Guest Column: John Bauters

John Bauters is a resident of Emeryville and currently serves on the City’s Housing Committee and the Emery Unified School District’s Measure “K” Parcel Tax Oversight Committee. John is the Policy Director at Housing California, the state’s leading non-profit legislative advocacy organization on policy that impacts housing affordability and homelessness. 

HOMELESSNESS AND HOUSING FIRST

A TINY WINDOW INTO THE AMERICAN HISTORY OF HOMELESSNESS
by John Bauters

Homelessness, and its history in the United States, is a largely untold story. To understand 

the origins of homelessness, one need not look much farther than the high school civic 

book. Colonial expansion was wrought with land skirmishes that disenfranchised settlers 

of land and home. The end of the Civil War and the subsequent institutionalization of 

racism in things like the New Deal's lending programs resulted in millions of African-

Americans from being locked out of home ownership opportunities. Broken promises 

with Native American tribes spurned the creation of reservations that offered no housing 

or resources. The economic fallout of the Great Depression, followed by the subsequent 

and insufficient regulation of the market has inequitably punished lower income and 

working families for a century. Perverse regulations in the early administration of Social 
Security and other institutionalized welfare programs – even if unintentionally racist – 

disproportionately and adversely affected women and non-white families, blocking 

millions of families from building wealth and transferring assets between generations 

– a key predictor of housing stability. The obliteration of HUD funding and rescission 

of America’s modest safety net programs in the 1980’s removed some of the last 

protections that kept poor, working families from the streets. Today, the ever-growing 

gap in wage earnings, the lost bargaining power of workers for things like health 

coverage and daycare, and the lack of investment in affordable housing exacerbate 

America’s ever-growing homelessness problem.

CRUNCHING NUMBERS

The point-in-time, or “PIT” count, which takes places annually during the last week 

of January, is an attempt to estimate the number of people who experience 

homelessness on a given night in the United States.  According to HUD's most 

recent report on homelessness, there are nearly 600,000 people in the United States 

who fit the federal definition of homelessness. The federal definition of 

homelessness, encoded in the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, is rather 

prescriptive. Advocates have long complained that PIT counts undercount children 

and youth, fail to include people who are marginally housed (i.e. living on a friend’s 

couch or in a relative’s basement because they lack the resources to house 

themselves) and that the process of collecting the data is inconsistently administered 

across jurisdictions. Although admittedly imperfect, PIT counts offer us a general 

sense of what homelessness looks like in the United States and is one of the few 

tools policy experts and advocates have for identifying gaps in existing policy 

and practices that would help reduce the number of people living without access 

to housing.

THE CALIFORNIAN REALITY

California holds several dubious distinctions related to homelessness. Not only 

do more than 20% of the people who experience homelessness in the United States 

reside here (by contrast, California is home to 12% of the general population, which 

means our homelessness rate exceeds our residential rate when compared with 

the national average), but we also have the largest number of unsheltered people 

experiencing homelessness as well.  According to the most recent Annual 

Homelessness Assessment Report (AHAR) issued by HUD in October 2014, 62.7% 

of those experiencing homelessness in California have no access to shelter of any 

kind. Even worse, on a local level, nearby San Jose and Santa Clara County have 

the highest rates of people living without shelter nationally. California is also home 

to the highest number of veterans who experience homelessness, with 

approximately 24% of all homeless veterans living here in California. And perhaps 

worst, 13,709 unaccompanied homeless children and youth live in California. These 

children are often victims of sex trafficking and other abuses, which helps explain 

why California also has the dubious distinction of being a leader in that category as well.

THE BIG PICTURE: A STEP TOWARD SOLUTIONS

For years, advocates, elected officials and communities have fought over how to address 

the problem of homelessness and the ancillary problems that come from having large 

numbers of unsheltered people in a community. The Bay Area and Emeryville are not 

immune to these challenges. Developing solutions for the complex problem that 

homelessness presents is as much a quest to solve for the social and fiscal problems 

affecting individuals and families in our society as it is a quest to create communities 

that are more livable, affordable, hospitable and humane.

It might surprise some that the solution to homelessness, in its most basic conceptual 

form, is quite simple: house people.

Yes, house them.

For decades, the federal government, local communities, funders and even homeless 

service providers have utilized a carrot and stick approach to solving homelessness: 

“If you get treatment for your mental illness, we will be able to provide you with 

housing assistance.” “In order for us to offer you a bed in our shelter, you must be 

clean and sober for 30 days.” “We can only offer housing subsidies to people who 

have already obtained some form of employment.”

