Light shelter for women, has placed 160 homeless women (and 42 children) into permanent housing, 89 percent of whom were still in housing six months later. WESC partners include Cascadia Behavioral Healthcare, Transition Projects Inc., JOIN, and Northwest Pilot Project. Finally, the most recent street count, conducted in January 2007, showed a 39 percent decrease in street homelessness (2,355 to 1,438) and a 70 percent decrease in chronic street homelessness (1,284 to 386).
These successes are greater than any of us who are working to end homelessness ever imagined. There are still too many people living on the streets, but adding emergency shelter capacity will not change those numbers. Investing in programs that end people’s homelessness is the only way we will ever get there.
