Why does anyone in Sacramento believe the myth that people choose to be homeless? | Opinion
Last week, when I wrote about an affordable housing proposal the City of Sacramento’s Law and Legislation committee was struggling to bring to a full council vote, I was unsurprised to receive several emails from readers who rejected the idea that a lack of affordable housing is a primary reason for homelessness — because “many of them choose to be homeless.”
And yet, that’s the same myth repeated by city and county officials who ought to know better: That many of Sacramento’s unhoused population is “service resistant” and are “choosing” to be homeless.
That is patently untrue, and it is a dangerous belief we must dismantle before Sacramento can ever truly begin to solve its homelessness crisis.
For some, living outside is the best choice between terrible and very few options.
People who are homeless do not reject the idea of shelter, they reject the idea of being shoved into an overcrowded, unsafe shelter situation for a night or two at best before being told to leave; often returning to their former location only to find all of their belongings have been destroyed or stolen.
It’s a fact there aren’t enough shelter beds available for Sacramento’s homeless population; between the city and county, there are about 2,400 beds on any given night, a number that fluctuates within seasons, for nearly 10,000 unhoused people.
To gain access to those beds, the unhoused are often required to leave their possessions and support animals behind. Imagine being asked to make that choice.
Additionally, families, couples and friend groups may be split up if they’re directed to a shelter that only caters to a specific demographic, which serves to separate communities and causes further fear and possibly further trauma. Moreover, many of Sacramento’s shelters do not house people for more than a short period of time or are only open during inclement weather, making it an impossibility to plan where you’ll next lay your head.
Choosing to live in a relatively safe, public area — albeit inside a tent — means you may have at least a few weeks in the same location before you are rousted. That sense of semi-permanence is far more comforting than constantly shelter-hopping, but if a person who is unhoused even once refuses an offer of a shelter bed, they are deemed “service-resistant.”
There’s a better way: In Denver, between January 2016 and December 2017, 363 people were referred to the Denver Supportive Housing Social Impact Bond Initiative program, which provides permanent housing and wraparound services, in partnership with the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless and the Mental Health Center of Denver.
Within six months of referral, 311 of the 363 were located by staff, and of those located, 90 percent agreed to housing within six months, according to the Urban Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank that conducts economic and social policy research. The average time between the initial meeting and a client agreeing to housing was just six days, and 81 percent agreed within one day of being located.
Why was their program so successful? Because they provided services to where people were and offered them permanent, supportive housing.
“One reason for the high take-up rate among Denver SIB participants is the program’s emphasis on Housing First, which doesn’t require participants to meet preconditions to entry, such as sobriety or a commitment to services,” wrote the Urban Institute’s Vice President for metropolitan housing and communities policy, Mary K. Cunningham, in a blog post.
“The program breaks down barriers to housing. Instead of using housing as a reward for good behavior, housing is offered as a stabilizer,” Cunningham wrote. “Throughout every step of the process — from engagement to housing — Denver SIB participants’ needs are prioritized. Service providers take time to build trust and rapport with clients, allowing clients to largely decide what services they receive.”
Sacramento has only the barest semblance of this program, with the Homeless Engagement and Response Team (HEART) at the county level and the Sacramento Police Department’s Impact Team, but neither is staffed to the level that is demanded by the sheer number of people who require their attention. The HEART team, for example, has only nine clinicians and four peers going out to encampments. We must direct more funding to programs like HEART that actually work, not toward punitive measures like sweeps or — as one reader suggested recently to me — “declare martial law” and “construct metal industrial buildings to store ... homeless persons.”
No one who is homeless prefers the hard ground to sleep on, and no one who depends on a tent to keep the elements out would rather have a thin canvas than a roof between them and a rainstorm. No one who deals with the bugs, rodents, animals — and the diseases that accompany them — secretly prefers to live squalor, nor is it “easier to connect with their drug dealer when stretched out on the sidewalk,” as another reader so eloquently wrote me.
We cannot effectively help people get off the streets and into shelters if we believe the uncaring and untrue myths about them. When that happens, we are allowing our fellow human beings to be hungry, cold and unsafe while simultaneously condemning them for their “choices.”
Editor’s note: The original version of this article misstated the total number of beds available in the county on any given night; that number is closer to 2,400.
This story was originally published August 26, 2023 at 5:00 AM.