This approach is significantly flawed. The chances that a person with a serious 

mental illness can be compliant with medication or treatment in the absence of 

intensive care or therapy while trying to survive on the street is infinitesimally 

small. People who suffer from addiction and substance use disorders have 

psychological and physiological cravings that are abetted by being left among 

the social environment that enables their addiction to persist, making self-induced 

sobriety on the streets as unlikely as winning the lottery for most. And the ability to 

apply for work, be rested for work, prepare for work and physically get to work is 

minimal when you lack a warm, safe and stable place to sleep each night.

HOUSING FIRST

The proper approach and the only successful solution to homelessness require 

embracing a "housing first” model.  Studies show that people who are offered 

housing assistance find employment faster, have fewer health issues, respond 

better to mental health and substance use treatment and experience fewer 

encounters with law enforcement.  If the thought of government financing 

housing for the homeless bothers you, let’s examine how much it really costs us:

A study on the cost of chronic homelessness by the Massachusetts Home 
and Healthy for Good Program found that the average cost for measured 

services (Medicaid costs, emergency shelter, law enforcement/incarceration) 

per person annually was $33,190. After employing a Housing First approach 

by housing the chronically homeless individual and providing wrap around 

supports, the same cost for those measured services fell to an average of $8,603. 

When you add back in the affirmative cost of providing comprehensive housing 

and supportive services to help make the program work, at a cost of $15,468 per 

tenant, the total return on investment to the state and local governments was an 

average of $9,118 per person.

What is missing from this analysis is something that doesn’t get crunched in 

numbers: social outcomes. Fewer people rely on hospitals and emergency services, 

scarce shelter beds become accessible to others when people in them become 

housed, the number of people living unsheltered drops, and the reduced demand for 

law enforcement and correctional services all make communities more livable.

In fact, if you want any more simple proof about how the lives of people who 

experience chronic homelessness are improved by housing them, look no further 

than Project 25. San Diego decided to house 35 chronically homeless individuals 

who were among the highest consumers of state and local emergency services 

and provide them with supportive services under a Housing First approach. The 

results were dramatic, to say the least.  In the 12 months prior to the project, those 

35 individuals alone spent a whopping total of 1,505 days in hospital care. 

Comparatively, two years into the program, that rate is down to 568, a reduction 

of 64%. Other communities like Charlotte, North Carolina and Salt Lake City, Utah

have already paved the path with success.

HOUSING AS HEALTH

Housing is a social determinant for public health and healthy communities. I had 

the pleasure of being a panelist at a recent convening held by the Alameda County 

Department of Senior Services on how housing improves health outcomes, which 

in turn makes communities not only more healthy, but safer. Aging and senior 

services are looking at ways to invest in solutions for people that allow them to 

age in place as opposed to receive institutionalized or nursing home care, which 

are far more expensive and lower the social health of seniors by removing them 

from their homes. Health officials and senior advocates already see that improving 

the quality, affordability and accessibility of housing improves health outcomes. 

So why stop there?

People who experience chronic homelessness have some of the greatest unmet 

needs and are subject to the most dangerous of health risks. Their lack of shelter 

and services decreases the affordability of general services we all share in as 

residents of the community and the lack of resources designed to meet their 

basic human needs decreases the livability of our community. If you want to learn 

more about how housing is a social determinant for health, read this white paper by 

the Corporation for Supportive Housing, one of the leading advocacy groups for 

supportive housing and a partner of mine in advocating for a “Housing First” approach 

to homelessness.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Funding the development of affordable, permanent, supportive housing is the single-

best long term solution to homelessness. Federal cuts to HUD due to sequestration, 

uninspiring leadership from Governor Brown on this issue at the state level and a 

lack of political will to fund housing solutions by a handful of legislators to address 

this issue leaves some of the problem-solving to local and regional groups. The problem 

cannot be resolved by a single local government alone. However, we can do our part. 

I ascribe to a simple philosophy: “Think globally, act locally.” Promoting affordable 

development and recognizing that solutions for people living in deep poverty or 

experiencing homelessness are not going to be solved by naïve notions of achieving 

affordability through simple “supply and demand” economics are major steps.  We 

must model local solutions for homelessness in such a way that breaks us from our 

untenable trajectory. Good social policy and good fiscal policy are not mutually 

exclusive. Providing a place for the housing first approach in the way we develop 

going forward, investing in permanent supportive housing and meeting the needs of 

everyone who calls Emeryville “home” are all steps toward creating a more livable, 

just community.