Stones Cry Out

Homeless advocates blame the Bush budget:

Kathleen Barr, the report's author, said the Bush administration's 2006 budget proposal hurts many programs aimed at low-income Americans and could set back emergency assistance providers further.

"It's hurting their ability to help folks," said Barr, who added that private donations of time and money weren't enough to keep pace.
Unemployment and wages too low to afford enough food are among the main reasons that people seek help from shelters and soup kitchens, Barr said.

Others point to the increasing gap between housing costs and incomes:

Unemployment and wages too low to afford enough food are among the main reasons that people seek help from shelters and soup kitchens, Barr said.

Many people are also hampered by high housing costs that force them to spend more than 30 percent of their income on the rent or mortgage payment, said Susan Ban, executive director for ShelterCare, a Eugene, Ore., organization that provides emergency shelter for families with children who are homeless.

The Bush Administration blames local and state regulatory barriers:

Among the concerns listed by HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson were slow permitting procedures and complex environmental regulations that can significantly increase the length and cost of home building review and approval processes.

They all identify parts of the problems, but none identify a real solution.

I realize that many of the homeless are bums, hobos, and tramps and I've met many homeless who make a decent living (relatively) shaking down folks with a guilty conscience or who do not know better when they see them with their signs on the street corner. But, these represent less than the majority of our nation's homeless. According to this 2002 US Conference of Mayors study of 25 cities,

41 percent of the homeless population are families with children

Requests for shelter by homeless families alone increased by 20 percent since last year, with 88 percent of the cities reporting an increase.

48 percent of the people requesting emergency food assistance were members of families -- children and their parents.

38 percent of the adults requesting food assistance were employed.

While I'm sure it is easy to nit-pick these statistics (I'm aware of the Heritage Foundation criticisms), the trends are alarming. The homeless and hungry are increasingly families and not tramps.

There is an immediate need and a long-term need. The immediate need is seen every day at the emergency shelters that are operating on inadequate staff and budgets. I have interviewed homeless service providers who are, for the first time in years, turning people away because for food and shelter because they cannot meet the need. The best they can do is give them clothes and wish them luck (people love to give away their rags to homeless shelters - it must make them feel good to know that they've done their part).

While true that Bush's budget proposes a $200 million increase in immediate shelter assistance (Emergency Shelter Grants), the same Budget slashes about $2 billion from other community development (CDBG) and housing (HOME) programs that provide more mid-level fix, while doing nothing about what I see as the greatest source of the problem: inadequate supply of housing in proximity to jobs, services, and amenities.

Michael Stone, Professor at UMass Boston, wrote a fabulous book in 1993 with the title Shelter Poverty. In the book, Dr. Stone outlined a very elegant case for defining who and who cannot "afford" housing. The Shelter Poverty scale is worthy of an entire post, but it basically takes household income by household size and matches that to subsistence budgets (poverty level for food, clothing, medicine, transportation, etc.). If housing costs plus the poverty level household budget exceed income, then that household suffers shelter poverty.

Dr. Stone found that while the overall number of shelter poor was no different than the number of those who paid over 30% of their income on housing (the conventional HUD measure), the demographic distribution was much different. Some people can afford to spend 80% of their income on housing, while other households can't afford to spend anything on housing without comprising their ability to subsist.

The shelter poor are the at-risk homeless population. Either they spend more money on housing costs and less on food and clothing and other items, or the spend money on subsistence items and lose their housing. Tough choices for too many Americans.

Most of the book was wonderful, but I had to throw it across the room and scream when I read Dr. Stone's "solution" to the problem of Shelter Poverty in America: Public Housing. Stone believes that the best solution to our housing problems is to covert the majority of America's housing stock to public housing. Unfortunately, his elegant definition of the problem is marred by his thoughtless attempt at a solution.

I've argued (see comments here and here), and I will continue to argue, that government is forcing market failure in the provision of housing at the local levels. This market failure is highly complex, but in my experience on the west coast, this market failure is lead predominantly by NIMBY's who use local development controls to restrict the supply of both market rate and affordable housing (including emergency shelters and transitional housing). I'm not talking public housing here folks. I'm talking non-profit, in many cases, Christian charities who are trying to build affordable housing and provide shelter services to homeless and needy populations, but meet exceedingly tough opposition in the town halls. This is Madisonian tyranny by local parochial factions. It is real. It must be stopped.

Some people, including Christians, say "tough luck" and are content that they tithe to their local church and the church offers its facilities once every few months for a rotating ecumenical shelter. Others realize that this simply won't do. I believe that "we" (as individuals and society) should meet the immediate need first and develop and implement a long-term strategy that creates the institutional and social reform necessary to reduce the problem.